GRANDMA'S
KITCHEN
A heartfelt 3D environment inspired by the warmth of a traditional Indian grandmother's kitchen — brass utensils, a steaming pressure cooker, sunlight through a mesh window. Built across Maya, Procreate, and Unreal Engine 5.
Unreal Engine 5 — Final Cinematic Render
About the Scene
This 10-second cinematic captures the quiet charm of everyday life. The scene avoids characters — relying entirely on props, soft ambient sound (birds, kitchen noise), and warm morning light to evoke comfort and nostalgia.
Step 01 — Creating the Base Mesh
The process starts by sketching primary shapes using NURBS curves. These guide the poly modeling stage where tools like Extrude, Bevel, and Insert Edge Loop shape the final mesh.
Scene blockout — basic structural geometry before any textures are applied.
Step 02 — UV Unwrapping & Export
After modeling, each mesh is UV unwrapped and exported as FBX for handoff to the Procreate texturing workflow on iPad.
First layout pass — yellow walls and structural props placed before final lighting.
Vintage transistor radio
Parle-G biscuit packet
Green plate and biscuit — one of the signature props requiring careful UV work for the pattern.
The Indane gas cylinder — the star prop. Textured entirely in Procreate, shown here as the final in-engine result.
Layer 01 — Base Colour
A flat base red is painted across the entire cylinder — establishing the tone and canvas for all subsequent layers.
Layer 02 — Branding & Text
The "Indane" logo, gas weight stencil, and label text are hand-painted in for an authentic, localized appearance.
Layer 03 — Patterns
Color bands and graphic accents are added to break monotony and align the design with the real-world cylinder.
Layer 04 — Imperfections
Scuffs, dirt, scratches, and faded paint are layered in to simulate years of kitchen use — making the prop feel lived-in.
Textured props in-engine
Gas stove & pan
Brass spice containers
Tea & Sugar tins, Surf Excel
Shelf overview — Marie Gold
Lighting & Atmosphere
Using Directional Light, Skylight, Point Lights, Spot Lights, and Rect Lights to craft soft morning light. Atmospheric fog and ambient kitchen audio complete the narrative.
Nirma + Lifebuoy — showing label fidelity and prop lighting quality.
Structure & Prop Placement
Basic structural elements (shelves, windows) were modeled directly in Unreal, while detailed props came from Maya. Each object was hand-placed to create a believable, functional space with clear visual storytelling.
The frying kadai — a key storytelling prop showing the kitchen is "alive".
Spice jar arrangement
Kadai — action & light
Sink & tap
Performance
Optimizing dense 3D models for real-time performance while keeping visual fidelity required careful polygon reduction and LOD management across all props.
iOS FBX / USDZ ★
Procreate on iOS supports only USDZ — not FBX. No established pipeline existed for exporting Maya meshes into Procreate. The project required building a custom conversion workflow from scratch.
Cross-App Textures
Ensuring textures painted in Procreate rendered correctly in UE5 required repeated iteration and troubleshooting across every stage of the Maya → Procreate → UE5 pipeline.