As an Environment Artist at OVFX Studios, Raghav brought breathtaking dome tents to life in his mentorship project at Think Tank Training Center.

Interview with Raghav Verma | Swamp Haven | 3D Artist

Artist Introduction

Hey! My name is Raghav Verma, I’m currently working as an Environment Artist at the OVFX Studios for an unannounced Netflix and Hulu title. What can I say, I love to create things! Be it environment, props, or procedural systems for environments! My focus remains on game art which uses real-time rendering pipeline using game engines like Unreal Engine to create beautiful environments. I'm also a ThinkTankTraining Centre Alumni, and I’m known for my popular game environment project named Swamp Haven which is my latest environment project.

Tell us about the project - Swamp Haven

Swamp Haven is my mentorship project which was made as a part of my final term at my art school, i.e. Think Tank Training Centre. It was an ambitious project that I took the responsibility of to finish in 4 months of time. It focused on pushing my technical skills to make high quality game assets.

You used Marvelous Designer for cloth simulation of the tents. Why did you decide to use Marvelous Designer? 

Marvelous Designer is the best go to software for making real-time cloth simulations, especially ones that require a lot of manual art direction. The availability of GPU driven simulation is a big help when it comes to creating cloth simulations in a tight schedule. However it also features CPU simulations for more accurate sims. SwampHaven had to be completed in 4 months, and I had tasks every single day which needed to be done quickly, especially the Dome Tents. The Tents were a reimagined version of the concept art that I followed. They had to make physical sense for which I designed some ideas with my mentor Declan Hart. Finally a dome tent with modular cloth parts was the idea we landed up on. Marvelous Designer helped a ton while making the cloth sims because of its wide variety of tools that helped in making the sims quick and simple.

Can you give us a quick overview of the different tools used in your pipeline to complete the tent creation? 

For the most part, Pinning tools and Measure tools were the most important tools which were used for my Dme Tents. The ability to create attachment curves at a collision mesh using ‘Attach to Measure’ and ‘Surface Measure’ helped the cloth to stick to my meshes properly. Furthermore, the ability to add ‘Pressure’ to the geometry paired with availability of different types of cloth types also helped a ton in art directing the look of the cloth simulation.

Furthermore these tools used my Unreal Engine shader system which allowed me to control different types of control on the texture, like the color, dirt spread etc. as shown below. 

What tips do you have for other artists using Marvelous Designer for environment art for games?

For the limited time that I have used Marvelous Designer, I’d say it’s a great tool for making quick static meshes that require drapery or any type of cloth sim. Compared to other softwares, the UI is easy enough to grasp and the ability to play around with the cloth while it’s simulating in real time allows for greater control in art directing any cloth mesh. I’d recommend artists to check out Marvelous Designer for generating quick and detailed cloth sims for their project because of its easy to learn pipeline.

Are there any areas/ideas you would like to utilize Marvelous Designer in your future project?

For future I’d like to explore Marvelous Designer for animated cloth sims on an animated actor/avatar. I’ve seen some cool showcases of cloth sims on characters which look amazing. I’d love to try that out.

How can you describe your overall experience of the use of the Marvelous Designer?

Overall, Marvelous Designer offers a robust set of tools for doing cloth simulation quickly and efficiently. It helps in art directing cloth in many ways that helps both environment and character artists and is an amazing go to tool for simulations!

by Raghav Verma
Artstation