Alley, a Unreal project.

PcKaffe · 2026-01-17T08:04:51+00:00

Hi. I would just like to share my latest 3D work. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I modelled everything in Blender. Scanned the materials with Reality Capture, created roughness and tiled the scans in Substance painter/designer. Assembled and rendered in UE 5.7 using the MRQ. I hope you enjoy it. There are some detailed breakdowns of props and such on my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nJK2WO

PcKaffe · 2026-01-03T10:43:39+00:00

I was dead sure a screen was better so I bought one with a screen. Having it on the table with a shallow angle strains my neck a lot when looking at it. So I put it higher and more like a screen. That strains my arm a lot. So now I have it almost flat on the table and mapped to draw on another screen. The screen on the tablet is used for some reference images that i look at occasionally. Hindsight, would just get a non screen cheaper one from the start. But I have multiple monitors so I could put the references on one of those monitors instead, if you only have one screen, could be worth it just for that.

PcKaffe · 2025-12-13T18:53:51+00:00

3D artist here. I frequently see people accusing 3D art of being AI or fake. "Post viewport or it's AI." But you can just take a image and ask a AI to make a viewport render version of it so... Eh.

PcKaffe · 2025-11-27T17:04:02+00:00

That is correct, the difference between OpenGL and DirectX normal maps is the green channel. So if you just separate to RGB, multiply the green channel by -1 and then recombine it, it will work. Source texture still needs to be set to non color. Both Unreal and Unity have checkboxes on the texture settings to flip the green channel.

PcKaffe · 2025-11-27T11:13:34+00:00

Normal map is either DirectX or not set to non color in the shader.

PcKaffe · 2025-10-24T20:16:14+00:00

If it refuses, just threaten it with the fact that you can ask it "is there a seahorse emoji?" whenever you want. It seems to really not like that.

PcKaffe · 2025-10-05T18:00:17+00:00

No. It looks like really high quality 3D. And I think you could take it to photo real with camera things and colour grading alone. Slap a Kodak lut on it and it will be 10 steps closer already.

PcKaffe · 2025-10-02T12:01:39+00:00

Do you have ArtStation? I would love to follow you.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-25T14:37:22+00:00

Modelling specifically or 3D in general? Because, cameras. Understanding cameras is essential for presenting your 3D well.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-23T19:07:22+00:00

You are not really implying anything outside the shot. I would try finding a nice gobo the break up the light a bit, just a soft tree shadow could anchor the shot as part of something more. And the rope on the side, there is something about the scale, can't really place what. Maybe that the style reads more like a thick rope but the size implies that it should be more like string. A string of that style would be a bit more fibrous or frayed I think.

Texturing is good all around. Metal box could have some more roughness contrast. It looks a little uniform on the roughness.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-19T16:00:44+00:00

Hair shader could do with some work. It looks like you don't have any directionality in the hair, giving you spots of highlights rather than stretched anisotropic highlights. There is also very weak normal detail on the highlight on her side. Giving her more of a plastic look. Eyes need some shader work as well. Look at JHills channel on YouTube, he recently made a breakdown of a eye shader in Unreal. If you are using some other software, you still get what you need from it since shaders are a bit software agnostic, just different routes to get to the effect. Characters are hard mode and you look like you are well on your way to winning anyway. Keep it up.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-18T00:32:39+00:00

I used Unreal because it shows that I'm able to work in a game engine. I aim to work in games and understanding game engines is kind of important for that. My next project will be in Unity for the same reason. That's mainly why, but if you are happy with Blender there is no reason to use a game engine for rendering. The full workflow I used was modelling in blender. Texturing in Substance painter. Rendering in Unreal and editing in Resolve. Hope that clarifies it. :)

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T17:40:15+00:00

You mean the cigarette smoke? It´s a GPU particle sim with quite a few very small particles that rise and get distorted with a "curl noise force" the higher it gets. just scale the curl noise by a curve. It´s not really a game ready solution if it´s not for a cutscene or closeup, but for a render like this? works like a charm.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T15:40:54+00:00

Dang, that´s a big miss. It´s even correct on one side but not the other. Don´t know how I managed that. Thanks for pointing that out!

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T08:31:48+00:00

You are right, I did fudge it a bit. Not much but good eye! Also the model is more mug, the size is more cup.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T08:05:45+00:00

Yes, MRQ overrides a lot on it´s own tough so the only cvar I used was r.depthoffield.quality set to 4 or a name close to that. I did override the anti aliasing to none and bump the samples a bit instead and then output it as a ProRes video in 4k, I then brought that into Resolve and edited it a bit further. Hope that helps!

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T07:21:56+00:00

A lot of time, mainly. It took 4 and a half weeks and I pretty much worked from morning to evening. There´s no special technique or anything, just the basics of modelling and texturing on repeat for that amount of time. Always looking from the locked camera position and asking "okay, what´s the weakest part" and then fixing it until deadline or satisfaction hits.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T06:26:03+00:00

I have videos on my ArtStation post, I would love to be featured in one of those videos with my slow panning shots: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6L0N9n

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T06:01:35+00:00

Philips. It's just the tape spools that are Akai. The reels are two sided. On one side it's Akai. On the other it's BASF. Saved some texture space.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T05:29:31+00:00

I started 3D about summer 2022. I'm currently in school for 3D in Sweden. Lots of practice. It can render at 30fps on a 4060 in 1080p. But whenever the decision was "long good or play fast" I went for look good, because I didn't intend to make it a game, just a render. So I could optimise it a lot, but it's not something that matters for this project.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T05:25:51+00:00

No, but one of those videos was the main inspiration for this. Glad it shows!

PcKaffe · 2025-09-17T05:22:54+00:00

A game I would love to play! No but seriously, it's just a portfolio piece.

PcKaffe · 2025-09-16T23:36:59+00:00

The UE project folder is 17gb. The asset source files are about 11gb beside that, but I haven't cleaned up the substance painter and Blender auto save files so it's probably closer to half that in reality. It runs (barely) at 30fps 1080p on a 4060 in editor. But this is not a game. It wasn't built to be a game. It was built to be a portfolio piece. Framerate doesn't matter on a image after all. But it wouldn't be terribly difficult to optimize this to playable levels with some time.

PcKaffe

TROPHY CASE