This is a project we are doing for our final year at The University Of Hertfordshire
The team:
Joshua Khusal: Environment Artist
Benjamin Lane: Environment Artist
Georgia Jeffries: Character Artist
Adelaide Coldham: Animator
Freelancers:
Matt Jenkins: Rigging
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Pitch:
Our aim with this project is to create a highly detailed small trade town in the 15th century in the style of the byzantine empire, that sits in the middle of bridge that spans a rapid flowing river, populated by the town’s residents.
Trailer:
Short cinematic sequence of the environment, mixture of landscape shots, as well as shots in street level, followed by a playable sequence of the character walking through the town, towards the Barons house.
The Story:
The city state of (insert name of town here) is stuck between two warring armies.
The city is very crucial for trade and diplomacy so the surrounding countries treat it as neutral ground. Now a war has begun, both armies need to use (insert name of town here) to get across to the other side to invade, but the nobles of the city are worried about the damage either army passing through would cause, and in turn has restricted access into the town for anyone without specific permission (traders, important/wealthy people, etc). The inhabitants of the city are getting agitated by the threat of either army and many refugees are finding their way to the bridge only to find that they cannot pass to escape their plight. The tension between the rich and poor gets to breaking point and the poor in the city and refugees unable to afford the substantial toll to cross has started a resistance to take the bridge under their control. The nobles are aware of this issue and have been hiring many mercenaries to help discipline the resistance to little success. They have now ordered the help of (PLAYER CHARACTER) to help them, a highly successful and famous mercenary. The player will make his way through the town, towards the Barons house, that sits at the edge of the town.
Research: Trip to Croatia
The architecture we have chosen is 15th century Byzantine architecture. We therefore organised a trip to one of the best preserved old towns with this style of architecture, Dubrovnik in Croatia.
From this trip, we gathered a total of 1,700 pictures, ranging from modelling ref, to texture ref (to turn into tillable materials) to city streets layouts, as well as the general atmosphere we want to aim for. We organised all the pictures, into respecting folders and have them on a server for the whole team to use during the project.
This is the overall style we want to aim to:
https://preview.ibb....k/moodboard.jpg
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Concept Art:
Concept art made for us ( By Iacocca Khen Arasy)
Town Layout:
https://image.ibb.co..._sketches_4.jpg
Concept Art:
https://image.ibb.co...t_Art_final.png
Concept Art to real world reference:
https://image.ibb.co..._Real_World.jpg
The concept art is more of a layout guide than anything else, as while we’re building it in 3D, things will most likely change. We are planning to make the streets feel very busy, dirty and used. Filling it with props, such as crates, barrels, people in cages, market stalls, traders, carts as well as all the people which will be around the scene.
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That’s an overview of the project! There’s lots of other things that we’ve been researching and organising as well! Everything is still a work in progress and we’ll most definitely end up changing a lot of it, but here it is in its current state!
Crit and feedback welcomed as always!
TL;DR:
We're making a small medieval town that sits in the middle of a river populated by the towns residents.
Replies
Overview:
Market Square:
Lords House:
Front Gate:
Other Places:
These renders are from within Toolbag 3.
Here are some WIP renders of a statue I've been working on the past couple days, planing on cleaning up the folds, adding detail to the belt, and doing something with her hands or giving her something to hold like a flag or a staff
So far I've put together this really simple blueprint so our characters will walk to random places around the town. I'm still waiting for a rig from our freelancer so for the moment, the ue4 man is being used as a placeholder. I'm not really keyed up much on blueprints so I had to search through a lot of tutorials to find something I thought would work but was still easy to set up. Behavior trees made me want to cry XD. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve this, it would be much appreciated.
https://i.gyazo.com/3a69aa4da61993a3442b6461f8672ee9.mp4
Some updates on the statue, adjusted the length of her legs, posed her hands and added in a flagpole for her to hold, I've started retopology and should be moving onto texturing soon
Ive been making a modular building pack for the more wealthy people of the town. The textures arent yet finished, and theres a few lighting artefacts because i haven built the lighting just yet (: Ive made the geo in such a way where i can vertex paint on top of it, ive set up a height based vertex paint material which ill use to break up the repeating forms/patterns (:
Been doing some more texturing, developing the textures I had already done. Also experimenting to see the different designs/ forms I can make with my asset pack with what I have so far, still got loads more to make so I can create all the building shapes I want to. Still far from final and everything is still in the early stages, but slowly getting rid of the block out and replacing it with assets! (:
Been making more assets and seeing how far I can push my asset pack to create all the shapes and forms I want to, trying to be as unique and slightly quirky as I can, still pretty rough, but im hoping it will start coming together as I start texturing more of the assets. (: Its really time I need to start vertex painting and baking the lighting so I can see what everything looks like properly (:
Looking really cool so far!!!
That sounds like a really good idea, ill have a play around and see what I can come up with!
To break up the repetitive patterns Ive set up a height based vertex painter material, where I can paint in some moss/dirt/sand textures over the top! For the edges ive got a bunch of seemingly random bricks to place around the corners of the buildings to break up that super straight line, so hopefully that will fix those issues! (:
My next task is to make more heads so I have some variations for the faces.
Been texturing the roofs and also playing around with foliage, just having fun mostly. Also modelled the balcony, but most of my time has been taken up by making tillable materials (: Im still yet to build the lighting, as I need to replace the ground with a proper mesh asap and not just a stretched cube that has no uvs.
Quick runthrough:
Roof Texturing:
(The asset is 15k tris and using one 2k texture)
Ive made lots of changes, added a brick trim around the edges of the buildings to break up the sharp edge. Also added another trim to break up the repeating patterns as well as laying out more buildings.
Ive finally done a very rough preview (since it takes bloody ages) lighting build, just a simple directional light, havnt tweaked any of the settings much, just wanted to make sure my models were shading properly. Ive still got far to contrasted areas so in the coming iterations ill be tweaking the lighting lots (: And of course havent got round to post effects or anything like that, so its still looking pretty raw at the moment (:
Ive been working on a way to create a pavement system where i can create it and modify its properties in engine, to get some nice sweeping pathways. Its a blueprint system that creates mesh based on a spline and has parameters to tweak the twistyness, width and options to turn the side walks on and off (: The texture on it isnt final, still working on it and refining it, and ill be vertex painting puddles/mud/dirt over it in the coming weeks (:
Ignore the people walking in the spot, our animator added her animation in the scene since she was pre vising (:
Heres our verticle slice tomorrow (: Finally a proper video, no more gifs!
Ignore the watermark in the music, its just a placeholder since we havent decided on final music yet, and all the other sounds are placeholders as well.
The AI dont move at the moment, we're still trying to get that system working, but in the mean time they just walk on the spot and stuff.
Sounds like a good idea! (: when i get to that section ill have that in mind!
Some updates: here's a building I've been working on, you can see where it will be placed in the vertical slice video at around 0:40.
Still have to finish texturing, add in the window planes, texture and add in the doorway which is already modeled, and fix the arch clipping but thought I'd post it here anyway
Been making the gatehouse (: still pretty rough at the moment, just trying to get the shapes/forms that I want, and try and get a unique silhouette!
Apologies of the lack of updates, ive had a really horrible cold for 2 weeks, which means my progress has been a lot slower than usual
but im just recovoering now, so hopefully speedy progress from here on out!
We're back to good old gifs unfortunately!
Still keeping each character at around 20k tris.
Some more updates on the building I've been working on.
Have started setting it up in engine too so will post renders when that's done as well
Been working on the gatehouse some more (: The textures for the most part are still rough, mostly just trying to block colour in them to see what sort of colours/ materials I want to go for, also been sculpting lots of HPs
Adding some men into our NPC roster. I'm just using the guard head right now.
Keep it up
Here is a male peasant complete with a new head and hat.
I was also experimenting with a base beard texture on the face which I can add planes for on top for more variety in the faces.
Hope you all had a great christmas! (:
So ive been really busy texturing the gatehouse, a lot of the textures are still placeholders at the moment, so ill be going back and refining and polishing them, just wanted to get an idea of what the colours/materials are looking like together (:
Yes, that is the plan. I am working quite quickly to get these characters out, which sometimes may be too quickly. I'm hoping that if I have the time after the hero character is done (I have set aside MUCH more time for that) I will be able to spend some time improving and refining the modular characters that are a bit rough around the edges.
Heres our new vertical slice (:
Thank you very much!!
Yeah we are going to, its just temporary, its the music tracks watermark, we've got someone making some music for us at the moment, but until its finished I just used it as placeholder music! (:
Ive more or less finished the gatehouse section about a week ago but I completely forgot to post it, been working on the market square ever since (:
Still got some more things to add but ill add them as I go along (:
Gatehouse:
Made a market stall in marvellous designer and started baking and texturing it today, only got the solid colours in there for now so i can start parameterising it in designer, then ill start adding some detail/wear onto it (:
One critique is that that the specularity of the skin seems way too high. They looked slightly greased with oil and a tad too clean, given the setting.
Looking forward to seeing what comes next! You guys all do great work.
Really appreciate the kind words!
Yeah I definitely agree, ill pass that on to our character artist!