New Environment WIP:

Assassin0323

Hey Guys,

Been a way for a while been busy. I have been working on this composition over the last couple of days. Just had some time to follow Choco's Terrain Creation videos. By the way they are some amazing videos, really helpful for a terrain noob like myself haha. I have been working on this terrain over the last couple of days, just placed the tree where I figured it would go. Just got to a good point to post an update on the status, for some major C&C.

I have a lot of plans for this scene, right now I believe it is a total of about 7 miles wide for the entire terrain. The paint over I did pretty much explains everything. For the composition, I plan to do tons of grass meshes painted everywhere using the foliage brush. Put a path running over the hill, I already have my wind going in the scene. The sky needs a ton of work I know its just a place holder, thought it would look better then standard black background. Please comment and critique the hell out of it!

Here is a link to his site terrain tutorials page. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88933

Assassin0323

Here is a shot of the grass I plan to use its not color corrected, but it will be in the scene.



Here is a shot of the entire landscape in UDK.

Macattackk

looks good so far. keep it up!

Assassin0323

Thanks man, I actually have been working on the sky and added some height fog really made a difference. I appreciate the comment thanks.

Alex

Darkleopard

Keep us posted! Are you doing this all in UDK or using maya/Max to model? (im unfamilar with terrain stuff

Assassin0323

Darkleopard,

I wanted to do it all in UDK, but GDC ended up being 2 weeks away when I started so I followed Choco's method. It basically starts off in Mudbox for the base sculpt. Then goes to World Machine for some quick terrain variations. Back to Mudbox for some detail sculpting and finally baking out of maps. Then its all UDK and Photoshop. I was unfamiliar with terrain myself on my off time I have been learning this week. I actually painted in some grass with the foliage brush, added some height fog, and I fixed the sky for the interim. I am now going back and messing with my detail textures, then it will be time to tweak my terrain material.

Glad you like it, I am thinking about streaming my work on LiveStream later.

Here is a quick screen shot with the new stuff. Nothing special, the grass isn't color corrected yet(last minute step ). Forgive me for the aliasing I won't turn on MMLA Anti-Aliasing till I am ready to render out fully.

Assassin0323

I decided to start working on some of the more basic things in my scene. I worked on a new sky, tweaked the environment lighting, started working on some more texturing, color correcting things a little bit, and putting the final touches on the detail textures for the terrain. I still have a long way to go with this project, I would really appreciated any critiques or comments.

Assassin0323

Sorry for the delay, I have been trying to post some major updates. But ended up with a medical issue, so I have been on bed rest since. I decided to do a few quick tweaks to the piece till I get clean bill of health. Please comment and critique.

.polygon

add some more rolling hills between the tree and the far mountains to help tie them together. I feels very separated right now. too much fog also those background mountains look nice, lets see them more. also a few small rock piles in the fore ground would help

Assassin0323

Polygon,

Thank you for the critique, I will work on adding some more rolling hills. Your right about the fog its too strong I'll cut it back some. The goal was to have some rocks scattered about, as well as having a well to the right side of the trail. That would utilize more of the negative space in the scene.

Thank you for the critique it is very much appreciated!

Jarm

I love the simplicity of this scene... not something you see very often.

I think you could really push the feeling of being at a high altitude if you got more specific with the foliage. I'd expect the grass to be patchier and a darker green, broken up by small rocks and patches of gravelly soil. This is a great opportunity to build a nice deep vertex blending shader to really sell the idea of patchy foothill soil.

Looking forward I think you could do a lot with leading the eye in this scene. If you build a good vertex blend shader you could accentuate the path with your painting decisions. Another thing that would add a lot to the scene while simultaneously giving you more tools to lead the eye would be patchy rolling fog. You could pull back the overall atmospheric perspective a bit and re-add fogginess selectively and locally.

Looking forward to how this develops!

aajohnny

Looking great so far, I like it. I am with Jarm on this, it would be cool to add in some nice vertex painting add some dirt patches and a dirt road maybe? Keep it up!

Assassin0323

Jarm,

Thanks for the C&C, I figured less is more. I still have a ton of work to go. Glad you like the basic composition though.

I am not to familiar with apply vertex blending to landscape layers. It is something I would have to look into, I know a ton about vertex blending shaders themselves. To be honest this is my first scene using landscape tools in UDK, I decided to throw myself into it head first haha. Currently I am using landscape layers and blending between them just like you would with vertex blending. I did do some interesting things to the master landscape shader. I used some vector and scalar parms to quickly edit parts of the grass and path. The rocks are a definite, I can easily add some more landscape layers to put some gravel type ground around the rocks.

I am still playing around with the composition of the scene a lot. I liked the idea of a high altitude scene. But the original plans were to add a village in the background. I thought it would add some more depth to the scene. This would also give a reason for the trail, that is currently going nowhere. I do like the idea of the patchy rolling fog it could be a really fun Cascade project.

Thanks for the critques guys, I am always looking to improve and produce the best pieces possible.

Future Goals for this Project:
-Green up the grass a little bit more
-Work on the landscape shaders
-Work on the landscape itself to give more of a midground
-Figure out a better use of the fog or pull the fog and work on Cascade Fog
-ROCKS, ROCKS, and more ROCKS!
-Adding some more foliage maybe some bushs and other types of grass.
-Modular building pieces for a village
-Rain material
-More interesting lighting(May aim for a more stormy feel)