ASYLUM

"Clean" version of the asylum

"Decayed" version of the asylum
Introduction
When initially tasked with creating two versions of the same scene with two states of materials, one of the recommendations was that the first version contain materials in a new and clean state, while the second version contain the same materials in a decayed state. My mind quickly went beyond the thought of just including physical decay and wanted to create something that also included the idea of mental and emotional decay. I figured what better place to explore such concepts than a mental asylum, thus I started working on creating one that can make the transition from new to decayed.
Research and Reference OF the Clean Version
The design and materials of the room were inspired by the asylums of the 1950's and 60's including porcelain tiles for the walls, the tiled pattern of the floor, and the style of the bed and restraints. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to actually find references for clean versions of an asylum from that time, because most of the photos taken were either in black and white or are modern photos of abandoned asylums. Even in the old photos when the asylums were running, they had poor conditions and often the buildings were already showing noticeable signs of serious decay. Because of this, I often had to find "cleaner" references for the materials as they should have been when the building was first built. Some references and photographs were even taken from films.


Some of the references used as inspiration for the room


"Cleaner" versions of the materials that I ended up going with




And finally references for the bed, restraints, and buckles.
Creating the models
The modeling process was pretty strait forward. I had to model the bed frame, the mattress, the leather straps, and the buckles in order to make the bed. I modeled the pillow using nCloth in Maya and increasing the nCloth's pressure value. The room is just a hollowed-out box with a door and a window. I also added a rubber baseboard along the walls.




Unreal Engine Previz
It was difficult to fight the urge to UV and unwrap these models right after finishing, but camera shots had to be made in the Unreal engine first, and based off these shots, precious UV space can be allocated to the areas that are closer to the camera, allowing for the best use of texel density.

Just look at all of those amazing shots!
THE UVs
After establishing the shots, I was finally ready to layout my UVs. I split the bed up into several sections in order to maximize the textures that I will be using.












Making the Clean Materials in substance designer
Many materials were created for this project but the main focus was on six major ones. I created the bedsheet with built in wrinkles, the floor and the wall, the leather for the restraints and the metal for the buckles, and finally the material for the bed frame.












Adding Materials in Painter
The door and the bed's materials were assigned to the appropriate geometry in substance painter. Then a slight amount of grunge and wear was applied because even though these models were a part of the clean version, nothing is ever really perfect. All of the tileable textures will be added later in the Unreal Engine.



Research and References of Version 2
I had to go to some dark places of the internet (like the second page of google images) in order to find references for the decayed and bloody version of this project. A lot of inspiration was taken from movies and video games, but a lot of work went into actually studying how blood leaves stains on mattresses. Blood is often lighter towards the edges of the stain but is often surrounded by a dark ring traveling all along the outside of the stain.



References and inspiration used for the walls and the overall vibe of the decayed version.


Reference images used for bedframe decay and rust.




And finally, the disturbing references I had to closely study of bloody mattresses and pillows.
Creating Dirty Materials in Substance Designer and Painter
The floor and the walls were tiling materials, so they were "decayed" in substance designer. The grunge and blood textures added to the wall had a noticeable repeat in the Unreal Engine. This was fixed by kicking up the wall texture to 4k, making the tiles repeat more in the texture, and projecting the texture on the walls at a larger scale so there would be no loss to the texel density. Alpha cards were created to add more grunge to the corners and the areas where the walls and floor/ceiling meet.








Most of the decayed version of the bed was done in substance painter. Dirt was added to everything. The rust was added to the bed frame using a mix of smart masks and hand painting. The blood was hand painted onto the mattress and the pillow and then exported into photoshop where I created special masks in order to get the "rim effect" that blood has on fabrics.

Texturing the bed in Substance Painter


Some of the blood rim masks made in Photoshop.

Close up of the "blood rim" effect created by the masks.

Close up of the rust on the bed frame.
Unreal Engine Lighting and Rendering
Since this was an almost completely enclosed environment, I did not use an HDRI lighting setup, but rather I created my own lighting in the Unreal Engine. I wanted the lighting to appear cool and I wanted the windows to seem like a point of escape to the outside world from the room in which we seem trapped. For the second version, I tinted the lighting a little deeper and created a post processing volume in order to give a feeling of dementia, or at least heighten the sense that something was off.










The Music
The finishing touch was the music that was chosen for this project. The music was created by an artist called "The Caretaker" who released six experimental albums, each one exploring and trying to emulate the stages of dementia through music, by distortion of the songs, that progressively get worse as the mental state of the patient slowly declines. The music on my video uses parts of album one for the initial version, and parts of album five for the decayed version.