Yo!

Thiago Klafke here, sharing updates on my next personal project, "Costa Del Sol"!

This environment is inspired by the Costa Del Sol region in Spain. I fell in love with the architecture of this place right away. I love how bold and straightforward the shapes are and how the color pops come from plants, props, and organic elements.

My main goals with this environment are to finally deep dive into Substance Designer, create a fun VR space to explore, and document my entire journey to turn into a tutorial that will stand the test of time!

Concept 

I'm not recreating any area specifically but creating my version taking inspiration from these places:

Here's a top-down sketch with the main points of interest. The player starts down in a tunnel, walks up to the street, and has the coast to one side and the town surrounded by rocks on the other. I want to have a strong sense of directionality and leave some "hooks" to expand the environment later to make the VR version more fun to explore.

The first Dev Log video on my Youtube channel explains more about this part if you are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-p7qNjuIkg

I then created a kit with primitives and simple shapes that I'm using to quickly blockout the level in Unreal 4. My main goal for this phase is to get a rough idea in place. I will then replace all this geometry with "real" geometry and iterate on the whole map in stages. Think of it as a progressive JPG loading, where each pass enhances the entire picture at once.

View from the rocks

The backdrop will be much more populated later on, but I want to make sure I get the idea across.

An archway

The church.

A view from one of the apartments towards the Church plaza, showing the coast in the distance.

The main street where lots of commerce will be.

Another shot from the main street.

The town carved into the rocks.

A view of the backdrop.

Dev Log #2

I also recorded a new Youtube Dev Log, where you can see the blockout in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPdIS_ilERY

Mailing List

If you want to stay in touch, you can subscribe to my mailing list!

• 💼 www.thiagoklafke.com/
• 🐦 www.twitter.com/thiagoklafke
• 📷 www.instagram.com/thiago.klafke
• 📺 www.youtube.com/c/tkenvironments

Thanks for reading!

Thiago