It's October ! And "October" means.. INKTOBER AND BLOCKTOBER !
Inktober: Every October, artists do one drawing a day the entire month.
Blocktober Every day in October, one early blockout (from games) is posted with the hashtag #blocktober.
Following this idea, we decided to create a similar challenge for 3D Environment Artists who are interested :) . The #dintober-chat will be open so you can post your progress. We mods will check it regularly to give feedback and encourage you along the way !
✨Behold the first edition of Dintober !✨
The goal of Dintober is to finish an environment in a month. There are 14 steps overall. You can define the time you use on those steps, as long as you keep the time constraint in mind (1 month) and try to post your progress once a day (even small). If you feel more comfortable, you can scramble some of them and invert them (ex : Texturing if you need a trimsheet for your structure). When posting in the channel, please state which step you're in !
The example images below are a project I did in a week-end following those steps. Hope you find them useful!
1st step: MoodBoard / Intentions. Define what you’ll be doing for this Dintober, find references of what you want to make. You can either choose a concept to follow, mix references, sketch something. If you don’t want to choose the theme yourself, you can choose in the images we propose (below). Make a list of your needs to achieve your goal.
2nd step: Blockout Macro (Big shapes). Create your main composition using low resolution prototypes. Do not add color yet, focus on big structural shapes, main elements of focus.
3rd step: Blockout Micro (Medium or small Shapes). Add prototypes of elements that are secondary but add more depth to your environment. NO DETAILS. Add a camera.
4th step: Add solid color to your prototypes, do a lighting first pass to put emphasis on the important parts of your layout. (no need for unwrap at this stage).
5th step: Tweak what you already have, list and define if you need more or less things. If you don’t feel like you need it and think you should move on, move to step 6.
6th step: Prop Modeling: Structure (unwrap included). In the example project there was no structure, so I considered the "ground" to be it and made the sculpt/final shape.
7th step: Prop Modeling, Main Composition elements (final modelling of the macro prototypes) -Unwrap Included
8th step: Prop modelling: Secondary compostion Elements (micro prototypes) - Unwrap included
9th step : technical stuff. If you need a skybox, water, particles, anything specific to your environment, this is the step 😊 In the example I made a sparkly spiral for extra glitter :)
10th step: Texturing - Main Elements
11th Step: Texturing - Secondary Elements
12th step: Lighting pass, tweaks.
13th step: Add more awesomeness. (in this case I made an animation for the sketchfab viewer). Anything that adds more depth and sparkles to your work and feels good to add in the amount of time you have!
14th step: Portfolio time ! Present your work well... AND YOU'RE DONE ! If you've used a concept as reference, Don't forget to tag/credit the Concept Artist ;)
Don't know where to start? Would rather use a concept? Here are a few you could start with :
Panda Hut by Sylvain Sarrailh
Sketch by Shin jong hun
Fields 04 by Slawek Fedorczuk
Don't forget to credit the artist if you use a concept. Do not hesitate to ask questions, and good Arting to you !