Baba Yaga

Since I have been given more time to work on the project, I decided to add some more props to the House to add something to the storytelling part. The sides of the House are a bit empty, so I created container, bucket, cauldron and a metal cage to give the viewer some clues of what Baba Yaga might do when she's not flying on her broomstick. A cauldron is a typical Baba Yaga equipment, so I wanted to include an old rusty one, but there is also a metal cage where she can detain people. Props are attached to the House with ropes, so they don't move when the House is walking. I started by making a low poly version of each prop, and I unwrapped them keeping everything on one UV map. Knowing that these props will not be in the centre of attention, I decided to sculpt only the wooden parts in Zbrush while adding the normal details to the metal in Substance Painter later on. Using metal and wood smart materials mixed with some smart masks to make the models look old and used. prop...

I decided to use the Unreal Engine for the purpose of this project. I found it very easy to use, and the post-processing effects applied by default helps to make the textures and colours looks more define and pleasing to the eye. In terms of the style I was going for realism mixed with stylization, so I went for a PBR based material to make the model look a bit cartoony. I think that Unreal does a better job than Unity in terms of PBR based textures and realistic look of them, so for me, it was an obvious choice. I exported Baba Yaga and the House as separate models since Baba Yaga's animation is a bit longer than the House. There was nothing complicated while exporting the models to the Unreal, I had no errors, but there were still things to be done in the engine to make it all look spot on. The first part was to create all materials and assembly them correctly. Because of the different properties of some parts of the model, I had to make separate materials for each par...