[WIP] Mythwoven - Final Year Game Demo @ UH

omaii

Undergraduate Final Year Game Demo @ University of Hertfordshire

The fantasy fashion capital of Brocatelle awaits your prowess in Mythwoven, an action role-playing & management game where your strength lies in creative style and strategy!

Design and grow a couture brand unique to your whims on your journey to stardom as a Mage Modiste raring to conquer the forces of fashion and evil alike while helping others discover their beauty within.

ʚ・ ୨୧・ ɞ

This tutorial demo will introduce you to the game's core mechanics of material hunting, clothesmaking and dress-up. Experiment with material combinations to produce fabrics and clothes with a range of magical enhancements to your powers and combat prowess, and design your own style for the couture of battle!

Below you will find our development progress as we work on building this project throughout the year from late September to the end of April.

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CORE TEAM

Mai Linh Au - Project Lead & Environment Artist

Lulu Ross-Bouquet - Character Artist

Amanda Hui - Prop Artist

Kaveesha Amarasinghe - Technical Artist

Callum Highfield - Animator

Alicia Lee - Animator

Matthew Whiley - Concept Artist

ʚ・ ୨୧・ ɞ

FREELANCERS

William Fallows - Programmer

Robbie Coleman - Programmer

Devon Fell-Smith - Concept Artist

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omaii

To start off I'll post my progress and development of the two key levels in our demo thus far:

• the Sewing Room, where our player character weaves fabrics, sews clothes and dresses up in preparation for battle
• the Silken Forest, the tutorial hunting ground for the player to harvest crafting materials for making fabric and embellishing their clothing

Blockouts have all been done in Unreal Engine 5.3.2, which is our engine of choice for this project.

Our game will take place from an isometric-like camera angle (we've run into problems with lighting when trialling a true isometric angle unfortunately - no shadows casting), so the blockouts have been created with this in mind.

Old camera angle

However, we have plans to develop a more sophisticated camera system that could allow the player to perhaps zoom in on the character whenever they want to admire the crafted details of their clothing creations, or facilitate the ability to switch into a third-person camera.

Sewing Room

Our protagonist’s workshop of wonders is where they work their magic for style and in style. It’s a humble little abode for now, but that doesn’t stop it from being filled to the brim with this tailor’s creative crafts and a magnificent wardrobe.

This room started out quite big, mostly due to my own scale blindness ^^; 

Following feedback from our initial Concept Presentation in class, I scaled back the dimensions to be more snug and cosy, something more fitting for our character's very first personal studio.

Below is a quick diagram I made to abstract and summarise the layout of the sewing room.

Silken Forest

These woods are the domain of silkworms and moths with trees all adorned with delicate gossamer threads woven by its inhabitants. Beyond silk, weavers can also find other soft flora for their fabrics, such as cotton and flax.

The forest is a more underdeveloped location as of this post, as we still require more concept art and development to fully realise the vision. As I will be responsible for foliage production I have started out roughing some concepts and ideas for generic foliage population.

So far I've taken most of my inspiration for the foliage from various characteristics of different silk moth variants. The generic foliage will be a lot simpler, as I am considering reserving the slightly more detailed leaf designs and compositions for the mini-boss we have planned at the end of the forest, where the player will encounter a "queen moth" of sorts at the home nest of the forest's silk moths and worms:

This diagram from our most recent presentation summarises the overall intended flow for the forest level:

For this segment of the game, gameplay-wise it's quite inspired by games like Hades at the moment (huge fan of the hack-and-slash combat!), only without the roguelike element of procedurally-generated rooms because that's a bit beyond our scope and skill ATM. So the level here is somewhat akin to a dungeon crawl I guess, although it's not actually in a dungeon of course! The player can obtain materials like silk by defeating the silk moths and worms, which they can use to then create silk fabric and garments.

omaii

Started doing some rough grass models/cards and a very rough tiling texture that still needs a lot of work. I made these mostly to get over the hurdle of starting them xP

Cards: 256x256

Maya models (WIP)

Substance Designer Tiling Material (VERY WIP)

and a super rough test in Unreal just to get the master materials set up:

It's likely for this project that we'll move away from PBR and try to make our own shader that better conveys the look we want (which we're admittedly still a little undecided on, but we know we want to veer away from "traditional" hand-painted looks; we've been investigating painterly/drawn-texture shaders!)

omaii

Spent a few hours yesterday doing a first rough go at a dirt material for the scene, which... honestly turned out a lot better than the grass one above since I actually took the time to observe existing examples and analyse the techniques other artists have used to make their stylised materials xP It doesn't really fit too well with the grass above as a result, but I plan to rework the grass this week anyways by looking at more examples and techniques. I may also paint/draw some concepts to reference for myself.

I don't really like how unblinded and crisp the "brushstroke" shapes are right now, it feels more reminiscent of a bark/woody painterly texture so I'll be looking into how to soften and blend those better this week.

ThisisVictoriaZ

Hi!! My first thought when looking at your dirt material is that your normals are probably too strong between the brush stroke layers, and the pebbles you've go look a bit too blurry/undefined. I think it would be a good idea to study the way realistic dirt textures are created, to better understand the fundamentals of the shapes and colors present, because I also agree its coming off a bit tree bark-y. I would recommend this tutorial for making stylized and painterly textures in designer https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/orO2/handpaint-ghibli-style-texture-with-substance-designer-2020-1-2?utm_source=artstation&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=marketplace it helped me out alot!!

Callum_Highfield

Hello, I am Callum Highfield. One of the two 3D Animators on this project.
Whilst the character rig and mesh are being worked on I downloaded a rig from the internet and began experimenting with animation stylisation.
One of our main character weapons is a rapier, so I researched into how it will move.

Here is the most up to date animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_4VN6WJvo

Older version of the animation can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-qFsJYJveg

omaii

Made a start on some foliage test models yesterday in SpeedTree. These were put together using the bush and tree samples included in the program with some tweaks to get them to look more how I personally want them. Glad to have some stuff to start throwing into Unreal now and gradually refine and polish
There will naturally be more variations of foliage to come but I want to start gradually filling everything out and replacing bits where needed. Generally the materials and textures will be the main things I look to polish, as well as some light shader work. I definitely want some stronger gradients on the foliage.

Neyuumi

Hiya! I'm Kaveesha and I've been working as the rigger for this project.
So far its been smooth sailing with getting the rig together with a base model, though this time I did try to add some extra joints to help with deformation for the muscles, its allowed for an easier time when skinning the model for sure! 

omaii

WIP of one of the props for the sewing room, a vanity dresser Concept art was made by our freelance concept artist!



I'll be retopping the mirror and legs where needed! Accidentally added some extra loops xd I also fixed the width of the table in ZBrush where I made a start on sculpting the bow adornment.

omaii

Been a small while since I remembered to make any updates here! I'll make a more in-depth post about what I've been up to on my end shortly (in summary: learning basic PCG for the forest!), but in the meantime, here's the WIP video of our vertical slice that we presented today for a formative submission. It's structured as a mock trailer for the game concept with some current gameplay recordings (mechanics are still very much in development, so most of these shots are just walking around for now x))

https://youtu.be/PAn0XQFIOqY?si=4C3xN7dCmeFb0bWU

omaii

Been a little bit since I updated my progress here, so quick dump ^^

Some feedback we got was that the connection between the woods and the sewing room is still quite unclear, and it was suggested that we bridge the two locations by showing the outside of the shop. Currently we're still waiting on more concepts for the actual exterior itself but I've made a start on a basic cobbled paving material in the meantime.

I also completed some of the larger props for the Sewing Room itself, which I'll post below!

omaii

Sewing Room Props:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vbmLrE?notification_id=6821296192

omaii

Trying to fix up the dirt material based on previous feedback Working on getting the clumps of dirt to be less crisp and woody.

Noren

Coming along nicely!
Not about the project, but the presentation: Your HDRI/angle of choice seems pretty evenly lit for many renders, washing out the normals. The wardrobe seems to remedy that, though. That being said, a more pastel look could work well, too. The table reminds me a bit of the Brambly Hedge TV show in that regard, where they used painted and cut out paper objects for some scenes.

And the red banner(?) in the last pictures is quite saturated and bright, distracting a bit from the objects.

omaii

Made a start on blocking out the outside of the boutique for our project yesterday. We got feedback suggesting we try to show the outside of the store to make clearer the travel and connection between the sewing room and the forest for material gathering, since the link between the locations is not very clear right now (though part of that is also down to the sequence and script of the trailer we need to put together alongside the game!)

I'll be tackling this with a modular kit, and potentially make some extra pieces based off discarded and previous concepts for the exterior to mock up 1 or 2 neighbouring buildings on the same street as the boutique. Will also make a trim sheet for the planks and some other bits here!

Noren said:

Coming along nicely!
Not about the project, but the presentation: Your HDRI/angle of choice seems pretty evenly lit for many renders, washing out the normals. The wardrobe seems to remedy that, though. That being said, a more pastel look could work well, too. The table reminds me a bit of the Brambly Hedge TV show in that regard, where they used painted and cut out paper objects for some scenes.

And the red banner(?) in the last pictures is quite saturated and bright, distracting a bit from the objects.

Thanks so much for the feedback on my presentation! I looked up Brambly Hedge and love the art style I'm seeing in both the TV show and the book illustrations, will definitely be adding that to my inspiration library ^^ 

omaii

Shroom WIPs for the forest. It's in dire need of set dressing and some more colour work so it feels more inhabited by the moths as well as explored by other stylist mages gathering materials, so I'm also working on some props to scatter around.

omaii

Forgot to update on here for a whole month oops xP
Most of my attention on the environment side of things has been diverted to the street level until this point. Here's what I've managed to get it to so far:

Right now everything is still super rough, and my current focus is bringing as many assets as possible to the "base texture" state (generic stylised material with generators in Substance from high-poly bakes, or very basic painting) as I'm aiming to complete the modelling stages by the end of this month at the very least, if not before. I want to make sure I have enough time to give key assets the attention they need in the more detailed painting and texturing stage.
For the wood planks I made a trim sheet for the first time to familiarise myself with how they work. The wall and roof material I blocked out very quickly in Designer, they will be refined later on (also need to fix the rotation in the World Aligned Texture material so the roof tiles face the right way)

This week and until our Beta submission in a couple weeks I am shifting my focus back to the much-neglected Silken Forest, as it hasn't been updated much since Pre-Production! It's a much more important area than the street, which serves only as a transition zone between the boutique and forest.
I've started sculpting a few custom trunks to make new, more clearly "stylised" tree variants with. Here's one I made progress on yesterday:

Callum_Highfield

Pre-production animation tests and research. Here is a collection of the animations during October-December of 2024:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PmkuI5vj3I

Callum_Highfield

Alpha Production Animations - here are the animations inspired by pre-prod that will be used directly in the game MythWoven. Animations created Jan-Feb of 2025:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azx8M7tzoZI

Callum_Highfield

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