World Machine - Example of "other world" landscapes?

adam

Looking at Worldmachine for assisting in the creation of landscapes that seem alien or from another world than our own. Doing searches online for "alien landscape + world machine" isn't really getting very decent results so I thought I'd ask here.

Does anyone have good examples of non-Earth landscapes being made with World Machine? Even if WM is just the first step, I'd be interested in seeing them.

:thumbup:

artquest

Having done quite a few alien planet textures lately I can say that from looking at dozens and dozens of reference images... the other planets/moons we know about don't look too terribly different from our more familiar landscapes here on earth (just minus the plants and you know, signs of life.)

So I guess my question is, how alien do you want to go? Are you looking to do something more stylized? Do you have any reference images of the look/style you're after?

I ask because I've just gotten myself the trial version of world machine to see if we can use it for the same reason.

My plan was trying to get the alien look from the textures and not as much out of the geological formations.

GragGunslinger

I think something that really sells alien landscapes is some sort of aspect that humans have become accustomed to that if you remove simply makes someone go "uh...wait, this is not earth!"

Like if you look at Tatooine, it looks exactly like Earth until Luke sees the Binary Stars and you're like "woah." so adding in sublte details will really make the idea of this being an otherworld, but still realistic.

Unless you're going for something CRAZY like Xen, or Pandora, but then I think still using WM to establish your base landscapes and then tweaking your textures and then it all comes down to really selling your actual meshes that are "alien"

Isaiah Sherman

I would love to show you, Adam, but then I'd have to kill you (work-related).

Joshua Stubbles

Adam, usually it's just starting with a base in Zbrush/Mudbox to give you your main defining shapes. World Machine is mainly used for just topping it off with erosion, terracing and flow maps.

I don't know of a straight up tutorial on it, but the node based system in WM is pretty easy to dink around with.

artquest

Joshua Stubbles wrote: »

Adam, usually it's just starting with a base in Zbrush/Mudbox to give you your main defining shapes. World Machine is mainly used for just topping it off with erosion, terracing and flow maps.

I don't know of a straight up tutorial on it, but the node based system in WM is pretty easy to dink around with.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88933

Here's one such tutorial.


The workflow that I'm experimenting with now is doing a quick shape node in WM or using a black and white mask painted in photoshop to start my terrains in world machine. So far it works quite well.

On a side note I thought I'd mention that the digital set created for the landing site in Prometheus was actually a recreation of a real location here on earth using google earth data as a starting point. They mapped and modeled a canyon out perfectly and then started adjusting various landmarks to get the alien look.


I would imagine if you want floating rocks (avatar style) or some other such crazyness then world machine wont be able to do that. (atleast I haven't found anything that does that yet.)

Isaiah Sherman

Joshua Stubbles wrote: »

Adam, usually it's just starting with a base in Zbrush/Mudbox to give you your main defining shapes. World Machine is mainly used for just topping it off with erosion, terracing and flow maps.

I don't know of a straight up tutorial on it, but the node based system in WM is pretty easy to dink around with.

This. Make your shapes and bring them in to WM, then just do its fancy pass.