Marvel Studios What If...? Season 2: Skyworld Crystal Tree Look Development
Procedural textures were created in Substance Designer and projected in Mari using triplanar nodes. Texture seams fixes, additional bark crease extensions, and AOV crystal masks were all hand-painted in Mari.
I built the initial canopy foliage for our modeling team to follow as a guide. Using various geo card shapes to achieve the silhouette Marvel desired.
Texture look development stages that evolved into the final look. An opacity map was used to cut out the edges of the leaves.
Top canopy look development stages. Various patterns were explored before the final was approved by Marvel.
Trunk texture was created in Substance Designer and was used in Mari.
Leaves pattern texture created in Substance Designer. Additional AOV masks were created for the LNC team to add more color variations.
Nanomesh in Zbrush was used to generate the moss on the tree to hide unsewn branches intersecting into the trunk.
Initial concept design by Marvel Studios
I was responsible for the look development of the giant Skyworld crystal tree set in Season 2 - Episode 6: "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?". I worked closely with our talented Art Directors, Modelers, and LNC team at SDFX to achieve Marvel's vision. It was a daunting task that took over a year to finalize since we were also working on other episodes simultaneously. This would become one of my proudest accomplishments in my career as a texture lead. Thank you to Marcelo Vignali and Ethan Hurd for their art direction. Special thanks to the modeling team Marcelo Pirk and Yoo Hoon Kim who helped me establish the overall foliage of this asset. A big shoutout to the LNC team Hadi Salman, Merche Delgado, and Ed Pasaoa who worked tirelessly to put everything together. It was a great pleasure working with all the talented people over at SDFX and Marvel Studios.