THRONE ROOM - Fisherman's Kingdom - Kimmokaunela
ngon master
This is going to be awesome comp! Nice ideas you got there fellow polycounters!
I want to do something different. No epic halls, or gold. I want to create something more modest. I also want to learn some new tricks.
New story:
A fisherman named Thomas lived on an small island. He was the only person in that huge sea area so naturally he felt himself like a king. That´s why he build a throne for him by just using an old rowing boat and a few meters of rope. He used to sit there and look over the sea. Thomas was a simple man that liked to fish and enjoy the nature. One day he left to fishing like he did every morning but he never returned. Since then the throne has been waiting it´s master to return.
The tools are going to be:
3ds max
ZBrush
Unity 4.6
Photoshop
Xnormal
Substance Designer
ShaderForge for Unity to build my own shaders
This is going to be fun but also very time consuming so I need to start concepting!
Latest progress:
I want to do something different. No epic halls, or gold. I want to create something more modest. I also want to learn some new tricks.
New story:
A fisherman named Thomas lived on an small island. He was the only person in that huge sea area so naturally he felt himself like a king. That´s why he build a throne for him by just using an old rowing boat and a few meters of rope. He used to sit there and look over the sea. Thomas was a simple man that liked to fish and enjoy the nature. One day he left to fishing like he did every morning but he never returned. Since then the throne has been waiting it´s master to return.
The tools are going to be:
3ds max
ZBrush
Unity 4.6
Photoshop
Xnormal
Substance Designer
ShaderForge for Unity to build my own shaders
This is going to be fun but also very time consuming so I need to start concepting!
Latest progress:
Replies
Here is something that I collected for the envy itself:
Here is something that may help me to make that throne:
And here is the mood that I want to have in the final shots:
Can´t wait to start making some textures and shaders there. I don´t know if I have any changes agains UE4 or CE3 with a simple Unity 4.6 but I´m going to do my best. My pc is too weak for the other engines
BTW. That pink thing is just for the scale.
I´m trying to use all my freetime with this project and make more assets when I can. Now that I have some ground textures I want to have some vegetation stuff aswell so I can start creating the scene in Unity. I modeled the grass in 3ds max and use a camera to render it out. I also placed green, red and blue lights in there to get a nice normal map. Need to add more variation in the textures later on.
And here is the Unity shot with that shader in action. I need to modify the uvs at some point and also the lighting and billion other thing.
I tweaked the ground shader to blend better with the different textures. I did also add more control for blending the normal maps so now I can blend the bigger details better with the smaller ones. I also added the grass but that needs more fixing. I also tweaked the lighting a little more. Really liking the mood of those orange lights. I´m planning to add some lanters there to emit that light. Chrome balls are just placeholders for those.
Now that the envy is pretty good shade I can start making the throne. That is just a small blockout but I want it to be pretty simple. I think it´s much easier to build the envy first and then the props. This way they fit better to surrounding.
I found this small poem that I like and that really works as a reference.
The fisherman goes out at dawn - When every one's abed, - And from the bottom of the sea - Draws up his daily bread.
His life is strange ; half on the shore - And half upon the sea - Not quite a fish, - and yet not quite - The same as you and me.
The fisherman has curious eyes - They make you feel so queer, - As if they had seen many things - Of wonder and of fear.
They're like the sea on foggy days, - Not gray, nor yet quite blue - They 're like the wondrous tales he tells - Not quite -- yet maybe -- true.
He knows so much of boats and tides, - Of winds and clouds and sky - But when I tell of city things, - He sniffs and shuts one eye!
Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/the-fisherman-by-abbie-farwell-brown#ixzz3QU81jZHl
Family Frie
So the next step is to model the throne and start texturing with substance painter!
In near future the Earth almost vanished due to the high human population and waste. This caused the Earth´s core to start collapsing and that meant huge destructions and events in the global scale. Ground layers started to fall.
The population that survived started to build the STRUCTURE. Huge machine that supports the whole Earth and prevent it from dying. 70% of the planet vanished and the cities were rebuild on top of the STRUCTURE. Rest of the planet was split into different sectors that were the quarantine zones. In these zones the nature started to grow back stronger than ever before.
Many moved to these complex stations but some wanted to stay. One of those was the old fisherman named Thomas. He was the only human in that sector so he was able to rule how he wanted. When there were no others to fish, Thomas had full control of the nature.
One day he went to fishing with his boat like usual but never returned. It maybe because the nature has it´s ways to reclaim what belongs to it. Since then the throne has been waiting for him to return.
I started to model the new throne. Hi-poly modeling so far. I´m starting to like it´s design. I also started to block out the STRUCTURE pillars that are going to hold the ground. I also tweaked the lighting in Unity and added grass but I´m not fully happy how it looks. I also hand paint some flowers there but they need more work like everything in the scene.
I think this sci-fi look will work much better than what I had in mind when I started this.
I run the pro optimizer in max to decimate the throne hi-poly model a bit to get it in Unity so that´s why it looks like sh<3t
I also added more control to the ground shader and it´s starting to be really complex but I think it´s still pretty cheap to render. Now I can paint grass there using my blue vertex color, green is for the stones and red is for sand. Vertex alpha is blending dark color and boost the specularity for vet areas.
I also made the low poly pillars and baked fast maps to test in Unity. Next I´m going to model the throne hi poly and the low. Bake down some maps and then start to texture stuff in Designer and test the Painter.
One big thing is that I´m still figuring out the right throne design. I modeled hi-poly robotic chair but it´s not looking the way I want. I have a crazy idea about some sort of old rocking chair. That would create a nice contrast between the scifi and old times. Time is also running very fast so I need to get that design in my head soon.
I also started to model more props and vegetation but their priority are very low. It feels that no matter how hard I try, Unity 4.6 can´t match the level of eye candy that UE4 has. It feels that I´m doing 80% of time technical stuff and 20% is the art. Maybe I´m just optimizing too much but I decided to go with a little more stylized with this one. This project showed me that shaders are fun to work with. DX11 tesselation would be awesome but my 5,5 years old DX10 GPU thinks otherwise
I also started to build more props.
I made a low poly throne around 10k. I also made uvs and baked some maps. Then I created a fast template in Substance Designer. Always nice to work with Designer even thought I´m a noob with it but I managed to get good results and it was fast. I wanted to test Painter but my GPU is too damn old and weak. Then I continued with photoshop to add small things and throw textures to Unity. I also made a shader for that and now every shader is hand made. Next I need to start making better uv´s for the ground, add more vegetations, props, tweaked shaders more and so on
I´m planning to add more props into that same texture atlas to optimize a bit.
Its a fish trap in English.
I also modeled some hi-poly plants and baked those down with the same workflow that I used with the grass. I found out that using simple gradient maps inside 3ds max allowed me to create a pretty good base for the color pass. Using UV1 and UV2 I could add different gradients and blended those together with some noise. It´s so fast to set up something like this.
I basically rendered plants with camera inside 3ds max with a simple lighting. I also found out a really nice way to render normal maps by using red, green and blue lights and using another lights that are negative and opposite to them. Then I just combined those in Photoshop and hand painted some parts. Vegetation was one of the thing that I wanted to learn during this project.
I also modeled some alga but I´m not sure if I´m going to use it. I also decided to forget that scifi theme and go with this.
Yes that scifi theme was a bad choice. I realized that real-life can be as interesting. I also wanted to keep nature elements there because those are important for the backstory.
I think it´s much more interesting to see more modest and organic environment than big halls with gold everywhere or scifi pillars standing for no reason on the ground so that´s why I went with this nature idea.
Thinking now it was maybe a bad choice because there are so much work that you need to with nature and Unity 4.6 can´t really do all that stuff that is possible with UE4. However I think it was more interesting this way because I needed to find solutions for those issues and that is something I like to do a lot
BTW One cool trick to add fake kind of moss into stones is to just simply use normal map blue channel and lerp a green color with that. It´s not perfect but it´s very fast to set up and since it´s in the shader so then you can animate it.
I also start to concept the way that tree trunk is going to lay in the scene.
Right now I´m tweaking the normals in the vegetations and adding some particle systems to add more depth to the scene.
I want to model a fish skull that is going to go in the throne. I think it will give it the final touch
There is some depth alpha sorting kind of problems with that fish trap. Once again something that I need to solve.
It took a lot of time and testing to find that throne design. Sometimes you have to iterate a lot to get what you want. I think it fit well in there but it´s also a little different so that the eye catch it.
Just a thought!
I did that fish skull that I was talking about. I think it will give a little more attitude for the throne. I still need to tweak textures. I also found a better place to upload images so good bye potato quality shots