Objective

Following  story development and making the city skyline(s), one of my tasks is to create the environment for the middle part of our film: the university campus/street. I have split my deliverables into three clear categories:

• Storefronts (inc. signage)
• The University
• Street Assets (such as pipes, traffic lights, train tracks, decal, trees etc.)

The Storefronts

Modelling the buildings

After modelling the skyline scenes, I expected a similar approach to work here. The skyline allowed me to focus more on oversaturation and visual busyness, which meant that the individual buildings didn’t need a high level of detail. The density and lighting did a lot of the heavy lifting in those shots.

I was surprised by how the difference in scale between those distant buildings and these closer ones completely changed the pipeline.

I followed this video which enabled me to understand how to take a modular approach to buildings using the loop cut tool:

 

I used my own in Substance and overlaying them as masks with slightly different colours.

To stay true to our impressionistic art style, I found colour tints and shades that would fit exactly within the same family. The result can be seen below:

I put together a style guide to keep everything consistent, which Caity ended up using for some extra background buildings:

I have also been experimenting with putting emissive objects behind a transparent window material, conveying that certain lights are on. This helps to make the buildings feel more alive and lived in.

Whilst I did like it, it felt a little flat and perhaps too simple. I decided to go back into the texturing and modelling. I also created image planes with people silhouettes and used my colour ramp emission node setup from the skyline. I created the following refined setup:

For signage, I designed a collection of decals to use across the project. I also sourced signage from walking around Dublin – taking photographs and then hand painting on top to create a painterly feel (as an EOYS version addition, I’d love to add a little more fo these in to the scene!)

The University

Our film only has one human character, but the university in many ways is our antagonist. Therefore it had to be a design that felt strong.

Looking at references for other art colleges online, I was intially drawn to the following architectural style. I felt that the mysterious, frosted glass bursting with colour aligned with the sense of the unknown Charli is experiencing in my film.

Whilst I was happy with the concept, I felt I wanted to push myself further and make something a little more design-driven.

Going back to my initial point about the film being personally relevant, and a little meta, there was only one key reference I wanted to use:

Ulster University. 

I actually think the structure of our university building makes for a great set piece – the bridge specifically. It’s a little foreboding, and denotes a clear pathway forward that our character can enter and walk through. A very clear, visual entrance into the belly of the whale.

It also looks similar to Visions Academy from Spider-Verse with its walkway, which gave me some inspiration for the camera composition.

Using these references, this was my initial version of the university building:

I was happy with it and the composition was working, but it looked a little too smooth. I wanted it to feel grittier, and a bit more dimensional. I was walking through Poblenou in Barcelona, and saw this building:

It looked a little like the university, but it’s definitely a bit more daunting. It’s a little brutalist, and the four, tall windows are unnerving and very symmetrical. This would work well with the asymmetry of the right-hand side of the building.

I combined this design language with my model, slanting the window plane behind for some visual contrast. This was the result:

To complete it, I added some Edge wear & material variation in Substance Painter.

For more on lighting this scene, check out my lighting & cinematography post!

Street Assets

One thing I have found super useful is the vertex alignment/snap tool, and the recent addition of being able to hit B to anchor that alignment. After learning this, I resorted to using a single vert to begin quite a lot of my models, which allowed for greater customisation and accuracy in building objects, especially modular objects like staircases and fire escapes.

Using various references, I modelled a street asset pack for background objects, including benches, traffic lights, railings, a fire escape, and even a train, train track and platform. As these were far in the background, base colours will work okay, and potentially be more impactful as to not overcomplicate the scene and emphasise a sense of atmosphere and distance.

 

I also created the “No” decals for Caity’s signs. I made these in Illustrator and painted over with Procreate brushes to make them feel more organic and in line with our art style.

The trees have been a challenge. I wanted to use the BrushStrokes add-on here as a means to create the trees. I followed the following tutorial…

…and this was the result in Eevee/material preview:

I was super happy with it, but as soon as I brought them into Cycles, their softness was replaced with sharp, black cuts that make them a bit of an eyesore.

I played with a lot of settings until I realised that it was actually Cycles that causes the issue. The solution was that the light passes for Transmission needed to be above 30, which was still reasonable for our render time.