(WIP) Overgrown greenhouse - Critique and feedback welcome

benmcdonald

So this is the start of my second personal environment. 

I am planning on making a small overgrown greenhouse to help focus on learning foliage, creating outdoor scenes and to give me an excuse to make a cool Ivy Hda in Houdini! 

Original Reference : 

benmcdonald

Current blockout of greenhouse : 

I'm currently reusing a lot of assets and using a modular kit for the greenhouse. I want to keep the scope of the project quite small so I can make the most of the modularity. 

benmcdonald

I also began to make my ivy tool that will procedurally generate ivy over and around a chosen collision mesh.

Early example of the ivy branches growing over a sphere. 
(Included as this is so satisfying to watch! ) 




Early concept of the tool : 

1 - Draw initial curve on mesh



2 - Ivy grows



The spread of the branches is also controllable at this current state.

The main vex stems from this tutorial by Simon Fiedler with a few modifications : 

https://vimeo.com/212483416

Further went on to add some base color and actual thickness to the stems.



This is still an early proof of concept, but I'm excited to get this growing .

benmcdonald

Some further progress onto the greenhouse kit: 

Finally got some nice sculpt ready meshes made, just need to add some high frequency detail like welds and some bits of damage.

 Some variation is needed too. I'm currently thinking of making a bunch of different glass pieces that I can swap in and out of the modular kit to add varying levels of destruction. This would be much quicker than making multiple wall pieces too. 

Modular pieces within max:



Built scene within ue4



Next up is to work on the doors, glass and making a larger planter that has multiple shelves.

benmcdonald

The scene was looking pretty bare, so I added some quick blockout trees from speedtree aswell as starting to work on the initial mood for the scene. I also created a quick base ground material.

I want to create a chilling, uncomfortable atmosphere.

I followed a tutorial for local volumetric fog using particle systems  :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McBiRCSWM9Q





Set dressing is still very early days, and I need to finish my work on the ivy generator.



Fog is very early, and is too thick at the moment. However its really giving me some cool Steven Kings 'The Mist' vibes!.

benmcdonald

Rebuilt my Ivy tool from the ground up, following some new tutorials etc I was able to put this together : 

Only using bog standard materials at the moment : 



Added parameters to adjust the amount of leaves and branches.



My next steps will be reducing the length of the branches as the vine grows, aswell as potentially adding more large vines from a single input curve.

benmcdonald

Due to overloading work, university and some personal things, I'll be putting this on hold! Gonna keep the thread as this may get picked up again in the future.