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Meredith Tempio
Art Creation
Reconstruction of the Iglesia de San Salvador de Valdediós with Custom Foliage
My thesis artifact was a reconstruction of a pre-Romanesque cathedral , the Iglesia de San Salvador de Valdediós , presented in an environment with custom foliage and three different weather systems : a rain storm , a snow storm , and a sandstorm .
The project was created using 3DS Max , zBrush , Adobe Photoshop , Substance Painter and Designer , and is presented in Unreal Engine 4 .
I worked to recreate the Iglesia de San Salvador de Valdedios with as much historical accuracy as possible , focusing primarily on capturing the key features of the structure , including the horseshoestyle arches , the carved columns , and the carved windows on both the front and side ambulatory of the building . Furthermore , I tried to capture the damage done to the building in the 1970s and the attempt at repair done to the original structure .
The weather systems mastery meant creating a series of particle systems and meshes that can serve as a way to emulate the effects of different kinds of weather that could act upon a scene ; in this case , a snowstorm , a rainstorm , and a sandstorm . These effects are achieved through several particle systems , animated meshes , and material functions .
I created foliage that does not follow the typical conventions of mundane foliage in design and which cannot be created procedurally by SpeedTree or Houdini . The foliage styles included in my project are not the most fantastical that could be seen in a game ; however , the point of making custom , fantasy foliage is not just to make something ‘ weird ’ or different , but to enhance an environment and give it character . In this sense , the fantasy foliage must be grounded in the kind of environment in which it will be placed , like any other type of plant .
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