Creating 3D Environment Concepts with Mood & Story

Blender, Medium & 3D-Coat Workflow with Andy Walsh

Learn how to effectively communicate stories and evoke emotions with your 3D environment concepts. In this 4.5-hour workshop by Concept Artist Andy Walsh, you’ll discover the process he’s refined through a decade of experience to design environments that can draw the audience into an environment to establish an emotional connection. 

Beginning with reference gathering and quick sketches, Andy walks through his process for gauging the direction of the environment, and determining what needs to be created in 3D. From there, he uses a combination of Adobe Medium, 3D-Coat, Blender, and a little ZBrush, to put together an intriguing story moment to invoke curiosity in the viewer. You’ll discover how Adobe Medium can be used to block-in an entire environment with surprising ease, and learn how you can quickly and effectively add realism to your digital sculpts using 3D-Coat. You’ll also practice harnessing the power of Quixel MegaScans to blend your 3D creations with natural assets. Andy’s workflow also includes his simple process for inserting characters with the help of Mixamo and Sketchfab. 

Once the environment has taken shape, he shows how to render it out in Blender and export it into Photoshop where he adds the final layer of the story, along with finishing details and polish work. It’s here in this final phase where all the real magic happens! This workshop is designed for artists with some familiarity with Blender but who may struggle with the often necessary addition of adding in living characters and organic hand-made props. 

The grim and gruesome assets that Andy creates in this workshop are provided as downloadable project files for subscribers.