KAREN SU
3D Environment Artist
The King's War Tent
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A king and his subjects are traveling around during a time of war, and during a moment of tentative ceasefire, the king and his advisors gather round the war board, planning where next to mobilize their troops. Do not mistake the mobile tent for weakness, however - it holds the same power, wealth, and grandeur as any immovable palace would.
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Original Concept - Francis Goeltner
The King’s War Tent is based on the concept artwork, "The Siege: The King's War-Tent" by Francis Goeltner on ArtStation. I am responsible for all aspects of the project with the exception of the fire/bird VFX, books (both taken from the Unreal Marketplace), and map images (taken from Lord of the Rings).
Process
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I started out with modeling the entire scene in Maya. It gave me a good opportunity to organize what the kit library would look like, and figure out the proportions of the scene. Once I was done, I then took important assets and furniture pieces into ZBrush for detail sculpting. Because the furniture details (especially the throne) were too small in the original concept to read, I decided to implement my own creative twist by putting a mixture of Japanese and Celtic imagery into the carvings of the wood, and gold patterns on the cloth. Marvelous Designer was used to create the tarps and curtains that are the foundation of the tent.
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Materials & Decals
Much of the scene consists of objects that share similar material reads with one another, but the difficulty lay in making sure there was still enough natural variation in my scene. I created one wood material and used it as a base to create three variations in Substance Designer. Each of them were then made into master materials in UE with custom parameters that I could then make material instances of, and make custom blends for.
Furniture and detailed props were baked and textured in Substance Painter. After I finished the first wooden piece, I then turned its material into a smart material so I could easily apply this to similar props later on.
I then populated the rest of my scene with decals to break up elements, add subtle damage, and variations into the wood. I also hand-painted several alphas for other decals, namely for the different coat of arms on the war board, and for the gold patterns on the tent’s fabric. Because so much of the original concept illustration featured varied bird iconography, I thought it would be fun to create patterns themed around various other animals.
