Age of Blood | Aether Control Room Environment

aeonbluestar

Hi everyone. I'm here to do an art dump for an environment that I have been working on. This is for the game Age of Blood, which is an indie game being made by a (very) small team that I run. I am the creator of the original lore, co-writer of the expanded lore, co-game designer, art director, and environment artist. There area handful of us altogether and we each wear many hats. Like I said, small team

This is environment is referred to as the Aether Control Room. It's a room inside of a temple that was used by the ancient inhabitants to try and control rift portals between realms. The room essentially acts as a gateway to an exterior courtyard where a large rift portal has ripped through the ground, which is what I will be building after this. This scene here is in Unreal Engine 4 and is part of an actual playable map. The scene itself is meant to be eery and slightly uncomfortable, as it was not only built as the entry area to the actual main rift itself, but also as a warning to that you shouldn't mess with the other realms. The goal of this room for the player is to infuse the aether control device with their corresponding key element to activate the globe in the center. This gives you access to the courtyard outside where the central rift is found.

I'm trying to improve my skills as an artist, so any feedback from you 3D gurus is greatly appreciated and will help me make the rest of the environments better. The original goal of the game was to generate a solid portfolio/resume piece for eventually breaking into the industry as a professional. So I am definitely interested in pointers on improvements.

Thanks guys, and now to the art:


Wide shot of the room.


Wide shot of the room from a different angle.


The reaper statue that holds the Heart of Ice which the player must extract the essence of ice from.


The gate portal that the player traveled through to get into this room.


The fire element aether control device area.


The ice element aether control device area.


The door leading out to the courtyard. In the playable map, this is hidden behind a wall that fades away when the aether globe is activated.


A collectible eldritch book in a side alcove related to the fire element. This may end up getting moved to a different area, but I wanted to show it here anyway.


Here is an early in-game development shot of the character (and her pet) whom this campaign belongs to. That thing floating up above the reaper statue is a Flux Target for the Flux Thread game mechanic. If you remember the hookshot from Zelda or the grappling hook from Tomb Raider, then you know exactly how this thing works.


Thanks everyone for taking a look!

audi100

Hey right now the room looks visually cluttered and pretty boring lightning wise. The main thing causing this are the glowing lines on the ground and ceiling. I would get rid of the ceiling glow and maybe just have parts of the ground glowing if you want to convey some energy flow. Right now it makes it look like a weird mix between scifi and fantasy(tron). For an ancient temple it also looks really clean, maybe some debris/fallen over pillars, cracked walls ceiling etc. can convey that?

Another thing is that the ground is all one height. Maybe you can heighten up the most important element of the room and make it highlighted (light, godray from above). Players are like moths that go towards the light, right now I'd be lost in that room and would not now where to go or whats important in that room.

Also it has kind a blocky feel, a way to break this up would be for example some archs that support the ceiling (maybe some supporting columns in the middle of the room around the globe. I'd recommend looking at some architecture for ideas, there are plenty of medieval halls and churches that have those supporting structures.

Not sure about the stary universe floor can't really tell what it is.

Quick overpaint to illustrate the mentioned points

aeonbluestar

Thank you for the feedback, Audi.

This gives me some ideas already. I actually have an opening in the ceiling above the globe, so some sort of godrays coming from that would definitely make sense. I can also do some stuff with vertex painting to address the flowing energy in the floors. Support pillars/arches would also give me more opportunity for damage and debris.

I can also see from your paintover that your idea of what is and what isn't important stuff to get once you're inside of the room isn't completely accurate, so that is something I definitely need to address with the visuals. The portal, for example, is what you came through to get here. So once you're in, you don't really need to worry about it anymore. But the part you marked as should not be highlighted is the device that you need to use for the puzzle in the room. Essentially, you collect the heart of ice from the reaper statue to use in that device. I was thinking the path and existing lighting would help guide the player to the important bits, but I can see what you mean where that's not enough, especially just looking at an image with no backstory on the scene. Your lighting in the paintover also gives me a better idea on how to light the room, which is probably the most appreciated because I will admit that lighting is definitely one of my major weaknesses.

That stary universe floor is actually thick glass peering down into a space scene that is actually animated. That is there to help with the gradually growing aesthetic throughout the game that invokes a Lovecraft inspired sense of cosmic proportions. Both the gods and strange creatures of the world are aliens that came from the stars, and the different realms are pocket universes. That's a whole other part of the lore behind it all that is a little much to go into for this thread here.

Once again, thanks for the feedback and thanks for the extra effort with the awesome paint over! I wanted to call this scene pretty close to done, but I think I will put some more work into it over the weekend.

audi100

No problem, you should definetely study lighting and how it is used to convey feelings and support composition. There are a lot of great examples from paintings and movies. You'll be surprised how much is actually not lit at all or very dim.
Its probably the second most important thing after a good layout. Scrap all the asset and texture quality if the lighting sucks its all for the dogs. There is a reason studios hire experts just to light out the enironments.

The thing with the floor probably makes more sense in motion then .
But you could add some thikness to the sides, so the ground floor does not look like its a thin plane.

aeonbluestar

I didn't get as much work done over the weekend due to time constraints, but I wanted to post a progress update anyway.

I did manage to make a new platform for the globe, and edited the corresponding hole in the ceiling to match it. This raises is up a bit off the ground. Not much, but some, and the circular shape stands out to me way more than the old square shape.

I created some heftier support pillars and an arch support to go along with them. Due to the shape of the room, it wasn't possible to connect a few of the support pillars in places. I also attempted to add the pillars and arches throughout the room as suggested, but the space is not large enough for it. It messed with the flow of combat too much. The combat was designed with a God of War/Darksiders style philosophy and requires some open space to work out well. Even for this character, which is ranged, still needs the open space for kiting. I am considering adding in some rafters with half arches that meet the wall to break up the flat ceiling though.

I removed the covering glow on the floors and ceiling and delegated it to a vertex color in the material. This allowed me to actually crank up the intensity on the glow and use soft strokes to blend it.

Lighting has a long way to go still. I did start on a new lighting pass though. Added in major lights to highlight specific areas of interest. Looks like I have a lightmap issue on one of my new meshes (around the globe in the center) so I need to address that. After watching some of the Solus tutorials, I decided to give it a go testing lighting out with inverse square falloff turned off for a few lights, essentially going back to UE3 style lighting. That does seem easier to control. Still haven't made any godrays yet for the center. But that's next.

Next up will be godrays and a clutter pass. I've got some texture space mapped out in my pillar/arch texture for some general stone clutter.

Thanks for having a look!