[UDK] Ice Cave Ruin - Unearthy Challenge

Hupie

Hey there!

after a long time not working on my game art skills I quite missed it but the Unearthly Challenge gave me a perfect reason to get back in the real time world!

My plan is to make an Ice Cave with a lost ruin/temple inside it. I was mainly inspired by this picture:

http://www.hdwpapers.com/walls/ice_c...per-normal.jpg

I will be using UDK and i also plan to do a lot of zbrush action. Furthermore i want to experiment with UDK materials to make a nice snow/ice shader. All in all, i hope this will be a great learning experience for me.

Below is my first blockout and vray render. I want to further develop the mood/lighting and composition and then ill dive into ice sculpting .

Fnitrox

woh! didn't know the Unherthly Challenge was back!

I'll try and jump on this one too if i can get some nice ideas on the theme... it's so simple that it gets hard

Anyway you're off to a good start, I'll be watchin this thread


on a side note is polycount participating? the challenge wasn't advertised and it's not listed in the "teams"

m4dcow

Fnitrox wrote: »

on a side note is polycount participating? the challenge wasn't advertised and it's not listed in the "teams"

Not officially, but I have seen some polycounters with threads on gameartisans and 3dtotal.

Hupie

Change of plans. Rather then seeing this as a project i need to finish i think i will use this as an opportunity to experiment and try out things. First thing i wanted to try is to recreate a melting ice cave like this:

http://1funny.com/wp-content/uploads...6/ice-cave.jpg

So i first created tiling 3d geometry in zbrush and rendered out the different maps in 2.5d. Although the maps are low quality and don't look good, at least i finally learned a proper workflow thanks to:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e04k4Cz8UBo"]ZBrush Tileable Sculpting 01 - Brush Wrap Setup - YouTube[/ame]

See picture below for my result so far. It's far from visually pleasing but i'm going to keep experimenting and playing around.

Fnitrox

Might i suggest using a Voronoi noise from world machine for doing that effect?

Hupie

After some tries i finally got some decent result with the ice material. It was thanks to your tip Fnitrox that i found a good workflow. Instead of using World Machine i used 3ds max built in cellular map to create a heightmap. I made it tilable within Photoshop (would love to create tileable cellular maps from the start but i havent found this out yet) and then i played with the liquify filter to make it more organic. Then i imported the heightmap in zbrush to get some nice textures using different zbrush materials in 2.5d.

Im now trying to make the UDK skydome overbright but unfortunately havent succeeded yet. I tried to boost the sky multiplier but to no effect. I guess i have to dive a bit more into UDK again.

Hupie

Haven't produced as much as i initally wanted but i did learn a lot about tilable textures workflows with zbrush thanks to the bradhb3d videos and the eat3d video tutorial about tileable textures and hopefully now i can be a bit more productive.

Here's one of my first tries:



But fortunately my last try came out quite a bit better:

Hupie

New try at a tileable texture. Didnt come anywhere close my reference so it's a bit of a random texture. Better luck next time

A-N-P

I like where this is going. The transition from the wall texture to the ground texture is a little too harsh IMO. Maybe try blending those 2 a bit better? Another crit is the ceiling looks too flat (profile wise) Could do with adding some more geo to break up the silhouette where it meets the ground so it's not so straight and clean

Keep up the great work.

Hupie

Thanks A-N-P! I agree with your critics. The cave model is currently just used as a test object. When or if im going to make a full scene, im going to fix those issues.

In the meanwhile I have been practicing more tileable rock sculpting. Here they are:

Hupie

I decided to skip the ice cave for now and instead do a rock cave. I also did a paintover on my wireframe render to get some more feeling of the mood and also for fun. I'm currently working on the temple piece by piece. First up is a pillar with a lion as base, i'm planning to use it as one of the torch pillars in front of the entrance. (reference: http://www.seetheworldinmyeyes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/130123-Travel-Day-904-2-Rock-Cut-Cave-Temple-in-Mamallapuram.jpg)





Edit: Oh, and I also made another tilable rock texture:

Hupie

Finished the highpoly, now on to lowpoly and baking!

Hupie

Made lowpoly, baked textures and made a simple diffuse material en finally had my first try in Marmoset toolbag.



Wire (not very optimized, i know)