[WIP] Unity/Houdini interactive experience : Flowmap City

Strkl

Hello everyone ! It's been a long time since I have posted on this forum, but i wanted to share my current project, and get some feedback and critic as I'm building it. Beware that I like GIF so this thread will be quite gif heavy 

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Latest update : 

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The goal of this project is to  make an interactive 3d experience, that will be played on PC, and if I can achieve good performance, playable in browser. The concept is pretty simple : You will be able to spawn some kind of energy (represented by particles) and follow their movement to find hidden objects in the scene.

Here is a quick and dirty concept I did for this environment, as you can see this will be in a form of a small city diorama : 

My main references is the city of Dinan in france, I really like the blend of an old medieval city, with a lot of "modern" stuff on top ( wires, camera, electric boxes,...)

Here you can see a bunch of references I gathered :




Unfortunately I'm starting this thread while the project as already started, but I still have some picture to post. (you can see everything from the beginning on a twitter thread I made)

The first blockout of the scene, with a quick lighting in Unity. 

from here I started modeling some of the elements and props.

And finally the last upate, with a bit more update on the props, trying to find some lighting mood ( in marmoset for quicker iteration).

Please note this project is not only about creating a 3d environment, there is a big part i'm working with Houdini : I'm using houdini to generate data to drive some particles around the surface of the environment. 

https://twitter.com/aStrkl/status/991785548464443392

(posting a twitter post here, because I don't have the original gif anymore )

the movement of the particle is driven by flowmap made from Houdini data using Space colonization. Here is how the data looks in houdini before being baked onto a flowmap (mapped on the lightmap uv of the environment) 

I hope you guys will find seeing the process of this project interesting,. If you want to see more detail about certain , I'll try to make more screenshot and breakdown

Justo

I love this. A simple and clean look. I friggin love this. 

Ged

interesting way to use a flow map, keen to see more

SimonT

that looks like an intersting project!

lotet

Wow. This is beautifull! 

lqdgrphcs

Like this.....like the look, the concept is cool, bunch a great references. The meshing of the old and new (medieval and modern .... castle look with stop lights) is a nice meshing of worlds. One question though....what's up with the well on the second level with a tunnel underneath it?? Bit of a logical disconnect. If it were a fountain it would make sense but a well is specifcally based on a water source far underground with a hole dug down to it. Totally get that the well could be ornamental but if that is what your going for then a fountain or a gazebo would make more sense visually.

I am right there with you on mixing worlds but that is one chord that strikes an off note for me.
Just one humble opinion.

Strkl

lqdgrphcs said:

Like this.....like the look, the concept is cool, bunch a great references. The meshing of the old and new (medieval and modern .... castle look with stop lights) is a nice meshing of worlds. One question though....what's up with the well on the second level with a tunnel underneath it?? Bit of a logical disconnect. If it were a fountain it would make sense but a well is specifcally based on a water source far underground with a hole dug down to it. Totally get that the well could be ornamental but if that is what your going for then a fountain or a gazebo would make more sense visually.

I am right there with you on mixing worlds but that is one chord that strikes an off note for me.
Just one humble opinion.

Yes you are totally right! I was planning on changing it for a fountain or have it on a pedestal like a display

thanks for the input