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Creating foliage, grass, plants and vegetation for video games is a topic that a lot of people struggle with. There are a ton of workflows out there, but how to you know you're doing it correctly? Are you working in the most optimal way possible? Not only that, but there are so many issues and concerns you may face when it comes to making vegetation, and even more questions. How do you animate hundreds of blades of grass? how do you make both sides of the vegetation textured? How do you go about creating variation without it taking hours? Fortunately, Stylized Station has your back with this FREE guide. Dan Sonley was kind enough to stop by Stylized Station and give a masterclass on how he approaches his workflow as well as a TON of tips and tricks you can use to create plants, vegetation, grass and other foliage for all of your real-time needs. This 2 hour guide is going to cover everything you need to know, from modeling & sculpting to procedural generation & animation. This information and guide can be utilized in any software, but here are the specific software Dan will cover: -Zbrush -Maya -Blender -Substance Painter -Unreal Engine If you want to check out more of Dan's work, feel free to swing by his Artstation: Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 2:03 - Using Reference 3:00 - Beginning Modeling in Maya 3:54 - Three ways to approach (Two-Sided Materials, etc.) 7:18 - Interpreting Reference 8:18 - Modeling Practices 9:28 - Starting the High Poly and scene cleanup 9:54 - Sculpting ZBrush Quick Tips 11:24 - The importance of test bakes 13:12 - Which brushes to use while sculpting 14:19 - Breaking up the silhouette 15:07 - Decimation Master in ZBrush 15:37 - Starting the low-poly mesh 16:14 - Performance and baking considerations 17:04 - Posing your model & baking 18:30 - Once baked, now texture 19:45 - Substance Painter first pass 21:46 - Unreal Shader (subsurface setup) 23:14 - Substance Painter (base color detail painting) 25:00 - Quality Checking 26:45 - Painting technique (keep it simple) 27:49 - Revisions & Polish 29:01 - Bend modifier detail shapes 30:00 - Clothsim deformations 30:49 - Unreal foliage tool 31:33 - Blueprint Construction Script 33:12 - BP: Your first variable (Static Mesh Actor Array) 33:59 - BP: Adding plants (GET) 36:15 - BP: Set as Random Number 37:19 - BP: Random from Stream 39:32 - BP: Set Stream on compile 41:50 - BP: Random Transforms 44:30 - BP: Scale Random 45:00 - BP: (Wobble) Random Rotation 48:30 - Testing your Blueprint 50:30 - Tuning Blueprint values 51:20 - Randomize the whole shelf 53:51 - BP: Scripting an array for placement 55:50 - BP: Adding array variables 58:30 - Math 59:29 - BP: For Each Loop 1:02:06 - BP: Testing Z-Offset 1:03:40 - Debugging BP 1:06:04 - Making a variation using the BP 1:08:00 - Best practices 1:08:32 - MATERIALS! & Material Instancing 1:09:54 - Masking/Packed channels & Subsurface mask 1:13:49 - Shading Model: Two-sided Foliage 1:15:59 - Adding Wind (vertex color) 1:16:59 - Crashing unreal :) 1:17:41 - Adding Wind (vertex color) 1:19:00 - Panning Perlin Noise 1:20:54 - Absolute World Position 1:23:00 - Adding a Panner 1:26:00 - Fixing a seam in Photoshop 1:28:30 - Texture Compression Settings 1:29:51 - World Position Offset (Finalizing wind) 1:32:29 - Transfer Attributes in Maya 1:34:10 - Exporting with Vertex Color (Turn on import in Unreal) 1:36:25 - Green Channel 2nd UV set 1:40:00 - Editing UVs for Green Channel Vertex Color 1:41:21 - Blending Color Sets for Vertex Color 1:42:30 - Iteration Speed 1:44:00 - Fine tuning wind 1:46:32 - BLENDER. Making a more complicated plant (Bush) 1:51:32 - Decimating quickly ZRemesher as a shortcut 1:53:40 - Placing Leaves in Blender 1:56:11 - Cloth simulation physics 1:57:49 - Thats basically all there is to it 1:58:20 - Using Custom Vertex Normals (IMPORTANT!) 🎨The 3D Coloring Book🎨 Transform your Substance Painter texturing skills with HUNDREDS of professional-level assets, and hours of high quality tutorials 🎉 Join here: 💖Support Stylized Station💖 These tutorials remain 100% free thanks to the amazing support from our Patrons. To ensure these tutorials stay free and to gain early access to every video, consider joining our Patreon community. Check out for tons more tutorials, workshops and inspiration from the game art community! Follow me on all the socials: YouTube: Twitter: Instagram: Come join us on discord! We have the world's largest discord for sharing stylized art.
