#relevant practice

Although the making of the stylized art of magic above by Raashid Ifill is made normally with the normal tree branch, and early like it styles as it is stylized, but in a combination of the previous two styles that I want to do from Ghibli and glossiness of It takes two.

ArtStation - Magician's Abode [Real-Time]

(KeyFrame, 2024) Overall I think that this is the combination of the look I want to achieve for my final project.

References:

Finally, there is the process of making the final tree, here in the trunk of the tree first I centered in having some variations on the branches wideness, normally they are all skinny, but there are some more chunky by the rest.

To put more variation, I decided to put two set of branches in Speedtree, here I was motivated to do my own thing and experiment as I was already more acustom to Speedtree, the only problem is that if I had to do more plants on the future, I will not do two branches for variations and instead I will just modify their thickness by hand, this is because it make me generate a bunch more sets of nodes that otherwise I wouldn't had to.

I follow the same structure, making sure that the branches are always in airs and at least dividing themselves in the point.

Here the final look of the birch with the branches that we did previously, like one can see, there was needed a bunch of branches nodes, the number of which would have been lower if I haven't divided the branches at the start.

The form of the canopy I made it by doing like an oval kind of shape

I was following this shape like tear drop

I am overall happy with my tree, the only problem that I think of it is that it is not as stylized as it could be, I haven't made the materials, but I think for this tree as a background foliage that I will not do normal maps for the leaves.

I am happy to say that I learned a lot of how to use speedtree and its node, forces, and modifiers and I am more prepared to do the main flowers now.

Also, there is some trees that has the shape of the leaves different when stylized, like this tutorial

(Kris - LucenDev. 2020)

Here the shape of the leaves are like just an alpha brushstroke, here a more recent example

Viktoriia Zavhorodnia from this popular work:

She had a tutorial of how to do this trees and also the leaves are make as a basic shape

(Zavhorodnia, 2022)

References:

Kris - LucenDev (2020). Unreal Engine 4 stylised tree walkthrough (Free project file). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9oTupdnSgk

Zavhorodnia, V. (2022). Stylized Fluffy Pines Tutorial. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbEv4CGz7LE

This is also a point that I wanted greatly to search as I want to do these textures in Substance designer.

Overall, with these textures (If I dont do the closeup, will be enough to finish the textures (that aren't plants, not counting the floor) for the 3D project.

My main inspirations for the textures are already said in previous blogs, the only thing to add here is the reference from Tiny Glade, they don't have a lot of their process out for the public at least not so explained, but I find one thing they did that was very intriguing to me

In my previous project I did some windows, and I had the same problem that they felt flat, and I really like the way they solve the problem.

Another great reference for doing the textures is the incredible explanation of (Adobe Substance 3D, 2024)

They really give an in dept analysis of their process for making a bunch of stylized textures, really helpful for my project

References:

With that being said, I investigated more about materials of Immortal Fenix Rising art style and I arrive to this one

(魔灯Modeng, 2022)

Is for the same course as before and it uses from reference the grass of Vincent Dérozier , but here this video it doesn't only show how they did the grass texture, but also that in can change and how to make it so it bleds with the floor add rocks and flowers.

Another one from the same group tat seems it will be really usefull to me is this one.

As I will have a roof covered with moss and ivy, this roof material seems to be exactly what I will need to start making the moss.

References:

魔灯Modeng (2022). 魔灯班第一期SD案例 地表过程. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIPr1ONnF44

魔灯Modeng (2022). 瓦片青苔过程演示. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8kMbN3dRzo

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I still have to find references for the art style, and I became in love by all the detail explanation of Vincent Dérozier of the art in Immortal Fenix Rising (Dérozier, V., Tréhet, O., Couture, C., Gosselin, C., Alexis, D., Lemieux, L. and Dansereau, T., 2021)

Its amazing how they describe all their stylization progres and how they make it to look painterly, from the explanation of the segments of the process they use to create the stylized textures in Substance designer

(Dérozier, Tréhet, Couture, Gosselin, Alexis, Lemieux, and Dansereau, 2021)

To also how their process with plants, meshes and overall feel of the game was created, it will be such a great help in the making of this project.

And for my curiosity of maybe making the project a little bit more realistiv or how it could be, they also have comparisons with realistic art they have done before as the group is the same one that design Assasin's Creed Odyssey I like it lot mecause you can see that theyr use almost the same process to make the plants here than in Assasin's Creed Odyssey, at least in the branches of the tree, what they change is the overall color, and making less detail the leaf.

This was an incredible discovery for me as I found the person responsible for the vegetation in the game Immortal Fenix Rising that being Caroline Couture. But I will talk about that later as it is such an amazing topic.

Also even just looking at his work with the textures and how they interact in incredible

(Dérozier, (2025)

References:

Dérozier, V., Tréhet, O., Couture, C., Gosselin, C., Alexis, D., Lemieux, L. and Dansereau, T. (2021). Immortals FENYX Rising Q&A. [online] 19 Mar. Available at: https://www.exp-points.com/immortals-fenyx-rising-qa-ubisoft.

Harisova, E. (2020). Creating Generic Materials for Immortals Fenyx Rising. [online] 80.lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/creating-generic-materials-for-immortals-fenyx-rising/ [Accessed 25 Apr. 2025].

Dérozier, V. (2025). Generic Materials. [online] Available at: https://vincentderozier.artstation.com/projects/R3z0wv?album_id=2651245.

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for the last post for this project the last thing that I figure out is fixing the animation of the clock to work with the new texture, so I see this tutorial about how to animate clocks.

clock in game

proof that is moving in game.

This are the reference that I use to make the animation:

First for the bones I use this video Blender Secrets - Easy Piston Rigging (Blender Secrets and van den Hemel, 2022)

For how to do a clock animation this video: [2.8] Blender Tutorial: Rig and Animation For Clocks - YouTube (Olav3D Tutorials, 2020)

And for exporting to unreal this one: Import Rigs & Animations (BLENDER to UNREAL) ‌(Royal Skies, 2023)

References:

Blender Secrets and van den Hemel, J. (2022). Blender Secrets - Easy Piston Rigging. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st84B470kLk [Accessed 1 Dec. 2024].

Olav3D Tutorials (2020). [2.8] Blender Tutorial: Rig and Animation For Clocks. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhhnUo6EjrM [Accessed 26 Mar. 2025].

Here we were discussing how to proceed, the first idea about how to do the textures is making an atlas with objects so we don't do textures for each individual object. but also, Kevin told us about this video.

Later this video really helps us for texturing assets that doesn't need a lot of detail like the toys.

References:

Moltenbolt (2024). Make Low Poly Models Look AMAZING With This Simple Gradient Trick! [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITJgW9hVrE [Accessed 21 Mar. 2025].