Creating a Vibrant Scene Inspired by Armenian Culture with UE5 & Maya

Introduction

Hello, my name is Artur Artinian. I'm a student at Gnomon School of VFX in my final term and about to graduate studying with a focus on real-time game environments. I've learned so much during my time here, being surrounded by such amazing instructors and peers who push you to do your best every day.

Inspiration & References

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to create an environment inspired by Armenian culture. This ancient civilization has so much rich history and beautiful art that, in my opinion, remains vastly overlooked. With that, I knew the reference-gathering stage of this project was going to be extremely crucial to making sure it felt as authentic as possible.

The idea of the pomegranate came in conjunction with the church itself, as they are a very prevalent symbol in Armenian culture, representing rebirth and protection. I felt it would be a great opportunity to use them not just as an asset but as a narrative element, scattering them throughout the scene with a river tainted by their juice to help further reinforce these abstract visuals. I wanted to create a balance with the geometric shape language of these symmetrical churches, which evoke such a striking and sacred feeling to compliment the organic forms of the pomegranates.

A big goal of this project was improving my compositional skills, so a lot of time was spent doing trial and error in various stages. With this R&D phase, I also started to collect a wide range of references of various Armenian churches that I would pull from so that I could better study the design language of these architectural pieces to create my own version.

Beyond gathering images, I also pulled from my own experience visiting these ancient churches myself, as well as receiving tons of valuable insight from my family, who shared their personal knowledge and experience coming from Armenia. I feel like with any environment, it's crucial to understand the history behind what you are creating so that you can better recognize why things were built the way they were, and truly immerse yourself in the creative process.

Composition

When it came to planning the composition, I knew the pomegranate was going to be a central focal point of the image, so I started the blockout process with it using Maya. I prefer moving into the engine as fast as possible since blockout tends to be faster there, using very simple box geometry, I experiment with the lighting simultaneously to try to establish the overall mood and atmosphere early on.

To guide the viewer's eye towards the church, I use the red river as a natural leading line to create a path and try to reinforce this idea with the lighting and assets placed around it to continue to drive our eye forward. For larger-scale environments like this, I find it helpful to break the scene down into three distinct layers: the foreground, midground, and background. To enhance the scale, I use a low focal length on my cinematic camera, creating a slight fisheye effect to make the environment feel more grandiose and immersive.

Modeling

From the start, I approached the modeling process with a modular mindset, making sure my grid in Maya was set to centimeters so that I could build assets to snap with each other allowing for ease of placement and iteration.

After having a basic blockout, I went into ZBrush to create high-poly rocks which I would be using to build the cave around the church. By doing this, I could quickly iterate and develop the concept in the engine, testing how the structure and silhouette would read on the cave rocks.

Retopology & Unwrapping

For assets that were sculpted in ZBrush, I used Decimation Master to lower the poly count to something game-ready. Afterwards, I would unwrap in Maya.

Here are some of the high-poly sculpts that were created for this project. The main brushes I would use were Trim Dynamic and Trim Smooth Border brush to create chips on edges and also create the rock formations.

A great tip that I found super helpful from a former instructor of mine was the utilization of the Flip button in Maya's UV tools tab to quickly create a UV cut from faces you have selected on the UV shell of the mesh. This made the unwrapping process go fast for numerous assets, even with the topology that decimated meshes have because it would speed up the workflow of having to select edge by edge.

Texturing

For texturing, I used tiling textures, which I created in Substance 3D Designer for the main architectural pieces. To add further detail, there were areas of the church where I incorporated trim sheets which I created in ZBrush and baked down in Marmoset. These were used in specific areas such as the decorative strips on the upper sections of the church, and the door. For assets like the stairs, rocks, and some props, I utilized RGB masks, which I created in Substance 3D Painter.

I then set up a shader in the engine so that I could drive certain aspects of the texture, such as the edgewear, dirt, and various surface imperfections. Assets like rocks would also get an extra detail normal map layered on top to enhance the resolution and surface fidelity.

For props such as the "khachkars", which are the stone iconographic tablets, I also followed this same workflow. It let me dynamically adjust the masks with material instances, giving me control of these masks in real-time in the engine.

Assembling the Final Scene

To assemble the final scene, I focused on refining the composition and ensuring all elements harmoniously worked together to create an old, ancient-feeling atmosphere. My goal was to evoke a sense of history and timelessness, rich with abstract storytelling potential. Since I had already set up core modular assets, everything else would fall into place after. I arranged rock formations and stone kit pieces on the floor to fill out the environment and add layers of
details to the floor and surrounding landscape. By doing so, I was able to break up repetition in the floor and introduce some more organic variation to make the ground feel more naturally surrounded and fit with the elements around it. The Easy Fog tool was also used to create fog cards, which helped tie the scene together and create a thicker atmosphere.

To get the foliage of ivy on certain parts of the church, I imported the main architectural kit pieces into SpeedTree, and put my foliage atlas I created in ZBrush to create the effect of ivy growing.

Making sure the river looked good was very important since it was up close to the camera and led the viewer's eye to the main focal point. If it felt off, it could throw the whole scene off and make it look flat.

This setup allowed me to control the parameters through an instance for certain aspects, such as driving the depth fade, opacity, normal tiling, the inner and outer color, and so forth, to get the look that I was going for.

Lighting

Lighting played a crucial role in this project, especially considering the way the dark rocky cave surrounds the church. It's almost like creating an interior and outdoor lighting setup at the same time. Early on, I envisioned a directional light from the outside filtering through the cave hole to illuminate the church. Having this outside natural light provided a nice focal point for the church. It wasn't enough to illuminate the surrounding scene and other elements of the church, so I used a large number of spotlights around the scene to help with the bounce lighting and also help drive the viewers' eyes to places they should look.

"Light is Drama" is a phrase that was constantly in my mind while I was refining the lighting for this scene. The main aspects of the environment, the church and the pomegranates, meant that these were the important highlighted areas to create that sense of drama and draw attention to where it mattered most.

The god ray was achieved through this simple light function material that was used on a spotlight to create the look of those light shafts being animated through panning speed.

Conclusion

The main challenge during the production of this scene was balancing the composition and scale. Since a major goal of this project for me was to improve my composition skills, I spent a significant amount of time fine-tuning composition assets and re-iterating. I knew that if the composition was not strong, everything else would greatly suffer, so ensuring that the church felt properly integrated into the space around it while being pleasing to the eye was a big challenge. I learned so much from the creation of this project that I will be able to take it with me to future projects. Looking back, there are definitely new approaches I would take now, which I learned when creating this piece, which I hadn't considered before.

Lastly, if anyone is interested in learning more about Armenian culture and art, I highly suggest a film by Sergei Parajanov titled The Color of Pomegranates. This visually stunning film was a constant source of inspiration for me, igniting my imagination with its striking compositions and symbolism, and even inspired the name of this piece.

My advice to beginning artists isn't something necessarily technical. Simply create what you are interested in and passionate about, and believe in yourself. Don't make work with the sole goal of trying to impress others. When you focus on something that you are genuinely intrigued by, you end up creating something that is way more true, and this authenticity is something that can be felt by people. While you're learning, it's one of the best times to explore your interests and make what you want to without fear of messing up. Enjoying the process of making mistakes is something that should be embraced instead of feared. Tools are important, but what's more valuable is the storyteller behind the tools.

Thank you so much to Anton Napierala, Gabriel Cervantes, Javier Perez, Leonardo Ledesma, and all my instructors, peers, family, and friends for their insights and support in the creation of this work!

Artur Artinian, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine