WIP - Faanui: A utopia on water

NomadSoul2501

Hi everyone,

I decided to tackle a large scale sci-fi project. So far I've been focusing on organic and architectural projects, so I want to diversify my scope by branching into new themes. So far, I've been working on this project for about a month and a half. Being new to sci-fi I've had a lot of difficulties 'feeling' out this project.

After looking for inspiration I felt awestruck by wipeout HD's Moa Therma track, and so the first couple of models reflected that. Soon after I got stuck.
Where to go from there? The core idea was to take a real life setting and build a futuristic city surrounded by water. A modern day Venice.

For the rel life setting I recreated Bora-Bora and that also gave me the name for the city. Faanui, is an actual bay and where the city would lie in should it be real. Following the Venice premise I started placing buildings in and around the lagoon. Somehow that just looked awfully wrong.
It wasn't until I saw the loading menus of Mirrors Edge that I realized what I've been missing. Urban planning!!!
My city just had random buildings standing around, I needed residential areas, docks, blocks and all the elements that suggest a city has grew over a large number of time. With that in mind, I looked at Singapore and Hong-Kong and finally could paint some concepts.

Thank for sticking with the long intro:poly121:
Bellow you can find some shots from the progress so far









If you'd like to see earlier WIP for Faanui, head over to http://www.g-cg.com/content/?page_id=234

I'll be updating this thread frequently as this project grows and would greatly appreciate any comments and critiques.

Thank you,
Sebastian

c0ldhands

Up to a great start I see, big fan of Wipeout and futuristic cities(tip: visit Illium in Mass Effect 2, it will blow your mind). I like the concept, I think the water will add alot to the feeling of glass and steel. One thing though...gotta feeling this is gonna be gianourmos, like are you planning to do small yachts or boats in the water? How are the small islands connected(bridges probably, a ton of them too), how many buildings are you planning?modularity?. Anyway just have to post this pic here, hope you dont mind. This masterpeice is done by Syd Mead if you are interested. Good luck further on, Ill be lurking here.

NomadSoul2501

Thanks for the post. Great painting!
And yes, I drew inspiration by illium (mashing f10 in fraps...)

You are right, I'm planning some boats, if I can figure out how to make them entities in the cryengine. For the Layout, I have four elements: the individual buildings in the water, smaller clustered 'communities', the main city and an industrial area.

The individual buildings are like resorts or upscale retreats, they get serviced by boat/air traffic. For the clusters, think SG Atlantis, smaller blocks interconnected by bridges. The main city and the industrial area are connected by land.

The project is rather massive, its not meant to be playable, more along the lines of a demo so while there are a lot of modular pieces I'm focusing on a great number of unique assets. Having said that, I still keep the polycount extremely low and my framerate as high as possible. 81-62fps at the moment.

Cheers,
Sebastian

BeserK

Looking really well laid out! Some of the buildings look like cereal dispensers, but I'm guessing it's still early days

Vonklaus

Nice start here!

I would love to see some connection of the city to the water below. Maybe add some pipes and conduits that run beneath the water!

Some more image inspiration for you!

Divine Rage

You can't go wrong with Stargate.

Anyway, you're doing good so far. :P

NomadSoul2501

Hi, thanks for all the comments.

The texture work is still very early. For the geometry I'll have to see how it all meshes together before I do adjustments. There are several modular elements planed, such as docks, comm antennas, commercial billboards etc.
so these will further break-up the 'playmobile' look

Atlantis has been in my sights from the beginning, you will find several buildings inspired from it. The pipping is a great idea, I hadn't considered.
It can also be an element to guide the camera from the lagoon to the city.

Bellow's today's progress, I've been speed modeling like crazy












Cheers
Sebastian

pior

So much potential!
I'd say, try to mess around as early as possible with rendered AO baked to vertices

Good luck!

Electro

Very cool, I hope you keep pushing and get this all done.

fearian

I definitely got a mirrors edge/mass effect vibe opening this thread so nice work!
I can't tell the scale too well here though - how close will the player get to the buildings? its it just a cg kind of piece or will someone be running around?

c0ldhands

Would`nt mind reserving a spot in one of the high buildings. Anyway, if I have any crits it would be that I dont savy the round shaped base in the middle, I like it better when the city scape was formed just arround the shoreline. Or I would probably make it smaller and move it away from the front of the cityscape, fells like its blocking my view. Keep it up man.

NomadSoul2501

Hi everyone

Thank you for all the comments and critiques.

AO is definitely on the agenda as soon as I get to texturing.

This piece is designed to be a cinematic fly-through. I want to have boats and maybe some planes moving in the world, but its not designed to be playable and will not even have collision.

The round shaped island started bugging me as well when I introduced it.
I want to have something there, so that it's connected with bridges and I can fly under them. But I agree, it either needs to get less bulky or smaller.

Today I revisited one of my placeholder textures.
This project relies so heavily on glass, and I wanted to match a specific glass shader I saw in WipeOut HD.

Below you can find my reference as well as my attempts to recreate it.






Cheers,
Sebastian

Divine Rage

The first style you had for your bridges suits the scene and setting better in my opinion.
Even if the first made me think that if they had materials strong enough to make such supports possible, they wouldn't need suspension bridges in the first place.

c0ldhands

Looking good...definetly in the right direction. But correct me if im wrong, are there two textures at work there? One for the buidlings inside and the other the glass shader that goes on the outside?

c0ldhands

damn it, double post.

NomadSoul2501

You are correct sir
There are two materials.

NomadSoul2501

It's been a while since I posted anything new here:)

This past week has kept me busy though. Some more buildings have been added to the scene, but most important, this week has been a UV frenzy.
Every object on the waterfront has been UV'd so that I can experiment with color palettes and shapes.

Everything has a solid color and a some shapes assigned to it.
Let me know what you think:)







I'm sure, that once I add material properties and texture to the colors it will change a lot, but for now I want to get everything to read at extreme to mid distance.

Btw, I'm still looking into designs for bridges, so if you know of any good ones, post them please.

Cheers,
Sebastian

NomadSoul2501

Hi everyone,

Another update on the progress of Faanui.
For the last couple of days I've been filling up the city with more building types and changes in elevation. Also, the initial concept of the islands was too bulky and bland, so I came up with what I hope to be a less boring solution.

Also I have two more iterations of the bridge.
I'm still very undecided how to work those bridges into the concept.
I've been looking at a lot of modern architecture and especially Santiago Calatrava. The second idea was inspired by his projects.







Please let me know what you think.

Ps.The concrete texture is not final by any means, it just reacts to light better than the default gray material.

Cheers,
Sebastian

Ged

nice, starting to look like a proper city skyline. Does it loose the shadows on the city when you are far away?

NomadSoul2501

Hi,

GDC is drawing closer and I'm rushing to get Faanui to a presentable state.
Here's a sneak peek of how I was thinking the camera could be like.
I need to slow it down at several places and showcase the city more, but here goes:

http://vimeo.com/9982473

roosterMAP

lookin good! im not lovin the building wth the hole in it tho...