Winterfell Castle Project
Current Update: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2298244#post2298244
Introduction
Hi there, my name is Martin Garnett and I am currently on my third year at the University for Creative Arts studying a BA(Hons) in Computer Games Arts.
For my third year project I am going solo, and hoping to make Winterfell Castle in Unreal 4!
I've chosen this for a topic as I'm hoping to lead into Environment Art and I want to practice with efficient use of materials, and to learn more about shaders and the power of them.
The Project
As I've already mentioned, I am hoping to recreate Winterfell Castle. One other quirk I want to do with it however, is create a switch to change from pre-siege to after siege, hoping to show off the power of shaders.
Using maps, the books, and the series I shall be trying to make it as accurate as possible, so that people will recognise it, and feel that they are actually there.
Updates and Plan
Right now, it's just started and don't have anything built at this very moment. What I'm doing first it researching as much as possible, and sourcing as many references as I can. I did debate leaving this post until I created something however I didn't want to miss out on any potential recommendations and project planning tips!
I will be posting updates to my blog (currently at www.martingarnett.com/winterfell however this will change eventually). I will also be updating the thread here as frequent as possible. In my planning software I have allocated Friday's to project review and updating blogs etc. Therefore you guys can expect an update AT LEAST once a week.
Final Words
I hope you guys enjoy viewing my progress. I decided to post a progress thread here as looking around the forums, you seem to have such a uniquely brilliant community here with priceless suggestions along with awesome work.
If you have any questions about the project or have any input I would love to hear it. It will all help towards the end goal and I, of course, will credit anyone to helps.
Thanks for letting me display the work here, and I can't wait to get started now.
Introduction
Hi there, my name is Martin Garnett and I am currently on my third year at the University for Creative Arts studying a BA(Hons) in Computer Games Arts.
For my third year project I am going solo, and hoping to make Winterfell Castle in Unreal 4!
I've chosen this for a topic as I'm hoping to lead into Environment Art and I want to practice with efficient use of materials, and to learn more about shaders and the power of them.
The Project
As I've already mentioned, I am hoping to recreate Winterfell Castle. One other quirk I want to do with it however, is create a switch to change from pre-siege to after siege, hoping to show off the power of shaders.
Using maps, the books, and the series I shall be trying to make it as accurate as possible, so that people will recognise it, and feel that they are actually there.
Updates and Plan
Right now, it's just started and don't have anything built at this very moment. What I'm doing first it researching as much as possible, and sourcing as many references as I can. I did debate leaving this post until I created something however I didn't want to miss out on any potential recommendations and project planning tips!
I will be posting updates to my blog (currently at www.martingarnett.com/winterfell however this will change eventually). I will also be updating the thread here as frequent as possible. In my planning software I have allocated Friday's to project review and updating blogs etc. Therefore you guys can expect an update AT LEAST once a week.
Final Words
I hope you guys enjoy viewing my progress. I decided to post a progress thread here as looking around the forums, you seem to have such a uniquely brilliant community here with priceless suggestions along with awesome work.
If you have any questions about the project or have any input I would love to hear it. It will all help towards the end goal and I, of course, will credit anyone to helps.
Thanks for letting me display the work here, and I can't wait to get started now.
Replies
First impressions are that you might be biting off wayyyyy too much.
I am really excited to see this progress!
I'm kind of hoping a lot of the assets will be re-usable throughout the castle, so after I've built a few of the ares then the following areas should be a little quicker.
My grey boxing will start tomorrow, I'll try and get you an update then!
Thursday I took a trip to a local castle to get some reference images - unfortunate it was such a nice day (Don't hear that often ey?) the shadows are probably too harsh for me to use. Not only that, but upon comparing the brickwork with that in Winterfell Castle it doesn't match!
I have written my weekly write-up which can be found on my blog: www.martingarnett.com/wp
But here's some images to explain general progress:
This is an initial texture test. Made the normals quickly in Crazy Bump just so I could get an idea with the little highlights. Rendered in 3Do (Pretty piece of software).
This is reference to the series, as you can see - a different texture.
Early grey box overview, along with a first person perspective:
What are your views and opinions on this?
Can't wait to get back to this over the weekend. However the weekends are put aside for part time work and dissertation >.<
Sorry it's been a while, I've been really busy lately trying to organise workshops for Adobe Products as I'm an Adobe Rep for my uni.
Last week I did actually finish a better grey box for the courtyard for which I am going to start in - as previously advised I am going to de-scope my project massively and try to build it up.
Here are some quick renders of my grey box to see what I am working with:
Now I am trying to build each piece of my grey box in a more final model, I'm really struggling to work out what I need to model, and what I can produce with textures.
This is my first model so far, and some reference so you can see what I am working towards.
I plan to add decals for the corners, and windows, then that would allow me to make the tower modular and use it twice.
I know it's not much at the moment, I've never really attempted realistic environments before so I'm struggling trying to work out the best way in doing things.
My question is, would you model all the kinks in the building? and also would you suggest that I should model the windows in?
How would you attack this?
That being said, the blockout looks good but I'd think about what you're going to include in the scene. In that reference, if you take out all the people you don't really have much going on. It's basically a muddy square with one or two wooden structures. Maybe look at some games or other references and see how other people have made their courtyards more interesting.
That being said, I don't watch GoT so maybe there's a treasure trove of reference I don't know about!
I worry about it not running in the Unreal Engine if I make it too crazy high poly?
I've added some more details to the top since my last post, and I think I will go ahead and model some more details in.
Regards to the emptiness, here's another print screen of things I'm hoping to fill the square up with.
It can be worth looking at Epics own models too and use them as a basis if you're unsure.
Here is an updated render:
what textures did you use ?
how did you unwrap `?
The textures were made from photo's. I'm hoping to have time to re-do them via creating them in Zbrush later on, but photo texturing is far quicker for this early stage. I want to try and build up as much of the scene as possible to make sure I'm building the right things. Hehe.
On the model at the moment I'm only using Diffuse and Normal maps, but if I do get around to creating the Zbrush versions then I should be able to use more PBR maps.
This was actually quite an easy thing to unwrap. Because it's quite square I haven't had to fiddle too much with the seams and stretch.
I unwrapped this in Maya mainly using the automatic unwrap tool, and then just stitched and rotated the UV islands.
I'm keeping a lot of the parts separate as this allows me to re-use repeatable textures. I believe this will save more memory than trying to join all the parts together and using bigger, unique textures (and more of them).
A lot of the textures on this building I'm hoping to re-use around the whole scene.
Let me know what you think.
I'm not finished with my dissertation at uni so I can put 100% effort into this project now (yay!) Since finishing things are moving much faster so I'm a lot happier with that.
My course had a visit by the very talented Rob Watkins (I seriously recommend checking out his work!), and with his inspiration, he guided me to think of a way to make my environment something more unique than just a re-build of the set. This got me thinking and now, my plan is to produce the courtyard in an abandoned state, but with film equipment left around (also abandoned). With this, my scene is now set in the day time, and also beginning to be overrun by plants and ivy.
One main change with my project is that I've now migrated to Unity instead of using UE4. My reason behind this is simply because I was spending way too much time learning UE4 and my build was falling behind. I wish I could use UE4 proficiently enough to stick with it, but I'm a lot more competent with Unity.
A lot of my updates can be seen on my blog for the project: http://www.martingarnett.com/wp
However here are some assets I've recently been building for it:
Thanks for viewing
Apologies for not keeping on top of this thread. To be honest with you, I lost a little bit of confidence mid way through and I've been non stop trying to make things better.
My project has come to an end, I have a few last tweaks with the camera for the actual build, but I'm calling this done for now. I've learnt so much and can't wait to get my teeth stuck into my next project.
Here are some in-game (unity 5) stills of my project.
One of my best assets in game was my camera:
Any way, If you would like to know how I've done anything let me know! I'd love to help.
The development blog has moved now to: www.martingarnett.com/winterfell
There will be a build available soon for you all to try - it's a little laggy (due to spotlights being so demanding!) Alternatively it will be on display at my university exhibition. More info about that can be found here.
Thanks all for viewing