THRONE ROOM - The Temple of Utu - MartinH & Minos
polycounter lvl 16
Final Submission:
Temple of Utu
by Martin "MartinH" Holmberg & Thiago "Minos" Klafke
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGi1LON-fRw[/ame]
Summary:
Our environment takes place in a distant planet where a civilization was built upon a complex mythology based on the worship of their host star, Utu. This planet is surrounded by several moons each represented by a specific deity that plays a major role in controlling the planet's natural cycles. On the 333th day of each year, the rising sun shines directly on the throne, signaling the beginning of 7 days of darkness. This period which is believed to be the Underworld god Nedu returning to judge the recently deceased is in fact caused by a huge moon (also known as Nedu) eclipsing the host star and plunging the planet into darkness.
(Even though we didn't stick with the idea of the sun hitting the throne, the rest is still valid
)
Software Used:
3ds Max, Zbrush, Unreal Engine 4, Xnormal, Photoshop, Bitmap2Material, 3D Coat, Quixel Suite.
I did experiment with Substance Painter for the Throne a bit but due to being super busy with crunch and GDC I ultimately dropped it since I'm not experienced with it yet. Still a great opportunity to get my hands on it and I'll be definitely integrating it into my pipeline!
Beauty Renders:
Throne Construction Shot:
Thanks Allegorithmic & Polycount for setting this up, We had a blast working on this! Really cool to see so many awesome entries and good luck everyone
---- Original post ---
Hey guys, me & MartinH are teaming up for this with "The Temple of Utu".
Summary:
Our environment takes place in a distant planet where a civilization was built upon a complex mythology based on the worship of their host star, Utu. This planet is surrounded by several moons each represented by a specific deity that plays a major role in controlling the planet's natural cycles. On the 333th day of each year, the rising sun shines directly on the throne, signaling the beginning of 7 days of darkness. This period which is believed to be the Underworld god Nedu returning to judge the recently deceased is in fact caused by a huge moon (also known as Nedu) eclipsing the host star and plunging the planet into darkness.
Blockout:
Our first blockout, which will probably change quite a bit, specially the throne area:
Moodboard:
And some trims:
For this entry we will be using 3ds max, zbrush, photoshop and substance.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to a kickass contest
Temple of Utu
by Martin "MartinH" Holmberg & Thiago "Minos" Klafke
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGi1LON-fRw[/ame]Summary:
Our environment takes place in a distant planet where a civilization was built upon a complex mythology based on the worship of their host star, Utu. This planet is surrounded by several moons each represented by a specific deity that plays a major role in controlling the planet's natural cycles. On the 333th day of each year, the rising sun shines directly on the throne, signaling the beginning of 7 days of darkness. This period which is believed to be the Underworld god Nedu returning to judge the recently deceased is in fact caused by a huge moon (also known as Nedu) eclipsing the host star and plunging the planet into darkness.
(Even though we didn't stick with the idea of the sun hitting the throne, the rest is still valid
)Software Used:
3ds Max, Zbrush, Unreal Engine 4, Xnormal, Photoshop, Bitmap2Material, 3D Coat, Quixel Suite.
I did experiment with Substance Painter for the Throne a bit but due to being super busy with crunch and GDC I ultimately dropped it since I'm not experienced with it yet. Still a great opportunity to get my hands on it and I'll be definitely integrating it into my pipeline!
Beauty Renders:
Throne Construction Shot:
Thanks Allegorithmic & Polycount for setting this up, We had a blast working on this! Really cool to see so many awesome entries and good luck everyone
---- Original post ---
Hey guys, me & MartinH are teaming up for this with "The Temple of Utu".
Summary:
Our environment takes place in a distant planet where a civilization was built upon a complex mythology based on the worship of their host star, Utu. This planet is surrounded by several moons each represented by a specific deity that plays a major role in controlling the planet's natural cycles. On the 333th day of each year, the rising sun shines directly on the throne, signaling the beginning of 7 days of darkness. This period which is believed to be the Underworld god Nedu returning to judge the recently deceased is in fact caused by a huge moon (also known as Nedu) eclipsing the host star and plunging the planet into darkness.
Blockout:
Our first blockout, which will probably change quite a bit, specially the throne area:
Moodboard:
And some trims:
For this entry we will be using 3ds max, zbrush, photoshop and substance.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to a kickass contest
Replies
Loving those blockouts, loving the planning you did for it too, shaping up to be awesome, good luck guys.
Testing out some trims:
+ bonus cat pic:
Really works well.
Only crit I can give, which is infinitely small, perhaps one of the big square slabs should be rotated, so they don't both have the bottom right corner worn, and the other 3 corners less so.
When I first looked at it, especially where the sun hits, the slabs read identical in everything but hue.
Really liking the feel of it so far
@Spoon: Good catch, that's an easy fix!
Finished up another trimset tonight:
Looking forward to your feedback everyone. I'm having a blast with this comp and there's loads more to come very soon so stay tuned!
Also im having the same catproblems as Thiago, the damn thing wont stay off my tablet
Great work on those materials too, looking good in-game for sure.
Trims look awesome!
Martin is kicking ass on the throne, can't wait to see that bad boy textured!
Anyways, another day another update, here's the wallset for the temple room (the previous ones were just tests):
Alright, time for a new update! Spent the weekend putting the scene together with quick pieces and also started experimenting with lighting since it will play a major role in the scene.
Meanwhile Martin has been kicking ass with the throne getting all the bakes done. Major work for the throne area still needs to be done. Cool renders for the throne incoming soon!
Anyways, here are the latest screens, keep in mind that this is super rough and filled with placeholders.
great job guys !
@d1ver: Agreed! The throne area still needs some major work, we will hit that up next
Anyways, here's a new update, started replacing some of the temp trim textures with unique ones:
+ bonus cat pic - he continues hard at work on the scene as jihel noted, eventually stepping on weird keyboard combinations that send the editor to hell and back:
Here's a sphinx that will sit next to the throne:
The sphinx represents the 4 major deities of the Utu civilization: the lion represents Utu (the sun god/god of men), the creature in the front represents the god of natural cycles and lesser creatures, the wings represent the goddess of ascension, while the man sniffing the creature's ass represents the god of the underwold. The face is believed to be Utu civilization's founder, "Urbarra", on a happy day.
- "Biluda the 3rd", Great Historian, Master Builder and Cosmologist
Really hard to list all the stuff that were added since the last update but I think the major additions are the backdrop buildings and balcony/throne area. We also did a major scale pass, hopefully this feels much better now!
Man... only two weeks to go. Exciting times ahead!
aaaand here's a sneak peek at what's coming next:
Damn God of War 5 really look amazing.
Some critiques:
The plants look a bit too "clean" and artificial at the moment. I do like having plants there though, to contrast the rigidity and cleanliness of the marble.
The cupola over the throne itself makes the applied texture look not believable. The slabs of marble work great for the floor, but it looks like a texture on the cupola. Especially considering the intricacies of the rest of the palace.
That said the fact that it's got less detail brings the throne into good focus, it's just that the texture right now is not a perfect match.
The way this section curves also gives the texture a distortion that shatters the illusion that it's sculpted details instead of an image.
These are nitpicks though. Again, it looks absolutely fantastic. Great job!
@Noodle!: Thanks a bunch of the crits, those are really valid points and most have been fixed in the latest version
@anglorum: I'll be exploring making a VR version once the contest is over. Really stoked about that
@Spoon: As of now it's mostly just a directional light, color grading and very few fill lights.
edit:
Here's a comparison of the level with and without color grading:
With that being said though, here are some useful tips to get better lighting results:
- Set all your static lights, except the directional, to Static. Default for new lights is Stationary, but you get more lightmap complexity and much better performance with static.
- Add a skylight and set it to static. This will take a cubemap of your skybox and use it as an ambient light. I found you get better results with static than stationary.
- Crank up the indirect influence of the skylight and directional just a bit, to 1.3 or so. If you do too much it will look washed out though.
- An easy way to get quicker bakes without sacrificing quality too much is increasing the map scale in lightmass settings to 1.5. (set it back to 1 when doing final bakes)
- Make sure you have enough reflection probes to cover all your metallics, those are responsible for the nice highlights you see on the golden trims.
I've been working on a new ceiling this weekend and integrating Martin's new dome into the map better. I'll post some breakdowns later tonight!
(This is a medium setting light bake so bear with me)
The ceiling is made from just a few pieces (the big dome was broken up into smaller bits for lightmap purposes)
Just for kicks, here's a cool vista screenshot of the backdrop. Martin did a really kickass job with these but we never showed them properly before, so here they are! We want to polish them up further by adding more materials, vines and props if we have enough time (which seems a bit unlikely now
Still quite a bit of stuff left to make/polish and time's running short so we need to start picking our battles. The floor and receded areas to the side will get a big facelift soon!
I have no idea how color grading works, though, so that will be my weekend task, I guess
I hope you don't change the floor too much, it is what I like the most about the entire scene!
One minor crit, I think the foliage could do with another pass. Looks lower quality than the rest of the stuff in the scene. I'd expect it to look a little thicker, I think.
Temple of Utu
by Martin "MartinH" Holmberg & Thiago "Minos" Klafke
WIP Thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148195
Summary:
Our environment takes place in a distant planet where a civilization was built upon a complex mythology based on the worship of their host star, Utu. This planet is surrounded by several moons each represented by a specific deity that plays a major role in controlling the planet's natural cycles. On the 333th day of each year, the rising sun shines directly on the throne, signaling the beginning of 7 days of darkness. This period which is believed to be the Underworld god Nedu returning to judge the recently deceased is in fact caused by a huge moon (also known as Nedu) eclipsing the host star and plunging the planet into darkness.
(Even though we didn't stick with the idea of the sun hitting the throne, the rest is still valid
Software Used:
3ds Max, Zbrush, Unreal Engine 4, Xnormal, Photoshop, Bitmap2Material, 3D Coat, Quixel Suite.
I did experiment with Substance Painter for the Throne a bit but due to being super busy with crunch and GDC I ultimately dropped it since I'm not experienced with it yet. Still a great opportunity to get my hands on it and I'll be definitely integrating it into my pipeline!
Beauty Renders:
Throne Construction Shot:
Thanks Allegorithmic & Polycount for setting this up, We had a blast working on this! Really cool to see so many awesome entries and good luck everyone