Hey guys,
this is a personal project of mine that I started working on around the time we finished Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (3 months ago give or take).I created all the props and textures for this level, hope you like it !
P.S It's still work in progress
here's a small breakdown of one of the rock props used in the level.I decided
to keep some texture space free just in case i want to add later some similar smaller prop on it I guess the low-poly mesh could be further optimised, but the prop itself is pretty huge(culling a lot of objects behind it which is a nice optimisation and when your geometry is too low-poly,as a result you often get shadow artifacts on it
The cave entrance feels to regular to be natural. I'd also expect more erosion from water - softer normal map, really.
The statue has an improbably long neck; it looks like the vines are holding it up, but they'd far more likely have knocked it off.
The grime on the sarcophagus feels rather arbitrary. I'd expect some streaks - especially near the corners and any sharp edges - from rain run-off over the years. Depending upon how long it's been there, it might suffer from erosion as well; again, primarily softening the curves and fading the incised lines.
Lowering the vines over the cave entrance a bit, so they partially obscure the entrance might help.
Thank you for the detailed feedback As for the cave and the sarcophagus - they are inspired by real-life references right down to the dirt on the sides of the sarcophagus (about the cave entrance - you'll be surprised by the shapes mother nature creates sometimes .Yeah, i'm planning on chipping a bit the contours and edges of the sarcophagus, looks too untouched right now.About the statue long neck - maybe on the shot looks that way because of the camera angle or the FOV ( it was something like 75-80).The main idea was to create really delicate looking elegant female figure.Anyway, thank you again for pointing these things out
Christ that looks good, I don't even have anything to say. Can't wait to see that next-gen non AC Pirate game, hope you'll be one of the ones working on it. Great job!
Well for the rocks i used two main approaches - half of the rocks were made in zbrush and are using baked normal( for the sculpting i used mainly claytubes, trim dynamic, clip curve and some custom alphas i created using Ndo2 form rock photographs), or with tileable rock textures (made again in zbrush and used on low-poly meshes)
this is the short ingame footage from the level.I apologise for the camera movement, but at the time I had to record the whole thing by hand in the editor and in the end that caused a lot of glitchy movement
Awesome Environment, Bookmarked! You have left me both jealous and inspired. Whats your method for those fine rock flakes and the layered look in your first tileable texture breakdown? Im still having trouble with those in zbrush.
well I use trim dynamic with the focal point set to -85-90 to flatten details that i add with the claytubes brush,also at some places i cut with the clip curve brush
also the custom alphas help a lot.I made them with the program NDo2 to grab heightmap textures from real rock photographs, it doesnt work well every time but some of them are quite useful after some tweaking in Photoshop
Increidble work man! Lovin how well placed is everything, and the deatils on it...
Would you mind throwing some numbers about the amount of asets you did create for it? Like vegetation, rock modules...
Ummm, these are not 100% correct numbers but roughly :
3 grass props
4 trees (1 with dead branches , 3 green, different in shape)
2 types of ferns ( mainly for the caves)
3 variatons of ivy
around 5-6 rock props ( with some scale and rotating you can create amazing variety with very low number of props, i eas really pressed by time so I went for that approach)
5-6 bigger cliff props (half are using unique baked normals, the other ones are using tileable textures)
around 20 man-made props - statues, sarcophagus, bridge, torches, firepits, stone columns and stairs, runestone ,wooden doors with carvings , etc
Again, i tried to do as much as possible with a pretty low number of props(since i had to make all the textures for them), you don't need 20 variatons of rocks to create great looking rock formations and caves :P
Ummm, these are not 100% correct numbers but roughly :
3 grass props
4 trees (1 with dead branches , 3 green, different in shape)
2 types of ferns ( mainly for the caves)
3 variatons of ivy
around 5-6 rock props ( with some scale and rotating you can create amazing variety with very low number of props, i eas really pressed by time so I went for that approach)
5-6 bigger cliff props (half are using unique baked normals, the other ones are using tileable textures)
around 20 man-made props - statues, sarcophagus, bridge, torches, firepits, stone columns and stairs, runestone ,wooden doors with carvings , etc
Again, i tried to do as much as possible with a pretty low number of props(since i had to make all the textures for them), you don't need 20 variatons of rocks to create great looking rock formations and caves :P
Great info man! As you said, optimization is great, specially when turning and scaling things... just was a lil curious about it, cuz it looks great, and i wasnt really sure about the number of different stuff there... I've seen the stuff you got from AC...and how guys use modular construction, and the ending result is so great, specially when getting all together!
Well,if anyone has questions about the creation of something specific in the level, I'll try to answer the best i can but right now I'm kinda relaxing after finishing the level and not really having the energy to post a lot of breakdowns
As for the fire - yeah, i know that the heat effect is pretty over-exaggerated and i'll try to reduce it's intensity.I didnt have a lot of time to mess around with the particle editor in cryengine but for this specific effect the modifiers did.nt really allow me to change the intensity of the effect only the speed of the waves the direction and the distance after which they fade out.Hopefully after some more research a'll be able to really reduce the distort effect,Thanks for the feedback !
I was just about to comment on this as well. Apart from the intense heatwaves though, everything is really well made! It gives me an urge to play Skyrim again.
My hat off to you sir, you've made a wonderful environment.
Oh yeah, a note on the video: You should have set up a camera path or used a controller instead of your mouse. With the mouse movements, the video is really snappy which is a bit annoying in terms of the presentation. Otherwise, solid work. I really liked the first soundtrack you used btw. :thumbup:
Yeah,somebody pointed out few days after i uploaded the video how i could set a camera path in cryengine for smooth camera movement and I was ready to jump from the window )) When i get the level in more complete shape, i'll make another video and i promise no more shaky movement
btw, i wanted to ask you guys if you are able to generate cubemaps from the environment probes in the latest version of the SDk (version: 3.5.6), because right now I can't and is really frustrating since the new release have really nice TOD in the forest level, but i cant use this release since all my cubemap data gets corrupted.
Very inspirational, I am actually working on a level with similar mood and environment, obviously the quality will never match this awesomeness, as I am having constant problems with SDK (just started using it) and my skill is not that far. Anyway, I have a question regarding the Clouds and the mountains, that are being covered by them.
- How did you do the clouds, are they just planes with alpha or a real paticle effect.
- Are those mountains part of a massive terrain or is it a separate big mesh creating a silhouette of the background?
Hi Gendolf, sorry for replying just now, been very busy these weeks
1.there aren't really cloud entities in the scene, just fog and some particle emitters with "dense fog "effect (available in the xml particle libraries in the SDK)attached to them that proceduraly generates slowly moving dense fog cloud
2.The mountains are separate props made with mudbox and world machine, actually it's just one prop that i cloned and rotated
hope this helps, if tyou have any other questions i'll be happy to help
Replies
Really enjoyed the composition and lighting that went on for the cave scenes! As well as the huge scale! Ha how long did that scene take you?
to keep some texture space free just in case i want to add later some similar smaller prop on it I guess the low-poly mesh could be further optimised, but the prop itself is pretty huge(culling a lot of objects behind it which is a nice optimisation and when your geometry is too low-poly,as a result you often get shadow artifacts on it
The statue has an improbably long neck; it looks like the vines are holding it up, but they'd far more likely have knocked it off.
The grime on the sarcophagus feels rather arbitrary. I'd expect some streaks - especially near the corners and any sharp edges - from rain run-off over the years. Depending upon how long it's been there, it might suffer from erosion as well; again, primarily softening the curves and fading the incised lines.
Lowering the vines over the cave entrance a bit, so they partially obscure the entrance might help.
Could you give us some insight into how you did the rock mesh? Was that in zbrush? Which brushes did you use?
Congrats
this is the short ingame footage from the level.I apologise for the camera movement, but at the time I had to record the whole thing by hand in the editor and in the end that caused a lot of glitchy movement
also the custom alphas help a lot.I made them with the program NDo2 to grab heightmap textures from real rock photographs, it doesnt work well every time but some of them are quite useful after some tweaking in Photoshop
Would you mind throwing some numbers about the amount of asets you did create for it? Like vegetation, rock modules...
Great, great work! Congratulations!
3 grass props
4 trees (1 with dead branches , 3 green, different in shape)
2 types of ferns ( mainly for the caves)
3 variatons of ivy
around 5-6 rock props ( with some scale and rotating you can create amazing variety with very low number of props, i eas really pressed by time so I went for that approach)
5-6 bigger cliff props (half are using unique baked normals, the other ones are using tileable textures)
4-5 cave modules ( tunnels, 90 degrees turn module , etc)
around 20 man-made props - statues, sarcophagus, bridge, torches, firepits, stone columns and stairs, runestone ,wooden doors with carvings , etc
Again, i tried to do as much as possible with a pretty low number of props(since i had to make all the textures for them), you don't need 20 variatons of rocks to create great looking rock formations and caves :P
Great info man! As you said, optimization is great, specially when turning and scaling things... just was a lil curious about it, cuz it looks great, and i wasnt really sure about the number of different stuff there... I've seen the stuff you got from AC...and how guys use modular construction, and the ending result is so great, specially when getting all together!
Thanks again man, really pleasure to read you!
As for the fire - yeah, i know that the heat effect is pretty over-exaggerated and i'll try to reduce it's intensity.I didnt have a lot of time to mess around with the particle editor in cryengine but for this specific effect the modifiers did.nt really allow me to change the intensity of the effect only the speed of the waves the direction and the distance after which they fade out.Hopefully after some more research a'll be able to really reduce the distort effect,Thanks for the feedback !
I was just about to comment on this as well. Apart from the intense heatwaves though, everything is really well made! It gives me an urge to play Skyrim again.
My hat off to you sir, you've made a wonderful environment.
Oh yeah, a note on the video: You should have set up a camera path or used a controller instead of your mouse. With the mouse movements, the video is really snappy which is a bit annoying in terms of the presentation. Otherwise, solid work. I really liked the first soundtrack you used btw. :thumbup:
btw, i wanted to ask you guys if you are able to generate cubemaps from the environment probes in the latest version of the SDk (version: 3.5.6), because right now I can't and is really frustrating since the new release have really nice TOD in the forest level, but i cant use this release since all my cubemap data gets corrupted.
- How did you do the clouds, are they just planes with alpha or a real paticle effect.
- Are those mountains part of a massive terrain or is it a separate big mesh creating a silhouette of the background?
Once again, Amazing work Petar !
1.there aren't really cloud entities in the scene, just fog and some particle emitters with "dense fog "effect (available in the xml particle libraries in the SDK)attached to them that proceduraly generates slowly moving dense fog cloud
2.The mountains are separate props made with mudbox and world machine, actually it's just one prop that i cloned and rotated
hope this helps, if tyou have any other questions i'll be happy to help