Year
summer 2016
#PBR Texture
#Maya
#SpeedTree
#Substance Designer
#Plugin Development
#Unity Artist
Netease Game Internship
Internship as Technical Artist, at Leihuo Game Division, Netease, Inc., Hangzhou, China
In summer 2016, I had the privilege to work as a technical artist at Netease Game.
I worked as an artist to make PBR textures and 3d modeling, and also a developer to create plugins and tools for artists to use.
Our main goal is to research and develop cutting edge ways to design, model, animate and render plants and vegetation in different platforms, which is mobile platform and PC platform.
I took charge of the R&D of these two different pipelines for two upcoming games in the company:
one is a mobile game, called < Meteor, Butterfly and Sword>
one is a MMORPG PC game, called <逆水寒>
In three months, I developed two plugins to support wind effect for plants for company’s game engine and to automatically generate 3D models with texture based on the silhouette image users upload. I made a series of 3d plants and PBR textures by using new methods we research. And finally based on the two pipelines we research and develop, I created a guideline of vegetation and plant creation process for other artists in company to use and follow.
Here are some individual work I made:
Plugin 1
Automatically Generate User-Adjustable Leaf Model from Uploaded Silhouette Image
In Maya, artists no longer need to model the detail of the leaf or other small element of a plant. By uploading the silhouette of the target, a model will be generated automatically and users can adjust them by changing some parameters. Also the uv of the model is paired with the target, so artists can apply the texture to the model very easily.
Plugin 2
Create a plug in to support Game Engine’s Wind System by controlling Vertex Color of a mesh
Alpha Channel :Store the relative height of the vertex compared to the base of the plant.
R Channel: Store the overall swing amplitude of the plant which increases gradually from bottom to top.
G Channel:Store the range in which the swing amplitude of each leave varies.
B Channel: Store the randomness of plant details for intensifying the random properties of each vertex.
In maya, artist use this plugin to assign vertex color to the plants, and bring the plants to the engine. Then the plants will automatically pair with engine’s wind system and will be controlled by the engine.
Vegetation Art Work
To achieve a high quality of plants and vegetations but also minimize the rendering cost, I research and develop a pipeline for mobile platform:
This is the process of creating PBR textures by using maya, photoshop, speedTree and substance designer.
Part 1 : make leaf or petal in maya and photoshop
Part 2: generate vegetation and plants in Speedtree using the model from part 1
Part 3 & 4: export models from part 2, bake diffuse map in maya, import low poly&high poly diffuse map to substance designer and generate other textures
Here are small version of PBR textures I created:
Plants and Vegetation in Mobile Game <Meteor, Butterfly and Sword>
Plants and Vegetation in PC Game <逆水寒>
Special thanks to Netease Game Leihuo Division Technical Artist Team for the mentorship :) It was a great summer!