[UE4] Samorost/Machinarium Fan Art Progress Thread
I have recently been working on a small fan art diorama for Samorost and Machinarium. I have made a ways into it already but after doing a mentorship with Josh Lynch, he convinced me to start a progress thread. I have been collecting some WIP shots along the way so I will do a mini dump of the progress so far. The goal was to just make something a little more fun and different from what I usually do, as well as working on improving my substance designer. So you are warned! One long post ahead
I started by collecting reference from the game and some materials I thought were nice. I trimmed this down as I collected a lot!
Then I jumped into modo for a quick blockout.
From here I went straight into zbrush and high poly's, starting to build out form. I didn't take many screenshots at the start but these are the ones I have. I went through and pretty much built everything to a rough state, decimating them down and throwing it all into unreal on auto unwraps.
From here I started to explore some possible camera angels.
Now that I had a pretty good idea of what meshes I need, I started going back through them, finalizing the sculpt/ingame mesh and uv's. I also started looking at what I can do with lights. I still can make up my mind so you will see it change a lot =D I have been using a mix of substance source and my own substances so far.
The egg shell was my first substance and was very simple
Then I created a barnacle/coral material to blend with all the flora elements.
I had a bit of trouble with the larger coral flora at the back. My first attempt came out pretty weak.
But I went back and re-did them entirely. This time setting up a 3 material layer blend which I plan to use on all the assets.
I went a little overboard on the other flora bits, not sure if I like it or not.
But all that detail got lost anyway!
Continuing progress.
This was the point I started my mentorship with Josh and have been working on these three materials since, bringing me up to where I am currently.
My plan going forward is to finalize these materials and start to resolve the ground. I have been going slow lately so want to try and get everything in with textures to have the full scene to look at. I feel lighting is my weakest area so any advice about how to light the scene would be greatly appreciated.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and please crit away!
Replies
Keep it going..it looks very promising!
That said; that's a butthole.
Here is the sculpt for the ground
another ground blend material
and the progress ingame so far.
@Sirdelita I actually ended up making some alpha's from the warped rock substance material, that really helped tie the sculpt and texture together.
I implemented a bit of feedback iv had so far, darkening the ground a little and trying out some emissive mushrooms. I was trying to get them to light from the emissive channel itself and I think I may have gone a little overboard in the process. What do you all think? It might be better to try to light them manually instead. I also tried out the new megascan grasses, mushrooms. They seem really nice and really helped me speed up foliage part of this.
It was suggested to try a very soft lighting setup too but im totally unsure about the best way of doing this? Any suggestions would be great!
As for feedback I think the stars are a bit overpowering, they take away some of the focus. In the ref picture they look merely hinted.
Looking at your current progress with lighting feel like it's too dark and hard to read. That said I'd also like to talk a little bit about perceived blacks. Colors are basically what you perceive them to be against the rest of the environment right? So If you actually go for something that is fully black you'll end up flattening your image, instead you have the option to use something that is "almost black" and could be perceived as black if not the original shot was just next to it.
If you cover up your original shot with your hand, it'll be harder to see that the right-hand image isn't just a black background. This is just my personal preference in the end. It's also has a slight gradient from black at the bottom to whiter at the top, just something to mess around with to enhance the depth of the image.
I know you want to stay true to the original but even so, try things!
Either way
I set up a simple rig and first pass textures for one of the characters.
I plan to get all of the characters rigged, posed and with clean bakes, so I can work on all the textures together. Speaking of which, I also have finished the bake for the helicopter.
Thanks for the awesome feedback too! I will be looking to address that after all the art is in.