Organic environment... where to begin?

ablaine

Where do I start? I'm trying to create the following level for a mod project I'm working on, and as I'm new to environment art I was hoping someone might be able to provide some tips and suggestions for a good workflow for re-creating this level in a modern engine.

http://adamhogseth.com/AR0205.jpg

How should I re-create those walls and floors? I really want to capture the layered look with the deeper reddish colors underneath stretched tendons covered in sloughing skin... I just don't even know where to begin.

The props and other things are minor concerns.. I know I can handle those after I've got the walls and floors nailed down. I just really want to do this level justice. Thanks in advance!

Joshua Stubbles

You could do the tunnels with splines, which you can extrude shapes onto or if you have max, make it a renderable spline with geo. The main pods can be started from a sphere or box or plane - whatever, really. Then you just stitch em together.

If you want to do it modularly it's pretty much the same way, but you'll have to make sure the pieces line up, are formed to the grid, etc.

Justin Meisse

When doing caves - soft selection will be your friend. Selecting jagged or stretched polygons and running a relax on them is helpful as well. Caves are pretty flowing and organic, don't worry about perfection.

as far as the texturing, if you are able to us vertex blending and multiple uv sets you can do this:

Unwrap the walls on UV channel 1 and have the seams running down the center of the floor and ceiling

Unwrap the floor and ceiling on UV channel 2, put their seams along the center of the walls

Now when you vertex blend these textures the seems will be hidden completely.

ablaine

All good suggestions, thanks guys! As of now, I have my layout built out.. how should I proceed?



Should I be laying out my UVs at this stage? Or turbosmooth to get a bit more geometry in there before setting up UVs (though I'm assuming it would be easier to set up with less geo)? Right now it's about 400 polys, and the walls/floors are the height/width I want them at. I just don't know where to go from here.

I think for the organic look I'm going for ( with tendons stretching from the walls to the floor, etc), the best way to do it would be to select a section of the tunnel and flatten it out so that I can work on both the walls and floor together when setting up textures/baking.

Whats the best way to do so? I'm used to using UVLayout to generate UVs for characters, and then making some minor tweaks in max to clean them up. I'm using Max 2012, and I have some experience using Renderhjs' tools in the past, but in the past I've always just selected a row of verts and clicked "align verts to x (etc)" then selected the next row and done the same and so on. There has to be a better way to do this kind of layout, right?

Justin Meisse

I'd use pelt mapping, as long as everything is quads you can use edge loop select and convert edge selection to seams.

I've used turbosmooth on caves in the past, it works fine as a starting point but you're going to want to go back and edit your mesh by hand. You're going to lose a lot of your original volume after you smooth it.

ablaine

Thanks Justin, that makes a lot of sense. So basically... select edge loops, convert to seams, run pelt, select one of the sides and flatten horizontally, then the other, then flatten the other two vertically, and then select the polys and hold borders/run a relax by faces/edges?

nfrrtycmplx

if you're creating this level in a modern engine, you're going to probably want to do it modularly or somewhat modularly.

I generally design spaces using lego pieces (and i do the same with organic stuff) build out the tunnels as re-usable tunnel pieces... and change the props and lighting in the tunnel to make it look unique. Your rooms are all roughly the same size and shape. no need to make 4 rooms, make one and change the decorum... caves and tunnels and organic whatnots are fun because you can take strange shapes and kit-bash them together to get interesting shapes... careful with overdraw though.

good luck

nfrrtycmplx

correction, i've also built organic levels in max from splines. it's a bit janky but fun... build out the floor of your map with splines convert to edit poly then teselate... then extrude splines out to make the organic walls... this is useful technique for doing organic hallways in general...

cholden

Even if not modular, the first thing I thought was breaking it up into pieces that are individual halls where applicable. Possibly making adjustments based on camera angles to further this. But yea, nfrrtycmplx is right that some of these could be the same mesh.

A lot of what Justin brings up is similar to what we did on Warhammer for caves and dungeons. Building a collar (cap) to modular pieces or a some connector piece to hide the seams.

ablaine

Thanks nfrrtycmplx and cholden. I definitely agree that some of the areas could be made modular. The outer, circular tunnels, some of the small inner tunnels.. even some of the Y-shaped intersection tunnels could be separated and re-used in a few areas.

I think what I'll do is get the pieces I want to use UV'd and then mock up a quick texture for the walls/floors and then start to re-create the layout using the modular pieces as best I can.

And then, I suppose, I would want to add some variation to the tunnels by selecting loops/verts and moving/scaling them around to make the walls and floors look more organic..

Is there a better way to do it? Or just a bit of pushing/pulling verts?

And then I'll work on my texture, sculpting the tendons and thick, skin-like top layer in zbrush and setting the texture up so that it tiles horizontally and making sure the texture has enough variation in it that it's not obviously the same pattern repeated on every wall... and am I right in thinking that the nature of the organic look I'm going for with this level kind of lends itself to a bit of stretching here and there and would add more variation.?

Does that sound about right? Are there any issues with that workflow that I should consider revising? I'm at work for another 6 hours so right now I'm just trying to think through it.. so any suggestions would be appreciated.

nfrrtycmplx

I suggest trying it and seeing what results you get. No way to truly understand a workflow until you execute on it... I've modeled organic level geo so many different ways and STILL haven't come up with a way that I would call "the best". So many cats to skin, so many tools...

Try what you're talkin about and let's see it good luck chief

Blaisoid

hmm, what's the mod's name?
and you aren't trying to remake the whole BG2, or are you?
Not that i would complain if that was the case, but such extremely ambiteous projects rarely succeed.

ablaine

Blaisoid wrote: »

hmm, what's the mod's name?
and you aren't trying to remake the whole BG2, or are you?
Not that i would complain if that was the case, but such extremely ambiteous projects rarely succeed.

The mod is Baldur's Gate Redux for the Dragon Age engine. The plan is to remake the entirety of BG2, but we're releasing in modules (otherwise it would be years before we released anything). The first module was released before I joined the team, and was more of a proof-of-concept but it does contain Irenicus' Dungeon as well as some custom assets/creatures. The second module contains the entire city of Athkatla (we're up to 92 levels so far), and a large number of custom creatures/characters (which is what I've been working on). You can see images of the levels, creatures, and characters we've been working on in the Project WIP Section at http://bg2redux.com/ if you're interested.