Desert Environment (Diablo 3 Caldeum inspired)
polycounter lvl 9
Hey all! I posted this on the waywo thread a little while back, had a few days to mess around at the time and started a desert environment that was very much inspired by Act II of Diablo 3. Since then I hadn't been able to work on it, but I just got back around to it today, so I decided to start a w.i.p. thread for it. Here's what I ended with a few weeks ago:
At this point it still needed a lot of work. The biggest thing being some subject matter and story telling. But then I got to the point where the composition of the scene was working against what I had planned for it. I felt like it would have been a cool composition if I left the scene where it was at, but if I wanted to start adding some props for points of interest and story telling, it might start cluttering up the scene. So i took a step back and re-evaluated my composition and came up with this:
Still lots of work to do!!! But now i feel like it opens up the scene more for a better vista and stuff
. I guess I could've avoided all of this if I roughed out some thumbnails and basic concepts... but I kinda jumped the gun on this one. One night I made a rock, and the scene kinda just snowballed out of it. Currently my plan is to add some creature bones, an abandoned merchant wagon, and a city facade in the back. The city stuff will probably bleed into the foreground a little bit with some destroyed ruins as well. I'll also need to add some bubbley stuff to the tar and make it feel more like tar, and get a better sky in there. Like I said, still very heavily work in progress and still lots to do. But I kinda like where it's going, so hopefully i can finish it soon. Like I mentioned before, I kinda didn't plan anything out, so comments, crits, and suggestions are very much appreciated!!
one last thing... the wide image is the result of stitching a few screenshots together. Anyone know of any better was to take panoramic shots?
At this point it still needed a lot of work. The biggest thing being some subject matter and story telling. But then I got to the point where the composition of the scene was working against what I had planned for it. I felt like it would have been a cool composition if I left the scene where it was at, but if I wanted to start adding some props for points of interest and story telling, it might start cluttering up the scene. So i took a step back and re-evaluated my composition and came up with this:
Still lots of work to do!!! But now i feel like it opens up the scene more for a better vista and stuff
. I guess I could've avoided all of this if I roughed out some thumbnails and basic concepts... but I kinda jumped the gun on this one. One night I made a rock, and the scene kinda just snowballed out of it. Currently my plan is to add some creature bones, an abandoned merchant wagon, and a city facade in the back. The city stuff will probably bleed into the foreground a little bit with some destroyed ruins as well. I'll also need to add some bubbley stuff to the tar and make it feel more like tar, and get a better sky in there. Like I said, still very heavily work in progress and still lots to do. But I kinda like where it's going, so hopefully i can finish it soon. Like I mentioned before, I kinda didn't plan anything out, so comments, crits, and suggestions are very much appreciated!! one last thing... the wide image is the result of stitching a few screenshots together. Anyone know of any better was to take panoramic shots?
Replies
Personally i prefer the handpainted style they had going on, if you where aiming for that it didnt really come through. This looks alot moore realistic.
But that might have been your goal.
Visceral - I really dig the hand painted look as well; however, it wasn't my goal to get that look. But yeah, if it was, I failed big time, lol.
mixeh - I'm actually fighting with that sun. I'll probably try to come up with something that isn't so bloomy, but it helps make the scene feel a little more hot. Though, in the end this is supposed to be just one wide image, so hopefully the sun won't be that annoying when it's just one image to look at.
sipher3325 - DUDE!! I HATE ACT 2 ALSO!!! But it was so pretty
Still looks cool, but almost all you're images are like that.
Shhhhh... Don't let everyone hear you :P Haha! Yeah, actually Raul pointed out the same thing. To be honest, I didn't even catch onto it until this scene. Must be some personal liking of mine. I did try throwing the sun in other places... but it somehow just ends up in the middle. Might be a nice experiment for me to try something different...Idunno...
Either way your work has been kicking ass Bbox85. I think once you add in the merchant wagon (good chance to get some pops of colour in there) and those creature bones (could use some as foreground silhouettes to help frame up the scene) I think you'll have something really nice to show.
I'd also try moving the sun over to the left / right some more once you get more pieces in, could help create some subtle rim lighting that may create some extra "magic" within the enviroment.
Weop, really looking forward to more updates!
Looking forward for updates!
As far as my rock workflow goes... Some of you will probably laugh at this but a lot of times I like to make a single rock that does most of the job for me. Stand alone, this rock might look really dumb, but through rotation, scaling, and clever placement, it can provide some interesting rock formations. In this case, the rock I'm using looks like this:
TEXTURE IS HIGHLY WORK IN PROGRESS!!! I looks a bit like tree bark right now, but I'll get around to fixing that a little later. For now, it seems to be getting the job done when placed in the scene. Anyway, as you can see, this rock looks a little odd. But with this, and a variant of the same rock that i made a little bit more pointy (literally just took some verts and pulled them out a bit), I was able to create a rock formation like this:
Not including the temporary rubble, this is all the same rock. The cliffs in the back are the same rock just scaled up. In the foreground, wherever it gets a bit repetitious, I'll use some sand to break things up a bit. After this, to help with blending and create a bit more uniqueness in the rock formations, I created 2 variants of a rock rubble mesh, and a flat pancake-like rock mesh:
To create these, I sculpted out small rocks, baked them out and combined them to create the rock rubble. The pancake-like rocks are the same rocks, just flattened out. Normally I wouldn't think to do that, but I did a quick experiment and it ended up working out and not distorting the texture. Since making these, I've actually discovered some new tricks on creating rock rubble more efficiently and better looking. So I'm tempted to re-do these assets. If it comes to that, I'll fill you all in on the process
It wasn't until after this that I started implementing the pancake rock, but you can see the result of that in the images at the top of the thread. It took a bit to get the hang of the main rock, at times i felt like the shape of it held me back a bit, but overall I think the rock proved itself somewhat useful. I think there's room for a few more rock meshes, perhaps a larger more spikey rock, used to create some more interesting silhouettes, and one for large cliff faces. But yeah, so far this has been my approach to this scene. Hope this explanation was somewhat insightful!
Updates to the scene coming soon!! I haven't been able to work on it during the week, but I'm hoping to get some good progress in this weekend.
If you where to re-make them, or ad in more, it would be awesome to see the sculpt process to!