February 21, 2023

Clay Nation | Environmental Design

Clay Labs

Metaverse, Web-3
During my time with Clay Labs, I was tasked with creating concept environments for the three regions, Sonic Village, Baked Nation and The Underworld. In addition to this, I also worked on a dynamic procedural clay material, and a modeled a variety of assets.
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Study Environments

My tasks while work working with Clay Labs was creating 6 concept environments inside Unreal Engine, two for each of the main regions; Sonic Village, Baked Nation and The Underworld.

Concept sketches were initially drawn up by illustrators on the team, then with those sketches, I modeled, textured and constructed the scenes within Unreal Engine. 

UE5 Environments

All 6 scenes were constructed as interactive environments within the engine. These scenes served a hand full of uses, including conceptualizing the wider environment as well as producing a wide variety of landscaping assets and materials.

Excluding the character models, all of the landscapes, models and materials were created by me for these concept scenes.

Parametric Clay Material

Since my task required so many different types of materials, I spent much of my free time developing a parametric clay material that I used to texture everything from ground materials to road signs. 

With all the assets being clay styled, this also assured that materials were consistent throughout the scenes, and any major changes to the base material (PBSAR algorytm) could be updated across all assets fairly seamlessly. 

Clay Material SBSAR

General 3D Modeling

All models and vegetation in these scenes were modeled by me as well. A majority of the assets were sculpted, retopologies and were material painted.

A handful of the objects were created moduly or non-destructive, giving us the ability to quickly create variations.