Post-Processing

The second important part of the process is post-processing effects. In order to be able to see and set them up, first you need to “Create>Post-Processing Profile”. Then you drag and drop it onto your main camera. If you click on the profile you can see all the effects and their settings that can be tweaked. 

As there are quite a few effects, I recommend to play around with it yourself. The one effect that I usually tend to turn on in all the scenes is “Anti-aliasing”. It takes care of the sharpness and smoothness of edges on your objects depending on a value.

For the first room I used only “Grain” effect, to create a slight distortion. 

For the second room I used “Bloom” to make the light seem a bit less sharp. I also used “Vignette” with the following settings.

It obstructs and limits area of view as well as makes everything even more dark. Because of that the player can only see the parts of the environment that I wanted to have visual focus on. 

Final touches

At this point you are pretty much done. The one thing I would recommend is to try out different angles and points of view of your main camera. This is a very simple, but visually effective trick.

That’s it for this tutorial, thank you for following it with me. If you have any questions, comments or ideas feel free to share!

Lighting

Now the first important part for our scenes comes - lighting. The color, intensity and the strength of shadows all depend on the type of atmosphere you are trying to create. 

When it comes to lighting inanimate objects you have a choice to make your meshes “Static”. It affects how well the surfaces will receive lighting information. Turning it on has sense if you know that those objects are not going to move. Here is an example what a room would look like with and without the function on:

For my first scene I will not make my environment static. I want to have very sharp light and very defined shadows. It is needed to create strong black and white contrast. 

I am placing only one “Point Light” in the scene, turning “Indirect multiplier” down to 0 and drastically increasing it’s range. It’s intensity is set around 4. After experimenting with the placement I found this one to be matching my idea. With this type of light its position can create a variety of intense contrast. 

The second room is static. Here I am using 2 lights, very dim and of grayish color. Another source of lighting is the TV screen. Here I am using simple shader with “Emission” on and the color brought up to HDR.

Color and materials

At this point you should already know what your color pallet would be. In my case I didn't need any color in my scene, because I will be relying on lighting. So In the first example I didn’t use any other materials than the standard gray.

In the second example I also stayed with gray color palette, but with variations. The objects that I want to stand out and be more visible will be lighter gray.

Export and set up in Unity

This step is pretty straightforward. Once you made sure everything is in order - export your models into Unity. 

Because my room is static and almost every object remains at its original spot, I exported my scene as a group. If your scene has very high polycount I do recommend exporting piece by piece. The same counts for models with deformations.

Once in Unity you can begin setting up your project.

It’s best to set up your environments in separate scenes, unless they are directly connected to one another. Personally I find having separate scenes better - it helps to avoid confusion with effects and lights and gives you much more flexibility.

Modelling

For this project I used the primitive modelling workflow. It is fast and works well if you are creating stylized scene.

Always keep in mind what your focus points are. Try to work from big to small - block out the big shapes and add later the smaller ones.

When you are ready with modeling and not planning to add any additional deformations, check your models for n-gons. I always check my meshes in the process of modeling. The easiest way to do so is to use “Cleanup”. It should be your best friend if you plan to export your geometry into a game engine.

If you want to deform your models, once your scene is finished, pick out which objects you will be adjusting. Don’t use every single mesh however. If you do so, then everything in your environment will blend together and loose it’s visual power. 

Then check if the models have enough resolution and export them into a sculpting software. You can also use your modelling software - it all depends on what kind of shape you are going for.

Concept phase

At first you have to decide what kind of emotional or mental state you are going to portray. In our case it will be anxiety and depression. To create believable impression I have collected series of pictures that represented people's associations with those disorders and made my mood board. You can make your own one as big as you want . If you need to have more information I would recommend to prepare small questionnaire and let people answer it. 

After that you have to pick out environment and visual style you will be using. In my case I chose a small student room as basic environment. 

Once you have collected enough visual material write out a few keywords for yourself. Later It will help you in creating desired effects. For example the keywords for anxiety are: bright, overwhelming, uneasy, agitated. 

Here is an idea, based on the mood board, questionnaire and keywords, I have got for the scenes. 

To create the feeling of anxiety I will use: 

• Sharp bright lighting and shadows; 
• Strong black/white contrast; 
• Different angle of camera; 
• Lowered point of view of the player; 
• Grain; 

To create the feeling of depression I will use: 

• Dim lighting; 
• A lot of gray; 
• Deformed assets; 
• Very strong vignette; 
• Bloom;

Introduction

Hello and welcome to this tutorial!

I’m a student currently finishing my education at the Dutch school of arts. My passion lies in 3D modeling and particularly in modeling environments and assets. 

Sometimes you are working in a very small team or alone and your project consists of several environments. Those environments seem to be very different but very often they represent the same basic environment changed or transformed due to the project requirement or condition. In that case reusing of the assets will be very helpful and will spare your time and energy.

In this tutorial I will share some techniques for translating different emotional states into the same 3D environment. This method helps to show a range of states. I used it working at the project where one of the goal was to demonstrate how human emotions can change perception of regular environment.

As an example I will take two emotions - anxiety and depression and as a basic object ( environment to be changed) – a student room. In both variants I used two slightly different methods. For future reference I call them “Non-deformed” and “Deformed” techniques. The key aspects of the effects creation are: color palette(materials and shaders); lighting(placement, intensity, color); point of view(camera angle); post-processing effects.

In order to follow this tutorial you need theory basis and experience with 3D modeling. For creation of my models I used Autodesk Maya but any software of this sort will work equally. It will be very helpful if you have knowledge about game engines. I used Unity for creation of atmosphere. To enliven the scene I added the first person controller.

If you have any questions or comments I will be always happy to hear it . So, lets start!