Behind the Scene of the Crime

Gathering reference is always an essential first step in my process. I gathered a gazillion different images to find the right mood I was searching for, but eventually filtered them down to this ref board.

Starting with a blockout pass to establish scale, composition and lighting, all of the scene elements slowly evolved from here.

Once the blockout scene felt balanced, I started creating all the modular assets to construct the final scene.

I created a master material for vertex painting between three different textures each with separate parameters for grunge, damage and water puddles. Then I scattered decals around the scene for storytelling, landmarks and breaking up texture tiling.

I'm constantly watching my lighting values to ensure all surfaces have proper contrast.

For my victim, I created a sleazy looking MetaHuman and imported him into Unreal. Then exported the character meshes to Maya for mesh tweaks, cleanup, retexturing, and final posing. Then imported everything back to Unreal for final placement and materials

Fitting my porkpie hat and glasses on the victim's head. What a sleazebag... He probably deserved the crime.