UDK Tundra Diorama [Based on Monster Hunter Tri]
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Hello! Thank you for taking a gander at my project!
My current studies in Game Shaders and Effects require me to create a diorama in a scene of my choice, and I've picked Monster Hunter Tri's Tundra (Area 5:
). I think there's a lot to play with in this environment, and I'm making steady progress.
I've made a moodboard to help demonstrate my ideas and plans: -
So far, I've been playing around with making the block out and ZBrush for the sculpting tools are great for making organic surfaces which work for caves. I've recently learnt not to make the cave base entirely in Zbrush and I'm going to create a modular piece that can be rotated around to give the cave walls a unique cave surface (and I can be sure the single modular piece hasn't got NGons, and I can give it a simple tiling texture).
I made the cave parts in 3DS Max. It started from a plane, I extruded and reformed it until I had the shape of the area I'm going to work on. I cut the top and bottom apart so I could keep them separate in Zbrush with the bottom half being a sub-tool. : -
Then imported it into ZBrush and used some primitive hack and slash techniques to make the top half as cave-like as I could, with stalagmites. This is really just a practise demonstration; I'm quite new to Zbrush and was testing out what I could do. : -
My next steps will be to make modular stalagmites and then to model the torch.
After the torch has been made, I'm going to work on creating the smoke and distortion and play with different material methods for it. The torch will have materials that will be lit in the diorama, but the story behind them is that they aren't always lit; only when a human travels into the vicinity to the areas where they need light. Considering this, will the materials in the basin of the torch be long-lasting, easily replaceable materials? If so, I need to consider what will be burning and consider modelling it or trying to make a substitute that has a suggestive texture.
I'm going to create a wide particle effect of dripping for the area of subtle dripping that will be barely noticeable but the light will catch it and it'll be noticed by the matinee presentation of the final video.
The water I'm going to produce will be frozen towards the entrance of the cave, so it will have differing specular effects. I can achieve this with vertex painting, which will also be used for creating any green plant life, such as mould on the cave walls.
I will also need to produce a simple particle effect for the cloud of air where the cold comes into warmth, which will be pale and fairly thick closer to the cold source of the window and cave entrance. The same particle effect can be used for the window and the exit to the tundra field. There will also be snow flakes in this to suggest where the wind is blowing into the cave, which will be an extra diffuse and alpha used in possibly a flip-book animation for the particle effect.
Crystals are going to use a Cube Map and will have high specularity. The result I want to achieve will be challenging, and I will need to find an appropriate panorama image for the cube map which will be inside a cave. I would like to make the crystals semi-transparent also, but not enough that the player can clearly see through to the other side (I'm hoping to avoid a result like glass).
I hope to make various models of resources collected by the monsters inhabiting the cave as their nest, and more research into this will be needed.
I'm not an artisan in this area of games design yet, so all feedback is greatly appreciated! But please be clear
My current studies in Game Shaders and Effects require me to create a diorama in a scene of my choice, and I've picked Monster Hunter Tri's Tundra (Area 5:
). I think there's a lot to play with in this environment, and I'm making steady progress.I've made a moodboard to help demonstrate my ideas and plans: -
So far, I've been playing around with making the block out and ZBrush for the sculpting tools are great for making organic surfaces which work for caves. I've recently learnt not to make the cave base entirely in Zbrush and I'm going to create a modular piece that can be rotated around to give the cave walls a unique cave surface (and I can be sure the single modular piece hasn't got NGons, and I can give it a simple tiling texture).
I made the cave parts in 3DS Max. It started from a plane, I extruded and reformed it until I had the shape of the area I'm going to work on. I cut the top and bottom apart so I could keep them separate in Zbrush with the bottom half being a sub-tool. : -
Then imported it into ZBrush and used some primitive hack and slash techniques to make the top half as cave-like as I could, with stalagmites. This is really just a practise demonstration; I'm quite new to Zbrush and was testing out what I could do. : -
My next steps will be to make modular stalagmites and then to model the torch.
After the torch has been made, I'm going to work on creating the smoke and distortion and play with different material methods for it. The torch will have materials that will be lit in the diorama, but the story behind them is that they aren't always lit; only when a human travels into the vicinity to the areas where they need light. Considering this, will the materials in the basin of the torch be long-lasting, easily replaceable materials? If so, I need to consider what will be burning and consider modelling it or trying to make a substitute that has a suggestive texture.
I'm going to create a wide particle effect of dripping for the area of subtle dripping that will be barely noticeable but the light will catch it and it'll be noticed by the matinee presentation of the final video.
The water I'm going to produce will be frozen towards the entrance of the cave, so it will have differing specular effects. I can achieve this with vertex painting, which will also be used for creating any green plant life, such as mould on the cave walls.
I will also need to produce a simple particle effect for the cloud of air where the cold comes into warmth, which will be pale and fairly thick closer to the cold source of the window and cave entrance. The same particle effect can be used for the window and the exit to the tundra field. There will also be snow flakes in this to suggest where the wind is blowing into the cave, which will be an extra diffuse and alpha used in possibly a flip-book animation for the particle effect.
Crystals are going to use a Cube Map and will have high specularity. The result I want to achieve will be challenging, and I will need to find an appropriate panorama image for the cube map which will be inside a cave. I would like to make the crystals semi-transparent also, but not enough that the player can clearly see through to the other side (I'm hoping to avoid a result like glass).
I hope to make various models of resources collected by the monsters inhabiting the cave as their nest, and more research into this will be needed.
I'm not an artisan in this area of games design yet, so all feedback is greatly appreciated! But please be clear