Alistair Grant
Senior Environment Artist at The Chinese Room
Home
Resume

Blade Runner Breakdowns

Hey there 👋 hope some of this is helpful but please do get in touch if you have any particular questions! :)

The project ran from December to beginning of April. I searched for some inspiration and references in mid-December and found Syd Mead's stuff and then thought about that over xmas. Then in mid Jan started block-outs and then went straight into making trim sheets after finalising the composition. Some scale tweaking was needed later so will need to really lock down the block-outs before moving on in future.

BladeRunner scene in UnrealEngine 4 progress video

Mostly inspired by the amazing concept work Syd Mead did for the original BR but pulling together many artists who have been pushing the quality bar in this area for a while also

Mostly inspired by the amazing concept work Syd Mead did for the original BR but pulling together many artists who have been pushing the quality bar in this area for a while also

Top left: showing editor view. Top right: Roughness (closer to camera the 'wetter' as more exposed). Bottom left: lighting only. Bottom right: diffuse.

Top left: showing editor view. Top right: Roughness (closer to camera the 'wetter' as more exposed). Bottom left: lighting only. Bottom right: diffuse.

Prop sheet

Prop sheet

Trim sheets workflow, dividing, modelling, sub-div into squares prep for sculpting, sculpting process, duplicate for AO, then baking and texture creation

Trim sheets workflow, dividing, modelling, sub-div into squares prep for sculpting, sculpting process, duplicate for AO, then baking and texture creation

Unwrapping geometry to a trim sheet texture you can create geo efficient structures quickly and efficiently. For variety you can later do vertex painting and adding decals.

Unwrapping geometry to a trim sheet texture you can create geo efficient structures quickly and efficiently. For variety you can later do vertex painting and adding decals.

Curbs with two texture variations, the original sculpts which were baked down and two different wireframe approaches, a performant one depending on the materials and normal maps to do the heavy lifting, and a second one with more polys to help silhouette

Curbs with two texture variations, the original sculpts which were baked down and two different wireframe approaches, a performant one depending on the materials and normal maps to do the heavy lifting, and a second one with more polys to help silhouette

Curb and step sculpts re-topology workflow to create a game-ready mesh. Blenders decimate modifier set to un-subdivide reduce by four, then place UV seams along edges, then decimate using collapse retaining seam position, last manual vert welding.

Curb and step sculpts re-topology workflow to create a game-ready mesh. Blenders decimate modifier set to un-subdivide reduce by four, then place UV seams along edges, then decimate using collapse retaining seam position, last manual vert welding.

The spiral column high poly, wireframe and unwrap method. After several different approaches to UV unwrapping this was the most successful, allowing for a bake and the column mesh to use a tiling texture outside of the 0-1 UV space.

The spiral column high poly, wireframe and unwrap method. After several different approaches to UV unwrapping this was the most successful, allowing for a bake and the column mesh to use a tiling texture outside of the 0-1 UV space.

Setting up a blend material will allow large models like this one to have variety, you can see each texture is assigned to a different RBG value (red and blue respectively) in the engine and because the column retained its geometry it had enough verts.

Setting up a blend material will allow large models like this one to have variety, you can see each texture is assigned to a different RBG value (red and blue respectively) in the engine and because the column retained its geometry it had enough verts.

BladeRunner Road material vertex painting/blend example

A rain-splash flipbook material was put into a three stack material blend which would have allowed for greater specificity in how water was gathering in the scene but in the end I mostly went with the blue channel.

A rain-splash flipbook material was put into a three stack material blend which would have allowed for greater specificity in how water was gathering in the scene but in the end I mostly went with the blue channel.

BladeRunner in Unreal Engine 4, Hologram shaders with UV distortion and glitching

The holograms were an important part of the scene and later on in the project I added a distortion effect to this hologram material which supported the idea/feeling of the scene being 'sunken' with its water-like movement. Graphic from Territory Studio.

The holograms were an important part of the scene and later on in the project I added a distortion effect to this hologram material which supported the idea/feeling of the scene being 'sunken' with its water-like movement. Graphic from Territory Studio.

And the second hologram shader received a glitch effect because the bollards in this section had been damaged and I wanted that reflected in the material. Graphic from Territory Studio.

And the second hologram shader received a glitch effect because the bollards in this section had been damaged and I wanted that reflected in the material. Graphic from Territory Studio.

Report