Planetrism - Game Art Thread

kimmokaunela

Planetrism is a Virtual Reality game about colonisation of alien planets. It will have RPG elements and has a grand story with different characters, history and locations. Multiplayer might be something that we are going to do in the future but right now our focus is in single player experience. 

We are using Unreal Engine (4.15) and the game is going to be playable in hi-end VR platforms (Vive & Rift). Right now our team consist of two members and I´m responsible for all the visual side of things. Two heads and a lot of different hats to wear Most of the assets right now are at WIP stage and shaders and lighting are going to change a lot in the future.

This thread will be used for posting updates and tips & tricks for VR development. Mostly from visual side of things and how we are solving different issues that VR brings. We want to be very transparent so if you have any questions or feedback, please post them! You can also follow more progress in Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlanetrismGame

Dev Blog: https://planetrism.tumblr.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PlanetrismGame/

kimmokaunela

Our first location is a planet called "New Skylake". Here are some shots from it. Our primary goal is to have solid 90fps so lighting is pre-baked and we try to optimize as much as possible to have room for characters and different FX. So far everything is textured 100% with Substance Designer. Planets are also fully procedural and you can read more of our system here: https://80.lv/articles/procedural-planets-for-epic-skies/







We are using a lot of tileable textures and fastest way for us is to make them in Substance Designer. Here are some of those.





We also made a trailer for this location that you can find in our twitter. Here are few stills from that. Note that some aspects are already changes from that.

kimmokaunela

I finished this rail gun that will be the main weapon. Player will be able to change different scopes and accessories. I came up with this concept few years ago so now I had a perfect opportunity to finish it You can look the Marmoset Viewer version in ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/z4BED

Nam.Nguyen

wow, 2 people ? that's a lot of works,  

stuff look dope man, can't wait to see more.

Millenia

Looking great!

Mongrelman

Great stuff, looking forward to playing this.

BunnyLoveSu

Really loving the gun! 

K_A_S_I

Awesome!

last

good job man!

Spoon

Great gun!

macoll

Looks gorgeous indeed, subscribed, gg

kimmokaunela

@Nam.Nguyen Thanks! Now our team have 3 humans and one dog so it´s almost double now
@Millenia Thanks! 
@Mongrelman Thanks! Hopefully we have more gameplay soon so we can give a build for players.
BunnyLoveSu Thanks! It was a fun model to make.
@K_A_S_I Thanks!
@last Thanks man!
@Spoon Thank you!!
@macoll Thanks! I will keep this thread up to date!

kimmokaunela

I made this little guy that will be one of the enemies. There will be few different types of these. It was pretty fun to rig and animate this even though I´m bad at it More shots and marmoset viewer can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kK9lx



model

lotet

That is looking pretty darn sexy.

EricElwell

Sweet bot!

Shrike

Environments look very cool but If I didnt know better Id assume it would be straight out of Mass Effect Andromeda or a hommage. The weapon design and the Graphic design + Font choice (strongly rounded forms) definitely fortify this. (And the Evironment quality seems definitely on that level) Granted that the Mass Effect style is a very stereotypic Scifi one, id maybe try differentiating a bit, at least in Fonts and I really would replace the blue hexagon UIs, that is a satire of itself at this point. For the logo, id definitely include the blue line that is in the small version, without it the visual balance is off, and id make the P the same thickness, that seems odd. The weapon has kind of too strange and arbitrary proportions for my taste, in the future form will still follow function, but the environments look very nice especially considering its a VR game. Keep up the good work.

kimmokaunela

@lotet Thanks!
@EricElwell Thanks man!
@ShrikeMy attention wasn´t to make Mass Effect fan art or anything like that but I agree with you. I guess my brains have too much references from other scifi stuff I will try to find another font too. The current font is a free one that I found some time ago when I needed to have a clean scifi text in some of my textures. I think that would be too hard to read in VR so we will use something much simpler there. I agree with you on that logo too. That 3d logo was the first idea and I just simply forgot to add that blue line there that I made to 2d version. Weapon took a long time and a lot of different iterations and I tried to make that functional but I guess I just added too much different shapes there like I usually do. Right now it feels very good in VR but I might tweak it more in the future or totally replace it when I have more time. Thanks again for these points, I will keep those in mind!

DMacDraws

Yeah man i like the bold, simple shapes and colours under the substancey wear and tear, best of stylised and realistic in one  

smwyatt45

Awesome work man!  The textures and richness of the enviroment is amazing!

kimmokaunela

@DMacDraws Thanks! 
@smwyatt45 Thanks, textures are almost all done with Substance Designer so I didn´t do that much

I´ve been very busy with this project. It feels like making VR games is 20% art and 80 optimizing I´ve been jumping between props, environment, lighting, blueprints.... Even made our terrain material to use tesselation because parallax mapping just don´t work with VR. Finally manage to finish the hands. It took a lot of iterating, testing and crying to get them work in game. So now we have hands, gun to shoot with and enemy to shoot at so it´s a good start



model



And like always you can find Marmoset Viewer here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nOoYO

kimmokaunela

After a small break we are back developing this project. I changed the whole lighting from static to fully dynamic because the level is now 4km x 4km and player need to be able to build outposts so dynamic was a way to go. It was a pretty huge optimizing task to keep things still running smooth in VR. 

A lot of people are saying that you don´t want to use dynamic lighting with VR because it cost too much but with some trade offs you can do it at least on hi-end VR. Sure static lighting looks good with a nice indirect lighting and so on but dynamic gives much more freedom with basically everything. With dynamic lighting we also now have a choice to run dynamic day and night cycle that really looks mesmorazing in VR with volumetric fog. I´m planning to write more detailed guide for lighting in vR.

Here are few shots from the new level and 360 shots can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/l8AeO

macoll

Looks very cool, keep up the nice work, gg

kimmokaunela

@macoll Thanks! We will do our best!

Small update again. I manage to finish the buggy. Our levels are pretty huge so its important to have transportation available. I already rigged it and its somehow driveable now but we need to make the VR controls next. Marmoset viewer file can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xyQ1X

kimmokaunela

Here is also a shot from the game with the buggy. Its running in Unreal Engine 4.16

kimmokaunela

Managed to finish this portable hydroponic gardening unit. Marmoset viewer version here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LWDdK It is capable of growing up to five different vegetation types at the same time. Built in liquid nutrition heating/cooling system with quad electric pump system makes it reliable solution for any situation. Filtering system makes it possible to re-use same water up to 10 times and leftover can be converted to drinkable water.

kimmokaunela

We have been working really hard to get more things done. Some gameplay core and robot AI work. Now we have 25km2 playable area where foliage, rocks etc.. are spawning procedurally. Player is also now able to build different buildings in VR to maintain colony and keep food and energy running although we still need to implement more functions there. I will post more of this feature later when we have more things done in that field. This is very demanding project for two of us. A lot of multitasking, optimizing, thinking, creating and so on. More and more I feel that this project is my life mission and it means a lot to me that you like to follow the progress as we go

What I want to share today is the space scene that I managed to finish. The core of this scene is the planets that are all using a master material that I made. That master material is using textures that I generate in Substance Designer where I build a system that is able to generate fully procedural planets. Changing seed number there will result different continent and ocean setups and forms. Master material allows me to animate lights, toggle if there is civilization or not, clouds, atmosphere status and so on. Space is itself is using four different star textures that I also made in Substance Designer. Some of them are tiling more and some less. This way it creates a pretty good results.





More shots and substance graphs can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qBawN

kimmokaunela

I just managed to get the base done for our modular cave system. I built a pretty simple model kit that works with the UE grid. I´m also planning to figure out a faster way to generate cave systems, maybe with splines or procedural tools. Then I made a master material for rocks so they blend two different rock textures, a sand texture to blend better with the ground, water leaks draining down and a macro normal map to add vertical details. I also made one material for the cave ground too. Its blending three different textures and I can also vertex paint water puddles there too. All of these blendings uses vertex paints. All of the textures are made with Substance Designer and ZBrush. I also found out a pretty cool trick to use procedural foliage spawner system for the cave rocks, scifi fungus and bigger rocks. It gives a pretty good base to start with and then I can continue with the foliage paint tool.

Here is a fast animation I made that shows the space and cave environments a little more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I02JFjWOE6w




And like always, more shots can be found on our ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qwd3L

lotet

amazing work as always, really love the shots with the blue rim light. and the video is really cool as well.

kimmokaunela

@lotet Thanks! It was very interesting to use Sequencer for the first time. 

kimmokaunela

A lot of changes for environments. Added more rock structures and tweaked my rock creating workflow better so I can make more rocks faster. I also made more material changes and foliage changes. I came up with different tree and cactus types that works with our setting. All of this is scattered procedurally on 25km2 landscape. I found out that my 7870 is not able to spawn foliage when simulating the whole landscape area so I divided spawners into smaller groups and sectors. Now my graphics card seams to be somehow stable after simulations Also added culling volumes in those sectors.

Here is a small video from our first player mode to show small part of the environment and our car in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp8Ob-8u7UM

I also tweaked our sky and distance planets, overall lighting and so on. Now all of our materials are organized into material functions and during that process I was able to optimize some part of our terrain material. Everything is running smoothly still in VR. With default first person mode we are getting around 120fps steadily so there is room for different things still.

I started to prototype dynamic weather system that will work along with our dynamic day / night system. Also all of the foliage is now using global wind so different weather types are easier to implement. One thing that I think came out pretty well are hot spring pools. Its actually pretty simple setup but really adds more colours to scene.

Thanks again for reading and if you have any questions don´t hesitate to ask.

kimmokaunela

Here is a small update. We´ve been very busy making UI elements and interactions. The UI system is called: A.N.G.E.L. - TEAR -Interface (Autonomous Networked Guardian of Essence and Lucidity - Temporal Eyetracking Augmented Reality). Its basically AR vision that player have in a VR game  I made this widget that will show player status, logs, settings, map etc... I also made some generic windows that will be used for items and buildings. I also created a holo material that will be used to render objects in the AR system like world maps and so on.

kimmokaunela

Some updates to environment side of things. I made some broken building structures and tweaks to overall lighting. 




I also made our first creature. Its a caterpillar type of animal that is mostly friendly but will attack when player goes too close. This worm likes to be in shadows where there is moisture and small insects for food. Usually player will find these in caves or near big rocks.

kimmokaunela

A lot of changes again. We work pretty much day and night to get the core up and running and also have much more detailed environment full of life. We also put a discord chat up: discord.gg/JxURFgJ  There you can chat with us, find latest news and give feedback.

First thing that I want to share is recent tweaks to our first person blueprint. We are now supporting more dynamic movement. Here are few gifs that shows the changes and some of the updated environment.

https://gfycat.com/TallSparseCockatiel
https://gfycat.com/BlueJampackedBangeltiger
https://gfycat.com/SlimyRectangularFurseal

Some new creatures! Here are the hi-poly versions but we already have low-polys done and textured. I also rigged them and made basic animations that will help to make more believebla AI interactions.

This is a predator fish. It will hunt smaller animals or player. Very fast but also almost blind so it needs to rely on its side sensors.

Here is a mole creature that will live most of its time underground. Mostly friendly but can bite and destroy buildings or crops.

Here are some of the biomes that shows different nature elements that player will encounter in the first exoplanet called New Skylake.

lotet

awesome work as always, love the gifs. only crit would be the animal textures, they look a bit to much like the environment in my opinion.
 it looks like you are using the same techniques as rocks or other hard surfaces for them, they dont look that alive or organic unfortunately.

kimmokaunela

@lotet Thanks! Thats a good point! I need to iterate more with those creatures.

I made few items that player can use to heal and repair things.


https://www.artstation.com/artwork/evrvX

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LyWXl

jimsvanberg

Wow lot's of great stuff here! I will take a closer look as soon as I find some time!

kimmokaunela

@jimsvanberg Thanks!

I´ve been modeling more items lately. First is a climbing axe that player can use to climb on a certain surfaces. Also it works as a melee weapon too. More better quality shots and Marmoset Viewer can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EW1Rv


I also modeled a geo scanner that is handy for finding out best spots to start drilling some resources. Then I also modeled the drill itself. More better quality shots and Marmoset Viewer can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3nQaJ


Next I need to start modeling the main hub area for the game. That would be interesting and a huge task.

kimmokaunela

Here is a shot from the game with that drill.


Also here is a shot about some of the manual books that player can find in the game.

kimmokaunela

For the last 12 days I´ve been working pretty much day and night for making the game hub area. This area will be the place where game starts. Also this area will be expanded to cover different tutorial sections. From here player will travel to different exoplanets where the actual game is taking place. This is a fully modular and dynamic level with dynamic lighting. After some optimizing I was able to get this run really smoothly in VR. Planets are also based on my Substance Designer graphs that I made earlier and meteorites and planet clouds are also moving over time. More better quality shots here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vKaAD

lotet

beautiful, the indoor environments look great!

kimmokaunela

@lotet Thanks! Here is the latest VR footage from that scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmEwAio8Cfg&feature=youtu.be

kimmokaunela

Sorry for the lack of updates. We´ve been working hard on the gameplay side of things so we can share something playable soon with you. I also tweaked our buildings in terms of models and materials. There are still a lot to do but its getting there slowly Here are the latest shots:





Also here are shots from the buildings using dirt and damage masks that are controlling the environmental effects in game.





You can find more shots here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/E0GJv

kimmokaunela

Our first demo is almost online but before that I want to share some stuff were my focus has been.

Some robots that I have been doing lately. Here is the first one. sHMU is a smaller version of the reqular HMU unit. Developed for small and tight environments: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nG3KX


Then we have a canine type of robot designed for fast movement and to assist player with different tasks: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dnlNW



Stay tuned and if you have a VR set then you can soon test Planetrism

kimmokaunela

We have been working really hard with the demo that is now available for free here: http://planetrism.com/demo/ It´s not the final game yet but you will get a better idea what Planetrism is about. 

Like always we want to keep our development as transparent as possible and since we are a small team its important for us to hear from you what do you think about the demo. We hope that you find it interesting and if you have any 

feedback or questions, please join to our Discord (https://discord.gg/JxURFgJ)

Here is a little demo trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xIs-_-f9Mk

Thanks for following our development!

slosh

This stuff is so impressive.  Is this what you're doing full time?  

kimmokaunela

@slosh Thanks! Yes I spent all of my time for this project doing all sort of stuff. My dream come true. Only if there would be players to enjoy this game

Vexar

Looks great, I hope they let you do a non VR version so people can see  the great work!

macoll

Vexar said:

Looks great, I hope they let you do a non VR version so people can see  the great work!

I second that, i am not interested atm for the VR version. Awesome stuff as always and thanks for sharing ^^

kimmokaunela

@Vexar Thanks! Non VR versio would be awesome to have but since our team is only two devs we have to choose our battles. Also I think it would be a better idea to first make the VR version because it would require much more complicated interactions and optimizations. For non VR version it would just mean boosting visual settings and making a new player that would use more simplified systems.

@macoll Thanks! It would require more resources to make the non VR version so right now we can´t promise anything else than the VR.

For the last few days I have been crunching with demo bug fixes and modeling more core elements like these devices. This machine will suck air through different pre heated tunnels to form condensated water. This water can then be used in different ways, for drinking water or for growing food.



Another crucial thing is to build items and spare parts for broken devices and so on. 3D printing will be the solution for most of the tasks. Player can find different resources to turn into building material and then print with this machine.

Vexar

Making an easier to finish and play project is never a bad idea. VR makes people ill, and is very expensive. I would only be targeting VR right now if I was getting paid by Sony or another large publisher that can help push the product. Regardless your work is awesome I hope it turns into a big success. One thing that is confusing me is that you have Rammin Speed and a link to a group on your sig with Angel investment. So I thought this is the reason for the VR direction.

kimmokaunela

@Vexar I forgot to change my sig. I don´t work at Rammin Speed anymore. Its true that some games or movements makes people sick in VR but devs now know how to avoid most of that. Its harder to make content for VR because everything needs to run solid 90fps but at the same time the immersion is totally different and that is important for this game. Also since we are small team it would be much harder to fight against other basic fp games and VR right now has much more room to experiment different ideas and stand out from the rest. Future will show how well VR will do but I truly think it will be the future for many players.