UDK Theme Park Environment
What's up guys, I really wanted to get a thread going for this WIP of a new environment I started, looking to get feedback and critique along the way of my journey building this thing up. I hope everyone's having a great soon to be Happy New Year! So here is to the start of a New Year with the new environment I've been working on.
Back story:
The environment is based off of a Six Flags theme park located in Eastern New Orleans in the Ninth Ward of the city. In 2005 After Hurricane Katrina hit the area, the Six Flags theme park took a huge loss and was very badly damaged by the wind and flooding from the storm. The Six Flags theme park at the time of the hurricane was owned by the city of New Orleans, after assessing the flooding damage from the storm, it was decided that the park was to be shut down permanently with no intent to reopen. The Six Flags theme park still lies desolate in Eastern New Orleans where it is illegal for people to trespass, yet many find their way in to explore and mainly to do graffiti, as the abandon park has become a graffiti playground for taggers. The way this particular Six Flags theme park was built, such as the style of the buildings and look of the rides is very unique. Some of the buildings have a retro vibe to them, and after being abandon and hit with much graffiti, brings color and a intriguing aspect to the park
References:
Surprisingly till this day the majority of the buildings and some of the rides in the Six Flags theme park are still intact and in fairly good condition. The main visible damage is to the paint and color of many of the buildings, as well as the ground of the theme park is badly discolored and stained in many areas. The benches, planters, signs, railings, and other ground assets around the theme park also Surprisingly stayed intact after the storm, except for the few unlucky ones that were pulled from the ground and tossed around lying sadly in various areas of the park. The theme park is surrounded by foliage and potted palm tree plants that seemed to flourish after the storm hit, making the look of the area even more interesting to walk around in.
Block out:
So far for the block out of the theme park I created my buildings, rides, and a few other little assets in Maya and brought them into the Unreal Engine. I used the UDK tree as a placeholder for now to get a better idea of where I want the foliage in the environment to be. As I progress further into the I plan to add more destruction to some of the rides and ground assets, but not too much, as I want to stay as true to my references as possible. I haven't created any UV maps or solid lighting yet, this is just a primary block out mainly to find where I wanted my buildings and ride assets to be placed to get a good feel when moving around the environment.
Back story:
The environment is based off of a Six Flags theme park located in Eastern New Orleans in the Ninth Ward of the city. In 2005 After Hurricane Katrina hit the area, the Six Flags theme park took a huge loss and was very badly damaged by the wind and flooding from the storm. The Six Flags theme park at the time of the hurricane was owned by the city of New Orleans, after assessing the flooding damage from the storm, it was decided that the park was to be shut down permanently with no intent to reopen. The Six Flags theme park still lies desolate in Eastern New Orleans where it is illegal for people to trespass, yet many find their way in to explore and mainly to do graffiti, as the abandon park has become a graffiti playground for taggers. The way this particular Six Flags theme park was built, such as the style of the buildings and look of the rides is very unique. Some of the buildings have a retro vibe to them, and after being abandon and hit with much graffiti, brings color and a intriguing aspect to the park
References:
Surprisingly till this day the majority of the buildings and some of the rides in the Six Flags theme park are still intact and in fairly good condition. The main visible damage is to the paint and color of many of the buildings, as well as the ground of the theme park is badly discolored and stained in many areas. The benches, planters, signs, railings, and other ground assets around the theme park also Surprisingly stayed intact after the storm, except for the few unlucky ones that were pulled from the ground and tossed around lying sadly in various areas of the park. The theme park is surrounded by foliage and potted palm tree plants that seemed to flourish after the storm hit, making the look of the area even more interesting to walk around in.
Block out:
So far for the block out of the theme park I created my buildings, rides, and a few other little assets in Maya and brought them into the Unreal Engine. I used the UDK tree as a placeholder for now to get a better idea of where I want the foliage in the environment to be. As I progress further into the I plan to add more destruction to some of the rides and ground assets, but not too much, as I want to stay as true to my references as possible. I haven't created any UV maps or solid lighting yet, this is just a primary block out mainly to find where I wanted my buildings and ride assets to be placed to get a good feel when moving around the environment.
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6U5DvbOiuk"]UDK Theme Park Environment Block Out - YouTube[/ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6U5DvbOiuk"]UDK Theme Park Environment Block Out - YouTube[/ame]
Replies
You have my attention ^^
I look forward to seeing where you will take this next
The roller coaster is extremely intricate, Were you planning on having actual geometry for each metal bar thing or are you just going to use a alpha?
@GrungyStudios The roller coaster is based off the massive one at the Six Flags Theme Park in New Orleans called the Mega Zeph. I created it using modular tracks, railings, and support beams. I knew when building the environment I wanted the roller coaster to be hovering over the whole park in background to give it that nice view from all areas of the park. Being that it's somewhat far away from everything else I will most likely end up using Alphas for the beams and taking out the geo for the bolts, but for now in the block out I have a full metal bar beams with bolts holding them together, just to get the feel of how it would look with them rather than without from a distance.
Here's a quick breakdown of how the roller coaster was constructed using modular pieces. Luckily I recently finished watching the UDK Modular Workflow tutorial videos by Tor Frick, which I highly recommend, they taught me to really take use of the grid when building my assets, without that step, assembling this roller coaster with my modular pieces in UDK would have been a nightmare, so thank you Tor Frick for the great tutorials!
But you got to smooth that track. That ride would be so painful. The actual Mega Zeph is much smoother and graceful.
Great work so far really like the modular break down of the coaster!
Blockout looks pretty good. Looks like your taking on quite a large amount of work.
Theres this album with some nice images of an abondoned carnival. Some awesome pictures. Figured you might get some use out of them: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.418202354905597.97895.193626194029882&type=3
@ZacD The real theme park I'm going off of is actually extremely flat and has no real good height variation. I'll think about adding a stair set leading into the chair swing area, I think that would be a good spot for some height variation because it leads into such a large open section of the park.
@gsokol Thanks for the awesome pics of Nara Dreamland in Japan, that place is looks nuts! Definitely some good inspiration for abandon interesting environments.
@SanderDL @Mstankow Good insight on the roller coaster design, after looking at it I realize the drops are a bit to steep and the slopes of the tracks need to be a bit more mellow and smooth. The actual Mega Zeph is so massive that I didn't want to fully re create it exactly, mainly because I knew it would be hiding in the background of the park behind foliage and other assets, but I love the look and feel of the supports and beams of the actual Mega Zeph, so I made sure those stayed true for the most part. I'm for sure going to go back and smooth out those slopes and tone things down a bit more though, so thank you for the heads up on that.
Getting ready to create some tileable textures in Zbrush for the Arcade building. It has been a few weeks since I've been in Zbrush so today I worked on one of my barrel prop assets to get the feel of Zbrush again before I get into the tileables. Thanks again for the feedback guys!