Skuther: Airship Village [Cry3]
polycounter lvl 10
VIDEO FLYTHROUGH COMING SOON
Polycounters!
Haven't posted here in a while. After wrapping up my previous UDK piece, I went off to Insomniac Games for the summer and actually got to contribute a bunch of art to Ratchet and Clank. In short, it was an awesome experience and I got to meet and work with some really talented dudes. Now i'm back in school and facing down my last semester which ends in may. After that, I'm kicked out into the world for good. I think this is the perfect reason for this next environment project to be the big one.
The Challenge:
Use Cry engine to create a cinematic wide shot of some fantastical world. Elements in the scene should be tied together by a sense of narrative and composed to invoke vastness and depth. I also wanna hit some dramatic lighting (something like golden hour early morning) and implement it accurately.
Below you'll find a bunch of concepts I've made, I'm hoping to get some design crits as I block out my first pass.
Concept Art / Flavor Text:
We enter the world of Galestorm, the setting of a high flying, hack-n-slash, Open-World RPG with a lot of platforming elements. The basic aesthetic theme of the world is that the sky is the ocean. Towns and cities are built on tall sky scrapers of rock and give off a coastal feel. The world's flora is derived from maritime shape language (coral reefs), and airships are the main form of transportation.
Final Concept / Art Target
In particular we've just journeyed to this town called Skuther, once ruthless barbarian territory now tamed by the loss of their powerful warleader - Ragnar. The settlement and it's allied neighbors have hung up the swords and shields of their plundering days for the harvest and trade of their most valuable rescoruce, Skyfish. It's been three years since they've turned docile and as naive foreign traders trickle in monetary wealth, a cold revenge is planned in secret.
The town itself is influenced by How to Train your Dragon's norse architecture and Final Fantasy 4's airship filled ambience. When it comes to fantasy, I'm also a really big Zelda fan - so I hope that finds it's way in too. I'm running with architecture mostly described in the bottom row of this next sheet.
Below are some of the other compositions that I visited before painting the final shot above. As you can see in the final above, I went with shot 3.
And finally, a mood sheet to keep everything in check.
I'm not experienced in cry engine at all, so this should be a real interesting battle. I'll have a blockout in engine and posted today or tommorow. Any thoughts on design are really appreciated. You guys were a huge help last year and provided a ton of valuable criticism. I think this next journey is going to be an awesome one.
So again, let's do it.
Polycounters!
Haven't posted here in a while. After wrapping up my previous UDK piece, I went off to Insomniac Games for the summer and actually got to contribute a bunch of art to Ratchet and Clank. In short, it was an awesome experience and I got to meet and work with some really talented dudes. Now i'm back in school and facing down my last semester which ends in may. After that, I'm kicked out into the world for good. I think this is the perfect reason for this next environment project to be the big one.
The Challenge:
Use Cry engine to create a cinematic wide shot of some fantastical world. Elements in the scene should be tied together by a sense of narrative and composed to invoke vastness and depth. I also wanna hit some dramatic lighting (something like golden hour early morning) and implement it accurately.
Below you'll find a bunch of concepts I've made, I'm hoping to get some design crits as I block out my first pass.
Concept Art / Flavor Text:
We enter the world of Galestorm, the setting of a high flying, hack-n-slash, Open-World RPG with a lot of platforming elements. The basic aesthetic theme of the world is that the sky is the ocean. Towns and cities are built on tall sky scrapers of rock and give off a coastal feel. The world's flora is derived from maritime shape language (coral reefs), and airships are the main form of transportation.
Final Concept / Art Target
In particular we've just journeyed to this town called Skuther, once ruthless barbarian territory now tamed by the loss of their powerful warleader - Ragnar. The settlement and it's allied neighbors have hung up the swords and shields of their plundering days for the harvest and trade of their most valuable rescoruce, Skyfish. It's been three years since they've turned docile and as naive foreign traders trickle in monetary wealth, a cold revenge is planned in secret.
The town itself is influenced by How to Train your Dragon's norse architecture and Final Fantasy 4's airship filled ambience. When it comes to fantasy, I'm also a really big Zelda fan - so I hope that finds it's way in too. I'm running with architecture mostly described in the bottom row of this next sheet.
Below are some of the other compositions that I visited before painting the final shot above. As you can see in the final above, I went with shot 3.
And finally, a mood sheet to keep everything in check.
I'm not experienced in cry engine at all, so this should be a real interesting battle. I'll have a blockout in engine and posted today or tommorow. Any thoughts on design are really appreciated. You guys were a huge help last year and provided a ton of valuable criticism. I think this next journey is going to be an awesome one.
So again, let's do it.
Replies
I love the concept and I'm interested to see some cool cry engine cinematic.
Thanks so much for the awesome support!
It's been a few weeks since I opened the thread (school started up again) so I couldn't do the cool "update every few days thing"
But here I am, updaitng you now, with the first in-engine screen grabs.
Here's the breakdown of the house as of now.
On another note I dont think I have seen this style in the Cry Engine yet, it looks quite beautiful.
This week I got a little lazy, so this update is on the small side with block-in houses and a catwalk test.
An initial fog layer has also replaced the body of water that shouldn't be there (this is an airship world after all) Some kind of scrolling cloud material will rest on top of that when I figure out something cool.
Sounds like an awesome idea. The fog is temp just to cover the really nice looking water. I was feeling tempted to change the setting for it so I wanted to cover it up as quickly as possible lol.
As soon as I figure out what I can do with clouds in the engine, i'll get that stuff sorted out!
Also, does anyone know if there is a way to rotate the viewport camera? Can I do that somehow for the final promo shot? Thanks!
Dude I loved your last environment piece you did, looking forward to this one
your textures..are so guud
I'm hoping to reign in all of the other houses to some quasi-textured/completed state by Sunday and also resolve the rocks which are only made up of two meshes right now. By monday we should have a good understanding of what this scene is going to look like in final, and what needs to be noodled more.
thanks alot for tip
ramsus > thanks!
Jungsik > nice to see you around again!
This image marks our arrival at a big milestone: with all of the scene's elements roughly textured and composed in the engine. There's also some animated particle effects which spring the view port to life a little bit - soon to be further augmented with airship silhouettes flying around in the far background.
I think the colors are pretty much there... but there's allot of lighting iteration left to muse over. Now we're entering the fun part of the project though, full of giving textures final passes and sealing everything down for good.
The big rock meshes have along way to go I think. I dont know if it's going to take another mesh or two thrown into the mix (right now most of the mountains are composed of only one mesh) or just more diffuse painting and a better detail bump map.
Other than that it's just a long list of small stuff to fix that will incrementally make this scene look very resolved.
If anyone has a bone to pick with this image, make your voice heard!
I totally thought it was a painting
I'd love to see you bring more saturation into the background like in the concept - the play off desat green/sat orange is getting a bit lost in the foreground as is cuz of the fog
It's hard not to focus on it. Seems a bit harsh/pointy and a bit too perfectly tiled.
My 2cents.
awesome stuff though.
Now, I'm really rusty on good composition rules, but I'm pretty sure that the angles and arrows generated here are violating them somehow.
quick and dirty paintover. . . .
*shrugs*
I still think another tweak or two, like reducing the darkness of the tile cracks, or breaking that up with something might go a long way. But It's definitely a lot better, imho.
Dont' know if that's what you were trying to address with the deforms, but it helps.
The lack of gesture in the buildings are a common criticism that will be addressed in the next iteration. Dan's warping is along the lines of what I wish to do, but more focused on creating an "inhale" along the shape of the house instead of canting it back and left. I don't want to go as far with these deformations to wind up with Tiny Toon's world, as it sacrifices the mythic / contemplative tone that is currently being built.
The point of smothering or dampening roof detail is sound, and I think it will come in the form of wear and tear via decal textures which will overlay the crevices of the daimond plate. I'm really confident that it will have the effect Psuedo is looking looking for.
The sky seems like it needs some painted stylized details.
Watch the decal textures. That can really take the nice style out of this if you push them too far.
Great thread though and nice job on the prepro stage. Can't wait to see it finished.