Castle Environment

feanix

Okay, I'm going to start documenting a new scene I'll be working on here and there.

The concept comes from the extremely talented Mr. Petter Lundh.

I'll be using his awesome castle concept:


My main aim for this scene is to have a large-scale environment. That is to say, on the scale of something you might find a a dragon-flying sim or RTS. So I won't be doing a lot of small scale detail. I'll be making it viewable from any angle, unlike my previous two scenes which were made mostly to be viewed onlu rom the same angle as in the concept art.

For now I've been working on blocking out the landscape shape and the castle meshes. I've also been playing around with getting the sky to look nice. The trees atm are just experimental.

I'm having some trouble running lightmass due to fairly large memory requirements.

The sky is the most complete part of the scene so far. I've made the moon small on purpose to match the concept. The aurora are particle based and weave across the sky much like the real thing. I'll post a video when I think I'm ready.

The rocks are also very primitive at the moment. I'm using Z-up to control where the snow lies and I need to add a mask to give it a bit of a rougher transition.

I'm using a Landscape for the terrain so I'll almost certainly be sculpting in a bit more detail as time goes on.

I wont be aiming to match the concept art as closely as before as the main focus for this scene wil be to have a full 3D scene.

Ryper

A good start, but I would pay more attention to the scale of everything, at the moment it all looks very out of place. This could be me being a noob or just that its because its in its early stages. but the top screenshot in particular the trees look very large in comparison to the scale the concept gives.

Keep it up though and this should be good to follow

feanix

Thanks for the crit, Ryper. I'll make sure to pay attention to the scale with those trees. It's tricky cos some trees, especially in old growth forest, can get HUGE.

I should also point out that the stone colour on those towers is WAY to dark and will be much much lighter in the finished scene.

feanix

Thanks luke! I'm not going to go for an exact match. It's one thing to try for it when you're just looking at things from a single angle, it's quite another to do it when you're doing a multi-angle scene.

I can make the valley surrounding the castle a little deeper. We'll see how it works out.

feanix

Please do! I forgot to link to his page above when I mentioned him. *fixes*

tristamus

I LIKE CASTLES. =D

plundh

Awesome! I'm excited to see how this turns out.

feanix

Thanks for all the nice comments guys.

Here's an update:

Ark

I know it's a bit early but your lightings looking a little flat and thus your scene looks a little dark and since i see you got your Aurora Borealis, you can add some directional light to add some shadows to your scene and bring out the forms on your models.

feanix

Thanks for the advice, Ark! I've played around with the lighting to try and get it looking better. The problem I'm finding is that if I put in too much of a difference between lit and unlit areas that it starts looking like day.

I've also pretty much given up on lightmass. It can't manage to actually even load the entire scene into memory on my measly 4gb machine, much less start doing lighting calcs on it. So I'll be doing the lighting old school here.

Xendance

The hill doesn't really work currently. In the painting it looks like if the rock was almost volcanic, lots of sharp edges and things like that, while in your scene the hill looks quite smooth.
Edit: Just read that you'll be sculpting it later on

Ark

Best way to light a night scene is too use a orange/yellow/beige light for the moon and use dim blue fill lights to represent the night sky instead of covering the scene in darkness. Since you have a pinkish sky tho, try adding some pinkish/purple shadows in there. Searching for 'Alpenglow' on google should show you what i mean.

Shifting your dominant light source along with your moon to the side so you get some side-lighting will be a lot better than what you have now. Since your moon is at the rear of your scene, this would mean back-lighting which isn't really suable for showing off large areas like you have here.

Whats with the orangery glows under the rocks?

feanix

Thanks for the advice Ark. I'm still halfway through looking at doing all that. I've also done a lot of work on the terrain material today. I've added some specular to the snow and some normal mapping and tesselation to the mountains. I also move the mountains around a little to match up with the concept art.



PS: Those orangey glows are placeholders for the fires seen in the concept art.

feanix

I've been fiddling with getting the mountains more into the right shape. I'm getting close I think. It's actually only a small slice of mountain range that needs copying from the concept. The others arent shown so I can pretty much make those look however I like.

I also did some experimenting with the foliage painting in the June version of the UDK. While it seems okayyyyy it seems like the collision on landscapes can be a bit funky. It's almost like theres another collision mesh hovering between 0 and 256 units everywhere. Perhaps it's a super-low poly collision mesh? Dunno.

I also added some fun with image reflections.

Enough prattle, images:


Here's a close up of some of the trees. You can see the positional colour variation at work really nicely here.


A shot to show off the image reflections:


And just for some variety, a shot from the other side. I'll need to detail this all up for the final scene.

nordahl154

I love the water, but the transition is too sharp and sudden. Also, the snow on the fir trees would have to be very fine and powder-like to make the snow that blurry and smooth on the branches. Doesn't really fit. The background fog could be a little more blue too, like the reference, and only purple/orange near the horizon because this is a sunset/sunrise scene.
I like the progress though!

feanix

@nordahl: Thanks for the crits. The water's actually meant to be ice. I used these concepts when deciding on making the border pretty sharp. I may soften it up a tiny bit in future but it will still be pretty sharp.

I adjusted the fog colour a little. Is this what you meant?


I also made the transition between snow/no snow on the tree branches a nit sharper:

ayoub44

look great , keep it up

Rick_D

your scale is all off, the concept shows a grand castle looming over everythign aorund it with great lines of sight over all potential incoming armies, you have a small celtic yurt collection that couldn't repel a herd of cows.
the concept feels very sharp and angular, dangerous rocks and crevices, you have squat round little rocks that don't feel at all threatening.

i would work on these elements and the rest will fall into place.

feanix

@ayoub: Thanks!

@Rick_D: Thanks for your advice. You're dead right about the castle not being imposing enough. It definitely needs to be able to survive a cow siege. I used Photoshop to compare the silouette in the concept to one of my screenshots:


That gives me a nice guideline to work to!

Also, spiker rocks are on the way. I only have two variants atm but I'll definitely be doing some more to represent those toothlike ones!

Thanks again!

feanix

Haven't worked on the building but I've updated some of the lower rock formations.

feanix

Worked a bit more on the buildings. I'm kinda going back and forth on unique textures, mulyiple materials and texture atlases for the modular castle sections. More experimentation needed there.

michaelmilette

Looking good man. a couple of things that I saw was the moon looks way to bright for the amount of lighting that is highlighting the ground. the light comming from the windows would highlight a little bit of the wall aswell. also try working with the spercular on your rocks doesn't seem to be picking up any highlights they all seem very flat like there is just a diffuse on them.

cheers

Rick_D

taht's definately moving in the right direction man

feanix

Played around with the specular. This what you meant, Michael?

SgtNasty

Not sure if you are trying to reproduce the concept 1:1. If you are, your scene overall looks too purple, whereas the concept was a lot more blue.

feanix

I've made it more purple as a matter of personal taste. And nope, not trying for a 1:1 this time. :P Thats for the crit!