[UE4] Snowy Mountain Castle
polycounter lvl 5
Greeting Polycount!
This is the beginning of a project in Unreal Engine 4. We are three guys, Zacktor, Mtr and Limeslushie and we are going to create a scene with a character that you're going to be able to move around in a third-person perspective. Exploring and interacting with the environment is the main focus of our project.
We're currently studying game development at PlaygroundSquad in Sweden and are doing this project to learn and have something extra to do outside of our studies.
Here's a rundown on what we have so far:
Setting
Our project will be set in a fantasy world, you will be able to move around inside a castle located on the side of a mountain during the winter.
Character
The main character will be a female knight.
Environment
A barren landscape located in a mountain range, some foliage with pine & spruce trees will dot the area. Lots of work will be put into the castle as it's the main focus of the scene.
We've done a lot of reference hunting and compiled some of the images into a moodboard showing the general look we're going for with our project.
Environment
FX, Shaders
Fire for braziers and torches, the breath from the character, falling snow are some of the effects we will be making.
We're also working on shaders for the terrain and we want to figure out a way to leave footprints in the snow.
Future
We'll be updating this thread as we go, comments and critiques are most welcome even though we don't have much to show at the moment. We want to share our progress right from the start so we can learn from the community as well!
This is the beginning of a project in Unreal Engine 4. We are three guys, Zacktor, Mtr and Limeslushie and we are going to create a scene with a character that you're going to be able to move around in a third-person perspective. Exploring and interacting with the environment is the main focus of our project.
We're currently studying game development at PlaygroundSquad in Sweden and are doing this project to learn and have something extra to do outside of our studies.
Here's a rundown on what we have so far:
Setting
Our project will be set in a fantasy world, you will be able to move around inside a castle located on the side of a mountain during the winter.
Character
The main character will be a female knight.
Environment
A barren landscape located in a mountain range, some foliage with pine & spruce trees will dot the area. Lots of work will be put into the castle as it's the main focus of the scene.
We've done a lot of reference hunting and compiled some of the images into a moodboard showing the general look we're going for with our project.
Environment
FX, Shaders
Fire for braziers and torches, the breath from the character, falling snow are some of the effects we will be making.
We're also working on shaders for the terrain and we want to figure out a way to leave footprints in the snow.
Future
We'll be updating this thread as we go, comments and critiques are most welcome even though we don't have much to show at the moment. We want to share our progress right from the start so we can learn from the community as well!
Replies
From the very start you should test out a workflow for each part of the scene. How many assets will each part have? How will they fit together? What texture process will be used to ensure that the textures can be re-used, changed quickly?
Thanks for the quick reply and feedback, we are currently working on our asset list and the blueprints for the castle as well as character concept art.
I've been breaking the castle down into different modules such as foundations, walls, towers and so on as I'm trying to get a clear picture in my head on how I'm going to make the different textures reusable and what props that will need their own space. If you have any tips I would very much like to hear them
Worth mentioning is that we're starting with the exterior of the castle, this includes the courtyard and the various things you can find there such as a blacksmith and a stable (without the horses). The first stage will be to have the character move around in the environment without any interactive objects, and then we'll hopefully be able to build on that and expand it further.
As you mentioned it's a pretty big project but we think it's going to be an interesting learning experience and we sincerely hope that you'll stick around to see the result in a couple of months!
Gl for the project
:thumbup:
Been working on different layouts for the castle, out of the three the one on the right seems like the one we'll be going for.
It's divided into two levels with the lower one will be the main courtyard with areas for a blacksmith, a stable and training grounds.
The upper level will have a smaller courtyard with the keep, they way up to the keep will pass underneath the barracks.
Comments and critiques are most welcome, cheers
Hello, I'm the one who's gonna be responsible for the creation of the character for this project.
I currently don't have much experience in 3D. I've made a few low poly things already but no high poly stuff. Therefore I'm hoping to learn some new things and get some art for my portfolio.
I'm starting off with character thumbnails as I want to get the design down before I move on to make the concept art which I'll be using as reference when I create the basemesh.
We selected some thumbnails we liked in the first image and then I proceeded to draw some more detailed thumbnails. And from there I got some feedback from the rest of the team who selected some detail that they liked. And now I'll be making the last pass of thumbnails which will be even more detailed before I go ahead to make the final concept art.
An early blockout of the castle wall module with collision meshes for UE
After some time playing around in UE4 I'm starting to get the hang on how to navigate and how to import meshes from maya.
Right now I'm working on blueprints and figuring out how they work, I'm trying to get the drawbridge to open and close as the player presses a button inside a hitbox. At the moment I'm able to move the mesh, as I've followed the official Unreal tutorial on how to make a sliding door. But I want to be able to rotate it with a slight delay and maybe play a sound as it descends, if anyone has any tips on how to achieve this I'd really like to hear them
Today I've spent some time blocking out the character using simple geometry and a simple basemesh in order to get a sense of the general shape and sillouette.
The blockout of the castle is coming along nicely, most of the walls and parts of the gatehouse are in place. Next up is the keep and the barracks.
As I wanted to get a feel for how the workflow from a blockout to a more detailed asset would be I decided to start with the foundation of the walls. Looked something like this: Maya -> Mudbox -> Maya -> xNormals -> Quixel -> UE4. And this is the result:
If you have any feedback whatsoever please feel free to post.
As a small two week school project I decided to focus on building the smithy, experimenting with shaders and trying different ways to approach texturing assets.
I started off making the base anatomy in mudbox and then made the basemeshes for the clothes in Marvelous Designer which I then exported to mudbox to sculpt on. Textures where made in Substance Painter and Photoshop and normals were baked in Xnormal.
It's been a while since the last update, we've been busy with assignments and we're currently working on our second game projects for school. But watching Tor Frick work on his medieval town triggered a spark of inspiration and I feel it's time to put my back into it and finish this project.
The larger placeholders are getting in place but there's still a long road ahead, feels nice to be up and running again!
I spent this weekend finishing of the last touches on this head sculp and I also did a quick paintover portrait mockup to get the feel of what the character is going to look like once its finished.