In this Mentee Showcase Cairo Goodbrand talks about his experience taking the Environment Art Mentorship with the The Mentor Coalition, discusses the “The Painter's Discovery” and sheds some light on the impact the Mentorship had on him as an artist.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Cairo Goodbrand and I’m an Environment Artist currently looking for a Junior position in the games industry!

I discovered 3D game art about two years ago in university when I came across Unreal Engine and started playing around with it. I quickly realised that most of the time, I couldn’t recreate the ideas in my head with free assets or materials from the Marketplace. I decided to dive into the world of Environment Art, consuming hours of Youtube tutorials on modelling, sculpting, texturing and materials.

Choosing The Mentor Coalition

Earlier this year, I decided (after much deliberation) to resign from my job as a civil engineer to seek a career as an Environment Artist. This wasn’t a decision I made lightly, and there have been quite a few nights I kept myself up worrying that I’d made the wrong decision. I haven’t ever formally studied game art and my education was limited to hit-or-miss searches on Youtube. How could I match up to all the amazing art that is being produced out there?

I decided against tutorials on sites like Udemy- I felt like I would benefit from one-on-one calls and not pre-recorded videos where there is no room for elaboration or questions. My search for a mentorship with an experienced Senior artist led me to the Mentor Coalition- and to Jobye Karmaker’s Environment Art Mentorship.

I chose Jobye specifically as a Mentor for his expertise in vegetation, as seen in games like Shadow of War and Far Cry Primal. I knew that I wanted to improve upon foliage and more organic assets, so he seemed like the natural choice for my interests. I had also previously seen a talk he had done on the subject for Digital Dragons and his way of explaining certain concepts really resonated with me.

The Mentorship Experience

During our weekly calls, the main concept that Jobye reinforced for me is the idea of working in passes. This was to teach me how things are generally done in the industry, and to minimize the amount of work I would need to redo if things were going in the wrong direction.

For the week before our first call, Jobye gave me the task of compiling reference and mood boards for the piece, as well as blocking out the scene in UE4. I’ve worked with PureRef before, but this time around I wanted to have all my reference in one space so I could check back quickly when I needed to. I divided my PureRef into sections like Cinematic Shots, Foliage, Materials, and other relevant boards for the project.

Week 1 - Starting The Environment

I then began blocking out my scene based off of a stunning concept by Julian Calle. It ticked all the boxes for me in terms of my goals for the Mentorship and I wanted to emulate the painterly feel on the concept, in 3D.

It’s very interesting to look back at the blockout to see how far the piece has come- and what has changed and what hasn’t.

During my first call with Jobye, we refined the scope of my blockout to have the camera positioned closer to the cabin. The original framing was a bit too ambitious for a four-week period, and the tighter shot would allow me to have more time to detail everything. We also talked about using CineCameras in UE4 instead of the standard camera and lowering the FOV for a more cinematic quality to the shot.

Next came the week that I found the most challenging- the first pass. Before the Mentorship I had the bad habit of trying to finalize assets too early on. I struggled to move on once a certain level of detail was achieved in the pass, so I didn’t achieve as much as I probably should have in the second week.

Week 2

The biggest takeaway from Week 2 was some more insight into foliage conventions and optimization for games. I had created a “grass patch” which was way too geo heavy to be practical, even with LODs. Jobye showed me how to create a much more optimized grass clump, which was a 1mx1m area and consisted of 25 tris. This grass made up most of the coverage you can see in the final scene.  My original grass patch was used closer to the river and for breaking up the uniformity.

We also talked about ground foliage atlases, and how they can be used to divide a game world into different biomes. I ended up with six different types of grass, and three different flowers which all shared the same atlas. In a production setting, and in all my personal projects, I want to do a better job at maintaining a more consistent texel density for the foliage in the future.

Learning SpeedTree has also been a goal of mine for a while now. I wasn’t happy overall with the progress I made- but I’m thankful I find myself more comfortable with the software now (after the initial teething phase)! I found myself enjoying it more towards the end of the project and I look forward to using it more in the future!

Here you can see the final SpeedTree model of the White Mountain Ebony tree I used for my scene. Jobye helped me tremendously with the optimization aspect of its creation. My first attempt ended up at over 100k tris! Jobye walked me through setting up branch “prefabs” which had much lower poly counts and resulted in a much fuller looking tree. Using anchor points and setting up a branch atlas was a valuable task for me to try. He was even kind enough to show me examples of this through his own work!

Week 3

Week 3 was all about nailing the base of the piece. The modular rock I used all over the scene was sculpted and baked, the final low-poly meshes were put into place and some texturing of the smaller props was done. Once all this was done, Jobye and I discussed storytelling and grounding. We added some additional practical details to the scene, such as the wood sealant on the cabin, the metal brackets and some storytelling elements like paint decals and fallen orchid leaves.

There’s also a lot of blending between materials used for additional detail in the scene, and Jobye provided me with a lot of tips for better height blending, for both landscapes and materials. I also introduced some dither on the rocks to make them blend better with both the ground and the large arches in the background.

Week 4

For the final call, we spent some time discussing other techniques for making the scene ‘pop’ a little bit more. This is where lighting and post-processing came into play.

I had added a bump map interior to the cabin, and Jobye had the great idea of adding some point lights to the windows to inject some extra life into the scene. We also upped the directional light intensity and tinted the skylight blue to portray more of a sunny afternoon feel to the piece.

I created a Colour LUT to use in post-processing to help create more contrast. I found that it helped me to constantly switch between my main shot in colour and in black and white to get a better sense of balancing all my colour values.

There was so much more insight and direction that Jobye provided throughout our calls that I couldn’t possibly condense it into a few short sentences. I found that the breakdowns above are the ones that I have incorporated more heavily into my workflow.

I can’t thank Jobye enough for his time over the course of our month working together. He is an extremely patient and understanding Mentor, and every tip that he gives you is a gold mine of information. I still refer to our Mentorship notebook when working on new projects just to remind myself of the many things I can do to improve my art.

Post-Mentorship

After our four calls, I had a clear idea of what I needed to do to finish up the scene thanks to Jobye. The final two weeks were spent doing another pass on all the props and materials and giving everything “the extra 10%.”

I feel like the most noticeable improvements came with the final set-dressing and detailing stage.

I added my modular rock, rotated and scaled, to the other arches to break up the silhouette. I then took the hanging grass mesh, used for the front and sides of the sod roof, to create the ‘vine-covered’ appearance of the arches. The foliage was given a world scale mask to create different areas of colour and contributed towards the fluffy grass look I was going for.

Next up: fog cards. I hadn’t used these before, but the difference they made was surprising to me- the scene was feeling very flat and one-note before the cards were added. The control of colour using material instances was useful for creating more cool/warm areas where I needed them.

Finally, I wanted to add some small details for further grounding of the piece. These include: the distant flying birds, a more rocky and wet ground material for near the river, the water running down the arches and the splash particle effects near the base.

Jobye was extremely generous with his time, even offering feedback on the changes I made after my mentorship had ended. I also want to give out a shout out to the folks in the Experience Points Discord. They helped with changes which really improved the overall composition and detail. This scene was definitely a combined effort and I’m so happy with how it turned out!

Impact

The Mentorship was hugely beneficial for improving the efficiency of my workflow. Working in passes- with feedback in between- has become a vital process in the way I work. I also have a better idea of the optimization requirements for shaders, props and foliage in production. I’ve always tried to be conservative with geo but having clear numbers in my head of what is expected is such a help. I also have a firmer understanding of foliage and SpeedTree workflows which I’m sure will be helpful in the future.

The one-on-one teaching style of the Mentorship was a huge plus. I enjoyed being able to work on my own during the week and build up some momentum, and then have my call with Jobye on a Sunday evening and consolidate that knowledge, and have my list of questions answered. Part of this was the ability to explain to him what I was struggling with and have him explain in detail how I could go about the process. I remember battling with my rock sculpt and Jobye was able to bring up one of his own files and screenshare the process with me. Having this kind of experience and demonstration on hand is invaluable to a student.

Since completing the Mentorship just over a month ago, I have worked on curating my portfolio to include just my strongest pieces. In the last two weeks, I have started applying to jobs looking for a Junior Environment Art position. I hope to take the knowledge I have gained during the Mentorship and apply it in the industry and beyond! Fingers crossed!

I cannot recommend The Mentorship Coalition enough. Jobye and all the other Mentors are extremely passionate people who, I feel, genuinely want to see their students improve and grow. The Mentor Coalition was the most significant investment I’ve made for furthering my artistic career.

I hope that this interview gives someone a useful tip or trick to incorporate into their workflow and gives others a better insight into the benefits of taking of Mentorship with TMC! Thank you for reading!