The House on the Roc--Work in Progress

sharsein

Going to be making this concept by Charlène Le Scanff : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dx4JQ
Blockout to figure out proportions and composition:

 

sharsein

Did a sketch over to brainstorm ideas for what could be going on in the back of the house. Learned a bit about lift nets, I think it'd be fun to have one that caught some large predator to add to the precariousness of the house. Not sure if I want to stay with the bear vs something more spiny to echo the sharp rock things sticking out of the water.

sharsein

Modeled out the roof planks more. Struggled a lot to hide the fishing rod from the front view, I don't think it works compositionally, and I really don't want to compromise the silhouette from the angle depicted in the concept art.

sharsein

Sculpt in Zbrush:

sharsein

Returned to this after taking a break. Baked normals and AO. Texture is still incomplete, currently just base color and shadow group with inverted the blue channel of the AO as a mask. Not happy with the shadow colors I picked. Tried using Unreal for a first lighting pass--not happy with the smudgy shadow look so will need tutorial digging.

sharsein

Handpaint done, trying to figure out how to get the lighting to not be either bleeding markery or desaturated and dusty.

sharsein

Lighting and roughness set up. Water should probably be slightly greener. Not sure how to get the water lighting effect shown in the concept. 

Nathair23

How cute, I really like it! Water looks like the difficult part material-wise, good luck with that Also, for the water have you tried with some voronoi texture in order to make the foam like the concept?

lotet

This is beautifull, really love the shading and the way the forms pop.

sharsein

Nathair23 said:

How cute, I really like it! Water looks like the difficult part material-wise, good luck with that Also, for the water have you tried with some voronoi texture in order to make the foam like the concept?

Thanks! I hadn't heard of voronoi before, but adding noise to the water makes sense. I'll try it out.

sharsein

I challenged myself to try to design the fishing rod and fish to match the style of the concept art. Choosing the colors was probably my biggest challenge.


Nothing seemed to work for the rod, so after looking at reference realized the problem was I needed more detail in the shapes to avoid the toddler toy look:

sharsein

Got help from Kristof Lovas for an issue with the fish mouth clipping through water, technical thread here: http://polycount.com/discussion/194623/solved-inside-the-fishs-mouth-custom-depth#latest

Since it was so stylized, ended up just using a simple alpha texture for the ripples. 

More images on artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wQrVY


Fish turnaround: 


Fishing rod final: