Hi again!

So it's update time for the Pharmacy project. A lot happened since the last time I posted.
The scene has gotten a lot of love as well. A relight as I felt the previous one didn't match the concept in the way I wanted. I've also added textures to all parts and props and started adding dirt and rubble to some parts, as well as added some new props.
I found the old boxes a bit boring and clean so I did a texture pass on the to roughen them up a bit.

Below you have a progress update and a closeup of one of the new assets that was added (an auto injector).
But that's not all...

I've made a decision

The bigger news and the centerpiece of this post is that I've decided to shelve the project.
It became apparent to me that it was no longer as fun to work on as I wanted and it started to become a chore taking it forward.
Looking back at it I think I've felt this most of the time during the project with the exception of a few select evenings now and then.
Now the story behind this decision is a bit bigger. I've made some realizations about how I work, why I do what I do, and where I should go forward, and this project isn't that.
Now don't take me wrong I've really enjoyed creating this project. Its just that I find myself wanting to work on it less and less. And from that I decided its better to cut the scope down, finish it up and move on, rather than forcing my way through it.

This is something I talk about in more detail here: LINK TO ANOTHER BLOG POST
This is in order to not shift focus away from the topic with a bunch of project updates in the same place.

In an effort to do the project justice though, I've created some small dioramas to wrap up what I've created for the scene in a neat way.

Hi again, It's update time!

So since last time I've been to Gamescom, Sweden game conference, on vacation and back so a lot has happened both inside and outside of this project.

But the focus here should be about this project. And the bulk of the work since the last post has been a complete overhaul of the lighting. I felt that the old setup ended up being way too saturated and bright. And a second point to the lighting was that when I added proper textures the baked GI gave "proper" light from any emissive surfaces. Causing the light on the pillars and in the ceiling to brighten up the entire scene, and that combined with my directional light ended up way brighter than I wanted.
Another big part of whats changed is that I also gave everything in the scene proper textures and UVs, moving away from the simple tiling textures they had before.

For this round of screenshots I went back to one of my extra supporting cameras as an alternative angle. Making sure the scene is keeping up to shape from more than one direction. 

The scene now has a proper set of textured pharmaceutical props. With proper list of contents if anyone is picky about their vitamin sources.

I've taken a pass adding proper detail normals to the shader and materials to give those really juicy close ups and in that also aligning the reflectivity of the surfaces with how I want it.

Whats next for the project now would be to start giving the scene some proper dressing.
Getting the pharmaceuticals placed in a more proper and logical sense and giving the scene its abandoned, "someone has been here to steal shit" look.

Hi there!
It's time for an update on the scene again

A lot has changed since the last post and the biggest one is probably the textures. I brought in some temporary tiling textures to the objects of the scene to get all the colors in place and get a feel for it all.
The original concept has some really impactful reflections going on in the floor which is something I really wanted to keep so one thing that got some love was the Screen space reflections.
With that I also worked a bit with the shadows to get them real sharp and tight.
Notice how the old shadows have a very soft edge to them compared to the new ones. Also notice the bias issue in the older shadows where the shadows of Adams feet weren't cast just behind him.

There has been boxes... all the boxes!
For this I also created a cardboard material to go with them

And what kind of update would it be if it didn't bring some shader sweets. I started a basic glass shader with refraction and a very subtle adjust of opacity based on depth. This gave it this dark tinted look that I quite liked, rather than it just being transparent. (Shown in the GIF below)

I felt it was finally time for an update on this!
I've managed to get a lot of small blocked out props in to have me getting started on filling the place up.

I spent some time experimenting with the second room, the storage room from the concepts but I never managed to get it to a place where i liked it. So for now I've decided to focus the project on mainly this part of the scene. But I might jump back to the storage area later who knows.

But perhaps the biggest change is the one finished prop. I found it quite fun to model and thought I would take a little detour going all the way with this fire extinguisher. I decided to not add any dust to it in the texture as I think I want to do that with a shader in Unity instead. Will probably give the textures some more love at a later stage when the whole scene starts coming together, still have some masks in there that I'm not 100% satisfied with.

The power of Global Illumination

This scene uses quite a lot of indirect light which makes GI a fundamental pillar in the look of the scene. I think this scene therefore demonstrates the power of GI quite well and shows  what it can do with very little effort. This is a quick bake of about 6 minutes (using Bakery - GPU Lightmapper)

I'm back at it and kicked off a new project this week. So I thought I would share the progress of the scene here with anyone interested in following along...

So I've wanted to do a post apo scene for a long time and I felt that now is a perfect time. Its a genre that I've always liked a lot and wanted to play around more with.
But post apo is HUUUUGE , so what to pick?
Well my latest work has consisted of a lot of exterior work so for this project I wanted to go inside a bit. And after roaming through my collection of nice looking environments I settled on this concept by Ilya Dykov.
The scene being a medical facility or a pharmacy give me a nice amount of small props to really focus on and develop my prop skills.
Plus I will be forced to make some kickass looking cardboard because that's laying all over the place!

So heres the first stage blockout with just basic shapes and lighting mostly to establish scale, position and how the scene should be broken down.

Blockouts

Scene Breakdown

The concept art

A small update...

I thought I would start of by explaining where I've been the past few months. So...
For the past couple of months I've spent my time doing my military service, hence the low level of activity from my end anywhere online. I've had the chance to experience the most incredible things, gotten to know the best of people and detail study anything from gun roughness to vegetation spread in forests. But during my time away certainly have felt that tingle in the fingertips. 

So during some of my free weekends I managed to sneak in some scripting. Now you might think "What? Scripting? Why are you learning that".
There's great value in knowing code and the inner running of the engine you work in as an environment artist. For the past year / year and a half I've had a personal goal of being more independent when it comes to tools in Unity, not having to rely on programmer friends or the Unity Asset Store for everything AND to know more about the technical running's of the engine (but that I will save for another blog post).
For a long time I've felt I wanted to make small adjustments to Unity in order to fit my workflow and I knew that the best way to do it was to just learn how to develop it myself.
Out of this I've decided to share the tools I develop with fellow Unity users hoping it can be of use to more people and with that I present...

Forceling Tools

Some of the tools that I've developed over the past years out of just curiosity or the fact that I felt it was a needed add-on to Unity. And with this announcement I'm releasing 3 tools on my UAS (Unity Asset Store) page!

Forceling World Space Grid

Is a simple but very useful shader and material that shows a grid of 1m, 10m and 100m on objects. The grid changes size depening on distance from the camera, meaning when you are very zoomed out it shows the 100m grid and as you get closer it displays 10m and finally up close, 1m.
I created this as I've always felt there was no good debug/testing material for just establishing size and space in a level during blockout.

Forceling Import Processor

It might not look like much but this is more of a under the hood kind of thing. It is a set of scripts that let you customize how Unity imports certain files. It uses profiles to save your settings so every new file is imported the way you want it. I made this as I found myself constantly having to change how certain files are imported, normal maps needed to be set as normal maps, I wanted my .fbx files without embedded materials. This tool does all that for me giving me more time to focus on actually producing the art!

Forceling Instance

Is a tool that lets you create copies of an object at a certain distance with a specific rotation. It also gives the ability to use random rotation and multiple objects of which it then will random between. This tool is perfect for placing prefabs or assets that repeat over a specific distance but you still want to give some rotation changes, for example pillars. I created this to make just this kind of repeating architectural pieces. Not having to place them at the specific distances by hand and giving me an easier way to adjust their distance if i decide to go from 3m to 5m distance.
Just a simple change of a value now!

Hi!

To kick things off on this blog I thought I would share some parts of my vacation trip to Frankfurt, Germany.
One thing that I always do when I travel to new places is to grab my camera, and go out taking pictures.
Im doing this to build a library of references for myself and others. And for me these new places are filled with new things that I often not see at home in Sweden. Sidewalks look different, different vegetation, its a whole new world to learn and study just by traveling across some country borders and as environment artists I think we all get a bit exited when we see those new cool looking places.
Now I said I'm doing this "to build a library of references for myself and others" and I mean that! Thats why I'm also sharing reference packages with you which I have made them available in my Artstation Store. All images I'm using in this blogpost are part of these reference packs.
artstation.com/tobiasforsling/store

Before getting into it I would like to share my photo section where I keep some of the photos I've taken during my previous travels.
tobiasforsling.artstation.com/pages/photography

Königstein Castle

As the history nerd that I am I felt that I just couldn't miss out on an opportunity like this so the first place I decided to visit was Königstein Caste. A castle with its parts dating back to the 1000-1100s. It had then been upgraded and expanded upon all the way to the 1600s.
Today the remenants of it stands as a huge ruin on top of a hill overlooking the entire surrounding area. The only road leading up to it spiraling around the hill making you really feel the intimidating walls as you come closer and closer, properly showing what an uphill battle it would have been trying to attack this place.

Frankfurt City

Now the next and perhaps most apparent place I took a walk to/through was central Frankfurt. And the first place I went to was Römerberg, which is the old part of Frankfurt. Although it was completely destroyed during world war 2, a lot of effort has been put into rebuilding a portion of it according to original plans and designs. Walking around there its feels a bit strange to see buildings looking that old in design, but made with completely fresh materials, no flaking paint, no broken rooftiles, not even a speck of moss on them.

Being in central Frankfurt there was of course not only old buildings. Most of it is more modern buildings with wide sidewalks, stickers on the lightposts and sometimes roaming skyscrapers. As I grew up in a quite small town cities this big has some really interesting things that I'm not that used to seeing. The big thing would be the height of buildings of course, but also smaller things like the fact that sidewalks are much larger and the junk and dirt that ends up on electrical cabinets and light posts over time. I also walked by the building that was said to be the last standing piece of building from world war 2 that hadn't been rebuilt or removed. 

Botanical Gardens - Palmengarten

As an environment artist I just couldn't pass on the opportunity to check the botanical gardens out, and oh boy, I was not disappointed! The place had plants from all over the world sorted into different areas of jungle and palmtrees, arid rocky areas, bamboo forest and cactus gardens. It felt like I had found a goldmine as this was so much new things that I wouldn't be able to see at home.

Now you might think that yeah but you can just google pictures of palmtrees and cacti but I would say that there is something you are missing out on then not seeing things in person.
You get such a different experience by seeing something in person, you input the image of something directly, unprocessed into your visual library alopng with the smell, the feeling of the weather around the place, the sound of all those cars driving around while someone is also tearing down a building down the road. So go out there and see the world!

A final reminder that all these images are available in my Artstation store as part of much larger reference packs.
artstation.com/tobiasforsling/store

If you have any questions or comments don't hesitate to let me know! <3
Hope you enjoyed and talk to you later!