[UDK] Winter Camp - Dragon Age II Inspired Env

NickGW

I spent my winter break working on a new environment so I thought I'd finally make a thread for it. It's based on a piece of concept art for Dragon Age II but takes a more stylized leaning similar to skyrim.

My goal was to capture the early morning feel with the definite coldness created by the blue tint the concept has. I also wanted to work with vertex blending some more so I used it for the ground and most props to cover parts in snow.

I still have a lot to do before I call this finished but I'm really happy with the progress I made over my break. Here's a rough to do list.

- finish the dog statue
- update stone supports for the wood bridge
- clean up floor vertex blending
- update snow in floor material to look less clean
- create debris and additional mesh variations.
- adjust meshes with thatch to emphasize organic nature
- thatch alpha for stray strands
- adjust vertex painting per mesh for variation
- play with lighting and post processing till it looks right

As always any feedback and comments are greatly appreciated, thanks for stopping by!


The Concept



Progress Shots

lloydj14

A really nice start, great work. i think u have identified everything that needs to be done to work towards the a finished article.

NickGW

Thanks for the comment lloydj14 and sorry for the late response.

Another update! I haven't had as much time to work on this so I've only been able to tackle a few of the changes and additions I mentioned above. I have a long weekend off so my hope is to get more debris variations (stone blocks and broken wood) as well as tilable debris texture for a few scattered piles. The post processing and lighting have also seen a huge change. I've gone towards a blue tint across the scene to emphasize the coldness and the obvious complimentary orange from the fire. The sun area is kinda overexposed so I'm gonna keep tuning that so it's not such a dominant element.

The background structures in the first image are too far back and feel too small so I want to play with their position a bit.I also feel like there should be a tower or wall remnants along in the area currently filled with sky on the right side of the second image. Maybe both?

Thats it for now, next update will hopefully be sometime Monday evening.

NickGW

The updates a day late but I was able to do most of what I wanted to over the weekend. I made a somewhat destroyed tower and a few larger walls with battlements to fill out the background. I also made the tiling debris texture but wasn't able to make the meshes for it. Now that I have the tower and battlements modeled I feel like I need to make a trim set to accompany them and break up the stonewall texture. I also still need to make the destroyed battlement mesh and decorate that area with stone blocks and the debris mounds.

That's it for now, hopefully I'll have some more updates soon.

KazeoHin

looking good, but I'm missing that grittiness. That feeling of cold, wet mud and sun-melting snow trickling down wet brick walls.

NickGW

@ KazeoHin

Having melted snow trickle down the stone walls is a great idea, and I also have an extra channel for the floor material so I can fit in pooled water as well. When you say gritty are you talking about just the mud and snow or the scene as a whole? I'm still working on bits of debris (broken stone chunks, rocks etc) that will add a roughness and deterioration to the scene.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll start working on the trickling water when I get home tonight.

NickGW

Ok another update! I've put in trickling water for the stone wall material. Still tweaking how much is visible in the diffuse and the strength of the spec. I might try and make it look a little more frosty/frozen to suggest melting but also refreezing. Not sure how well that will read but I don't want the melted snow to convey too much warmth.

I've also put in the ability to create puddles and wet areas for the floor material. I'm mostly using this for small puddles in a few areas and along the edge of areas of the snow. The spec for the mud has also been tweaked to give it more shine and wetness although in some cases the spec makes it blend with the snow and water causing the mud to almost disappear. Something I'll have to address.

The wall in the background has the rubble landslide but still needs pieces of debris to poke out from the mound. I'll start adding debris, rocks etc this weekend and work on improving the grit and age of the environment as a whole.

NickGW

I feel like I'm just about done and hoping to wrap it up this weekend. Made some prop placement adjustments as well as adding in debris piles, stone blocks and small rocks. Also created a different skybox (still using a modified version of the procedural sky material) to better match the softer and larger clouds in the concept.

I'm still not super happy with the snow. It doesn't feel like it has that natural accumulation and detail. I'm currently just using snow painted on the floor meshes and a few meshes for piles but I think I'll make some smaller meshes to place on top of the larger ones to achieve an effect similar to what was done in Uncharted 2 as seen here.

Thats it for now, hope to have another update with the final shots on Monday.

NickGW

These are the final shots I'm gonna go with for my portfolio. Thanks again for the feedback lloydj14 and KazeoHin.