"THE LARGO EMBARGO" PROJECT

Hey all!

First of all it is a massive milestone for me to be part of such an amazing community as 3D artists and creative individuals, so I want to make sure I do this right. So, for my first ever blog post, I'd like to break down my first ever complete from scratch project, Monkey Island's 2 opening chapter scene, "The Largo Embargo".

As a kid, the game was such an amazing experience to me, and it hit exactly where I needed: cartoonish, smart humor, abstract art, funny as anything and a joy to play and see unfold.

(Yes, I am not your average age amateur 3d artist. I was told that it doesn't matter. I hope...)

So after a few weeks of practice in Blender, Substance Painter and months of training and tutorials in Unreal Engine, I gave it a go and tried to complete my first scene. And what better scene to me than this!

The project started on the 29^th of December, with a deadline of the 2^nd of January.

Chapter 1: Reference and design

Of course I did all my research from professionals and how to begin a project: the workflow starts with reference, and I collected everything I could, from screen shots of the original game, the epic remaster and it's original concept art.

What I clearly realised was the fact that it is very difficult to deliver a 1-to-1 2D scene in a 3D environment, especially one with such abstract art. So after collecting reference, I decided on the feel of the scene:

What would it feel like, what would it be like if Guybrush's world was following our physics and materials world, but was constructed with his world's art and design? Would the wood look like our own, or would it have different properties and look? What about the bridge? How would some crazy pirate build that thing? The sign with the shovel? Would it be like any other wood sign? The observatory?

What I saw was that I wanted to build the scene with a mix of both worlds: yes, the materials would look "almost" like ours. The design though of the boats, bridge, rocks, poles HAS to be in the Monkey Island world. So it became clear to me that I need to follow the general shapes and feel of the props and environment, and transfer it to our own world, making a sort of "Who framed Roger Rabbit" transition, but backwards.

The second important part was the color scheme. The scene uses pretty much three colors: Red, Blue and Yellow. I needed to make sure that I note the color use and feel of the scene, as this would dictate what materials I would use, along with the lighting (which, I found out, was no small task).

Chapter 2: Blockout and scene organization

I began the project by doing a top-down, handwrite scene design. I did not think too much about keeping depth and scale at this time, as I needed to understand how the placement would dictate the camera position.

After I had a scetch I was happy with, I started putting all the primitives I needed into the scene. The blockout process meant that I now had to think about scale, so I did a rough measurement in Blender: I assumed that the planks of the bridge would dictate the general scale, as these were the only props I could measure against the character models in the reference (Guybrush seems like a tall guy in all the games, above average at least. Especiall in Monkey Island 3, where he looks like an old school center from the Seattle SuperSonics...).

So if Guybrush was 1.80m (about 6`2") and Largo was.....well....a lot LESS than that, then the planks would be about 1.5m.

So now I had my relevant scale and blockout. This was the time I did my scene organization through Collections in Blender.

I knew that this would be a scene with a lot of back and forth corrections and placement, so I needed to be organized. I created all the necessary collections and subfolders (Bridge -> Planks, Ropes, Poles, then Boats -> Planks, Sign-> Shovel, wood etc) along with a separate folder for lights. Always use a separate collection for lights. It can get nasty otherwise very soon.

I also sorted out my naming conventions for the blockout, as I wanted to work as fast and efficient as I can. This helped a lot when I was moving around and replacing props and items.

With all the organization sorted, time to start modelling!

Chapter 3: Modelling part A

I had previously created scenes from Tutorials in YouTube, so I put my knowledge to the test. I had some wood planks ready, so I imported those. This was a good idea, as it gave me a good head start for testing.

I also had some other abstract wood models, which I used as a start to create the first prop: the Entry Sign.

This was such an important item to the scene, as it is the very first piece of art that Guybrush interacts with in the chapter. It has the shovel (which proves important later in the story) and communicates the first piece of information to the player: do not come around here digging for treasure, filthy SCUMMtm!

So the shovel needed to be an item that looks and feels like the game, but is also clear that you can pick it up from the sign. So the design was as close to the original, but the depth was more pronounced. Lights would help with that later.

After the sign was done pretty much to a 1-to-1 artistic design, I moved along with the bridge.

The decision I took early was that the ropes needed to be part of the planks from the get-go. That saved me a lot of time, as I could create five or six variations of the planks along with the ropes, place them, test them from camera view for angle and size, and adjust accordingly.

The ropes were constructed with Bezier Curves. I really wanted to make sure that they followed real world rules (no clipping where visible, minimal clipping when hidded) but also the feel of the reference. So two rows per plank, two bends per row, dark colors.

The first real major obstacle was the planks size and placement vs the reference. In the game, the 2d artist created the sense of depth by reducing the planks size and creating a curve behind the observatory. This works really well for the player transition to the next screen, and gives the feel needed for entering a larger environment, with boats acting as bars, hotels and...erm... dry cleaning.

This though was very hard to excecute in 3D, as the sense of depth achieved in 2D is completely different than in 3D. If I was to follow real world rules, I hand to place the start of the bridge let's say 10 meters from the camera, and the end about 30. After a lot of trial and error, I decided that I would be better off following the general curvature of the planks placement and do a more subtle back curve behind the observatory. That way I could place the boat better on the left and keep the scale of the bridge constant, rather than having to place props and camera constantly to create something closer to the depth generated in the game scene.

I thought that this solved quite a few problems with scale and placement, as now I could focus on the artistic design of the props.

The next challenge was planks rotation. In the game scene, there is a nice depth effect from the start of the bridge to the end of it. It starts on a negative curve rotation but finished in a possitive one (relavant to the camera). This was another tricky bit, as it affected not only the planks, but ropes and rocks placement.

The decision here is to follow again as close to real life rules as possible. So the planks had the general placement and rotation, but their placement makes more sense in physics with less gaps between them. That also helped with the placement of the bridge holding ropes, at least for the foreground ones.

However, the background ropes were a different story. Due to the relevant depth and placement of the models, the background ropes would look absolutely horrible if I was to follow just the size and height guidance from reference. At least that was what trial and error showed me, in my own eyes.

So I decided to created the back ropes following the relevant placement in 2d (gaps between foreground and background) that allowed the rest of the models and background to be clearly visible and maintain scene feel.

For the poles, I was possitive that I had to follow curves, cracks and shapes as close to the reference as possible, as they are the ones that really create that abstract, comic book feel to the scene, along with the boats' design. So clear shapes, funny looking cracks, rotation and edges all work together to present the “this might look real, but not really” feel.

Chapter 4: Lighting part A

At this point I saw that I needed to start working with lighting, just so I can understand the general needs of the scene in this department.

The first light was the centre one, with the construction of the lamp and using emission from the material to see how the rest of the scene reacts. After a few crazy attemps at lighting most of the bridge with one light (common rookie mistake, I know), I analysed the lighting of the reference.

This is when I saw and realised how individual elements in the scene are lit also individually. What does that mean though?

Well it meant that a) there is no way only one light would generate such different effects on objects (colors, shadows), b) in 2D the lights do not act as in 3D c) I would have much more control if I placed individual lights on key places to recreate the scene lights from the 2d environment d) lights need to follow the color pallete of the scene, as they are probably more responsible for the final outcome than materials and material colors. I can change a light color in a key region, but it is not efficient to change material colors for the same kinds of objects all the time.

So, the lights I used to begin with were a point light inside of the lamp (using translucency in the lamp material, along with emission, helped to generate that lighting), then spot lights in places like the top of the bridge, the top of the observatory and the entry sign. Two small point lights in red color in front of the two entry bridge poles gave the reference coloring, and the rest would have to wait for the other models.

Chapter 3: Modelling part B

In the beginning of the project I thought I would be able to create most of the whole original scene, with the Bar and woodcutter boats on the left finished. I quickly realised that this would not be possible with the timeline I had, and would also have bad results for the final renders. I knew I would be stretching too much, and I wanted to test myself but also have something to show that was complete and (hopefully) up to some sort of artistic standard.

I saw this when I started modelling the left big boat. This boat is host to the woodcutter shop in the game, and acts and an in-betweeen point of interest between the start of the scene and the bar boat. It has a complete wooden shack built on top of it, with lights coming from inside the building.

Although I did manage to create the rest of the bridge and planks that connect the boat with the starting screen, I realised that this would be a whole different animal, and it also contributed next to nothing if I did not create the rest of the game's scene.

So that went away. I stuck to the front of the boat after a had created the whole boat model, because I knew that I could use it for the background boat in the starting screen.

The tricky bit on the boat is the front of it. The lighting in the reference is very different on the top of the boat than on the nose of it. The big piece of the boat in front is so extruded, but also lit mostly from the top down and not from the lamp. Although this is a clear artistic choice on the 2D image, it would not make a lot of sense in 3D.

To avoid issues and follow the art, I used a very simple wood alpha with a color ramp for the base color of the boat material that was closer to dark red than to anything else. Then, after I used a dark blue tint on the extruded model (let's call in nose, shall we? I am not into boats that much...), I upped the metallic factor on the material to 0.7, wanting to create the light bounce from the top but have darkness on the rest of the object. That worked pretty ok in the long term.

One of the bigger tasks were the individual bridge ropes. I used Bezier curves for every single one of them, and I created the necessary variation in rotation and position, to follow the reference but also create a more believable result for the real world. That meant that I also had to tie some of the bottoms of the planks with those ropes.

The weird part is that the bridge ropes are colored different than the plank ropes in the reference, at least in my eye. That was a chance to create variation (am I pretty sure that whatever pirate put that bridge did not have the rope colors as their first priority) and give a nice feel to the bridge, with the opportunity to create also variation through lighting later.

However, in the 2d scene there is a clear “out of this world” decision that affected mine: what holds the planks in place after the rope bridge???

Even when the player continues through the scene, the planks seem to be held either by a couple of poles or just stay in the air connected to one another. Sure that looks nice on 2D, but in 3D makes no sense. Thus, I decided to connect some of the ropes on the bottom and put a couple of poles underneath the rest of the planks, along with a holding pole that is actually present in the next screen of the game, but not in this one. That solved the “logical” issue.

Chapter 4: Modelling part C

Next would have to be the rocks.

Ahh the rocks... I did not have that much experience in scuplting, so I decided to follow two routes: see reference in wireframe from ready made models (mostly Quixel models and YouTube sculpting tutorials) and use what I had created before and expand on it. This actually helped a lot, as I managed to create shapes that I thought were close enough to the reference, but also seemed believeable to the real world. I used a free rock texture from Textures.com and adjusted the scale through texture mapping and UV placement. I created some different variations that seemed to work well enough, and placed them in a relevant to the camera way in the scene.

I decided to use more rocks than the reference, as I wanted to give the sense of a harsh island environment, where boats go to die. Following the reference, I placed two rocks in the front of the camera shot, and the rest accordingly.

For the water, I used a trick that Grant Abbitt tought through his tutorials: a large plane, subdivided for a lot of resolution, then selected vertices at random and lift them ever so slightly.

With a glossy swap water texture, this worked wonders, as it made the night water so much better. Reflections worked quite well, and I was pretty happy with the result.

I decided not to play with translucency for the water, as I did some research for night lit water scenes and it is next to impossible to have objects visible underwater from this sort of angle. I did try to see the results with water translucency, but the scene was loosing more than it was gaining.

The destroyed boats in the foreground were crafted the same way as the bridge: all individual, different models and variations. The tricky part though was the destroyed wood effect, so I had to cut, arrange and spend quite some time in each individual piece of wood to make sure there is no repetition. For the middle destroyed boat I followed the reference pretty much religiously (placement, cuts) but for the right one I wanted to play around and hone my skills in creating something a bit different. Hopefully that worked out well.

The next tricky bit was the ground on the right, top of the rocks.

On the reference, the “grass” is hanging on top of the rocks. While that works in 2D and gives more sense of depth, I found that, no matter what I use (with the skillset that I have), I could not create grass and the hanging effect without covering a lot of rocks or creating a fake result.

Thus, I decided to be more realistic with it and grabbed a nice forest ground texture, created a plane with lots of variation and placed it as best I could relevant to the camera. Remember: the scale and rotation / curve of the 2D scene is very different than the actual 3D space, at least for the placement I had.

 Last was the wood material and model variation for the left boat. I did a lot of profound breakage, as the original reference did not have that much detail on that part and I wanted to fill my scene with more than this.

Chapter 5: Lighting part B

Now that most of the important models were in place, lighting was next.

Looking at the reference, there is a lot of color variation in the lighting, especially in front of the rocks. My rocks had a blue tint (which worked well with the color palete of the scene), so I put on the right ones two point lights: a yellow one and a light blue one. That gave the reference sense but also worked well with the color variation generated from the lamp, and also had a good effect on the sense of depth.

A bit more tweaking with the rest of the lights in the scene, and I had a result I was happy with.

At that point I created the background: I used an amazing wallpaper from “Tales of Monkey Island”, as both a tribute to the latest game of the series and to cover my inability to draw anything as close as this. The image is relately low res, however I could not create the clouds in the artistic direction the game has.

What I did, was combine the image with a background noise texture and color ramp node, to create the color variation for the blue tint of the background.

  Chapter 6: Easter Eggs

Monkey Island is an amazing series, that has a lot of funny moments.

I wanted to pay tribute to this, with two Easter Eggs. I did not want to hide them, as I think they needed to be easily visible but not the centre of attention. So the first one is clearly the cover of the remastered game, where I used most of my reference.

The second one though the a nice sticker that pays tribute to the original Monkey Island. See if you can spot it (hint: it's not that hard...).

Chapter 7: Scene Adjustments and Post Processing

At this point I was happy with the overal feel of the scene, and I wanted to make some corrections to finish off properly.

I noticed that the background image did not blend well at all with the water, so I put more depth with some rocks. Very dark colors and a relevant scale gave the sense of depth I wanted, plus the coverage that contributed to the blend of the background.

For the camera, I used a minor focus adjustment to draw the eye to the centre of the scene, but gradualy have the viewer noticing details such as shadows and color differences. This creates a nice depth as well in my opinion, with such a simple adjustment.

For post processing, I used a simple oval vignette that covered the four edges of the screen in a bit of a darker effect, plus a very light bloom for the lamp emission.

Although the original reference has a very profound bloom, presenting thus a sense of a foggy environment, I wanted my scene to have a more clear cut night feel. The fact that the background has also such a big moon and clouds contributed to this direction, rather than having a foggy (and thus more of a moody, desaturated color pallete) than I wanted.

The final render is at 4K (although I could not post it here so I did a 2k one for the sake of presentation) and I was happy enough with the results, for a first ever project.

Final Thoughts – Post Mortem

All and all, I feel that I put my knowledge to the test as much as I could, stretching as much time and effort as possible.

From start to finish, the whole scene took three full days. There was a time limit, as I wanted to have it ready for a personal goal of mine (more of that maybe later in the year) and I really wanted to present a complete scene, with pre and post production pictures and analysis for my first ever Artstation project and blog post.

What would I change? Having more time, I would surely try to make the clouds as stylized as presented in the original scene. A better ground effect would also be something that I would love to try and create, plus a lot more variation on the boat models.

I also feel that the lighting and color palette is something I could work on more, maybe try different ideas for the visual effects (such as the bloom effect) or introduce some more detail, like fireflys maybe near the light or try a foggy environment with volumetrics.

I also believe that the back ropes could have been a lot better, and give a nicer sense of depth.

If I wanted to go for a more realistic approach, I would work on the boat materials and poles. Even the shovel would look a lot more like a real one, but artistic choice prevailed in this one.

I hope anyone that read this rather big blog post enjoys it, and I am more than happy to receive any kind of feedback, as I am always looking to learn more and more in 3D art.

Till next time,

KC