Wildstar Desert Environment (Cory Loftis Concept), UDK
polycounter lvl 11
Hey everyone! I came to the realization a while ago that my portfolio was entirely lacking in the environment department. So I went on the hunt and ended up deciding on actualizing one of concepts that Cory Loftis generated for Wildstar:
I'm hoping that I end up doing it justice. : )
Some goals I have for this project:
1) Generate a quality environment for my portfolio.
2) Get better at generating hand-painted tileable textures.
3) Various UDK learnins' (vertex color in engine, texture blending, particle effects, etc.)
There are others, but I feel like those are the primary ones.
I've generated a prioritized asset list for the scene (subject to change):
PRIORITY--1:
Terrain Textures:
Sand
Cracked Clay
Rock (same as monolithic stones)
Plants:
Palm-esque Bulb Tree
Palm Tree (combine or build this in conjunction with Palm Bulb Tree; build Bulb version, remove bulb for regular Palm version)
Red Flowers (primarily on bones)
Viney Red Fire Flowers
Medium Cactus
Large Cactus (huge thorns)
Rocks:
Large Monolithic Rocks
Small Rocks
Bones:
Skull Variant 1
Vertebrae Variant 1
Rib Variant 1 (scale and adjust to create multiple variants)
Other:
Skybox
Rocky Billboard (for background)
PRIORITY--2:
Terrain Textures:
Moss/Lichen
Plants:
Bare, Scraggly Tree
Spindly Cactus
Rocks:
Boulder Variant 1
Bones:
Skull Variant 2
Dorsal Spike
PRIORITY--3:
Terrain Textures:
Dirt
Rocky Dirt
Plants:
Small Yellow Ground Flowers
Small Tube Plants (next to fire flowers)
Small Bulbous Cactus (or modify medium cactus to use for this as well)
Rocks:
Boulder Variant 2
Bones:
Skull Variant 3
Rib Variant 2
Tail Bone
Other:
Wood Rope Bridge
With that asset list made, the first thing I did was block out each of the Priority 1 assets (the little rectangle on the right is player scale, I modified it a bit from the concepts established gargantuan scale):
From there I picked three assets to make first, a "small" asset (the large cactus, a "medium" asset (the bulb palm tree), and a "large" asset (one of the monolithic stones). On top of this I started noodling on the first terrain texture, cracked clay.
Here are the shots of the Large Cactus as of now:
Hi-Poly
Poly Paint
Low Poly Texture Progress
Low Poly in UDK
Textures:
Palm Bulb Progress:
Hi Poly
Poly Paint
Low Poly in UDK:
Textures so far:
I'm going to use the bottom right corner for the trunk tile. Similar to the set up I used on the cactus map.
Here is where I'm at on the terrain texture that I started:
Haven't started on the large monolithic stone yet.
Still trying to work out a plan of attack since I've never tackled a huge rockface like that before.
Anyways, I just wrapped up my thesis artifact, so now I can dedicate more time to this project. : )
Comments and critiques are always welcome. Thanks in advance everyone!
-Jordan
I'm hoping that I end up doing it justice. : )
Some goals I have for this project:
1) Generate a quality environment for my portfolio.
2) Get better at generating hand-painted tileable textures.
3) Various UDK learnins' (vertex color in engine, texture blending, particle effects, etc.)
There are others, but I feel like those are the primary ones.
I've generated a prioritized asset list for the scene (subject to change):
PRIORITY--1:
Terrain Textures:
Sand
Cracked Clay
Rock (same as monolithic stones)
Plants:
Palm-esque Bulb Tree
Palm Tree (combine or build this in conjunction with Palm Bulb Tree; build Bulb version, remove bulb for regular Palm version)
Red Flowers (primarily on bones)
Viney Red Fire Flowers
Medium Cactus
Large Cactus (huge thorns)
Rocks:
Large Monolithic Rocks
Small Rocks
Bones:
Skull Variant 1
Vertebrae Variant 1
Rib Variant 1 (scale and adjust to create multiple variants)
Other:
Skybox
Rocky Billboard (for background)
PRIORITY--2:
Terrain Textures:
Moss/Lichen
Plants:
Bare, Scraggly Tree
Spindly Cactus
Rocks:
Boulder Variant 1
Bones:
Skull Variant 2
Dorsal Spike
PRIORITY--3:
Terrain Textures:
Dirt
Rocky Dirt
Plants:
Small Yellow Ground Flowers
Small Tube Plants (next to fire flowers)
Small Bulbous Cactus (or modify medium cactus to use for this as well)
Rocks:
Boulder Variant 2
Bones:
Skull Variant 3
Rib Variant 2
Tail Bone
Other:
Wood Rope Bridge
With that asset list made, the first thing I did was block out each of the Priority 1 assets (the little rectangle on the right is player scale, I modified it a bit from the concepts established gargantuan scale):
From there I picked three assets to make first, a "small" asset (the large cactus, a "medium" asset (the bulb palm tree), and a "large" asset (one of the monolithic stones). On top of this I started noodling on the first terrain texture, cracked clay.
Here are the shots of the Large Cactus as of now:
Hi-Poly
Poly Paint
Low Poly Texture Progress
Low Poly in UDK
Textures:
Palm Bulb Progress:
Hi Poly
Poly Paint
Low Poly in UDK:
Textures so far:
I'm going to use the bottom right corner for the trunk tile. Similar to the set up I used on the cactus map.
Here is where I'm at on the terrain texture that I started:
Haven't started on the large monolithic stone yet.
Still trying to work out a plan of attack since I've never tackled a huge rockface like that before.
Anyways, I just wrapped up my thesis artifact, so now I can dedicate more time to this project. : )
Comments and critiques are always welcome. Thanks in advance everyone!
-Jordan
Replies
Frozan: No problem buddy. I agree, the spec needs work. The normals are kind of getting lost on the cactus. The palm bulb doesn't have any spec on it yet either, which isn't doing it any favors. :poly122:
murph: Thanks man!
guhhh, Jessica, and TorQue: Thanks much.
I'll have something to post tomorrow night. Went to Industry Giants this weekend and sat through two Environment master classes today, so I'm amped up and have a lot of new things I want to try this week!
Slow updates on my part. Need to speed this up. Especially if I want this to be included when I start applying to companies in a few short weeks. Thesis is still consuming a lot of my time. Anyways, I wrapped up the various palm trees, made a lil' cactus from the big cactus protrusion and applying the tile I made, and made the spec adjustments that Frozan suggested.
Here it be:
And here are the palm textures:
Still have a little square of space left. If I encounter anything small I need along the project, I'll squeeze it in there. Also I should note that though I'm displaying these at 512 in this thread, the actual maps are 1024 in UDK. I have no clue whether that is unreasonable or not. The assets are all player scale or larger though so I figured it was alright.
Next I'm going to be starting on the terrain/landscape so I can get a real scene blocked in instead of using a default UDK scene.
Like always, comments and critiques are welcomed! Thanks everyone.
EDIT: By the way, what file format/import workflow are you using for the textures? Was wondering how you got them to look so sharp in UDK.
Torch: Thanks man. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary with the textures. I transfer/bake and paint them all at double the resolution I intend for them to be. Then I resize, run the smart sharpen filter over them in Photoshop (obviously this needs to be adjusted per texture, one setting doesn't work universally), and save them out as Targas. When I import them I don't change any of the import settings in UDK, except for the normal map, I change the compression settings to "TC_Normalmap". Hope that helps!