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❝I ALWAYS WANTED TO CREATE A GOTHIC ENVIRONMENT THAT ALLOWS THE OBSERVER TO SEE AND UNDERSTAND THE STORY❞

GOTHIC MEDIEVAL ENVIRONMENT

ARTIST Efe Kaan Güney

SOFTWARE Blender, Substance Painter, Unreal Engine 5

3D environment artist Efe Kaan Güney spent ten days creating this atmospheric scene. “I always wanted to create a Gothic environment that allows the observer to see and understand the story,” he explains to 3D World, “and I enjoyed making the landscape and lighting.” Güney tried to make his own landscape material and terrain, so opted to use a texture atlas for the trees and modular pieces for the log houses, castle and bay.

Creating realistic foliage and vegetation presented a particularly tough challenge for Güney, as he knew that he would need to maintain that optimised and realistic look in all his 3D models. “I usually go looking for textures of leaves, branches etc to use in my final packaged textures,” he recalls. “Always use packaged textures, that'll save you more memory from your project. If you find the right texture for you, in Substance Source or Quixel Megascans for example, you can just use them with a texture atlas.” When he can’t find the right texture Güney usually models his branches and leaves in Blender, before baking them onto a plane to create his own baked maps and create textures from scratch, merging a lot of things from his library. If working on a large environment Güney usually creates some trim sheets and atlases to use in a lot of meshes to maintain optimisation.

“What drives me is that, with art in general, nothing is impossible and there will always be room for improvement,” Güney reflects, “there is no limit for an artist to improve.”

● kaandima.artstation.com

THOR’SILDEON