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Intro

Hi everyone. Today I’ll talk a bit about NOVA III Space Station, the main purpose of this project was to learn and play with some workflow, a kind of sandbox for where rules aren’t really defined. I saw this project as a kind of digital paint where you start to draw some shapes in grey values then you start to see things from them and finally you refine until it becomes something. I had nothing defined in mind at the beginning, this project was more about experiments. At the same time, I was playing a lot with Decal Machine, Hardops and some other Blender addons, and I really wanted to see how to use them outside of Blender.

介绍

大家好。今天我将谈谈NOVA III Space Station，这个项目的主要目的是学习和玩一些工作流程，一种没有真正定义规则的沙箱。我把这个项目看作是一种数字绘画，你开始用灰度值绘制一些形状，然后你开始从它们中看到东西，最后你细化直到它变成某种东西。一开始我并没有什么明确的定义，这个项目更多的是关于实验。同时，我经常使用Decal Machine、Hardops和其他一些 Blender 插件，我真的很想看看如何在 Blender 之外使用它们。

What software did you use?

In term of software, Blender is my main modeling tool for some years now, all the addons ecosystem help to create a software that fit your needs so much that I’ll probably be lost on a fresh Blender setup, if you need a tool,
look at blenderartists.org someone has probably already made something for that. For decals and signs, I use Krita another great free and open-source software… and Finally Substance Painter for procedural masks, smart materials and roughness textures also for baking and painting props like the drone.

你用的是什么软件？

在软件方面，Blender 多年来一直是我的主要建模工具，所有插件生态系统都有助于创建一个非常适合您需求的软件，如果您需要一个工具，我可能会迷失在新的 Blender 设置中，
看看 Blenderartists.org，有人可能已经为此做了一些事情。对于贴花和标牌，我使用Krita另一个很棒的免费开源软件……最后使用 Substance Painter 制作程序蒙版、智能材料和粗糙度纹理，也用于烘焙和绘画道具（如无人机）。

References/Inspiration

Even if I like almost everything from medieval castles to tiny stylized houses, I’ve always been attracted by sci-fi: straight lines, curves, pipes, slick materials, mix between design and industrial elements, I spend a lot of time analyzing some scenes and object from various artworks or games, like Doom, star citizen, unreal tournament maps and many others. For this project, I gather references from those artworks, even If I try to design elements from scratch, I can’t think about every tiny detail, having PureRef on a side monitor is always a must-have.

参考/灵感

即使我喜欢几乎所有东西，从中世纪的城堡到风格化的小房子，我总是被科幻所吸引：直线、曲线、管道、光滑的材料、设计和工业元素的混合，我花了很多时间分析一些来自各种艺术品或游戏的场景和对象，如 Doom、星际公民、虚幻锦标赛地图等等。对于这个项目，我从那些艺术品中收集参考，即使我尝试从头开始设计元素，我也无法考虑每一个微小的细节，在侧显示器上安装 PureRef 始终是必备的。

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Planning

I would love to show you my Trello, but in fact, there was not any plan for this project, it was just like taking time to read a book, or play some games. Most of my side projects were props, bots, or things I can achieve in a small amount of time, but this one was more long term, at one point I wasn’t sure if I wanted to push it or just delete the project folder, it’s not always easy to keep motivation over time, and I think it’s important to remember that you go forward piece by piece. I should probably thank my friends too for honest feedbacks and for giving me the motivation to get it to the end. Starting a project without even a blurry deadline or the vision of what you want to create is not something I can recommend. This is probably the best way to never get it finished.

规划

我很想向你展示我的 Trello，但实际上，这个项目没有任何计划，就像花时间看书或玩游戏一样。我的大部分副项目都是道具、机器人或我可以在短时间内完成的事情，但这个是更长期的，一度我不确定是要推送它还是只是删除项目文件夹，随着时间的推移保持动力并不总是那么容易，我认为重要的是要记住你一点一点地前进。我可能也应该感谢我的朋友们的诚实反馈，并感谢他们给了我坚持到底的动力。在没有模糊的截止日期或您想要创建的愿景的情况下开始一个项目不是我可以推荐的。这可能是永远无法完成的最佳方式。

Blockout/Modelling

For the Nova Space Station, it starts with modular walls, then some tests into Unreal and make some rooms to play with modularity and space and see if everything behave as expected. I quickly made placeholders for tests then add new modules until I was able to have enough liberty to build the layout.

定型/建模

对于 Nova 空间站，它从模块化墙开始，然后对 Unreal 进行一些测试，并制作一些房间以发挥模块化和空间的作用，看看一切是否都按预期运行。我很快为测试制作了占位符，然后添加新模块，直到我能够有足够的自由来构建布局。

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Once I started to have something I put on some lights and see how it react, I like to put some lights in my blocking process, it helps to have a better idea of volumes, space, and see where you might land in your scene, most of the

directions I took were based on feeling at this point. At the same time, Things start to get out of the dark, talking and showing my progress to my friends was helpful to see what people think this place can be. I start to think about some stories and functions of these rooms, it helps to define the props I’ll need. another element that led the list of objects is the relationship between the walls, the ceiling and the floor, I needed some objects to create a kind of ripples that connect the whole assembly.

一旦我开始有一些东西，我就放一些灯看看它的反应，我喜欢在我的阻挡过程中放一些灯，这有助于更好地了解体积、空间，并查看您可能会落在场景中的位置，
我采取的大部分指示都是基于此时的感觉。与此同时，事情开始摆脱黑暗，向我的朋友谈论和展示我的进步有助于了解人们对这个地方的看法。我开始思考这些房间的一些故事和功能，这有助于定义我需要的道具。引导对象列表的另一个元素是墙壁、天花板和地板之间的关系，我需要一些对象来创建一种连接整个组件的涟漪。

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In terms of the modeling process, I started with simple shapes to see how they take place within the scene, then I refine the geometry and split materials according to my needs, at this point I start adding decals and plugs like wire tubes and go back to the model when needed. I used Hardops and boxCutter (Blender Addons) as a part of the modeling process for chamfers and other great features those addons have to offer, then I cleaned Ngons and add a Weighted normal modifier to straighten normals on meshes. Each Asset contains most of the time 3 materials for surfaces and Decals material: one main material which covers most of the surface, then another that can be metallic part of the colored element to give some accent, and finally, the last one which contains decal material.

Here is a simplified example of the different steps:

在建模过程方面，我从简单的形状开始，看看它们在场景中是如何发生的，然后根据我的需要细化几何形状和分割材料，此时我开始添加贴花和插头，如电线管，然后返回需要时到模型。我使用 Hardops 和boxCutter（Blender Addons）作为倒角和这些插件必须提供的其他强大功能的建模过程的一部分，然后我清理了 Ngons 并添加了一个加权法线修改器来拉直网格上的法线。每个资产大部分时间都包含 3 种表面材料和贴花材料：一种主要材料覆盖大部分表面，然后另一种可以是彩色元素的金属部分以提供一些强调，最后一种包含贴花材料。
以下是不同步骤的简化示例：

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Uving / Baking

UVing was almost straightforward, DecalMachine took care to unwrap trims on poly strips, then put all the rest of UV’s into an empty space within the trim texture within a single click, I had to use a second UV set to map tileable roughness and normal with the right ratio. In the beginning, I planned to bake everything to generate blend mask textures for layered materials but finally, I went with basic baking for the drone, the crate, and some other props. For the rest, I used Geometry decals that shared the same textures and trim textures that make the process way faster.

UV/烘焙

UV 处理几乎很简单，DecalMachine 小心地打开多边形条上的修剪，然后单击一下将所有其余的 UV 放入修剪纹理内的空白空间，我不得不使用第二个 UV 集来映射可平铺的粗糙度和法线正确的比例。一开始，我计划烘焙所有东西以生成分层材料的混合蒙版纹理，但最后，我对无人机、板条箱和其他一些道具进行了基本烘焙。对于其余部分，我使用了共享相同纹理和修剪纹理的几何贴花，从而使处理速度更快。

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For trims, I Create Geometry on a plane then I baked materials IDs, AO and Normal. Material ID were used as masks to set different colors/roughness within unreal material. Tilable roughness texture is added within UE material with an exposed Texcoord multiplier parameter in order to be tweaked afterward according to object scale.

对于修剪，我在平面上创建几何体，然后烘焙材质 ID、AO 和法线。材质 ID 用作遮罩以在虚幻材质中设置不同的颜色/粗糙度。Tilable 粗糙度纹理添加到 UE 材质中，并带有暴露的 Texcoord 乘数参数，以便随后根据对象比例进行调整。

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Materials

For materials, nothing complex, most of the time, I made a simple master material which contains many parameters to tweak roughness, colors, textures slots. It’s easy to make fine adjustments later in the process. there were some materials that use masks and emissive stuff like flickering and panning but, everything was still simple. I wanted the details to be seen up close and for the silhouette to take over, and then the decals and/or vertex paint to break the repetition. Textures within these materials are most of the time, composed of a tileable roughness and normal map, colors are driven by a constant three vector which allows me to change color easily if I need to.

材质

对于材质，没有什么复杂的，大多数时候，我制作了一个简单的主材质，其中包含许多参数来调整粗糙度、颜色、纹理插槽。在此过程的后期进行微调很容易。有一些材料使用遮罩和发光材料，如闪烁和平移，但一切仍然很简单。我希望可以近距离看到细节并让轮廓占据主导地位，然后贴花和/或顶点涂料来打破重复。大多数情况下，这些材质中的纹理由可平铺的粗糙度和法线贴图组成，颜色由恒定的三向量驱动，如果需要，我可以轻松更改颜色。

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Megascans

MegaScans assets were helpful to fill outskirt with rocks, I didn’t want it to be too much present in the scene as I wanted to focus on the interior, but it helps to give some clues about the environment, I also use some surfaces imperfections and leaks textures from their library. Even if most of my materials were slick, adding some imperfections to the roughness makes the surface more attractive.

超级扫描

MegaScans 资产有助于用岩石填充郊区，我不希望它在场景中出现太多，因为我想专注于内部，但它有助于提供有关环境的一些线索，我还使用了一些表面缺陷并从他们的库中泄漏纹理。即使我的大部分材料都是光滑的，但在粗糙度中添加一些缺陷会使表面更具吸引力。

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Shaders/Technical

In addition to Meshes Decals, I used vertex paint on materials where each RGB channel drives rake, roughness texture blend or grey lines, for edges wear and adding extra details across modules. I used the same technique on the ground for puddles and dirt. once more, nothing complex here, just lerp textures with Vertex colors. I used Spline Meshes blueprints for pipes, small wires and decals like footsteps or ground lines, it’s really convenient to dress some parts or surfaces, there are plenty of tutorials about how to make it, like this one.

着色器/技术

除了网格贴花之外，我还在每个 RGB 通道驱动倾斜度、粗糙度纹理混合或灰线的材料上使用了顶点涂料，以消除边缘磨损并在模块中添加额外的细节。我在地面上使用相同的技术处理水坑和污垢。再一次，这里没有什么复杂的，只是带有顶点颜色的 lerp 纹理。我用样条网格蓝图管，小丝和贴花像脚步声或接地线，这真是方便打扮某些部分或表面，有很多关于如何做到最好的，像这样的教程。

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With slick materials and tileable textures, I used a lot of decals too, but not within meshes this time: dirt, leaks, signs footsteps… helps to break repetitions across modules and add a new layer of details. For ground stripes and footsteps, I used spline mesh with a decal material. Add some world particles helps du give more depth to the scene, even more, when you plan to make the camera traveling.

使用光滑的材料和贴合的纹理，我也使用了很多贴花，但这次不在网格内：污垢、泄漏、足迹……有助于打破模块之间的重复并添加新的细节层。对于地面条纹和脚步声，我使用了带有贴花材料的样条网格。添加一些世界粒子有助于在您计划让相机移动时为场景提供更多深度，甚至更多。

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Lighting

As mentioned earlier, I started with directional light at an early stage just to have an idea of windows locations, ceiling holes, then I start to put some light fixtures on darker areas. I like to set my directional a bit warm because that kind of environment seems cold (metal, rubber and slick materials don’t help). To give more atmosphere, I played with some volumetric fog with warm color too, everything started to be ‘orange’, so I added some blue colors for the walls, some light fixtures and emissive elements. The difficulty here was to get a lot of light from outside but avoid dark spots and keep things readable. I spent a lot of time on this step by tweaking lights, colors and intensity and re-bake everything with Lighmass.

灯光

如前所述，我在早期阶段就开始使用定向灯，只是为了了解窗户的位置、天花板的洞口，然后我开始在较暗的区域放置一些灯具。我喜欢将我的方向设置得有点温暖，因为那种环境看起来很冷（金属、橡胶和光滑的材料无济于事）。为了营造更多氛围，我也使用了一些暖色的体积雾，一切都开始变成“橙色”，所以我为墙壁、一些灯具和发光元素添加了一些蓝色。这里的困难是从外面获得大量光线，但要避免黑点并保持可读性。我花了很多时间在这一步上调整灯光、颜色和强度，并用 Lighmass 重新烘焙所有东西。

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Rendering

I discovered a YouTube channel from William Faucher full of useful information about lighting and rendering and cameras. I tried MovieRenderQueue and it’s a great tool that allows you to have control of your render, I also used some Sharpen post process and color adjustment within the Engine.

渲染

我发现了William Faucher 的一个 YouTube 频道，里面有很多关于灯光、渲染和相机的有用信息。我尝试了 MovieRenderQueue，它是一个很棒的工具，可以让您控制渲染，我还在引擎中使用了一些锐化后期处理和颜色调整。

Conclusion

This project was fun to do, and it’s nice to practice and test new things, however, it’s not always easy to stay motivated over time, especially for a side project when you can only allow a small amount of time by day. In any case, I am happy with the result and even if I could probably have pushed further, I was able to learn new things, which remains my main goal.

结论

这个项目做起来很有趣，练习和测试新事物很好，但是，随着时间的推移保持动力并不总是那么容易，尤其是对于每天只能留出很少时间的副项目。无论如何，我对结果很满意，即使我可能更进一步，我也能够学习新事物，这仍然是我的主要目标。

很棒的内容