Kings Quest 5 Environment

Lulufinder

I'm a lighting TD working in advertising looking to add something a little bit different to my reel. I decided to take a scene from the old classic Sierra game, Kings Quest 5 to work on my environment skills and finally dive deep into ZBrush. Instead of working directly off of the original I decided to redesign it a bit to make the composition a little bit more dynamic and the style more whimsical. I'm a little bit uncertain about the proportions and general architecture of the cottage (and I know the perspective is a bit off), but I'm hoping I can sort that out a bit in the modeling phase. I'd love to hear your feedback on the concept so far before I start diving into blocking it out in maya. Here's what I have so far:

Mik2121

That looks really nice! I like the style you are going for, though the bridge handrails kind of bother me. Also I would add maybe some warmer color somewhere as contrast, right now it feels a bit too "cold" overall. Though I guess you could always add that at the end whenever you go 3D.

Either way, I'm liking it! Looking forward to seeing the finished piece!

mystichobo

Mik2121 wrote: »

That looks really nice! I like the style you are going for, though the bridge handrails kind of bother me. Also I would add maybe some warmer color somewhere as contrast, right now it feels a bit too "cold" overall. Though I guess you could always add that at the end whenever you go 3D.

Either way, I'm liking it! Looking forward to seeing the finished piece!

I agree, this is looking really promising!

I did a quick colour adjustment in PS to make it a little less cool:

Lulufinder

Awesome, the warmth in the highlights definitely helps. I started to refine the tree that sits in front of the house a bit and messed with the transition from the ground to the water (added rocks and some variation ) that I'll post later. I'm going to start blocking it out in maya this week regardless as I think it's probably enough of a guide but I'll probably keep going back into the painting for some practice. Thanks guys.

Lulufinder

Starting to crudely block out the tree in the foreground. I started in maya with a base mesh for the trunk and a few other pieces for the branches and roots and then dynameshed them all together in ZBrush. I found that I needed to bump up the Dynamesh resolution to about 256 because anything lower would shrink the smaller root pieces into nothing when I re-dynameshed. Hopefully I'll have some more progress tonight.

Karmageddon

It's on bro

I'm doing this exact same scene in the hangouts and stuff (but been taking my sweet ass time). I also go by Lulu on the webs. I'm confused. ermagerd!

Lulufinder

Ermagerd indeed! How is that even possible. haha. I thought I was picking something somewhat obscure.. I'd love to see your progress. Where are these hangouts you speak of? I'm relatively new to the forums.

Karmageddon

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101777&page=23 It's a sticky.
I haven't posted my progress, but have been getting crit in person instead and in the hangouts. I suppose I should start a thread though or something. So far everything is sculpted, about to retopo and do diffuse and all that jazz.

Lulufinder

Awesome.. well I can't wait to see it / nervous it's going to put mine to shame. This is my first foray into doing an environment from scratch so it's definitely going to be a bumpy ride. The main is goal is to get comfortable with the ZBrush to Maya workflow and hopefully end up with a pretty still at the end. I'm glad someone else remembers the old Sierra games

Karmageddon

Hey it's not like I own the concept or anything - have at it. Just means you have very good taste

Lulufinder

Got a bit further with the tree.. Trying to stick with my painting as much as possible but am definitely making up some details as I go. I feel like I may have started to get detailed a little bit too soon but I'm pretty happy with it so far..

Lulufinder

Here's a super crude update of my progress with the layout. Took a break from the tree and started figuring out the terrain that it sits on. First mistake I made was using a polyPlane with no thickness and using dynamesh with it. Apparently ZBrush doesn't like that so I had to salvage what I had already sculpted by using 'Unified Skin' to get a approximate mesh with thickeness so I could continue sculpting. Does anyone have any good techniques for sculpting terrain? It seems like adding a bit of thickness to a plane will ultimately create a mess.. Tomorrow I'll start to block in more objects and try to figure out the background terrain.

Pixelatedkiwi

I loved the old school sierra games, great idea and I love what you've done with the concept, thanks for sharing Looking forward to seeing this come together :thumbup:

Lulufinder

Thanks! Your medieval mill project is really looking nice so far.. I really like that shingle texture.

Lulufinder

Still trying to come up with a good workflow from Maya to ZBrush. It's frustrating to say the least. I like being able to export an .obj with multiple objects from maya so that I can block in multiple objects simultaneously in ZBrush but I haven't come up with an efficient method going from ZBrush to Maya. I've tried GoZ but that only seems to export one subtool at a time and half the time opens up a new instance of maya altogether. Could anyone share their technique for blocking in an environment in maya? I like being able to freely bounce between applications but maybe that's asking too much..

Broadway

Whoa, that concept is freakin' awesome. You should throw up a thread with more 2d stuff if you have more like that!

This was one of the first PC games I played as a kid and all I remember from it is being so super frustrated, back in the day before you could look up internet walkthroughs. It still makes me laugh how the game would basically give you a choice like "Take the right or left path?" and you'd go left, and it would be like "A witch appears and shoots a spell at you; you are now a frog. Game over!" "THAT WASN'T VERY SMART GRAHAM." You're right game, that was totally my fault, it was obvious that the left path was full of invisible witches, I don't know why I made such a stupid decision. Good times

Can't wait to see how this shapes up!

Lulufinder

Thanks! Yeah, the kings quest series.. or all of the sierra games for that matter, were notorious for killing you without warning. There's even some good youtube compilations of all of the many deaths you'd experience through out the games.

Lulufinder

Continuing to block out the scene and rough in props:

Lulufinder

Haven't posted in a while.. decided to re-design the hero tree in the foreground so that it's a bit more interesting. I also started modeling / concepting the ferns that will be prominent in the foreground on the right side. I'm trying to find a leaf shape that'll be slightly more stylized than your standard fern

Lulufinder

Made some progress on the house. Decided to do some research and make it somewhat grounded in real medieval architecture. I decided to block it out nice and even before I stylize it a bit more to get closer to my concept.. I'll probably push it a bit even further when I start the high-poly :

Lulufinder

Did a little sketch over to demonstrate what i'll be doing for the final model:

Bonkahe

Work work work! you might try using alpha planes to get the silhouette of that main tree really smooth and flowing, with the little bits of bark hanging off. Keep working! you can do it!