Orc Encampment Diorama [WIP]

mhofever

ORC ENCAMPMENT - AN UNREAL 4 ENVIRONMENT DIORAMA

Hello everybody! I've been working on my first UE4 environment, which is an orc encampment diorama. After playing some Shadow of Mordor and inspired by Warlords of Draenor, I wanted to create a stylised orc encampment.

Originally I hadn't planned on making a full diorama, I was mucking about with asset creation one day and it evolved into this so far. I haven't created any environments/dioramas for a while as I've usually been working on props most of the time, so thought I'd get into it again.

I really do appreciate any feedback as I'm quite hopeful of this turning out to look good, so far it's shaping to be so, but of course, I need different opinions from other people.








The orcs in this universe are more like the Warcraft orcs, proud warriors with honour as opposed to the ones in Lord of the Rings, where everywhere they go, the land decays.

The banner sort of spoofs the Eye of Sauron banner that the Mordor orcs used. I'm thinking of impoorting multiple textures of the banner with different alphas as it will make the banners more unique.


Things I've yet to add :

- Weapons and armour rack
- Blacksmith area
- Vegetation (more bushes, flowers, plants, etc.)
- Particles (fire, flies, butterflies, etc.)
- Camp props (misc. items)
- More backdrop variations (maybe a castle in the distance)

I'm trying make it look like the area around is deforested as they needed the logs to craft the spiked walls.

I've spent 10 hours or so to get what I have at the moment, with more time put in, it will surely be much more detailed!

DWalker

The walls don't seem to be providing much protection with the large openings, and placing the camp on a flat plain without any trenches or earthen ramparts.

Personally, I think orcs could follow one of two models - independent & chaotic fighters (e.g. Celts) or strict disciplinarians (e.g. Romans), and you seem to be leaning towards the Roman model. I think that could be shown in their fortifications; consider the following:

Doesn't that look like something a disciplined band of orcs could put up? Note that the Romans would establish a similar fort every night - AFTER marching all day.

As an alternative to the standard log walls, there could be smaller horizontal twigs or branches woven between the upright posts (i.e. wattle).

Any openings really should have gates, and if you're going with the roman theme, there will be 4 gates, one in the center of each of the walls.

Simple leather tents would work well here, especially if it's a temporary camp.

mhofever

You're right, it does need to be walled off with gates. Originally I had planned on having this as a sort of vertical slice or diorama of an interior part of the camp (where the higher ranking captains would be) but I think I'll expand the camp to create space for the tents.

The twig barricades you mentioned, I'll create those but I'll test out placing them outside around the spiked wall area and see how that turns out, also maybe even a guard tower in case they need to alert the camp.

mhofever

Some progress, not much stuff added other than textures for some of the previously untextered models, a couple of new foliage, gates (the left side still needs to walled off).

Still need a lot more vegetation and natural stuff as well as stuff for the interior of the camp.

MattyWS

Very cool so far! Although in the bottom image it seems strange that the geometry grass is so much bigger than the texture on the ground.

hedvix

Looking good man. Definitely gives me the whole "world of warcraft" feel to it. Maybe add a "skull" prop here and there since its an ORC camp?

mhofever

MattyWS wrote: »

Very cool so far! Although in the bottom image it seems strange that the geometry grass is so much bigger than the texture on the ground.

Good point, might need to increase the size of the texture.

DWalker

The problem with a portcullis is that it needs to be raised/lowered from a height at least twice as high as the gate. You could add a pair of tall columns, I suppose, or a gatehouse, but it might be simpler to change to a swinging or sliding design, or even something like a drawbridge.

mhofever

hedvix wrote: »

Looking good man. Definitely gives me the whole "world of warcraft" feel to it. Maybe add a "skull" prop here and there since its an ORC camp?

Thanks, that's exactly the sort of vibe I want the diorama to feel as I was inspired by Warlords of Draenor into do this little piece of environment.

Skulls on pikes is definitely on my to do list.

mhofever

I've had an idea about the portcullis. I'm thinking of setting winches at the sides of the columns and have it as a rope mechanism, meaning when the orcs use the winch, the rope at the most bottom part of the wooden row pushes the gate upwards. Both the rope and wood'll have to be of strong material, so I might go back to the gate and add some textures to indicate it's strength.



I've also used CrazyBump to render out the dirt normals and the lighting against the dirt goes quite well here but I need to edit the dirt material to make it a little more subtle.



I've been focusing a lot on texture changes and the technical side, I need to continue creating more models for the scene. The tents, food, bowls, mugs, bones, weapons, probably even a little blacksmith area (because orcs gotta keep them weapons in mint condition!).

MattyWS

I think your dirt is too glossy, unless you were going for a muddy look?

mhofever

MattyWS wrote: »

I think your dirt is too glossy, unless you were going for a muddy look?

I've yet to fix it in the material editor but you've given me an idea on how I can get certain parts of dirt to look wet.

Gannon

two main things stick out aside from the glossy ground.

The ground is super flat looking and doesn't offer much elevation change around any of the structures like the walls. I would half expect to see it built up a little higher in some areas.

The second is the pencil shaped wooden walls. Get some that aren't perfectly pointed. A few extra triangles to wonk the tips could be cool.

AutoExit

I like that! It would be a good idea to put some trees,bushes, rocks or props between Orc's camp and mountains on background. For me space around camp looks to empty. But it's only my suggestion. Good luck on your project!

Zinco

Jeez this is just looking awesome

mhofever

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone!

Taking Gannon's advice, I ended up expanding the landscape a little to show the camp on a hilly..well...hill, which gives me more room to add extra stuff around, as AutoExit said, I'll make some modular cliff rock assets to try add more to the surroundings. Since because the map has been extended a little, I'll definitely need to make a lot more foliage to make it more lush (though was thinking maybe around the camp foliage will be less dense).







Also some assets with sculpt and textures shown, will add more of them soon. I tend to sculpt in the basic detail then using textures to add more to it and sometimes using CrazyBump to re-generate the normals from the textures.







Was going to add cloth physics to the banner but APEX somehow buggers up my 3DS Max, so I'm leaving cloth simulation out for now till I find a solution.