Dragon Incense Burner

Goals & Inspiration

I’m a huge fan of Zhelong Xu’s artwork, especially his sculptures and designs, which make me feel compelled to create something inspired by his incredible artwork that I have seen and studies, whilst incorporating my own ideas into this piece.

For this project, I choose to make this Dragon Incense Burner because I have always been attracted to Eastern cultures, and I would like to explore the more delicate designs of Eastern dragons.
On top of that, I really wanted to push what I am able to do with a realistic look and challenge my sculpting ability.

Also test my hand at using the Unreal Engine 5 nanite and Lumen lighting to render a 3D asset which I can complete within a shorter amount of time, compared to creating and lighting a full environment scene.

Eventually, I plan to create a full scene around this asset. Please look forward to that!

Software

Software used during this project:

• ZBrush – Creating high poly sculpt and detailing.
• Maya – Initial block out, Subd modeling, retopology, and UVs.
• Substance Painter – Baking and Texturing.
• Photoshop – General use
• Unreal Engine – Rendering the final presentation shots.
• Davinci Resolve – Compiling the image sequences render into video format.

References

My plan is to create something with very intricate details, to sharpen my sculpting skills. I started by looking on the internet for some references that could serve as an inspiration for me to execute my ideas.

I begin with gathering my references for this project, mainly focusing on the references that featured cultural elements and some artwork from artists that I admire (Keita Okada, Zhelong Xu, etc), things that can attribute to my Initial idea and design, which is a Dragon Incense Burner with some real-life object and artifact references to achieve the realistic look that I am aiming for.

Then along the way, I added more references depending on my need, for example, some extra animal anatomy references when sculpting the dragon face and body in order to ensure believability.

During the texturing phase, I collected more references on the appearance of aged metal surfaces, oxidation, rust, weathering, etc.

Blockout and Highpoly Sculpting

In the Blockout stage, the core intention is to find the right proportion and scale. So, for whatever stuff that I modelled, I always have a Human scale side by side in relation to the model, so I do not lose track of the sense of scale and detail for the object I am working on.

During the modelling, I do not save polygons and use as many as necessary. I feel like the key is to get the correct shapes, proportions and build a good silhouette. While modelling, I always think about how each part will be separated for the lowpoly baking later and create each component accordingly.

By doing that, I find that it will be much easier and fewer fixes will be required during the UV and baking phase. I try as much as possible to plan ahead so I do not have to worry and spend too much time doing the modification further along the process.

ZBrush is always my primary choice for the sculpting because I feel like I can execute a more detailed sculpting with it.
I started with sculpting the dragon head first, because I wanted it to be the main focus, and it will determine the direction for the rest of the parts, like the body, the burner details, the roof structure, and so on.

For this dragon head, I went with the basic sculpting technique, which is manually painstakingly hand sculpting the details stroke by stroke. As torturing as that might sound, once I got the hang of it, it is actually pretty therapeutic, and it serves as training to further re-enforce my knowledge on the foundation and basics.

One of the challenges that I faced when I was working on the body, is that I don’t want to have to sculpt every single detail by hand because it is essentially a repetitive process and can be incredibly taxing to do so.

So to save my sanity, I’ve created an IMM brush with the mapped tilling texture on it just so I can turn that into a masking inside ZBrush then inflate it to create the scales detail, etc.

This technique saved me a lot of time from having to create the detail from scratch so I can then invest more focus on the overall shape and silhouette instead.

Lowpoly

For the lowpoly, I just decimated all the lowpoly inside ZBrush decimation master tool and clean the topology up in Maya when necessary. Since I know this model is just a static mesh and doesn’t need a lowpoly with proper poly loop, etc.

And for the polycount itself, because I’ll be using nanite in Unreal Engine 5, I wasn’t trying to optimize it too much and instead use the polycount budget to maintain the silhouette integrity and detail as much as possible.

UVing

For the UVing process, I just UV-ed it straight in Maya without the help of any external software like UV Rizom and such. I want to be able to have full control over how I pack my texture and separation even though it will take more time and effort to do so.

Texturing

The texturing process is one of the more exciting parts for me second to the Highpoly process, because during this phase is when I start to breathe life and story into the asset that I am making.

I always set up my painter file with ACES_UE4_log Color filter to get a better color match between Substance Painter and Unreal Engine. I got the LUTs for the Substance Painter from Brian Leleux in Artstation.

I used a metallic roughness PBR workflow for this asset. Using standard masks and generators for the texturing process.

This is where all the details that I’ve put into the Highpoly sculpt pays off because it will be generated into all the baked map inside Substance Painter accurately.

During the initial Texturing process, I always try to automatically generate the detail from the baked map first before adding the hand-painted detail into the asset.

This is to make sure that I do not have to redo the texturing due to baking errors or issues where tweaking of the mesh (low poly or high poly) and UV is required. I understand that there is a function to preserve brush strokes in Substance Painter but I’ve always done it this way just in case.

Another thing that I find important is to keep the layer stack clean by naming each layer in a logical order. I make it a habit and practice this because as someone that works a lot with other artists in a studio, there are going to be times when someone else might have to take over your tasks and be required to modify them.

By keeping my files clean and avoiding creating a lot of unnecessary layers, I can ensure a more efficient and streamlined workflow within a production pipeline.

Moreover, I feel very strongly that as an artist sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in what is technically correct but then forget that we’re creating Art. I always remind myself to maintain a balance between both worlds.

While checking the layers and the real-life references is crucial to make sure the details look believable and realistic, some rule-bending is also essential in order to bring out the storytelling of an asset, which to me personally is what distinguishes between a good and great artwork.

Most important of all, Have fun! Enjoy the process.

Rendering & Lighting

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to use Unreal Engine 5 and many of its latest features like nanite and Lumen Lighting for my final render and preview.

For the final render, I’m using the Movie Render Queue to get the highest quality of still shot renders and video output. I really recommend it, you have a lot of control parameters and can customize it to your liking and save a lot of different presets.

And since the lighting is using Lumen, it looks absolutely stunning, and I can make tweaks here and there really fast. I used a mix of everything, three-point lighting with lots of Rim light, particle effects for the falling leaves, Atmospheric fog, etc. to add some atmosphere and ambiance detail.

The extra assets other than the Incense Burner that I sculpted are all from the Quixel Megascans and UE marketplace.

Conclusion

This was a very fun project for me even though it took much longer than I expected. Initially, I planned to finish this project in about a month or two, depending on the time I have juggling between my work in the studio and my personal work, but it ended up taking about 3 months.

I’ve truly learned a lot in this project. If you have any comments, feedback, or questions you may leave them here at my Artstation to help me improve on my future projects. I hope you find this article helpful and interesting.

And a final thank you to GameArtist for approaching me and giving me this incredible opportunity to share my journey with you.

Thanks and keep making cool art everyone!