Relighting was achieved by the use of cinematic cameras, sequencer and the render queue in Unreal Engine 4.
All post-process was done directly in the Engine with additional camera controls.
Reference is taken from The Evil Within and other various lighting styles. Here's a breakdown of this project. I'll discuss the Lighting and how this was achieved.
Final Render:
Reference:
I've taken reference and inspiration for this project from such horror classics. Amongst others, the main influence of this project was 2014 The Evil Within and the work from Sergey Tyapkin, a known artist I've been following for a quite awhile now.
I used Dekogon Clinton Crumpler's Subway Train. What I wanted to do is not only relight the scene but also to give the scene a sense of eeriness and a feel of how I was to shoot if I was here in person. So I did exactly that. I generally think about this type of lighting all the time, so once getting the hang of how controls work and applying what I know from photography, it wasn't that hard to work with. I'm super happy that the whole entre train was also separate pieces as well. 
I moved a few things around to create a different feel. You'd be surprised how much you can do when everything is laid out for you. I then started to delete most of the defaults that came with the pack which were the lights, the fog and the mesh light, with exceptions to keep the emissions, but that also was tweaked slightly.
Only 4 lights were used here and made adjustments to the fog and the mesh lights. In addition to this, I also made adjustments to the camera. Generally, when I shoot in these circumstances I like to use a wide focal length of 20mm. After that was added in, I then did the usual ISO, shutter, and F/Stop settings and started to comp. I've always enjoyed adding punchy blacks to my work to give a sense of unknown, and super glad I did this also to a 3D piece.
Once I was happy with the composition and lighting I started adding the cameras into the sequencer and did my photographer thing.
I had a lot of fun working on this project and what excited me the most was that I was able to go back to my roots as an adventurer but this time, using Unreal Engine.Final Render:
Planning:
Feedback based on the previous crate.
Special thanks to my mentor Stephen Honegger for guiding and marking up things that needed to be adjusted.
After getting this feedback and markups back from Pops, I knew for a fact that I really had just delete everything and simply start again. Collected in PureRef are references from Battlefield Battlepacks, Renders and Cinematic shots from games such as Call Of Duty along with the one to one reference that I was going with for this project. I gathered more reference this time as shown below, and made it one to one as mentioned. The form and the textures had to be spot on, the crates measures at 25 x 9.5 x 6 and assuming this was inches I need to get the scale right. I also have been obsessed with plugins lately so I need to find something that would make the scale experience, fun and visually better for the UI.
Modelling:
I added a human base mesh from Maya’s content library as a scale reference and have been working with different types of templates as well. This dude is at 180cm, I then realized afterwards this box was tiny, here I was able to understand how big it was, I was shocked after I converted it. I measured the crate with the plugin called Measure Tools, this made this process much easier and real-time as you can see in the image below.
The next step was to figure out how I was going to get the shape working with the panels. I used Union, and the Boolean tool then cleaned up the areas where needed. Steps are shown below, from block out to the final panel. I bevelled the areas that resemble the overall shape and form, then soften the edges the give it more depth.
After the details for the crate was completed from the reference, I needed to create the rope. Doing this was quite changing and the only way to get it right was to make it procedural and dependent on a curve. Doing this I need to make a NURBS curve and duplicate them to create the base for the rope. Afterwards, I then layered what was necessary then kept only the one reference curve. I decided to go further with this and have the one curve with joints. Doing this has now allowed this to become what I call Rope Maker and all you really need to do this make an adjustment to the curve and it can be any Rope I'd like. Works using the shape and the adjustment with a spline. As shown below.
At this point, all that was needed was to get the reference in Maya and view it from the Z-axis so I could copy it exactly.
I then set the map size to 4K, knowing I didn't want to comprise detail. Two texture sheets were exported but easily would have been only one if the inside wasn't necessary, but I had to get this right, then I started the UV Mapping and prepped this for Substance Painter.
Texturing:
Was all done with Substance Painter, and Source for the wood texture. The stamps were created in photoshop with the original references with photo retouching, then to be turned into Alphas. I used masking for most of my process know I was only limited to two Texture Set. Started in a 2K workflow and worked with masks, stencils and layering to give it a worn look, stains, scratches and spray paint stamps were added for additional realism. Once everything was done, I then baked all maps in 8k with Anti-Aliasing and Subssampleing at 8x8 then exported out to 4K to retain all the detail from the masking and the textures themselves.
Tweaking:
Lighting / Rendering:
Lighting was done with one spotlight and a shadow catcher, multiple cameras were added for the ease of rendered without having to move and pan the camera too much. All of this was done in Marmoset Tool Bag. After everything was prepared, I was able to create the necessary like a turntable and exploded view for extra viewing
Post Process:
The final steps before I post anything online really is SEO, I know not many people might not take it this far. But I actually do keywording for everything I do, Images and Video Content, even if it is for 3D. It's a habit I took with me from my Photography Days. But, it really does help, it's difficult enough as it is with what we do in the 3D industry, so I highly recommend it. Taking the extra mile for this and researching on how you can too, well help your traffic, It also will save you time because when you post to folio either Artstation or other, the tags will always be there, and you can always reuse tag and filter it if you have a system as I do. It's a must. I'll never need to add the tags one by one, but your work still has to be boss.
Final Result:
Final results show variations, all angles and an exploded view for more detail for look dev.
The Original U.S. WWII Wood Box for MK1A1 Grenades | Prop
Can be found at the following links.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B11yq9
https://calvincropley.com/projects/B11yq9?album_id=1735814
Final Render:
Special thanks to my mentor Stephen Honegger for guiding me on this process. https://www.artstation.com/playdoh
