THRONE ROOM - The Throne of the Last Traveller - Scribes
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Hi. Myself and The Scanner Darkly have decided to give this throne challenge a go under the team name "Item 42".
For this environment challenge I thought about the historical significance of the throne.
A throne is often a powerful symbol of a state or religious leader's influence. The earliest thrones were used by religious dignitaries whom--depending on their rank--were thought of as being in intimate or direct communion with their god (or gods).
Religious objects can also become sacred. Churches sometimes house "cathedras"(like St Peter's cathedra), chairs that symbolise the Seat of God or other holy figures or concepts.
For a cosmic-horror spin on the throne room challenge, I therefore imagine a sacred throne that conveys the will of a primordial god, whose followers believe that the only way to admit oneself into heaven is to accept non-existence as the highest state of being. To be annihilated by the 'Throne of the Traveller' is the most compelling end to a zealot's pilgrimage.
A throne of this sort would convey real power, not just holy symbolism. The cross-shaped church below (in which the Throne resides) is hence a mixture of Beksinski's organic corruption crossed with an industrial or electrical aesthetic, much like the industrial spires of Rupture Farms. In short, meet the Demonic Electric Chair.
So, our throne room idea thus far is a blend of the unholy, the ancient and a hefty dose of techno greeble against a palette of burning reds and cold blues. The throne itself will dominate the centre of the room and will mirror the aesthetic of the tower.
We've started an initial greyboxing of the tower in 3dsmax into ue4. I've also started drawing a few concepts for the throne that I intend to publish soon. We are creating this environment using the following programs: 3dsmax, zbrush, quixel suite, substance designer, ue4 and photoshop (so far).
We have some initial images, but for the moment please enjoy this unpalatable wall of text and a quick sketch of my idea for the throne room exterior.
Thanks for reading my first polycount post.
For this environment challenge I thought about the historical significance of the throne.
A throne is often a powerful symbol of a state or religious leader's influence. The earliest thrones were used by religious dignitaries whom--depending on their rank--were thought of as being in intimate or direct communion with their god (or gods).
Religious objects can also become sacred. Churches sometimes house "cathedras"(like St Peter's cathedra), chairs that symbolise the Seat of God or other holy figures or concepts.
For a cosmic-horror spin on the throne room challenge, I therefore imagine a sacred throne that conveys the will of a primordial god, whose followers believe that the only way to admit oneself into heaven is to accept non-existence as the highest state of being. To be annihilated by the 'Throne of the Traveller' is the most compelling end to a zealot's pilgrimage.
A throne of this sort would convey real power, not just holy symbolism. The cross-shaped church below (in which the Throne resides) is hence a mixture of Beksinski's organic corruption crossed with an industrial or electrical aesthetic, much like the industrial spires of Rupture Farms. In short, meet the Demonic Electric Chair.
So, our throne room idea thus far is a blend of the unholy, the ancient and a hefty dose of techno greeble against a palette of burning reds and cold blues. The throne itself will dominate the centre of the room and will mirror the aesthetic of the tower.
We've started an initial greyboxing of the tower in 3dsmax into ue4. I've also started drawing a few concepts for the throne that I intend to publish soon. We are creating this environment using the following programs: 3dsmax, zbrush, quixel suite, substance designer, ue4 and photoshop (so far).
We have some initial images, but for the moment please enjoy this unpalatable wall of text and a quick sketch of my idea for the throne room exterior.
Thanks for reading my first polycount post.
Replies
1. Concept Art
Below you will see quite a drastic move away from our first idea to something more Gothic in nature for the exterior of the level:
As for the most important part, the interior will be something akin to the rough sketch below, with a few details missing:
The throne is a conduit of great power. To convey yourself to another realm you must first destroy yourself in this one--that is the idea of the throne room.
We have a simple trick in mind to get around the issue of rendering another 3-dimensional world onto a 2-D plane. Rather than attempting something more explicitly like Portal we will be rendering a camera viewpoint in UE4 to a mesh. As the player/camera moves around the level, the camera--being tied to the direction of the player--will simultaneously move, giving the illusion of a 3-D world conveyed through an impossible space.
Tomorrow I will post some screens of our 3-D progress. Thanks!
This is just a shot of the progress in 3dsmax just to show you how I'm piecing the throne room together. Most assets are in zbrush now for sculpting as they all have an organic element to them, but this gives a good idea of the basic layout:
Just a quick bit of info on keeping all the assets matching up. The standard size of a character in UE4 is 96cm tall, so in 3dsmax if 1cm = 1 unit then the little blue guy on the left is 96 units tall in 3dsmax. 96 x 4 is 384 and I used this the standard tiling size in 3dsmax for this project (I don't mind how big things get for this kind of environment). That way, nearly everything that needs to fit together is modelled in multiples of 96 units just for ease. I am probably doubling the sense of size I gave in the sketch in my previous post.
Separately my brother has made some neat textures using Substance Designer; these I will demonstrate in action hopefully tomorrow or the day after.
For this I am importing 3dsmax files as object files and sculpting them, separating them into subtools via polygroups.
This is the wall interior and hopefully it should come out reasonably seamless (especially in the low lighting of the level anyway).
The next step is to unwrap the UVs and bake the high poly before applying it to our low poly mesh. Standard. We'll be using xnormal because it's just absolutely fantastic.
As for the diffuse, roughness, metalness etc I'll likely polypaint in zbrush, take it to photoshop for some further touching up and the generation of the remaining material maps.
We've also got the first of two meshes in, a candle (yet to be appropriately distributed) and a cauldron of fire which will by today be smoking blue flame. We will generate the bonfire flame as a material applied to a mesh rather than using cascade. We will be using cascade for smoke and sparks.
Update shot:
The colours and the materials are shaping up nicely, the only thing that's missing is the actual throne!
The lighting is currently still too dark, but by using a post process volume and ramping up a few settings like god rays, bloom with dirt masks and a light touch of a chromic aberration effect we have something that looks a bit more polished. Hopefully you are getting a Dark Souls/Gears of War vibe right now, I certainly am.
See below for some stalactite progress in zbrush. I started off with a simple element and used dynamesh to pull out a shape I liked before going in with a few brushes. Dam_Standard is probably one of the most useful brushes in zbrush next to clay buildup. It's still a work in progress.