THRONE ROOM – Dwarven Throne of Basalt – Cay

Cay

FEEDBACK PLZ

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LAST UPDATE

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Pretty hyped for this Let's get right on it.

I'm thinking of a kingdom under a mountain, where its throne room would of course reflect the dwarfs most precious. Basalt being such a special looking stone, they worship it and who else but the king would be allowed to sit on a throne out of basalt? Ideally it was built for eternity, but time and volcanic activity have had other plans, so the hall is partly damaged but still reflects its former glory.

A big light coming from above (probably through mirrors) lights the throne itself. In the background there's a natural cave. The hall itself is carved from stone in typical dwarfen manner, deco should reflect the affiliation towards basalt.

Tools used:
Maya
Photoshop
Zbrush
UE4
Quixel Suite/Substance Indie Pack
xnormal
both hands

(Excuse my mad concepting skills)

Cay

Update Time!
Ok so I've been fighting with the blockout to get a nice room layout, still not happy.
I might as well get rid of the cave in the background (which is pretty much non-existent right now) if it helps the overall look.
Also found some time to play with Substance Designer.

I'd appreciate every feedback and/or suggestion you are willing to offer.

Carter

Keep the cave! Gives a nice sense of depth. I know its a blockout but the wall to the left and right of the throne looks really flat maybe having the cave wrap around either side would help? Keep it up, like the mood of this

Cay

thanks! yeah I thought about making this whole thing more organic.. where parts of the walls are straight and then slowly transform into rock walls or something.. I'll see where this gets me

Cay

So I changed the layout of the main section to a more natural look.. and I'm pretty happy with it compared to the previous (boring) version. The throne fits in much better now.

Next up is experimenting with the hall itself, just like Carter said and adding a Landscape/Mesh for the underground. Lava Shader needs work and there's pretty much no textures atm, except for the basalt mesh.
The blue crystals will be some sort of secondary light source, not sure about the placement.. if they are too distracting they might end up somewhere else (caves maybe?).

Cay

It's getting hot in here

The Blackbody node is pretty useful, used it for the new lava shader.. which is a blend between the pillow basalt and its lava variation. Used Substance Designer for the base textures.

I also made a water shader for the WIP background cave(again Substance Designer).
You'll probably never see it, buut.. it was fun.

Cay

Another quick update..
After some valuable feedback I decided to make this whole thing smaller scale.
I'll also bring the cave/water section more into focus and next thing on the list is the throne redesign.
The smaller scene will help me get more detail and stuff in in the time there's left. I'll post some more shots in a few days. Here's a quick paintover of the scene to decide about the new direction.

Orb

yeah dude that PO is a lot better, more dynamic for sure, the white light silhouette behind could almost repeat that diagonal pattern.

Cay

thanks man! I'll be sure to try it out

Atokal

Cool >.<