Steampunk Spacewhale - Stomach [WIP]

Thedudxo

This is a playable enviroment where you can walk up walls.

My computer is a bit trash, so Im restricting myself to baked lighting + reflection probes (aside from a single directonal light) and minimal Post processing (currently just bloom and motion blur - the big turbine thing spins in game untill you turn it off).

Unity HDRP / Substance / Maya

Just made a chunk of progress on what im improperly reffering to as the "Conning Tower". Im sure you'll work out which bit I mean

The tower is on hydraulics and can move back. (it wont do this in game since everything is static)

All the screenshots are taken from in game first-person veiw - You don't "climb" this ladder. you walk up it.

The turbine blades aren't baked, since they spin in game. so I have placed high-intensity reflection probes near them to fake it somewhat, though im not sure this is the best approach. the effect bleeds into the tower and makes it brighter/shiner than it should be

Ive also had this question for a while: How best to lightmap large surfaces? My lightmap size is 64. I've split the acid up into a grid and manualy set the lightmap scale of a few of them to be lower, when there isn't much of a change across their surface. Is there a better way of going about this? I can usualy spot a few seams and it kinda breaks when transperancy is involved.

Hungry for feedback sandwiches

Thedudxo

Heres an old concept sketch from way back before I was even greyboxing.

the background is the enviroment from an older verson of the game. I can post the itch.io link if theres any intrest

Lighting + Colour mood board

you figure this one out

The way beams join up with eachother was alot more difficult than I expected. hence all these references. bonus points for rivets.

Thedudxo

Colour corrections and a single realtime directonal light. I think this brings the scene closer to the lighting/colour mood board (above post).


Alot of the textures are too dark/contrasty now. Or maybie i've just stared at them too long.

Thedudxo

Most of the platforms you walk on are floating. so something needs to float them. I liked the look of these:



The hardest thing about them would be the net texture. I couldn't find any tutorials on tiling net textures, so this took me a while to get working. I did find some examples of others finished works though, and of course some reference from actual knots and nets.



That last image was pretty usefull for making a knot, albeit tedious. after making the simplfied/expanded version, I had to manually pull it tight.



Here are the final NURBS curves. The ends needed to snap to the grid and approach that point at a 90* angle, or it wouldn't tile.



This also took alot of trial and error. To tile, the ends of the rope would have to be able to rotate cleanly around a central point (since it twists). So I made an equilateral triangle (rather a prisim scaled to 0 in the Y axis) and centred 3 cylinder caps on its points.

Using "center piviot" on these would give me the wrong result, since it centres the bounding box, which is a square. I used match piviot on the prisim instead.



To make sure i could get 2 knots out of 1 by flipping it over, I aligned these so they'd be able to be flipped in the Y axis. To get this to work properly I'd also have to make the twist negative, since flipping it switches the twist direction.



Placing these at each end showed where the rope needed to end up, to tile perfectly.



Now it was just a matter of doing the extruision, and playing around with that twist value a little untill it mached up.
(if your trying this yourself don't forget to "rebuild curve", or you wont get evenly spaced divisions)



Did this twice, once for the flipped version. Now it was just a case of snapping these together and baking it to a texture as usual.



Substance for whatever reason couldn't save, so I dont currently have a screenshot of that unfortunately.



Since I couldn't find any tutorials on making a tileable net texture with knots, I could have a go at one if theres any intrest. Although this post probably covers it, assuming other knowledge.

Thedudxo

I realise i should have actually "finished" the greybox much earlier. so that's where my focus is now, trying not to get stuck on details yet.

Thedudxo

Full redo on the lighting, realtime now with baked indirect.
switched fog to volumetric to take advantage of the new lights
A WIP displacement texture on the ceiling, I think this is really helping sell the scale of the stomach.
a bit more greyboxing since the last post

Thedudxo

Lil bit of greyboxing. I've also been retopologizing the outer walls, but that doesnt make for a particularly interesting screenshot.

Thedudxo

Thedudxo

I've been working on a mechanism that will mechanically zip/unzip itself as the water level rises, which makes the carts move around since they're fixed to the track and the spiral. It won't actually function in game, but i'm trying to make it work in theory so that a player could infer how it functions via its design.

form follows function. I'd appreciate feedback on whether this design is doing that. (not that it's important for every player to see and immediately get it, just those that are curious about the environment)

if you're unaware, when the water level rises the floor here is floating with it, again in theory this doesn't actually happen in game.





Finally did something about those platforms.





My list of things that need to be greyboxed/concepted is getting steadily shorter not too long now till im onto misc steampunk cosmetic objects. (stuff that isn't part of the level design)