Windmill | Breakdown
This is a breakdown of my mentorship project "Windmill After The Rain" https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mARqPZ
The vegetation and materials were created folowing the amazing tutorials by the talented artists Michael Gerard https://www.artstation.com/michael_g_art and Johnny https://www.artstation.com/johnny3d
The bird meshes and animations were downloaded from Fab https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/rural-australia-environment-collection-now-available-for-free
This project took me around seven months to complete. During this time, I significantly improved my material creation skills in Substance Designer and learned a lot about lighting, composition, and storytelling. One of the biggest challenges for me was building the wooden structures — it was quite tricky to get the shapes, proportions, and construction logic right. But through research, iteration, and feedback, I managed to solve all the issues and achieve the result I wanted. I'm endlessly grateful to my mentor, Teodor Ivanov, https://www.artstation.com/teodorr
for his invaluable guidance and inspiration during this project
I decided to experiment with different lighting scenarios to explore various moods: early morning, dark night, and eerie fog.
Dark Night
Eerie Fog
Breakdown of the central building into sections
Breakdown of the central building into sections (windows)
Breakdown of the right house into sections
Breakdown of the left house into sections
Breakdown of the tower into sections (first level)
Breakdown of the tower into sections (second level)
Breakdown of the tower into sections (third level)
Other construction elements
All the vegetation was created by me. I started by modeling the high-poly versions in Maya, then baked them onto planes and textured them in Substance Painter. In SpeedTree, I assembled the meshes for different types of grass, flowers, trees, and ivy.
Moss
Moss in Unreal
The props were originally created for my previous project, “Arabic Desert House”
New props
I modeled additional individual bricks and walls as planes and applied a displacement map to enhance depth and realism. The cart and door were built using pre-made wooden boards, while the metal elements were modeled in Maya and textured in SP
Main Materials. All the materials used in this project can be seen here https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P6raan
Process
RVT Blending
I created a local fog using a plane with a transparent material, which gave the scene an even more atmospheric and visually interesting look.
Ivy in Speedtree
Main grass group in Substance Painter
Boxwood and branch in Substance Painter
Moss in Substance Painter
The main construction element in my project is wooden boards and beams. I sculpted all the wooden elements in ZBrush, then used a decimated version as the low-poly model, which I baked in Substance Painter.
Base Mesh - Hight Poly Mesh
Reference Board in Miro
Plan, questions and comments in Miro
Material Board in Miro