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Uyen Dang
All work

Infinite Dollhouses

A miniature interior built around a hero dollhouse on a living room table. The project moves from references to Maya modeling, UVs, texture painting in Substance 3D Painter, scene assembly in Unity URP, and a set of light and dark final renders.

Timeline
Feb – May 2025
Category
Environment · Look development
Tools
Maya, Substance 3D Painter, Unity
Infinite Dollhouses, cover image

Infinite Dollhouses is a small-scale environment study that plays with the idea of a dollhouse inside a dollhouse, staged as a warm holiday vignette. I kept the scope tight and treated the process like a clean production pipeline: gather references, model with readable edges, unwrap with repeatable patterns, paint simple materials, assemble the scene, then explore lighting to accentuate the mood.

My Role

  • Modeled the hero dollhouse, the present box, and the Christmas tree (branches scattered with MASH) in Maya.
  • UV-unwrapped them and textured them in Substance 3D Painter, building on credited community materials.
  • Assembled and lit the scene in Unity URP. The surrounding furniture and environment are credited Unity Asset Store packs.
  • Made the recursive dolly-out video with Cinemachine.

Video Preview

Starts inside the tiniest dollhouse room, then a single Cinemachine dolly-out reveals that room lives inside another dollhouse, then another, repeating the recursion layer by layer until the final, outermost dollhouse.

Project Overview

The scene centers on a wooden dollhouse placed on a circular table with gifts and a Christmas tree nearby. The core idea is recursion and scale. The goals were: keep topology clean for bakes and keep materials believable so the set reads like miniature wood, paper, and fabric under warm light.

  • References and story notes
  • Modeling in Maya
  • UV unwrapping and checks
  • Texture painting in Substance 3D Painter
  • Secondary assets
  • Lighting and scene assembly
  • Final renders: light vs. dark

References and Story Notes

Reference board. Shifted from a burnt, nostalgic read to an infinitely nested dollhouse motif. Notes on lighting, layout, and furniture style guided later choices.
Reference board. Shifted from a burnt, nostalgic read to an infinitely nested dollhouse motif. Notes on lighting, layout, and furniture style guided later choices.

Modeling in Maya

I worked from a blockout into a clean low-poly model with beveled edges and mostly quads for reliable bakes. The wall thickness and stair proportions were tuned so rooms remain readable from mid and close shots. Early passes exposed sharp corners, so I added bevels and reinforced edges for a cleaner finish.

Wireframe on shaded overview during blockout
Wireframe on shaded overview during blockout

Orthographic views

Orthographic front
Orthographic front
Orthographic back
Orthographic back
Orthographic left
Orthographic left

Perspective views

Overall perspective view
Overall perspective view
Perspective front
Perspective front
Perspective back
Perspective back
Perspective left
Perspective left

UV Unwrapping and Checks

Strategy: unwrap once per repeating module (stairs, window sets, door frames), then instance or duplicate to keep layouts consistent. I kept everything on a single tile for simplicity, packed with uniform padding to avoid bake bleeding. Texel density was evened out across shell groups so wood grain and paint details read consistently between floors.

  • Mark seams along natural breaks: panel joins, corner trims, stair undersides.
  • Unfold and relax shells, straighten long edge loops for cleaner wood grain.
  • Stack or reuse shells only for truly identical, non-unique pieces.
  • Pack with even padding; re-scale outliers to match target density.
  • Run checkerboards, fix distortion, then bake mesh maps in Painter.
UV layout overview after packing
UV layout overview after packing
Checkerboard over UV layout, in perspective view mode
Checkerboard over UV layout, in perspective view mode

Perspective Checkerboard View

Global checkerboard pass to validate density
Global checkerboard pass to validate density

Orthographic Checkerboard Views

Front check
Front check
Top check
Top check
Bottom check
Bottom check
Right check
Right check
Left check
Left check

Texture Painting in Substance 3D Painter

I baked mesh maps in Painter (AO, curvature, thickness, position) and iterated using library materials as a base. Most of the work was tuning parameters — color, roughness/metallic, normal intensity, and scale — and masking with the baked maps so the surfaces read at miniature scale. Early test bakes exposed overlapping UV shells on a few trims; I corrected those in Maya, repacked, and rebaked. The final look keeps a light gloss on varnished wood, a soft painted-plaster finish with subtle roughness breakup on walls, and simple woven fabrics for the cushions. Texture sets were then exported for Unity.

Baking mesh maps in Substance 3D Painter
Baking mesh maps in Substance 3D Painter
Baking issue found and corrected (overlapping shells)
Baking issue found and corrected (overlapping shells)
Final material pass ready for Unity
Final material pass ready for Unity

Secondary Assets

Two supporting pieces frame the hero: a present box and a Christmas tree. The present is a beveled cube set with a hand-modeled ribbon and bow.

Present box modeling
Present box modeling
Present box UVs
Present box UVs
Present box textures in Painter
Present box textures in Painter

The tree uses MASH to scatter branches and drive basic variation, then simple ornaments for color.

Tree setup with MASH for branches
Tree setup with MASH for branches
Tree UVs and shell layout
Tree UVs and shell layout
Tree materials and ornaments
Tree materials and ornaments

Both assets share the same unwrap-check-paint flow to keep them consistent with the house.

Lighting and Scene Assembly

Assembled in Unity URP. The dollhouse sits on a circular table with gifts and a tree nearby. I placed lights at the objects that would emit light in the scene, then tuned exposure and indirect intensity to lift the midtones without flattening the wood speculars. A gentle vignette and warmer key help the miniature read as cozy and lived-in.

Present placement and material check
Present placement and material check
Tree placement and shader adjustments
Tree placement and shader adjustments

Final Renders: Light Pass

For the light pass I leaned into warm key light and soft fill to push the holiday tone. The goal was bright, readable rooms with pleasant highlights.

Key beauty frame from the light setup
Key beauty frame from the light setup

Final Renders: Dark Pass

I also toyed with a darker setup to lean into lamplight and interior pools of illumination. Dropping exposure and cooling the fill shifts attention to the lit rooms and makes the miniature glow without losing surface detail.

Asset Credits