final render

In October 2019, my team and I recreated the frozen waterfall from Subnautica’s DLC: Below Zero in a four-week project. Our team of five used several software programs:

• Maya 2019 – whiteboxing and modeling
• Substance Designer & Painter – textures
• ZBrush – complex ice arches at the bottom
• Unreal 4 – rendering, VFX, and the Chameleon post-processing plugin
• Github/SourceTree – source control

I was a project manager, modeler, technical artist, and visual effects artist, working specifically on the following:

• Set due dates on Google Calendar, managed the discord for communication, and created the Trello board for asset management.
• Modeled the waterfall and the alien fern using Maya polygons.
• Set up source control for the team using GitLab and SourceTree.
• Created the Unreal scene:
  • Added collisions
  • Set-up asset LODs
  • Transferred the blizzard assets
  • Modified the texture on the camera’s post-processing frost
  • Created our final build

Greyboxed Scene in Maya Side View

Greyboxed Scene in Maya Hallway View

Greyboxed Scene in Maya Waterfall View

Waterfall Progress Image

Visual FX Process Image

Alien Fern Model

Problems and Solutions:

• Chillennium and Flu Season – At the beginning of the project, I was away to compete in Chillennium and a few teammates called in sick to push back their work. This pushed our personally-set deadlines back a few times. However, we were able to work double-time to catch up and create quality assets.
• Source Tree, getting used to source control and the final merging fiasco – Only two teammates had minimally used source control before, so most of the team was unfamiliar with proper pull, push, and merging conventions. This resulted in a couple of merge conflicts, one of which caused us to revert to a flash drive for a quick transfer to save the scene’s lighting adjustments.