UDK - Windmill Garden WIP
polycounter lvl 18
I'm working on an environment piece based on the windmill area from Ico.
The scene is mostly blocked out and I've started working on sculpting for some of the more key areas-- what's in the scene right now is very early texture work, mostly AO over solid colors.
There are still a few pieces of stone which are using temporary or incorrect textures; once those are finished I need to model out and texture all the wood and metal (the mill itself, as well as the platform on the left), and then tackle the ground.
Once all that is done I want to add a lot of foliage-- I'd been thinking about thick ferns for ground cover, and climbing vines on the bricks.
I'll try to post more progress tomorrow. Until then, any feedback on this early stage would be much appreciated.
The scene is mostly blocked out and I've started working on sculpting for some of the more key areas-- what's in the scene right now is very early texture work, mostly AO over solid colors.
There are still a few pieces of stone which are using temporary or incorrect textures; once those are finished I need to model out and texture all the wood and metal (the mill itself, as well as the platform on the left), and then tackle the ground.
Once all that is done I want to add a lot of foliage-- I'd been thinking about thick ferns for ground cover, and climbing vines on the bricks.
I'll try to post more progress tomorrow. Until then, any feedback on this early stage would be much appreciated.
Replies
Looking good so far. The windmill is awesome!
This is looking really solid - no crits so far!
*Subscribed*
Easily one of my favourite games. :poly142:
I've been wanting to make an ico inspired environment myself, but never had the time to get around to doing that. I will be watching this one closely, this scene has a lot of potential
It would be interesting to see this scene with DX11 tesselation for all the bricks and some reflection in the little pond.
For foliage, the new UDK has a cool pivot feature that makes foliage realistically wave in the wind.
I'd imagine a floating fortress with a wind-mill would be pretty windy.
check it out:
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Alberto, Nathan, Zac, Eoq, Marq & Tea: Thanks a lot! I'm sorry this disappeared for a long time, and I'll try to update frequently.
Korrax: Will do! I'll try to get some ground textures and blending set up in the next update, even if they aren't final.
Cw & SirCalalot: I really like the Ico/SotC blown out-fairy shader look, even though it tends to destroy some of the details-- I'll probably end up posting some beauty shots with the heavy post when it's done, and create a few without them for portfolio purposes.
Computron:
I'm sculpting almost everything-- my main goal with this project is to become faster and more comfortable with Zbrush.
Here's a couple of sculpted bits: I'll put up some lowpoly peices later today.
I'm working with sort of modular peices inside of Max, then combining them before I export to Unreal in order to minimize lightmap seams.
Most of the walls are made from these parts here-- the grey meshes use a standard tiling texture with some relief built in, and the orange meshes tile vertically using a different texture. Everything is then just assembled using snaps, and I can quickly optimize out the brick cuts where I don't need the fancy silhouette or the vertex density for painting.
I experimented a bit with tessellation, but it caused some nasty and really obvious splitting, particularly where the tiling bricks meet the corner caps. I'll mess with it a little more, and see if I can sync the heightmaps perfectly, or just mask out the displacement at those seams. I also considered using IBR for the pond, but unfortunately that doesn't work with translucent materials. I stuck with a normal scenecapturereflect actor instead.
That foliage rotation stuff is really rad; I'll definitely add that in as soon as the foliage meshes are where I want them.
the bottom segment of windmill looks sweet, with all those damaged bricks sticking out and a layer of stones below.
@KennyTies In Ico those chairs were really big so it actually looks like the right scale.
Thanks! I'm going to try and have a big update done by the end of the weekend-- I want to get some ground textures in, get a bunch of foliage, and get at last partway through updating the main mill structure to use the new brick style.
After that, I'll need to add or finish some debris pieces, finish the stairs and bridge mechanism on the left of the original images, and sculpt out the doorway statues (the weird, unlit green block) as well as incorporate other feedback I get.
KennyTies:
Thanks a lot! You're right about the couch-- It had been in its own file before I took that screenshot, and I'd been scaling it down to .8 in Unreal. I'd just forgotten to propagate the scaling back to Max.
Here are the lowpolies at the appropriate scale:
Biofrost:
Thanks! I'd remembered the couches being really huge too, which is why I originally made them bigger; they're actually pretty close to normal sized compared to Yorda, though. I think they just seem bigger because Ico spends longer in them, and he's such a tiny dude.