The Moon Gate

In this article we’re joined by Michael as he talks about the creation of his tranquil, charming scene, Moon Gate, inspired by a trip to Yangshuo, China. Learn how Michael composed his scene, created narrative and brought his scene to life as well as his workflow for creating stylized assets and scenes.

Intro

Hey everyone! I am Michael Khinevich, a 3D Environment Artist from Shanghai, China. I am Belarussian but have lived in China for more than three years. I have two and a half years of experience in 3D. I worked on mobile and PC titles with clients from Nigeria, Germany, the UK, and currently working for a Swedish company.

I am a self-taught artist and didn’t go to any art school. China helped me to understand what inspires me and what I love - games, nature and the process of creation. I just added one to another and it became clear what I should do.

Scene Setup

The idea for this project came to me when I and my wife went to the art studio in Shanghai and painted an environment based on our memories from a trip to Yangshuo, just for fun. We used a picture as a reference.

That's the first project I made from my concept, so I didn’t have any clue about what should be in the scene - narrative, lightning setup, camera angle, etc. Total freestyle! After some brainstorming and research, I ended up with several concepts. It helped me to understand the general direction.

Working with your concept brings a lot of challenges. From one side you can create whatever you want and you have no limitations, but the same thing can easily become overwhelming, because so many options, and you don’t know where to start. Also, the result may look not as great as it may if you use someone else concept. But at the end of the day, it gives you a great experience and feeling, that no one had created this before and it comes from YOUR imagination. I think it’s worth it.

Composition

I spend a lot of time choosing the best camera angle for the main shot and finally decided that a 45-degree down-top angle is the best choice, because we can see more surfaces on the main props, and they feel more majestic when you look from that angle. Also, I like that from this angle you see the background trees, they bring variation to the colour palette and help to break the colour palette.

To lead the viewer's eyes to the focal point of the scene - the gate and the lion statues, I used the shapes of the mountains, landscape, and sunrays (red lines). Also, I was using the rule of thirds (yellow lines) to build a proper camera angle. To increase the viewer's focus, I also added a slight vignette effect.

Narrative

The huge advantage of living in Shanghai for an artist is that here you can find a lot of traditional Chinese architecture. I just grab my camera, went outside, and took a lot of pictures. I was always impressed by guardian lions statues, they all look so glorious and proud, that’s why that was the first thing I wanted in my scene. The other one was a moon gate because it is also a typical Asian structure with stunning curve shapes.

I like medieval and fantasy mix - Warcraft 3, WoW, Gothic and The Lord of the Rings is on my list of favourites, so I decided to give my scene the same feeling by putting damage on hero props and adding some destroyed elements around the area,  some tree colours are not natural on purpose, so it looks like a fantasy game. I wanted to bring the feeling that the gate stayed here for a long time and it was a small part of a bigger structure, and this road is rarely used by the travellers.

Lighting

I was using Unreal Engine 5 with all the great features, except Nanite because it didn’t work well with the shader that I used. The nice thing about UE5 is that there are a lot fewer things you should do in comparison with UE4 to make your light look nice. For my scene, I didn’t use any other lights except directional. I just tweaked some basic parameters and Lumen did a great job creating nice shadows and light bounces.

The idea was to separate the gate and lions from the background to make their shapes more visible. I achieved that with the fog cards, so it brought contrast between foreground and background and gave more depth to the scene.

The landscape has a very warm orange tint on it, to balance it, I made the background and shadows much colder. These two colours are complementary and have a good match.

In general, you always want to balance your colours. For example, if you have warm light, make your shadows cold, and if you have a winter scene, put a small fire camp somewhere. Colour and light understanding are fundamental skills that you should have as an artist.

Style

I tried to achieve a cartoony look for my scene, something similar to Ghibli, and to approach this I used several tools: Maya for blocking, ZBrush for sculpting, Substance Painter for texturing, and last but not least a post-process material in Unreal Engine.

The modelling part in Maya was pretty straightforward. The only thing that I want to highlight is how I made those roof panels. I used MASH in Maya for that. Here is a great tutorial on this by Mike Hermes. You create a curve and apply a mesh to it through the MASH system and then you can tweak it as you want. So instead of hand placing those panels I just used this method which saved a lot of time. Also I want to recommend JL Musli because he’s got a well-presented tutorial series about stylized modelling in Maya.

Sculpting is one of my favourite things in  3D. This is a territory, where you can add your personal touch to what you creating. A guardian lion statue I made completely in ZBrush using different brushes and techniques which I learned from other artists. It was an unusual experience since I don’t usually sculpt animals or humans, that’s why I gathered a lot of references from every angle in advance. To be honest, I had a lot of fun making it and it’s not as difficult as I thought it will be.

I am a big fan of Michael Vicente’s and Ranko Prozo’s artistic styles and I like to use Orb brushes in my sculptures since they help to bring that special style to art. I also use some standard brushes as well.

After the high poly was done I retopologized the props by hand in 3DCoat and UV unwrapped them using Maya’s amazing tools by Malcolm341 in combination with RizomUV, and this great addon from Eric Spellerberg.

After baking in Marmoset I started texturing in Substance Painter. My goal was to experiment with the smart materials and let them do the majority of the work, so I can focus on smaller details. I wanted to reach the hand painted look and for that purpose, as a base of my smart material, I used a free tutorial from StylizedStation and added more layers on top to complete the look. After the smart material was done, I added a few hand painted details to improve texture quality and pop up some parts of the mesh.

Last but not least, in Unreal Engine I applied a post-process material and for that I have to give a huge shoutout to Charlie from the PrismaticaDev YouTube channel for creating and breaking down this Advanced Cel-Shader post-process material. It brings that nice cartoony look to the scene by bringing stepping to the lightning so it looks hand painted.

Foliage Creation

As you may notice, there are a lot of trees and grass in the scene as well as some bushes, twigs and flowers.

Trees are very easy to make in SpeedTree since this is the main purpose of that tool but for the tree crones and bushes I wanted to make I wanted to make them with a different style to make them more fluffy. For that I used a tutorial by Johannes Burström. This approach is very unique because it doesn’t matter how you scale or rotate the crone, it will always look good.

A good skill for an artist is to know how to reuse the existing assets as much as possible, that’s why twigs are just small copies of the trees without crones, rocks and pebbles are tiny scaled mountains with different material instances, and foliage on the mountains are bushes with a different colour.

The grass was very easy to make in Maya since I didn’t want to make any textures for it. So I just created a flat plane, merged corners to the center and bend it a little. Then I painted vertex colours on it to preserve the movement of the bottom part from the wind and duplicated it several times to create a grass cluster. Before exporting an FBX to Unreal, I also Z-Up Normals, so the grass will have a more stylized look without so much shadow information.

All the colours were added in Unreal by using the foliage material and RVT textures.

Materials

I am still learning the materials and using a lot of tutorials from more experienced artists to achieve the desired results. I think it will be more valuable to share some sources with you, rather than explain things that I’m no expert on.

The first who I want to mention is Unreal Sensei. He’s got a bunch of great tutorials about Unreal Engine and covers everything that you need to know about how to create your environment in Unreal. Also he made a fantastic Auto Landscape Material, which I use in my scene. It’s free, easy to customize and that’s a great start for an artist who is learning Unreal Engine.

If you want to dive more into the tech part of Unreal, I recommend checking Ben Cloward's YouTube channel. He is a master of teaching and efficiently describes complicated things.

VFX

I don't think it's necessary but it's highly recommended to put some VFX in your scene, especially if you make a portfolio piece and expect a potential employer to see it. It feels more natural, shows your artistic thinking and brings life to everything you created. Basic staff like wind on the grass and some particles in the air are not difficult to make but the benefits of moving objects are difficult to overestimate. For example, I used Wind Splines in my scene which I created in Cascade using Dean Ashford's tutorial, it fits in with the style and makes the scene look prettier. The sky is painted by hand in Photoshop and animated using basic Unreal tools in Sequencer.

Photography

Here I want to mention Willam Faucher. This guy is a guru of lighting and cinematic effects and his tutorials are pure gold. If you want to push your art to the next level you should check his channel. Not long ago William shared a video about how important for an artist to have some experience in photography and it impressed me so much that I bought a DLSR camera. Photography immediately became my favourite hobby.

That feeling when you walk down the street and point your camera at things that interest you, choose the right angle, build composition and tweak settings is very similar to the ones you make in Unreal. When you have a camera, your eyes automatically start analysing the world around you and you find things that you didn’t see before - beautiful trees, interesting lighting or shadows, textures on the walls, unusual architecture and it can help you down the road in your art. It can improve your skills in composition and I recommend trying it. One more thing, for me hearing the sound of the shutter is not comparable to the feelings when using a smartphone.

Presentation

I can’t describe how important it is for a beginning artist to present their work properly. I often see people posting things which are not polished enough and don’t feel complete. Their portfolio looks like a mess with lots of different stuff - guns, props, environment, characters, paintings, etc.

I made the same mistakes in the beginning because I was so proud of myself and wanted to show everyone what I did. But the truth is, it sucks no matter how good I thought It was. It took me two years to understand the basics.

That’s fine if 3D is just a hobby for you but if you want to be a professional you have to understand this aspect.  If you are a beginner and your goal is to find your first job in 3D do not skip the presentation. I read a lot of materials and watched a ton of tutorials on how to present your art in the best possible way and it’s not as easy as it seems.

• Make sure that you polish your work as well as you can, using feedback from other artists and not from family members

• Do not post tutorial projects. It only shows others that you know how to follow the steps. Put them in a blog section if you want.

• Consistency in your portfolio is essential. If you are an Environment Artist you want to post environments, dioramas, maybe props. If you like to model vehicles, there should not be any guns and characters in your portfolio. I think it’s better to be the best at one thing, rather than okay in many. It’s totally fine if you don’t know what you like. Just take your time to try everything you are interested in and you will find it.

• Make your thumbnails look perfect. This is the first thing that people see when they scroll the ArtStation feed and you want it to catch their eye. It doesn’t mean you should put a lot of logos and completely cover your art. I like minimalism and don’t want any logos but if it’s small and doesn’t distract too much from the art it’s okay.

• Show your working process. People like to see not only the result but the whole path of your project. Show more breakdowns of the assets, sculpts and work in progress GIFs. Be sure that everything looks great there as well.

• Get rid of your weak pieces. It’s not easy, it’s heart-breaking but you have to do it. I heard that hundreds of times from other artists and now it’s my turn to say it - “You are as good as your weakest piece”. Leave only the best. Better to have 3-5 top-notch pieces in your portfolio than 10 meh pieces.

Fill in the About section on ArtStation. Don’t put too much information there, only the necessary minimum so recruiters can faster identify who you are and what is your role and experience. I recommend watching Kieran Goodson's tutorial series to better understand how it works.

Areas Looking To Grow As An Artist

I’m always excited about learning new things in 3D. There is so much information nowadays and it’s easy to lose yourself in it. But if you have a clear view of what interests you most, the circle becomes much smaller. I want to dive more into modular environments, decals usage, and tillable materials. I want to have expertise in Substance Designer since that tool can speed up the workflow of texture creation. I saw amazing things some artists do with that tool and it inspires me. Trim-sheet is one of those things that I know but should practice more. Overall I want to work fast, efficiently, clean, and of the highest possible quality.

If you want to become a better artist, you should constantly learn something new. Make personal projects, join challenges and be open to new tools and techniques. Practice is the best way of learning. Don’t be afraid to apply for an artist position if you don’t have experience. You never know what you are capable of. I know these are trite phrases, but it’s true. Every day, hard work, no excuses. And please, remember, do not compare yourself with others but compare yourself with yourself before.

Inspiration

Everyone got their ways of inspiration. Nature is what inspires me most. Sometimes I can stare at the tree leaves and observe how the light passes through them. The silence of mountains and the loudness of waterfalls makes me feel alive. Sometimes it can be just an interesting pattern on the wall or rock. I often scroll the ArtStation feed and see a lot of outstanding works. I have a huge collection of concepts that I would love to make in 3D one day.

Feedback

Never underestimate the importance of feedback, that will help you improve your art and bring a fresh view. For me, the best way to get feedback is through Discord channels. There are a lot of great artists who can help if you ask kindly.

For example, I didn't realize that something was wrong with the mountains before I asked for feedback but that’s alright since usually you work on a project for a long period and your vision may blur. You may not notice obvious flaws and that’s where feedback comes in very handy.

Future Projects

I am only at the beginning of a long journey and super excited about the future. I have fun and enjoy every moment. I will create stylized environments because that’s what touches my feelings most. With the development of new technologies you can create new worlds from your imagination in a few clicks and that’s fascinating.

Outro

This project was a fantastic opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and try my hand at designing everything from scratch.

Thanks to Experience Points for inviting me to talk about my process. If you have any questions, feel free to DM me on ArtStation or just drop me an email! I’m always happy to share insights.