[WIP - UE4] Lorn 5 - A Total War inspired environment set in the 40k universe

anMori

"This planet is a hellhole, but it’ll be an Imperial hellhole when we’re through with it." - Zhaebin, Lieutenant, Vostroyan Firstborn

Or in other words: time for a WIP thread!

Mission statement:
>Create a map with a scale suitable for the total war series.
>Set its theme in the 40k Universe.
>Learn substance designer.
>Improve terrain generation skills.

Planned scene:
>An massive arctic terrain (16km²)
>A hive city as it´s main focal point with another besieged one on the distance. (Foreshadowing the story)

Story it´s meant to tell:
Lorn 5, an ice planet long under imperial command, crucial for its production capabilities in the sector, is under siege by chaos renegades. Most of the worlds hive cities have fallen but one stronghold still stands. Under it´s umbrella of macro cannons, the remaining imperial forces prepare for the last stand. (loosly a prequel to the dawn of war - winter assault campaign storyline)

Inspirations:



Current state:

anMori

[update_001]

>Saw the need to create some cliff chunks to better block out the sides and safe some polygons not having to use too many small ones. (2 pieces, only hp yet) Will later use a shader to add detail textures that scale in worldspace to support large usage in engine.
>Created my first bark texture with substance designer planned to be used for the fir trees.

anMori

[update_002]

>Reworked the light
>Worked on a mesh/terrain blend shader
>General work on the landscape
>Added a couple more rocks 

Anngelica

Man I really like this. It looks like it's really freezing there, very cool atmosphere.

Meloncov

Those rocks are looking fantastic.  The scale on the snow material feels a little bit off to me, which has the effect of making the scene feel like a scale model instead of a real landscape

LorasTyrell

I love those rocks, well done on those! The blend shader is working really well too I look forward to seeing the architectural bits placed in the environment

Buchananball

Really excited to see where this is going, keep us updated! How grimdark/gothic are you planning to go for the hive city?

almighty_gir

Great work dude, love me some warhammer

Kaine123

could we maybe get some more info on the shader you're using to blend the rocks into the terrain? maybe even some screenshots of the shader tree? 

anMori

Hey,
thanks for the kind words everyone! 

@Meloncov
Absolutely. Currently there are also barely any mid/small size objects in the scene that make it hard to find any points of reference. Good spotting on the snow, I´ll look into breaking this up as well!
@Buchananball
Setting myself a fairly high aim right now and hope to pull something off similiar to what you see in the top pictures I posted as reference. Very hopefull I can break this down effectively into  just a bunch of tilables and a ton of modular pieces. 
@almighty_gir
Da empra protects, brother!
@Kaine123
Sure, I did quite a bit of research beforehand to find something that works as there are a couple of different ways to set it up however all build upon the idea of using distance fields. This tutorial already sums it up way better than I could do here  

Here´s how everything is tied together right now as a broad overview:



It´s still fairly WIP as I plan to reduce it to just two texture inputs for the main material and buff the snow overlay but let me know if I can provide any close ups already.

aclund3

@Optimus That's most likely just a block-out for future awesomeness.

anMori

@Optimus
Like aclund3 said, don´t worry too much about those cylinders They only serve as placeholders to get an idea of the general shape and placement to later be replaced by proper assets as I want to nail the surrounding terrain first.