Khons
Unreal Engine, Maya, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Premiere Pro. 2025.
“Khons" - an Art Deco bar set in the 1930's, is a game interior environment targeting mobile devices. I recently completed the project as part of Module 1 on the MA Game Art programme at Escape Studios. The project brief was led by technical specifications, such as a limit on total level polycount, baked Static lighting in Unreal Engine's Lightmass, and texture size of 1024x1024px.
Week 1 was dedicated to contextual and visual research, brainstorming and design, blockout of the level introducing height and depth variation, and compiling findings into an Art Bible to guide Art Direction. PureRef, Miro, spreadsheets were used to put references together, create a project structure flow chart, and keep track of assets respectively.
Throughout weeks 2-3, the focus was on modelling modular assets and unique props in Maya. UV'ing was done whilst taking into consideration planned texturing workflows.
Week 4 was intended for texturing. Meshes were textured using Trim Sheets, Tileable textures, or baked uniquely in Substance Painter - with certain models sharing packed UV sets to maximise resolution space. Custom patterns for Tileables were created using ID masks and base materials from Quixel. A velvet texture was achieved via multiple fill layers with the Normal channel of each manually tweaked. A Master Material, an Emissive, Mirror and Foliage materials were set up in Unreal Engine 5.
Considerable amount of time was spent on lighting in week 5. Inspired by film noir, a low key motivated lighting setup - driven by practical light sources, was sought. Plenty of fill Spotlights with a narrow inner cone and large attenuation radius were used as diegetic lighting and to lift black values and fill shadows to ensure player visibility. Point lights were used as rim lights to accentuate silhouettes.
HDRI's were added to multiple Reflection Capture Volumes to introduce variation in highlights and tint.
Decals, such as splatters, leakage, spillages and debris, were added in week 6 as part of set dressing. Two Blueprints were set up - one would prop interior doors open driven by collision with the player; another would add controls over the intensity, temperature and tint of a point light positioned in front of physical wall lamps and set to Stationary to cast dynamic shadows.
