Learn How to Set Up Wind for a Ghibli-Style 3D Scene

Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Li Zihan, and I’m a full-time 3D environment artist focusing on stylized art.

I have always liked games. My first study of game art dates back to after I graduated, which was in June 2021. So far, I have exactly three years of study and work experience.

I am currently in Hangzhou, China, involved in the development of a multi-platform stylized project. I will meet you soon!

Wind Practise

Artist Cry and I are very good friends. We both like stylized or Ghibli-style art. We communicated frequently in the later stages of the production. I am grateful for his guidance.

I think it is not an exaggeration to say that it was love at first sight. When I saw the work for the first time, I knew that this was the feeling I wanted, and I would definitely recreate it in 3D.

Finally, I chose May of this year to officially start working on my Wind project and completed it in about a month.

Composition

After thinking about it, I did not recreate all the scenes in Cry's works but chose the one I liked the most to produce.

In the beginning, I only planned to make the following two compositions.

But, you know, new ideas come to the creators more or less during the creative process, so my shots went from two to four, and from four to six.

It is worth mentioning that I chose the music "辺境の街フォルカ" from Cygames' new game "Granblue Fantasy: Relink" (every aspect of the game is impeccable, and I highly recommend everyone to play it). This was a pleasant surprise and it became the music I always listen to when making my works. So to incorporate the music and pay tribute to Tsutomu Narita (the music producer), I increased my shots to eight.

I didn't consider them in great detail nor did I deliberately look for references. Most of them were determined naturally during the creation process. However, I was very inspired by the work of Ariel Adasme.

Modeling

As for the spherical statue, I had been thinking about it since the very beginning of the production. In the end, I chose to break it into three parts: large, medium, and small. I only sculpted the exterior surface and used shared textures for the interiors to save time and cost.

The software I used included Blender for modeling, ZBrush for sculpting, and Substance 3D Painter for texturing. It's worth mentioning that I retained many vertices to accommodate vertex color painting.

The sheep design was inspired by Wooloo, a Pokémon I really like. The entire creation process took place in Blender. I used the Auto-Rig Pro plugin for rigging, which saved a lot of time. I made two simple animations: walking and grazing. Additionally, I created an outlined material for the sheep in the engine.

Texturing

For the textures, I mostly used ones I had created previously.

These textures were created in Substance 3D Designer. I selected a few and made minimal modifications. The textures for the previously mentioned spherical sculpture were made in Substance 3D Painter, using a smart stone material I had made earlier, with only minor adjustments to the color and noise distribution.

Final Scene

I did encounter some issues with scene building. Since I was controlling the wind direction globally, the camera movement would also be limited to the wind direction. I didn't want to create multiple levels for different camera angles, so the cameras are quite spread out. Please forgive my laziness.

For the scene setup, I used simple techniques. In large outdoor scenes, I followed a consistent trend, like the direction of the wind, which is easy to manage. I used fog to differentiate between midground and background and deeper textures to guide movement and trends, such as paths made by the spherical sculptures rolling over the grass.

In indoor scenes, I usually keep the lighting darker, allowing more creative freedom. I enjoy the visual impact brought by strong light and shadow contrasts. A little trick is to make a high saturation or cold-warm contrast effect at the edges of light and shadow.

In terms of mood and atmosphere, the first shot I made was based on Cry's work, and the rest were basically expansions of it.

My Unreal Engine version is 5.2.3. Thanks to its excellent graphics capabilities, I didn't need to adjust the parameters for Directional Light and Post Process Volume too much.

I added a lighting function to the Directional Light to simulate the shadows of clouds.

Please forgive me for forgetting where the tutorial about wind simulation came from, I found it eight months ago and I made the project based on it. I learned many other features at the same time, which has jumbled my memory. If you recognize the tutorial, please let me know.

The specific method is to use the material parameter set to control all materials. I also calculated the origin coordinates of the models to achieve a gradual swing along the horizontal height as my parameters changed. The two parameters are the direction and strength of the wind.

Conclusion

After three years of study and work, my mentality has changed a lot. In the past, I would just blindly reproduce other people's works. Now, this is too simple and unchallenging (unless I want to practice my ability to express atmosphere through sketching, such as creating a mood piece daily.

Now before I create something, I ask myself:

1. What can you learn from this project? To make new materials? To learn new skills such as rigging and animation? Or new systems?
2. Can my artistic ability and aesthetic taste be improved? Given a picture, can I create multiple pictures with unified content and storytelling?
3. Does the subject matter appeal to me? For me, a good idea is more important than a picture's degree of completion.
4. Estimate the time in advance, how long will it take to complete the production? Can your control of time and distinction between the priorities of production help your work?
5. Can I be reasonably lazy? How to produce it in less time without affecting the visual performance too much?

In short, the best advice I can give you is that in the early stages of your career, the most important thing is to create, publish on the internet, and summarize your shortcomings through feedback and communication. And when you have solved all the problems, believe me, you will get more positive feedback and use it as motivation to continue.

Thanks for reading. My next work is on the way!

Li Zihan, Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine