[Environment] Dwarven Fortress - Production Blog
polycounter lvl 2
Dwarven Fortress
Planning
I have gathered some references on what i would like to do and will use them to influence my work and make sure that it fits in to a nice overall feel to my environment. I have a link to my moodboard here! .
As i have not done much sculpting or any natural environment making (i have done a lot of hardsurface so far), i would like to explore and experiment with this area to further increase my skill set and hopefully help me get over the daunting thoughts of sculpting.
Here are some of the concepts that i have taken so far:
The first image is going to be what i am heavily going for however it will be with some alterations. I really like the bridges and the cold-warm colour contrast with the blue and the red/orange. This is overly used but it always looks good and as i am going to have lava it makes natural sense to do this colour palette. I also really like the rocks on the second image where they are square like and again they got the bridges involved!
I would like to do a trim sheet so that i can easily add details where i need them without having to do each mesh unique therefore saving time and keeping the same consistent shapes over the meshes. One last idea i had for the doors is to have a big banner above them to break up the colours a bit and have red crystals placed around to give the area a bit more value and give the scene more of a reason the dwarfs have moved in to this volcano.
For my main centrepiece i initially thought to have a forge, however to react with the warm contrast i actually decided against it as they also use hot substances like lava to keep them hot and running, i want something more blue. I do like the top left forge as it has a mystical blue liquid but it just wouldn't quite fit right in to the scene that i want to create.
I have looked in to magical gems and portals and i think i could pull off a cool portal effect with some material trickery to give the illusion that the portal is actually alive and working. I have therefore picked a portal as my centrepiece as i feel that it suits the concept a lot better than a forge and i can get a bit more creative with how it will look and feel within my scene.
My supporting prop needs to help my portal to stand out. I have picked some pillars out as i think it will help to give my portal a way of getting its power. It can also add some storytelling in to my scene, i can make it look like the dwarfs have built these statues and portal to harness the energy out from the volcano itself and use its energy to power their ancient teleporter (this is just a quick idea).
This is the part i was most excited about, and God of War has done it best! Dwarven architecture! The patterns, hand carved stone and magical symbols will all add up to make an awesome under-volcano base that they would have hand made by themselves!
I will continue to update this moodboard and you can follow along with the link above if you are interested! It will be growing and splitting up in to more concepts and ideas. I will also branch out and look at dwarven architecture, their symbols and patterns to put on to a trim sheet that i will use. I am super excited for this first sculpting project as well as my first blogs on polycount!
As i have not done much sculpting or any natural environment making (i have done a lot of hardsurface so far), i would like to explore and experiment with this area to further increase my skill set and hopefully help me get over the daunting thoughts of sculpting.
Here are some of the concepts that i have taken so far:
The first image is going to be what i am heavily going for however it will be with some alterations. I really like the bridges and the cold-warm colour contrast with the blue and the red/orange. This is overly used but it always looks good and as i am going to have lava it makes natural sense to do this colour palette. I also really like the rocks on the second image where they are square like and again they got the bridges involved!
I would like to do a trim sheet so that i can easily add details where i need them without having to do each mesh unique therefore saving time and keeping the same consistent shapes over the meshes. One last idea i had for the doors is to have a big banner above them to break up the colours a bit and have red crystals placed around to give the area a bit more value and give the scene more of a reason the dwarfs have moved in to this volcano.
For my main centrepiece i initially thought to have a forge, however to react with the warm contrast i actually decided against it as they also use hot substances like lava to keep them hot and running, i want something more blue. I do like the top left forge as it has a mystical blue liquid but it just wouldn't quite fit right in to the scene that i want to create.
I have looked in to magical gems and portals and i think i could pull off a cool portal effect with some material trickery to give the illusion that the portal is actually alive and working. I have therefore picked a portal as my centrepiece as i feel that it suits the concept a lot better than a forge and i can get a bit more creative with how it will look and feel within my scene.
My supporting prop needs to help my portal to stand out. I have picked some pillars out as i think it will help to give my portal a way of getting its power. It can also add some storytelling in to my scene, i can make it look like the dwarfs have built these statues and portal to harness the energy out from the volcano itself and use its energy to power their ancient teleporter (this is just a quick idea).
This is the part i was most excited about, and God of War has done it best! Dwarven architecture! The patterns, hand carved stone and magical symbols will all add up to make an awesome under-volcano base that they would have hand made by themselves!
I will continue to update this moodboard and you can follow along with the link above if you are interested! It will be growing and splitting up in to more concepts and ideas. I will also branch out and look at dwarven architecture, their symbols and patterns to put on to a trim sheet that i will use. I am super excited for this first sculpting project as well as my first blogs on polycount!
Replies
Scope and Time-frame
The time-frame for this environment is about a month or so.. and i am planning to work as much as i can over Christmas to get this done before i got back to university (as i am studying art). I will eat in to a week or 2 of lecture time as the first week or so of my uni assignments are very quiet so i may as well make the most of my time. The deadline will be 26th January 2020!!!I have toned down my scope a lot to fit this time frame and i am going to do a smaller environment that is based around Tyr's room from God of War ( https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ogxWW ). In my mood-board i have gone through artstation and got loads of references from the game as it fits perfectly with what i wanted to do and have given me lots of good references i can use to effect my work. This will not be a replica as i am going to put my spin on it. You can view my mood board in my first post!
I still plan on having a portal as my main asset with some floor patterns for some architectural goodness. I also plan on having pillars and walls with patterns on, a doorway and some rocks for maybe a more destroyed look... or i could float them? Will have a play around and test with my blockout to see what it feels like before i commit to it. I will make a trim sheet maybe 2 (1 for tiling patterns and 1 for tiling materials) so that it saves me a lot of texturing time and is as optimised as possible.
I suppose it is on to the block-out now and so i can start to get a good feel to how i want this to go! Excited to bring this to life with you guys on polycount.
Blockout Beginnings
I had limited time today so spent an hour getting my scale correct and blocking out a few pieces. Should get more done tomorrow as it is my day off work but also my birthday so we will seeIt looks like a set backwards a little bit but i wanted to re-work this and make sure i got that depth in nice and early in my blockout
I have planned out some pieces of my trimsheet and blocked out some basic pieces. The red will be a strip of bricks, green will be a metal bar, blue will be a strip of rock/a long brick, the yellow will be some hieroglyphs and the blue will be some patterns that can be used across my environment. I plan on doing another trim sheet for the ceiling and adding in some more dwarvern patterns to use around my environment to give it the flair that is needed.
Some tileable materials will be needed too. I will make some floor tiles, rock texture and a paint texture. This should be a good start for my materials and i can see what i am missing from there. These combined with my trimsheet should already give me a pretty interesting visual for my environment and i can fill in the gaps to what i feel is needed from there.
As for blockout progress:
I have been looking at all my references i have gathered and started to give my blockout a bit more detail. I plan on having pillars, golden archways and an ornate ceiling which should come together to look like a god owns the area. It will however be quite worn and therefore i need to think a bit more about the wear and tear on the materials i am creating but i would like to get a good base first.
From here i am considering doing a basic lighting pass and chucking in some base colours so that i can get start to get the key focal points coming through! This is gonna be fun!
Trimsheet Basics
I have decided to do my trimsheet in designer and have made a simple set up of masking strips out of a baked colour ID map (which i made in max yesterday above). It is just a basic colour to mask node and it works much like how a colour ID map would work in painter!This is the trimsheet so far, i got some basic block shape in there, a patterned rock piece and a basic metal piece where i haven't got round to adding damage to it yet. I like how my runes have turned out as it feels like they have been chiselled in by hand. I plan on having them to glow too
I completed my trimsheet for now, where i have done it in designer it can be easily changed at a later date if i don't like something. All i need to do now is get some colour and roughness going on it and it should be at a good stage to use and test on a piece of my environment to get a feel for how it will look.
I have set up my trimsheet in UE4 and tested a quick unwrap on my stairs for my bricks....
It is quite clear the gaps between them are too big so i am going to have to sort that in my treimsheet! I also got the same tiling detail on each step but that's because i didn't offset my UVs for them to be different.
Trimsheet in engine
I made the runes white so i can change the colour in engine aswelll as the emissive intensity.
I am also not happy with the chain pattern and how that come out, i feel that might need to be metal rather than stone so it doesn't blend in as much. My brass/gold texture can really be updated too as it is a bit naff...
I do however like how the runes have come out and the nice pattern that i made in photoshop from some references!
Hope it helps. you are doing an amazing job.
And also just to test the textures out before spending too much time on them) Who knows, you might want to change the atlas layout or add a thing or two.
And I agree It feels too noisy right now.
Keep up the good work!
Further Blockout Lighting and Texturing
Texture Updates:
I made a tileable peeling paint material in substance designer and have used it across most of my environment for now. I do however need a smooth-stone sort of material to break it some more and to give more contrast in the colour.
Starting to come along now! Pretty happy so far and can easily adjust and push my textures the extra 10% at the end!
Main Floor Material
Tiles for floor with sandy/rock underneath.
Dark brown/blue to help break up the walls colour and let the portal stand out more.
Portal Asset
Use Glyphs as alphas in Zbrush instead of on the trimsheet. Separate the mesh in to seperate blocks to make it stand out more and give it more silhouette and take that in to ZBrush... might do a 4-5 different blocks and build the portal and steps out of them.
Happy with portal texture!
Incorporate gears and "clockwork" into the portal, maybe some moving cogs around the outside edge? Test and see if it fits or not.
Roof
Open the top of the roof to let a light in that beams down on to the portal to help draw the eye to it.
Top half
Need a texture for the roof and i am undecided on the architecture of it for now... something simple should go a long way!
Decal
Dripping Grunge for the wall paint
Peeling Paint so that i can place where it peels instead of doing it in the texture? need to look into the logistics of that.
Extras
Wisps flying around the room on a spline? Poly trail behind the wisp with scrolling UV's?, gradient and emissive. 2 spheres, outer one with opacity, inner one with less opacity and emissive.
Meanwhile here is a little GIF of the portal effect i made in UE4 and the alpha i made in designer:
I blended lots of grunges together and used some different gradients to get parts that i wanted. I warped one of them with a mix of perlin noises at different scales and directionally warped it. I then just used splatter circular to get the result i want. I did that for 2 separate pieces so that i can have a bit more contrast and variation from the outsided to the inside.
In UE4, i made a simple glass shader with fresnel with parametarized refraction and reflection. I then rotated the this + the normal on to the glass shader to give me the effect i wanted. I could use the above image as a mask for colour and emissive! I also scrolled another normal map across it to give me a water like effect that you usually see in portals:
The bit cut out the bottom is just the same normal map panning in a different way.
Now that i have had some time to think this through and make a proper list of things i need, i feel a lot better!
Time to keep going! I got 10 days! I think it is doable!
Sand, Vertex painting and furhter lighting adjustments.
1 week today to get this finished.Changes:
- Updated my roof with some detail.
- Made a sand material and set up vertex painting.
-Added some sand piles.
- Adjusted lighting.
- Made a magical pillar!
- Adjusted the portal effect so it looks better now.
- Made a tile texture.