[WIP] Treehouse Environment

dorodo · Oct 2015

Hey guys! I'm doing a 3D Diorama based on Rudy Siswanto's concept (you can check his awesome blog <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://crutroom.blogspot.com/" title="Link: http://crutroom.blogspot.com/">here</a>). This is the first time I'm doing an environment for real, so all feedback you can give is really appreciated <img alt="" height="20">! 
 
Right now I'm on the Blockout Phase, and will probably start modeling all the kitbashing stuff next. 
 
<img alt="Wg1W0wIpng" src="http://i.imgur.com/Wg1W0wI.png" title="Image: http://i.imgur.com/Wg1W0wI.png"> 
 
(Concept and breakdown) 
 
 
 
<img alt="VJ9jxsEpng" src="http://i.imgur.com/VJ9jxsE.png"> 
 
(Quick tree bark tile to start getting a hold on the art direction) 
 
 
 
<img alt="d3E7Zjjpng" src="http://i.imgur.com/d3E7Zjj.png"> 
 
<img alt="GytvzPfjpg" src="http://i.imgur.com/GytvzPf.jpg"> 
 
(Blockout in UE4, organizing the number of assets I'm gonna need) 
 
 
 
I'm going to continue working on it this weekend. I'm still not completely sure what my workflow's gonna be, but I think I'm gonna sculpt most of the assets in ZBrush so I can translate that organic feeling from the original concept to 3D (and should help me in a PBR pipeline I guess), and then do the retopo using ZRemesher. 
 
This is also my first time using ZBrush, so I don't really know what are my limits right now, but that's also one of the points why I'm doing this environment. I really appreciate all the help you can give me, and I'll do my best to fix any problems <img alt="" height="20">! 
 
Thank you for taking your time to take a look!

< ASH > · Oct 2015

Hey dorodo nice work so far.

I really like the initial concept: for some reason the trunk used as a climbing ramp reminds me of the home tree in Teldrasil (the Night Elves starting area).

So far the 3d model look nice.

One thing though, watching at the last pictures you posted the UVs of the trunk has something funny: maybe it's just me but it seems that the texture is compressing quite a lot where the trunk bends.

Taht said I am looking forward the next updates. Keep up the good work.

dorodo · Oct 2015

Really late, but thanks for the tip, Ash! I'm going to re-do the UV soon. Sorry for the lack of updates! Finally got something to show.

I got a more detailed version of the house with UVs. Textures are placeholder at the moment.

Also started getting familiar with tileable sculpting and started working on the roofing.

And getting some more shape on the tree bark. definitely going to redo the UV and probably try out quixel for the texturing.

Should I be sculpting the roofing as an unique texture or should I continue wokring on the tileable sculpt? I'm kinda lost in that regard. Everything about the treehouse seems so tileable, but I'm afraid of losing the uniqueness of the design if I go with tileable textures for everything.

dorodo · Oct 2015

Working on some tiles in zBrush and getting them ready for PBR:

[SKETCHFAB]ad2738660d744ba7828e606f736fef0c[/SKETCHFAB]

Unfortunately I've been having some trouble getting the same results from Toolbag in Unreal. Was counting on their specular workflow supporting colored specular

.

Any ideas on how to carry that result to unreal? I did some tweaks on the textures, albeit to no avail.

Tzur_H · Oct 2015

make sure your roughness, metallic and ao are set to grayscale textures (srgb untick). might 'fix' it

dorodo · Oct 2015

It did help! Thanks!

Small update. Getting there, I think. Will have to deal with some of the issues caused by the geometry and UV now.

dorodo · Dec 2015

Hey guys. It's been almost 2 months, but I've been able to work on it here and there. It's by no means finished, but I think it's in a really much more advanced stage, but I feel like I should keep getting feedback from you guys. Now that finals are over, I'll be able to work on it much more and make it really polished.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/6b/je82c6ujbu1z.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/vr/gxkfubr3fvi7.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/dp/kxgve8a5v123.png

I did 3 lighting passes over production, and I wanna say this is the final lightpass (or close to it), but I still want to work on the background in order to expand a little bit more on the composition (something like the background trees in the original one), so we'll see how this will turn out.

As for the tree, I did some more sculpt on it in order to make it feel more natural. It also uses a tileable bark texture in order to give a better texel resolution at closer distances. That same detail normal map is reused on all the other wood materials, albeit on different levels.

The ground uses vertex color in order to blend between soil, dirt (wood chips, dead grass, rocks, etc) and leaves. they were done in a mix between zBrush and Quixel, which allowed me to create more height, normal maps and AO (which I used as a base for the texturing)

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/kj/r86j51rrcqzh.png

So far, the trunk + main branch have 2100 triangles in total. I also use some other smaller branches that I created for kitbashing purposes.

So far, so good. I wish I had been more organized with the material editor in UE4. I spent too much time reorganizing stuff because the nodes were getting too messy and I only found out about material instances halfway through.

I plan on adding the final missing assets (the target flag thingy + arrows, ropes), add decals on the roof to make it more organic and also optimize the foliage, which is waaaaaaaaaaaay far from being optimal (each piece uses about 4k triangles, with an LOD which halfs the polycount, but still). Finally, I want to add some animation on it to give it life, such as leaf particles falling, making the wind turbine thingy spin, etc).

That's it so far. I'm quite happy that I've been able to get along with PBR, so I hope I can have a much more faster workflow next time I start a project.

Once again, sorry for taking so long, and thank you for reading this! I'll probably post an update on Sunday, so fingers crossed!

[WIP] Treehouse Environment

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