THRONE ROOM _ The Forgotten Throne - Team Bird

hewitt96

Hello Polycount!

This is the thread for William And John - Team Bird. After kicking around some ideas for this contest, we settled on something very natural and organic with lots of opportunity to use ZBrush. We gravitated toward a Mayan and Celtic facade so we'll be creating a cavernous throne room from a forgotten kingdom loosely based on this concept by William. We'll be updating this thread periodically as we have new stuffs to show. Good Luck everyone!!

Primary Software Being Used:

Max/Maya
ZBrush
Substance tools
Photoshop
UE4


UPDATED CONCEPT:


And the reference/inspiration page:



Latest WIP

Goat Justice

Hi everyone. Just a quick intro to get my information on the record. I'm John, the second half of Team Bird. My Polycount nickname is Goat Justice. Looking forward to a fun project.

AlanSMitchell

this concept is redoncked great work so far.

hewitt96

Designed a wall.

Goat Justice

Image comp to flesh out some ideas for the throne... now on to the columns

Lawrence Preston

This is pretty epic, guys. Love the modular wall

Goat Justice

Lawrence Preston wrote: »

This is pretty epic, guys. Love the modular wall

Thanks! Yeah, William has definitely unleashed his inner concept artist on this project.

We're taking some time up front to test out a bunch of ideas before jumping into 3D. Early on we tried integrating some celtic design elements, but we're getting better result sticking to the just the mayan inspired details mixed with slightly exaggerated raw stone shapes.

Aerashi

I'm a fan of all things Mayan, will be watching Funky wall, will the reliefs have some sort of hidden meaning?

hewitt96

Aerashi wrote: »

I'm a fan of all things Mayan, will be watching Funky wall, will the reliefs have some sort of hidden meaning?

Maybe perhaps?



Gonna work on some ideas for add-ons for the wall next. And figure out how it might connect to the ceiling. Can't wait to get into ZBrush with this stuff.

hewitt96

Added a top half to the wall. I thought it would be a cool idea to explore if the very top layer of the wall was carved right out of the earth.

Aerashi

Yep, I can understand wanting to get into ZB asap with that Might I add a suggestion, the verticality is very cool, but maybe add some parts projecting out of the wall for a bit of variance? See the elephants here - http://www.quinnsgate.com/friends/cancun/images/mayan/mayan_wall_o_faces.jpg

hewitt96

@Aerashi - Yes we definitely plan to have those type of wall add-ons and more.

While we get ready to jump into full 3D production, I thought it would be a good idea to make our team a few ZBrush resources to make the High-Poly process go a bit quicker. Here a few Mayan characters and their displacement maps that we plan to use throughout the throne room.

Goat Justice

getting in on the z-brush fun

hewitt96

Starting on the base flagstone texture. I think there will be three variations by the end (probably three levels of destruction/damage).

hewitt96

Starting to take form. A bit time consuming, this method, but at the end I have a highpoly file that I can go back to if need be and make adjustments. I plan to bounce off this to make other variants that are destroyed versions.

WarrenM

great progress AND presentation guys, nice!

Karbon Protokool

Wow these displacements are a good idea:P I need to create meself some ornamentals as well. Thanks for the insight:) Nice project you guys are working on!

alimux

looks good ! i will follow your progress !

whatever

go team bird!

William3DArtist

Looking forward to this gold Mayan throne. I like the way it stands out compared to the neutral colors in the environment. I know turquoise was big in the Mayan culture. You could use that for other pieces around. Just an idea. Go Team Bird!

atomander

Beautiful sculpts guys! Really excited to see this one.

hewitt96

Thanks for the comments everyone!! I am a longtime lurker and first time contestant and am super excited to be working with John (Goat Justice) on this project. Looking forward to spending lots of time in ZBrush and substance (and UE4).

@william21984 - Yes that a great idea. I don't think John or I had thought that far ahead yet, but turquoise stuffs would provide an excellent pop of saturated color and would fit nicely into our color pallet.

Goat Justice

One last concept/sketch to post up before starting some block-outs in engine. Not as finished as the others, so it will probably evolve a bit as we go to 3D. this was the result of my attempts to find a more ornate and specifically Mayan look for the columns.



Thanks to everyone for checking out the project!

DorinD

Very good concept ! And good job with ZBrush Alpha
keep it up!!

hewitt96

A bit of a re-work of the original concept. I incorporated John's designs and re framed the image based on some feedback from some painterly-type friends. I left it pretty rough in places so I could get back to ZBrush quicker. Blockout in UE4 should follow in the next few days depending on how busy we are at our day jobs. ha ha

polytom

All about that day job juggling!

This is developing really nicely. The new concept works well

Rhetorikolas

I'm a big mesoamerican fan myself, love what you've got going so far. Probably the closest project to my idea, but still much different. Keep up the great work.

Flaw

The update to the concept art looks great. The composition and lighting look even better now.

The sculpts are looking amazing as well! I'm just going to sit back and continue to enjoy the show.

hewitt96

Thanks guys! Been working on this base sculpt of the flagstone. This is far as I'll take it in ZBrush (for now), We'll see what substance can do with the baked maps.

Goat Justice

Been silent for a few days so I guess its time for an update. I've been diving into the grey-box phase for our scene. It's not much to look at yet, but I'll be making some refinements over the weekend to the scale and proportions of the various elements.

Spoon

This has potential to be really sexy!

hewitt96

Heading to ZBrush with this one. Its going to be quite an extensive process to sculpt all these guys.

m4dcow

hewitt96 wrote: »

Heading to ZBrush with this one. Its going to be quite an extensive process to sculpt all these guys.

Not sure if its intended, but because of how the section with the 3 decorative tiles is, it will have 2 tiles in between on the borders so it would be more obvious where the texture repeats.

hewitt96

Thanks M4dcow!! Yea, this was something I was thinking about when it was being concepted. I was on the fence whether or no to change it or leave it in. I decided to leave it in as designed and have a column or buttress that separated each section. I'll have to do another concept for the column but i think it will add another level of complexity to the wall as an architectural whole (and provide more geometry than the flat wall which hopefully will cast some interesting shadows). If I ever decide to have a wall that is more than one section wide, I can always do some extra UV work to make that happen too without having the double bricks at the tiling point.

m4dcow

hewitt96 wrote: »

Thanks M4dcow!! Yea, this was something I was thinking about when it was being concepted. I was on the fence whether or no to change it or leave it in. I decided to leave it in as designed and have a column or buttress that separated each section. I'll have to do another concept for the column but i think it will add another level of complexity to the wall as an architectural whole (and provide more geometry than the flat wall which hopefully will cast some interesting shadows). If I ever decide to have a wall that is more than one section wide, I can always do some extra UV work to make that happen too without having the double bricks at the tiling point.

Cool, figured that was the case. The work so far is cool though, I'm working on a Meso-American type scene myself, but its pretty slow going.

hewitt96

Here is my work from today. Major details for the bricks at the lower portion of the wall are in. Things that are still missing: cracks, surface noise, and another medium and small detail type stuffs I can think of between now and the final pass.

WarrenM

Nice, LOVE the little relief carvings!

hewitt96

Thanks WarrenM!!

Beating up some more edges!

William3DArtist

Love the patterns. Looks awesome. Great stuff.

hewitt96

Forgot to post this the other day.

Biter

Very nice concept, looks very promising

theexpressor

the new design looks awesome

hewitt96

Hey guys. Here is an update on our blockout. Most of this work was by John. I came in after and did a quick pass of camera composition/framing and some basic lighting. We're both diving into the high-res stuff now.

hewitt96

I've been working on some ideas for the relief sculpture at the top of the wall. It has been difficult trying to come up something that is cohesive to the style and level of detail that we've set for this project, so consequently, I've scrapped a few designs that I felt were not working at that well. I think it was the fourth or fifth try that I came up with something that might work. After I sketched out the idea in photoshop, I got bored of working on the wall so I switched to a variation of the flagstone texture. Here is my progress on this so far. As always, C&C are always welcome.

hewitt96

Ugh, glad this one is behind me. Moving on to the next thing...

SeveredSon

I'm diggin this one for sure. Can't wait to see the final product. Keep up the awesome work!

hewitt96

@SeveredSon - Thanks, man!! Its been tough to find enough time for this contest for our team as we both have full-time jobs. I hope we can finish, ha ha.

Here is another update. This time on the wall segments. I baked down the normal and AO information for the lower half of the wall. I'm gonna rely on Substance to create the detail information on this. I also threw together a quick few lowpoly pieces to get some Marmoset renders (straight, corner-in, and corner-out). Eventually I hope to make a buttress thingy to avoid having that dual brick between tiling segments and hopefully create some interesting self-casted shadows.

Goat Justice

Cranking out more Mayan symbols so I can finish decorating the columns. These are a bit more quick and dirty, but I got six done in one sitting.

Flaw

Loving the updates!

Awesome work!

hewitt96

Thanks Flaw!!

Made some textures for the base wall.

hewitt96

Today's werk... Finally starting on the top portion of the wall. I've been putting it off a bit because of the complexity of the relief and having to werk out what the rocks will look like... This still has quite a ways to go before I can call it finished but I think its a good start.