Art Spotlight: Kooky Spooky House on Haunted Hill

About Me

Heya! My name is Riley and I’m an Associate Environment Artist currently working over at Imangi Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina! I graduated almost a year ago from my grad program over at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy in Orlando, Florida where I studied Game Art. Before that, I really had no experience doing 3D art at all so it’s been a pretty cool couple of years going from zero knowledge to where I am now!

Inspiration

I saw that the Sketchfab Halloween Low Poly contest was happening in October and really wanted to participate in it. I went searching around for different ideas of things I could do and saw this amazing concept by Diana Dementeva that I had saved a long time ago and thought that it would be the perfect thing to make! It was stylistically pleasing but not so complex that I couldn’t complete it in the time frame of the contest.

In terms of art style, I was initially going to do this 100% handpainted in 3D-Coat since I hadn’t done a hand-painted piece in a bit. After looking at the concept and thinking about it and my work schedule, I decided to make this using techniques pulled from the amazing Joyce (Minions Art) as well as using principles based on the art style guide of #DRIVE. Both of these processes allow for quick production while also being stylistically fresh and interesting.

Process

Modeling

The tool that I used to make this piece was Autodesk Maya 2017. I first started off by bringing in the original concept into Maya on an Image Plane so I could use it as a reference. I scaled it up to the size that I wanted it to be and just started modeling based on the concept.

For the initial blockout, I would use the Front Camera with no perspective to get the overall scale and shape matching 1:1 on the front-facing angle.

Example of the blockout laid over the concept. This is the stage where I’m trying to get the general shapes and proportions correct.

Once the front-facing proportions look good, I go in and make sure that it looks good in all three dimensions, haha

Once the blockout phase was done, I went in and added in more details such as the lines on the windows, the bricks, the road, etc. If I was doing this using a hand-painted technique, I wouldn’t have needed to add this extra geometry but because I’m texturing it with a different technique, I needed the extra geometry.

While I was adding in the extra detail, I continued to refine the model’s proportions and delete geo that people wouldn’t see to keep both polycount low and to make UV’ing easier later on.

For the background elements like the moon, birds, fog, etc., I debated whether to make them truly 3D or just use a 2D plane. In the end, I decided that since I really wanted to keep the poly count super low, making them 2D would be the better route.

Final model without textures

Texturing

Texturing is my favorite part of the entire 3D pipeline. If I could just skip to that part of the process I could die happy, haha. As mentioned above, I learned about this technique originally from Joyce (MinionsArt). She has a bunch of amazing tutorials and write-ups on her processes and pipelines available on her Patreon and Twitter!

Essentially what it involves is getting a texture atlas with your color palettes and UV’ing specific parts to those specific colors.

The process I used to texture my model.

To explain what I did, I basically took whatever geo I had on my model and I would either UV it by going to UV > Planar or UV > Camera-Based depending on what I was texturing. I’d then go and refine the overall shape of the model by making the sides darker, which I achieved by moving the UV shells down onto the darker part of the gradient. Doing this takes the model from being a flat color to having detail on the edges, sides, etc. (see the above image on step 2 vs. step 3). Once that was done, I’d add in highlights by either moving some UVs to a lighter part of the gradient or by adding a strip of geometry that I’d then use as a rim light.

Example of what the example model looks like with the UV’s. The shells on the third gradient are for the main example model, the rest are for the rim light.

I liked using this method because it allowed me to get straight to texturing my project and allowed me to not have to worry about seams. It’s a really fast way of texturing that gives really nice results and can be iterated on quickly. The UVs don’t look pretty at the end but with this technique you don’t have to worry about texel density, seams or any of that—you can just focus on getting your colors and overall forms looking nice.

What the final UVs looked like

Sketchfab

This project was actually my first time using Sketchfab and I really enjoyed it! I feel like the biggest benefit of Sketchfab, for me, was being able to make the whole render be an environment. Being able to use the background and add background elements to the piece really made the whole scene come together.

In Sketchfab, I really enjoyed adding in grain and a vignette to help push the 3D model to look like the 2D drawing. I also added a bit of AO for some extra shadows as well as some sharpness and bloom to help make the brighter colors pop. The setting that really made it look nice was the field of view; I cut the field of view down to 10 to limit the perspective and give the scene that diorama look.

One suggestion I have for people making something in this gradient art style is to put your base color into the emissive setting in your material, which allows for the model to retain all the original flat color information.

Thanks

I really want to thank the Sketchfab team for featuring me and for the opportunity to write this article! I never thought I would get so much positive reception from my little Kooky Spooky Ooky House but seeing all of it has probably been a highlight of my year!

I also want to give a shoutout to all my friends for all the encouragement and support I’ve gotten over the years; learning 3D and getting through grad school wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my friends and loved ones.

Please feel free to follow me on any other social media platform and contact me if you have any other questions or just want to chit chat!

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