Japanese Shrine

sketchfab

I recently watched a horror movie on Netflix based in Japan that centered around a Japanese shrine, which prompted me to revisit an old project of mine.\nI had created the components of this scene a few years ago but was unable to figure out how to combine them into a cohesive scene.\nTools such as ZBrush and Sketchfab helped expedite the process this time around, and I am now able to share the result with you.\nThe scene was intentionally set in low-light conditions, but I struggled to achieve this effect using the three lights available through Sketchfab. To overcome this challenge, I decided to bake the lights in Maya and use them as emissive maps.\nThese emissive maps aligned well with the soft lighting created by the lanterns throughout the scene.\nThe uniform layout of the scene made it possible for me to utilize an emissive lightmap for repeated meshes, such as the arches, steps, rocks, and shrine. By sharing these lightmaps among their duplicates, I was able to save time on modeling, light rendering, and texturing. In the case of the shrine, it was divided into four quarters to maximize this efficiency.