Discover how to create game-ready foliage
The Gnomon Workshop has released Introduction to Creating Game-Ready Foliage, a complete beginner’s guide to creating plants for use in game engines, recorded by Naughty Dog artist Peyton Varney.
The training, which comprises over three hours of video footage, introduces key workflows for modelling and texturing plants in ZBrush, Maya and the Substance tools, then importing them into Unreal Engine.
Discover how to model and texture 3D plants and import them into Unreal Engine
During the tutorial, Varney sets out the entire process for creating 3D plants for games, generating assets that are lightweight enough to be displayed in real time without sacrificing visual fidelity.
He begins by looking at how to source suitable reference images and use them to block out the basic form of a plant, then refining the model in Maya and ZBrush.
Varney then explores how to create textures in texture painting software Substance Painter and material-authoring software Substance Designer, before importing the textured plants into Unreal Engine.
Alongside the videos, viewers can download Varney’s Unreal Engine template – complete with the initial layout and shaders – then add their own plants to it when following the tutorial.
About the artist
Peyton Varney is environment texture artist at Naughty Dog, where he worked on The Last of Us: Part II. He previously worked on Marvel’s Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4 while interning at Insomniac Games.
Pricing and availability
Introduction to Creating Game-Ready Foliage is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. Free trials are available.
Read more about Introduction to Creating Game-Ready Foliage on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.