QUETZALCOATL
Quetzalcoatl (feathered snake) is a deity found among many ancient mesoamerican cultures around Mexico and central America such as the Aztecs and Mayans. There are many different representations of this god but my favorite one is the flying snake version cause it reminds me a lot of east Asian dragons.
I wanted to create a game environment based around this cultures cause we don't get to see many of them. More often than not they're just represented as exotic background locations without really digging into the culture.
I made a base model in 3dsmax and then added details in zbrush. Then I baked the mesh into a pbr textures in substance painter to create a trimsheet that I could use for the entire scene.
For the more detailed props I sculpted
them and painted them in substance.
Made a set of props using simple geometry and mapping them with the trim texture.
I created a general material with a couple of variations that applies a random noise dirt to the base texture and modifies the roughness value depending on its proximity to the water to create a wet surface effect.
Created a simple skinned mesh in Maya for the snake and animated it using a spline path.
Then I made a material with a scrolling emission texture and some wind effect to make it look more alive
