[WIP] Seaside Medieval Castle
polycounter lvl 9
Hey All!
This is probably my first thread outside of the my sketchbook thread in years!
I mostly use Blender for all of my modeling needs, but have been meaning to learn ZBrush.
Anyway, I started a new project at the beginning of this month. I normally do Sci-fi stuff but wanted to switch gears and work more with stone so I could finally learn ZBrush.
To kick it off I gathered some quick references. Mainly using the references from Galicia and also Girona (which I purchased here!)
Started greyboxing around some ideas and eventually came across this weird one with a balcony overlooking a seaside. Something about the lighting stuck with me so I decided to run with it.
Afterwards, I finally bit the bullet and booted up ZBrush (after owning the program for 2 years). I still really hate the camera controls but they're starting to grow on me haha!
Anyway, after about two weeks of learning I pumped out 9 unique bricks,
Here is a quick high-poly test I did using three of them:
Baked them down, just the normals for now. EVEE doesn't seem to like the normals very well
Test in UE4. I think I made the low-poly geo a bit too simple.
After I confirmed the light-maps and the normal bakes went well with the low-poly geo in UE4, I spent this week (5/24) putting the bricks together to build some modular pieces. Really fun to just throw things together without the anxiety of baking things or constantly checking if it will work. I mostly just put the bricks together and delete all the unnecessary faces. If needed, I make a unique second UV for lightmaps if the generated one in UE4 comes out trash.
Which brings me to my current state, with a really quick lightmap bake. Its not perfect (definitely some visible errors on the mesh at the top left image) but believe it or not this is a bit of a personal improvement as they're usually way worse on the first iteration!
So right now my current focus is to continue stomping out the greybox stuff and pump out a few more meshes. I think the floor is a bit too rugged as well.
The bricks are currently the only material in the scene so I definitely need to develop more materials soon!
This is probably my first thread outside of the my sketchbook thread in years!
I mostly use Blender for all of my modeling needs, but have been meaning to learn ZBrush.
Anyway, I started a new project at the beginning of this month. I normally do Sci-fi stuff but wanted to switch gears and work more with stone so I could finally learn ZBrush.
To kick it off I gathered some quick references. Mainly using the references from Galicia and also Girona (which I purchased here!)
Started greyboxing around some ideas and eventually came across this weird one with a balcony overlooking a seaside. Something about the lighting stuck with me so I decided to run with it.
Afterwards, I finally bit the bullet and booted up ZBrush (after owning the program for 2 years). I still really hate the camera controls but they're starting to grow on me haha!
Anyway, after about two weeks of learning I pumped out 9 unique bricks,
Here is a quick high-poly test I did using three of them:
Baked them down, just the normals for now. EVEE doesn't seem to like the normals very well
Test in UE4. I think I made the low-poly geo a bit too simple.
After I confirmed the light-maps and the normal bakes went well with the low-poly geo in UE4, I spent this week (5/24) putting the bricks together to build some modular pieces. Really fun to just throw things together without the anxiety of baking things or constantly checking if it will work. I mostly just put the bricks together and delete all the unnecessary faces. If needed, I make a unique second UV for lightmaps if the generated one in UE4 comes out trash.
Which brings me to my current state, with a really quick lightmap bake. Its not perfect (definitely some visible errors on the mesh at the top left image) but believe it or not this is a bit of a personal improvement as they're usually way worse on the first iteration!
So right now my current focus is to continue stomping out the greybox stuff and pump out a few more meshes. I think the floor is a bit too rugged as well.
The bricks are currently the only material in the scene so I definitely need to develop more materials soon!
Replies
Started a basic trimsheet going on but it still needs a lot more work.
Currently the water is the starter content water in UE4, I plan on changing that but much more bigger tasks to complete right now.
Updated the materials a bit! Bricks are no longer just a normal map and I've got around to creating a tiling material for the walls.
Not quite finished yet with the material but this should be alright for now!
he could always use decals later and foliage to cover it up.