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[Unity](WIP) Bassforest

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Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

 Hey everyone, I'm an pretty generalist 3D artist and I'm really interested in the new built-in cinematic capabilities of Unity. My big current project is a Unity short cinematic about a fantasy forest that's actually part of the neck of a giant, mysterious stringed instrument. I estimate that I'm about 35% of the way done with producing assets and figured it was a good time to start a WIP since my momentum has got going. 

Right now I'm creating assets and blocking out a landscape in Unity. The level of detail is something between a rendered perspective of an environment and a big open world level. After this some simple animation, then finally filming and editing using Unity's cinemachine. 


Original concept from an old unfinished painting 

Early Blockout trying to figure out the size of the strings. They turned out much larger than an average person, thankfully I don't plan on any characters besides the strings themselves and few shots from the forest floor. 
Elevating the neck

Terrain, blockout default trees

I decided to start learning Houdini FX, which I soon discovered is an arduous grind. After a couple of days with wrestling it these are the best clouds I could make- keep in mind this is just the geometry, I'm saving figuring out shading these for last lol



The strings will be played by Giant manmade stone "fingers" with a glowing face on each one. These are their concepts



I really trying to up my game in substance with this project- gumroad tutorials help a lot. Left is B2M right is designer. Still need to make a couple of more materials by using these as bases in painter.


This is the first tree I made- not great but I was more focused on making one that would work with Unity's windzones before worrying about making it pretty. Going to make a couple more models and mix up the foliage and figure out LOD so they look better from a distance
Wind is going to be a big part of the video, when the string plays the trees near them will shake violently and the camera will rumble

Will update along with my twitter http://https//twitter.com/Chozz14

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  • Tetranome
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    Tetranome polycounter lvl 6
    Funky concept, I like it!

    Here are some things I noticed with the art:

    Your grass feels very lumpy. I would bring back some of the medium/low details in the normal map compared to just the high. Find some reference to shoot for. Also, I wonder if you're planning to add grass meshes on top? Selling wild grass is hard with a landscape texture alone (although it should still be of high quality).

    I would also recommend not setting your spectrum of tools too broad. Trying to pick up Substance, zBrush, Houdini and Unity in the same project may cause a lack of focus. Perhaps choose one thing specifically for this project and tackle the next in a future piece - that way you can learn one in depth rather than a bunch on the surface, and you will have a higher personal quality level to shoot for when you use new software. Try to pick a reasonable project goal and hit it.

    Keep it up Ozz14! Rooting for you :)
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    @Tetranome thanks for the input! You're very right with too many tools causing a lack of focus- something ive been learning firsthand, especially with Substance. Suffice to say I will put houdini aside and work with it more after this project and stick to Bitmap2material and painter instead of making any more substances from scratch lol

    Next update-
    Rows of Low poly trees i sculpted and assembled in Maya. I will Put leaf and branch cards on them with each column descending column having less and less so when I make LOD groups in Unity they'll all be ready at the same time
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    Finally implemented custom trees that work with unity's windzones. Ran into a alot of unexpected barriers and hurdles right on the last day that I alloted myself before finishing trees but thankfully I pushed through it. There's a lot more to using custom trees in unity than i thought if you want them to look halfway decent AND actually move. going to use store assets for shrubs and bushes though.

    Big problem that might change the course of the project- Want to use custom trees in unity that play with wind AND have LOD groups? Too bad. Unless your a programmer, its either stagnant trees or realistic trees that sway at 25 fps. Going to have to be very smart with optimizing meshes from here on out.
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    A little postprocessing and tinkering with global lighting. Time to stop messing around with sliders and get into the nitty gritty of making the models for the strings and fingers
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    An alpha version of the Finger Statues with a glowing orb instead of face. Still need to fix up the UV's a little and polish in Substance painter. The green polygon in the Maya file will be the interchangeable base for all the different faces to differentiate the towers.I'm worried the towers aren't distinguishable quickly enough as giant fingers...
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    Back! All the face models are done and I'll post some more as I clean them up and texture them. Here's a little sneak peak the look of the glowing eyes
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    Trying to get a brass look in substance painter.

    Crunching to get a video trailer/Environment closeup shot done before I go to Cali for spring break because I need to have something to put in the portfolio for summer internships and jobs- by the time the entire project is done most studios will stop having applications- stay tuned!
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    Here are the quick environment stills I put together - any feedback on the close up environments appreciated. Much of the cinematic will actually take place atop the treeline as these statues float into the air and play the strings which I'll work on next.




    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=321BZWzPhOg 
     Trailer^

    So I'm off for a week of spring break but I need to hit the ground running when I get back. Found a really nice blender tutorial on creating and texturing a wound guitar string so I'll have to add yet another software to to this project, thankfully I've done projects with blender in the past.
  • jose.fuentes
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    jose.fuentes interpolator
    wow, this very ambitious.  Looking forward to seeing how this develops 
  • Alex_J
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    Alex_J grand marshal polycounter
    What is your lighting setup in Unity?


    Standard lighting setup (seems to be about like yours)


    A video showing how to set up linear-deferred lighting -- skip ot the end of the video to see how much better it looks:
    https://youtu.be/qfowBT5Znug
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    @BIGTIMEMASTER Yes i was using standard, tried custom deffered and it definitely looks better overall for the close up shot , although it disabled my skybox so in the bigger shots im afraid it might be a little too green and dark. Going to have to mess around with the skybox/fog/postprocessing
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    Finished the materials for all the different faces. Now working on the oscillation of the strings. Actually pretty straightforward-followed a blender tutorial using an Fcurve sin wave. Now im thinking about all the different possible states of a string for the animator logic in Unity. A string can either be openly strummed, strummed with one of the frets pushed down, or strummed a consecutive time (so not starting from rest but continuing an oscillation) without a fret being pressed or with any of the FOUR frets being pressed. Thanks to blendtrees in Unity I don't have to animate all those possibilities by hand, but I will have to animate at least a strum and each of the four possible frets for each of the four possible strings.


    That gives me 20 animations (4 frets, one open strum, 4 strings) to crank out in the graph editor of Blender in about a week's time. Repetitive but easy work. But with podcasts, coffee, other substances, and music it'll get done. This is also assuming that I wont run into any bugs or problems, which is an assumption that has never proven true but hey I'll cross that bridge when i come to it.
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    Having a problem all thanks to unity.... It only allows blendshape/shapekey animations using values between 0-100 and the back-swing of the string uses negative values. So as of now the strings are only oscillating one way. I replied to a 3 month old thread where Unity developers discussed in the forums the possibility of removing this arbitrary clamping. Hopefully I get a response or solution from them soon, in the meantime I need to churn out a material for these strings quickly.
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    Making old roundwound strings material in substance
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    Camera shake with strings being strummed
    Have to worry about finals for school now, but will have most of May to finish this before the deadline for the Autodesk Rookies contest
  • MarcoAntonio
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    MarcoAntonio polycounter lvl 6
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    Have a good idea of how to script this now.
    The fingers will all be controlled on the timeline editor, so i can just record the audio then put the fingers going down at the right spots, and the strings are going to have triggers in the animator controller for each fret that will push that part of the string down. Main problem I see now going forward are edge cases where the finger hits the string collider as it goes back up, and fast strumming where it goes up and down twice in less than a second.
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4




    Figured out the issue of colliders by having two colliders attached to the string,one around the string itself and the other on the ground where the finger hits it. Simple logic using an incremented counter that goes up (resets after five) every time the finger's collider enters or exits one of the string's colliders . Going to post the code and animator controller for anyone that' s interested.



    "Fret1" isn't a single clip but actually a blend tree of the fret going down and the oscillating of the strum. There's a boolean parameter for "fret1hold" and "fret1up" that is set by the finger entering or leaving the second collider (triggering the string to back up to its idle animation). Going to use this logic for every fret of each string so instead of animating them by hand, they will simply react to the fingers, which will be moved using the timeline editor to go at the tempo of the recorded song.

    Code


  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4
    5 days until the submission is due and I'm on track to finish. I'm really pushing cinemachine to its limit here- but I can't imagine being able to do a project like this without it. My timeline editor is starting to look like a really bad rhythm game!
  • HarlequinWerewolf
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    HarlequinWerewolf polycounter
    I'm so curious to see how this will look all together, The idea is definitely unique! I guess I need to go away and learn Cinemachine now too :tongue:
  • Ozz14
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    Ozz14 polycounter lvl 4

    Here it is the finished video! I had crawl across to the finish, and I think it shows, but overall the idea turned out to be pretty cool. Thank you to everyone who was following along the way! I wish I could embed but the link will have to do

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