Vietnamese Shrine

This project was inspired by a trip to Vietnam. More specifically, it is based on the many temples I visited in the southern part of the country.  

The base models were sculpted in Zbrush, then retopologized and UVed in Maya. Baking and texturing were done in Substance Painter. Finally everything was brought together and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 4.

The biggest problem I had to deal with in this project was getting everything to feel old and dusty. From the dust on the rims of pots to the dust on the table it was a real struggle to unify everything. In the end a combination of custom grunge and roughness maps ended up achieving the look I was going for.  I also used this project as a means to practice making my own alphas. The major example here would be the ashes from the many burnt incense sticks. I found a royalty free image of what I wanted on google and then used photoshop to turn it into a height map/alpha which I then applied in Zbrush and baked down onto a flat plane in substance. 

At the end of the day, as with any art project there are things I would love to go back and improve with knowledge I've gained since making this piece. However I am still very pleased with what I was able to achieve with the tools I had at the time.