Monolith Scene
polycounter lvl 4
I have been working on this monolith environment for a while now in UE4 and Im ready to put it out there for some C&C. My goal for its completion is the end of June and this will be a portfolio piece.
I am trying to balance some aspects from Halo, Witcher 3, Elder Scrolls Oblivion and blend them in a northern taiga environment with references from Alaska, Sweden and Norway.
The scene is set on a cloudy afternoon just before a storm rolls in. The colors are vibrant but im debating going a bit less saturated to make the environment feel colder but I feel the saturated colors compliment the soft look of the scene. I got the soft look by playing with the depth of field in post and using fuzzy shading for the foliage and some of the ground textures.
My goal with the pillar is to take the mystery of hard surface monolithic structures (Halo), beat them up a bit and blend them within natural elements.
The burial mounds are a more recent addition since I feel I can get some story elements out of those. They also mix well with the pillars, even in a half blockout state.
The material for the hard surface structures within the rocks started out as lodestone (magnetite) but I wanted to push the metalness. The result was a rough and shiny bronze like material that Im pretty happy with.
The hills and mountains in the background came out very well. I used some NASA earth heightmap data from Denali State Park in Alaska as a base for my heightmap.
Sometimes It gets difficult balancing this and a full time job where I work alot of overtime. Ill keep this thread as updated as I can.
Thanks!
I am trying to balance some aspects from Halo, Witcher 3, Elder Scrolls Oblivion and blend them in a northern taiga environment with references from Alaska, Sweden and Norway.
The scene is set on a cloudy afternoon just before a storm rolls in. The colors are vibrant but im debating going a bit less saturated to make the environment feel colder but I feel the saturated colors compliment the soft look of the scene. I got the soft look by playing with the depth of field in post and using fuzzy shading for the foliage and some of the ground textures.
My goal with the pillar is to take the mystery of hard surface monolithic structures (Halo), beat them up a bit and blend them within natural elements.
The burial mounds are a more recent addition since I feel I can get some story elements out of those. They also mix well with the pillars, even in a half blockout state.
The material for the hard surface structures within the rocks started out as lodestone (magnetite) but I wanted to push the metalness. The result was a rough and shiny bronze like material that Im pretty happy with.
The hills and mountains in the background came out very well. I used some NASA earth heightmap data from Denali State Park in Alaska as a base for my heightmap.
Sometimes It gets difficult balancing this and a full time job where I work alot of overtime. Ill keep this thread as updated as I can.
Thanks!
Replies
The heightmap was generated in WorldMachine then some small tweaks were applied in engine, mainly around the monolith mesh..
I did a quick sculpt for each of the rocks around the burial mounds the slapped on an instance of my master rock shader. I also heightlerped the grass texture over the rocky dirt while controlling is opacity with some vertex painting. Im happy with the look.
I worry about the perspective of my shots and hope they portray the scene well enough. I wonder if I am obsessing over perspective too much?
I have attached a couple of the main references I used for the scenes atmosphere. I mainly think of Skellige when doing the atmospheric depth and lighting. I also enjoyed the lighting on the Daybreak map from Halo 4 and used that while creating the light function for cloud shadowing.
I am having a major problem where I cant paint foliage on the monolith static mesh. Also UE4 is not letting me erase the foliage I paint in general. Its frustrating but I have also upgraded this project through a couple of versions of UE4. Ill try asking the Technical Talk forums and see if I can find a solution without having to migrate everything to a new map.
Over the last week I have done a bunch of small things. I made a couple more vegetation assets, removed the smaller pillars embedded in the rocks, tweaked the opacity clip values for the trees, foliage painting, and played around with lighting.
Im going to desaturate all the vegetation by about 45%. I think that will bring the scene closer to the values one would see out in a nature setting like mine.
I have one more texture and shader pass before I call this project done.
Im using a world scaled mask to get some variation in the grass and ill be using that for the rest of the foliage as well.
The monolith itself also got a proper sculpted detail pass.
C&C welcome as always.
http://trevorcotich.weebly.com/monolith.html
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/23GEA
Final
Progression Gif