• About me

3D Artist

Leigh Smith

Hi! I'm a passionate 3D artist that focuses on
environment and level design!

About Me !

Hi! My name is Leigh, a graduate from RMIT's Bachelor of design (Games). I'm a 3D artist with a particular interest in environment and level design. I enjoy making environments with strong distinctive aesthetics in hopes it'll leave a stronger lasting impact on the viewer.

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Solarpunk Environment

This solarpunk inspired environment is set in a forest where a research lab resides, sampling the area, and living in harmony with eco-friendly robots.All models created and textured by myself using Maya and Substance Painter, environment constructed using Unreal Engine.

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Executing rough quick concept sketches to get ideas onto the page which can then be expanded upon later on.Trying to create a rough aesthetic between concepts for cohesion and readability.Then moving to digital drawing for quick colours and exploration of other concepts before the final key artworks.

Examples of important models in the scene, showcasing some wireframes and UV maps.In this stage I also explored different lighting, simple colours as well as paint overs in order to establish the mood before moving onto model texturing.

After creating some important key models for the scene, I like to go into the environment and block in the layout to establish lighting. Then doing a paintover to better visualise the finished environment

All assets created by Leigh Smith

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Capstone Project

"Time to go Home" is a university project I made along side Jimmy Lin, Marvie Marin and Jay Brendan Del Rosario.I took on the role of Lead 3D artist and Tech artist, creating all the 3D models and their textures, as well as the shaders and post processing in the game. I worked alongside our Art Director for environment design, and when needed I would also work on 2D assets, such as the logo and some UI elements.Game was created with Unity, models made using Maya, Substance painter and Photoshop, shaders created with Unity's ShaderGraph.

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Content
      -   Environment           Development
      -   3D Models
      -   Shaders
      -   Fished Product

Straight away I got into creating basic 3D models and using primitive shapes to begin blocking out the classroom scene, working alongside the Art Director to explore colours and layout.Using Maya, I experimented with layouts and the size of the room before constructing it in Unity to test lighting.

Due to time constraints, we had to move on to other areas and circle back when it was time to polish.I created this paintover for our next room. It helped serve as a reference for aesthetics, colour, and lighting.

Again, had to move on to the next room, so I created another paintover for the room we had planned next, then constructed it in unity.This room design was actually scrapped as we didnt feel super strong about it and the aesthetic we wanted to have to lead into the ending of the game.

Struggling with the aesthetic of our last room, I circled back to our base rooms colours. Feedback suggested the room felt busy to look at. To combat this, I focused on the values so we could emphasise what we wanted to stand out.This aided in making the room feel more cohesive and readable. It was a colour palette that worked across all the rooms we had.

Polishing the environments consisted of baking the lighting, extra assets for detail, post processing, particle effects etc.Things that pull the rooms together to make them feel more lively and visually engaging.
 

For the plants. The UV's had to be placed specifically from the bottom up as these were being used by the growth shader from the bottom upwards.

This is the alpha map and textures used to create the leaves. Also shown is the albedo map and the normal map.The textures were made using Substance Painter, and there was a high poly sculpt made using zBrush.

I created a couple simple shaders for this project. We briefly explored an outline shader, a boil shader for a scribble effect, TV static, and glimmer shader for our interactable objects.By far I am most proud of the water shader, and growth shader created for our overgrown room.

Arcane Diorama

This diorama was created in my 2nd year of University. We were required to make assets in the style of the series "Arcane" and then using own assets, plus assets made by our peers, we would construct a diorama from either the Piltover or Zaun aesthetic.Diorama was constructed with Unity, models made using Maya and Substance painter.Inspect diorama on sketchfab here.

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Began with quick sketches of the type of scene i wanted to create, and potential assets i could make for that scene.

Pokemon Trainer Room

This diorama was created in my 2nd year of University. We were required to make a room that was made up of no more than 12 assets.I went for a scene that simulates a Pokemon trainers room from the earlier games. The empty, loneley feeling is supposed to make the viewer reminisce in childhood memories from when they played the games.Models and diorama set up made using Maya, textured in Substance painter and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag.

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Since I'm referencing Pokemon, I gathered references of pokemon rooms from the games, as well as images of the style and lighting that i wanted my scene to have.Images/artwork not done by me.

For concepting, I began with rough sketches of what the layout of the room could be like. Once established, the key concept art was created so I could references it when constructing the room.