Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind, Ancestral Tomb dungeon kit
grand marshal polycounter
I've been assigned to work on a dungeon kit/tile set for Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind. I've been told that being good at kits will help in the job hunt (hint to all you recruiters in Vancouver 
), but also I won't just be seeing props I make in the upcoming Morrowind mod; I'll be seeing entire dungeons created from my art! I of course love your guys' critique, and would be all around appreciative to hear what you have to say!
**Before I get into things, I want to note that Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind is constantly looking for more people on the mod team. Whether you're a prop artist, modeler, animator, writer, voice actor, etc., we can use your help! Here's our recruitment thread (don't let the slow forum scare you; our Discord has quite a bit of activity), or just send me a message!
https://www.darkcreations.org/forums/topic/7779-morrowind-recruitment-thread/?page=16
I've been given a ton of nif files from the original Morrowind, and asked to recreate these. There are 65 in total. My first two stages are material authoring and block-out modeling. I'll be cross referencing my other thread regarding Substance Designer. I wanted to get as many of the materials ready before the texturing stage, as I could build consistency throughout the work that way.
Here are some references I'll be working from;
A lot of screenshots I've found have been pretty dark, but screenshots from Elder Scrolls Online were decent. We're going for a more cramped feeling, more alike the original Morrowind Ancestral Tombs. These tombs are thousands of years old, but have been maintained and repaired throughout time, so they're not exactly in shambles. I'll be liaising with the level designer in order to get a feeling that we both are aiming for.
Some technical points: Textures should flow seamlessly from piece to piece as much as possible. This part will provide me with a challenge, as in the Skyrim engine, there is no world texture coordinates option. Certain pieces, like the floor and some walls, will be easy enough to figure out, but other parts, such as walls which are not just flat meshes, will be more difficult I'm thinking. Secondly, as each kit piece needs specific textures, parts (such as the second reference picture) which have large roofs might have issues with texel density, and I'm going to figure out a solution to that.
In advance, thanks to all who check out this thread, offer critique, and of course, those which will be playing in the future.
), but also I won't just be seeing props I make in the upcoming Morrowind mod; I'll be seeing entire dungeons created from my art! I of course love your guys' critique, and would be all around appreciative to hear what you have to say!**Before I get into things, I want to note that Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind is constantly looking for more people on the mod team. Whether you're a prop artist, modeler, animator, writer, voice actor, etc., we can use your help! Here's our recruitment thread (don't let the slow forum scare you; our Discord has quite a bit of activity), or just send me a message!
https://www.darkcreations.org/forums/topic/7779-morrowind-recruitment-thread/?page=16
I've been given a ton of nif files from the original Morrowind, and asked to recreate these. There are 65 in total. My first two stages are material authoring and block-out modeling. I'll be cross referencing my other thread regarding Substance Designer. I wanted to get as many of the materials ready before the texturing stage, as I could build consistency throughout the work that way.
Here are some references I'll be working from;
A lot of screenshots I've found have been pretty dark, but screenshots from Elder Scrolls Online were decent. We're going for a more cramped feeling, more alike the original Morrowind Ancestral Tombs. These tombs are thousands of years old, but have been maintained and repaired throughout time, so they're not exactly in shambles. I'll be liaising with the level designer in order to get a feeling that we both are aiming for.
Some technical points: Textures should flow seamlessly from piece to piece as much as possible. This part will provide me with a challenge, as in the Skyrim engine, there is no world texture coordinates option. Certain pieces, like the floor and some walls, will be easy enough to figure out, but other parts, such as walls which are not just flat meshes, will be more difficult I'm thinking. Secondly, as each kit piece needs specific textures, parts (such as the second reference picture) which have large roofs might have issues with texel density, and I'm going to figure out a solution to that.
In advance, thanks to all who check out this thread, offer critique, and of course, those which will be playing in the future.
Replies
1) First up is the tomb wall.The basic material was done in designer, and I drew out the tribal design by hand using ZBrush & its wrap function for a perfectly tiling pattern. The colour of the design might be altered a bit down the line to be more dull, but the art lead wants some examples before we make a final decision.
2) Next up is the tiles for the ceiling. From the reference, it took me ages to wrap my head around the design, and how the tiles were laid out. Eventually I found the horizontal zig-zag pattern. I couldn't figure out any way of creating this pattern inside of Substance Designer (although there is a possible way to do it in a newer version of Designer which I haven't bought). I ended up drawing the alpha pattern using ZBrush again, and then using Photoshop fill tool to create a rainbow filled image, so as to be able to use Designer's vector warp, and have cracks and colours on random tiles in Designer. I may duplicate the tile material and create a second variation without the zig-zag pattern.
3) The stone floor! I actually created a stone floor material previously, and it looked pretty sick. I gained some insite from my lead artist regarding the tomb's being up-kept, and studied the reference more, and realized it wouldn't work. It was too old and dirty and the stones looked nothing like the reference. Well, start again, and this is what I came up with. I think this is a 4 meter cross section, meaning the larger stones are roughly 1 meter long.
Forgive this material for not being as interesting as the previous 3, but I'm trying to include everything here. This was made for random things like stairs and possibly the ceiling or lower parts of the walls. Going to be playing around with it later, when I get to the texturing phase.
When I got the nif files (Skyrim engine's .fbx), I was kinda worried at the 66 obj's which I had to replicate. Turns out it's a lot more simple. You get a few pieces done and then you can use those pieces to cut and paste a lot. Unfortunately, since there are so many pieces, I won't be able to do a lot of sculpting, else it'd take me a year to high poly sculpt > retopo > UV > texture each single piece. I'll sculpt a few pieces, such as the stairs, ramp, and a few select other parts, but my aim is to let the textures do as much work as possible.
Here's an image to show the size of the hallways. There are 2 types of hallway for this kit: Large high ceiling (such as this) and low ceiling, which will be the height of the ledge above the skeleton's head.
I spent some time reading up on Skyrim's modular level design from the below link. Unfortunately, none of it applied to what I'm doing, as the pieces are all planned out for me, but it was a nice read, and I thought I should post it here. It covers planning out what pieces you need, whose role is what, and how to create pieces so they work together.
http://blog.joelburgess.com/2013/04/skyrims-modular-level-design-gdc-2013.html