This project involved recreating the Saudi Arabian city of Jubail for a naval simulation. Like in the previous project, the aim was to create realistic likenesses as inexpensively as possible. Due to the large amount of repeated elements in the city, I began by creating two façade materials in Substance Designer that could be used over the course of the project, either as the basis for generic buildings or as part of the texturing process for key landmarks. 

I used parameters in Substance Designer to allow a high degree of customisation so that many different buildings could be generated from the same texture. Below, I have included examples of nodes that control the window shapes, blinds, and wall textures. I have also included a patterned mask that I later used for mosque windows. 

A simple 'office block' material proved invaluable for adding rows of windows to the hotels and skyscrapers of Jubail. 

I modelled individual landmarks, using high poly versions to bake ID masks for my premade materials. I then added unique elements such as signage in Substance Painter. 

More industrial areas required a different approach. I broke this desalination plant into a number of component parts, which I then reassembled to form a large complex. (The final image is a mock up that I did in Unreal)

I created a series of low-poly landmarks for a naval navigation training simulation. Made in Unity, and rendered in real-time, the assets needed to have a low performance cost while remaining easily identifiable. I obtained references and measurements using Google and Bing maps, although I often had to infer angles of which there were no photos online. I then identified the key shapes of each building to form the low-poly model, adding detail by modelling a high-poly version from which I could bake both a normal map and an ID map. In the example below, the low-poly version comprises of 242 vertices, while the high-poly version comprises of 6130.

Thanks to the ID masks, I was able to add most of the details in Substance Painter, taking advantage of the 'mask with colour selection' feature. I created generic smart materials for textures, such as roof tiles, and windows (shown below), which repeated across many of the landmarks. This minimised the amount of manual work needed for each asset. 

Using this technique, I was able to deliver lots of assets in a relatively short space of time while meeting the requisite poly count and visual quality. Below is a selection of some of the assets that I created. They can all be found around the Firth of Clyde.

And here are their corresponding ID masks. I actually think some of these look cool by themselves!