Beach Day | MFA Lookdev Thesis
Beach Day is my MFA Lookdev thesis project. I began production on this project in Spring 2023, and completed it in the Spring 2025 semester.
The final project comp will be added on this page on March 6th! In the meantime, you may see content on this page change as I update it 🔧✨
Programs: Unreal Engine, Maya, Substance Painter, Arnold Renderer, Nuke, Marvelous Designer.
I used Unreal Engine to produce renders of my environment scenes using a workflow designed by my advisor and mentor, Derek Flood. This workflow allows the artist to build, edit, and render incredibly large scenes extremely quickly. By rendering environment/lighting maps from the Unreal scene, I can easily match the lighting on my hero characters and assets, which were rendered in Arnold using the “standard” Maya workflow.
Table of Contents
Concept Art
I used a character rig that I already owned: the Dana Rig by Gabriel Salas. Using a rig let me pose the character in unique positions in each shot without having to worry about the rigging myself. I wanted to customize the character for my project, so I decided to give the character a bubble braid hairstyle as an xGen challenge for myself.
In addition, I hoped to customize the character’s clothes beyond the simple t-shirt and pants on the original rig. I designed a lacy shirt as a surfacing challenge. The shorts I added with practicality in mind: since I would pose the character in different positions in each shot, I wanted something skin-tight enough to easily pose or clothsim in to place.
Character Lookdev
Set Dressing & Texturing
Unreal Shot Setup
A WIP of shot building progress in Unreal.