Modular Pipe System

3d modular pipe system. Created in Blender, imported in Unreal Engine.

FBX Download: Modular Pipe System Demo

Seamless textures applied

Various segments, bends, couplers,
and 3 kinds of valves

plain detail shading

Modular Building

 This 3d modular set based on photos of a historical building established in 1872 as a hotel in Schoolcraft, Michigan. It was turned into a bar and apartments at some point and has been known as "Buds Bar" ever since I have known about it.

This set started with my interest in the amazing colorful peeling brick texture. 

Peeling brick surface.

After researching a bit, it seems this structure had an upper floor and peaked roof with tower. I decided to map out the original construction in this set.

Photo with original façade and upper floor

Historical Illustration

Current building, Mapping out module sizes. 

The stitched photo shows repeating elements that will be needed. Sizes are adapted to a metric grid so it is easy to assemble by using grid snap.

Modules Assembled

Modules assembled, temp textures

Next:

-finish balcony railing

-final texture assembly from photos

Generated Desert Sand

 Idea for generating windblown sand texture in Blender, and Unreal Engine.

I saw some nice sand patterns from a desert photo and it reminded me of the weird type of patterns the Blender Musgrave texture generates. After some experimentation, the results were actually pretty decent. Here are some examples of the setup.

The Musgrave textures are stretched out run, through ramps and blended together, then a Voronoi is used to make variations in the strength of some of the peaks. The Musgraves are also rotated around at different angles, because they tend to reveal repeating lines with larger scale values.

This technique might also help generate some interesting textures to use for panning water normals.

using several blended Musgrave textures input
into a bump, and into normals for baking.
Output Normal map, and Heightmap.
Tweaked to make seamless in Krita.

Shader setup on a plane in UE4

Simple UE4 shader with added color,
and heightmap to modulate roughness.
Blended the normal map with a seamless noise normal
to add some fine grains.

Download Texture Images

Brick Wall mesh and texture

Source photo from old schoolhouse

X tiling texture made with Krita

Materials applied and arranged in UE4

 

UE4: Lighting mini-blinds

Mini-blinds with lined shadows

Objects in scene are painted with the shadows
from the light function

Blueprint class with plane object and lights built in.
contains a non-shadowing point light, and shadow casting spotlight
which has the light function defined.

 

The blinds photo is added and set to give emissive light,
there is also a normal map I was testing, more useful when
not emitting light.

The spotlight near the blinds has a special material
 added as a "light function". This makes the lines masked out.

Virtual Art Gallery: Props and Pawns

 Details about the functionality:

The player pawn is for walking around and looking at things. It contains actions for moving forwards backwards and sideways using the keyboard, and looking around with mouse.

The pawn is set up as a "character" with character movement. There is a spring arm with camera, but currently the distance is zero, so it functions as a first person view. I also added some optional actions for mouse right click to zoom in, and left shift crouches down and back up; both using a timeline.

I decided to try using a "cinematic camera" for the player view, and see what features make it unique. It has lots of settings to tweak the image quality, lenses, and focus. In this case I made a simple autofocus for fading things that are outside the center area. 

Autofocus triggers on the tick, set at 1 second intervals

There are posed people set up around for scale and atmosphere, but they can be an obstruction. To resolve this, I built a blueprint that can fade the people in or out when the player is near.

blueprint with capsule collision. material instance parameter
faded in and out with a timeline.

Dither fade and remove collision when overlapped

added dither parameter to master material

Props:

Herman Miller inspired bent plywood desk

Work desk inspired by Herman Miller vintage office

Small workspace

Modular sofa set. showing detailed fabric material

master material: Reused the canvas pattern and normal maps.
starts with a color, blends with pattern, mixes in 2 bump textures.

Virtual Art Gallery 3

 

Beginning layout of virtual art gallery built in Unreal Engine. Currently contains some of my own art in frames. Here are a few photos showing work in progress.

Partitions and lightboxes modeled in Blender
Furniture and lamps were imported from libraries.

Framing and work area. created original floor texture.
Modeled a few quick furniture inspired by Herman Miller.

People for scale, from the "scanned people" library.

framed art attached to prefab partition, decals

Version 3 - UPDATE:

New framed artwork, expanded layout. Many original elements were able to be converted to an Unreal 5 project. A lot of new artwork has been added, to supplement my paintings and drawings. Currently there is no ceiling, expecting to be replaced with a drop ceiling with big fluorescent boxes.

Framing Area

Lounge Area

I was concerned how I was going to pack every inch of this gallery with original, beautiful artwork. I have quite a few nice photos, drawings and paintings, but the collection needs to be much more diverse and engaging. Using AI generated art elements I can make an unlimited number of interesting pieces extremely quickly. Many of the colorful framed works are AI generated from text prompts using "Wombo Dream" web app. 

Overview

Lightbox has emissive material
gives a nice glow.

New area with pillars.

corner area with seating

Storage racks, mostly empty at the moment.

partitions. employee workspace.

the gallery owners desk. not quite enough clutter,
needs more bills envelopes and magazines,
piles of printed out emails. From this angle
you can see the pen and ruler are merged
in a very unrealistic way. will fix.