The world of art is a consistent stream of refined excellence. As such, art tools need to keep pace with the rate of artistic expression from the community they serve.

And so it’s no surprise that both art schools and art students have ever-higher expectations from such tools — often picking only the best to serve as instructional mediums.

And so we were delighted to come across a recent instructional scene break down by State of Art Academy – an international architectural visualization school – that used Quixel tools and materials to great effect in a recent “Prairie House” scene break down.

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We had the opportunity to speak with three of SOA Academy’s course coordinator, along with three of the academy’s talented instructors, who use Quixel Megascans and Quixel Mixer on a daily basis for their courses, projects, and masterclasses.

Here is an overview of the use of Megascans in the project.

For the vegetation, SOA used Megascans alongside GrowFX and Evermotion. “Importance was given to the translucence of the leaves and grass, with a parameter that is easily customized with Corona Renderer.”

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The grass was created using Megascans textures. “We created groups of simple grass and groups with denser grass with wide leaves to differentiate the scattering with Forest. We also scattered dry leaves for the street and the garden. These leaves are customized models made with DebrisMaker script.”

The SOA artists also told us that the grass texture was achieved by mixing two different types of textures: one with the grass, and one with the ground. Both textures were mixed with Megascans Studio (the predecessor to Quixel Mixer).

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“We started testing and using Megascans assets and tools ever since the first release. We were Quixel NDO users already, and when we saw on the web the first Megascans tests, we were looking forward to getting our hands on the assets to put them in our pipeline.” 

— Roberto De Rose, Art Director & Instructor

“We were really surprised by the quality that we could reach when creating natural environments and high-res textures for the ground in a very short amount of time. The collection has been expanding day by day, and so have the options we have, which now are almost infinite.”

— Riccardo Desiderò, Project Lead Artist & Instructor

“When I joined SOA Academy’s team, they had already decided to introduce Megascans and Megascans Mixer in their training offer for the Masterclass. I completely agreed with that choice as I think that they’re essential for the creation of any 3D visualization, particularly when you have to show detailed areas in the foreground.”

— Giona Andreani, Project Lead Artist & Instructor

 

“We’re proud of the choice made, which is also shown in the appreciation given by our students. We’re sure that Quixel will continue developing their tools efficiently with a keen eye on the artists’ needs.”

— Denise Celeghin, Course Coordinator

 

Thank you, SOA Academy!

Check out the full Prairie House breakdown.