[WIP] Tormented forest UE5 [WIP]
Long time no see !
So the "Tormented forest" is a new project. I want it to be dark, scary, oppressive....
My main reference is Darkwood from Fable universe, the forbidden forest, and the Nighthaunt lore from Warhammer Age of Sigmar.
I want to focus on vegetation and trees because that is something I don't usually do !
Do you remember this mission, when, in Fable, a merchant had to be accompanied and protected and you obviously had to go trhough the Darkwood forest ? This is my main inspiration. It was not an easy mission at all and the merchant was so afraid that he was completely dumb.
For the art direction, I want this project to be kind of stylised, not realistic. I'm looking for something detailled but I want to play with shapes and color first (see the work Billy Wimblet below)
I want to feel the huge scale of the trees and the character to be small among them.
I like to play with long focal lengh, something inbetween 50 and 85 mm. But I also don't want the final image to flat so I probably will work a lot on that later.
I will be heavily inspired by the work of Billy Wimblett and the work on Disney environment painting (Bambi to give an example).
Tyrus Wong's work is awesome too.
I will try to stay on thoses tracks as I usually change my mind a lot during this process of creation !
moodboard and inspiration : credit to Billy Wimblett and Tyrus Wong.
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Start with basics shapes! to set up my intentions. I want a lot of huge trees, twisted branches and trees, roots etc. The layout might change in the futur as it's just a test in Blender and the final composition will be in UE5.
I'm slowly replacing the placeholder with a twisted tree that I have made in Speedtree. It's still a placeholder of course, but it express more my intentions.
I want this tree to be the main focus on the image. I want to sculpt it like a face in it like this concept I found in my Fable Legends Artbook ( I don't have the artist name...)
I want to put on the first plan a character that have to go through this oppressive forest, but it's kind of obvious and a recurring theme...SO maybe it will be just some ghost, or, a kind of dark creature wandering around...
The mood is always the first thing I do in the process (after the layout). I like to set up a lighting with my primary intentions. That makes me feel confortable with my idea and I project myself better this way. I'm pretty happy with this layout and lighting. Of course it will change but that's a starting point at least !
Now I know what are my main focuses :
Huge Trees
Medium and small vegeation
Ground
Character (to be defined)
I know that the huge trees are going to be a challenge because of their sizes. But that's ok. I will work on some tiling base materials in Designer and Zbrush and make some masks to add varaitions and break the tiling. I need now to focus on the composition more, find a way out in this image. I don't want to make that too easy and obvious, I want the viewer to feel traped in this forest...
I like the fact that the character on the left is quite far from the camera, I don't want him to be defined too much and stay blurry and mysterious.
UE5 render :
Some other test with the composition, I switched to 50mm lens. I like to work with lense from 50 to 85 because you're more in your subject and I feel that here, it's working well, we are more "in" the forest among thoses big trees. Now I have to play with medium scale elements...
Small update on this !
I decided to change the POV and play a bit more with colors, I tryed to get some desaturated look to match a realistic lighting.
I implemented a terrain material that I can paint, for now it's megascan texture as placeholder but I will on proper texture later !
i also made a rough sculpt of the big tree 😃
Update time !
I added a world position moss on the rock and trees. Worked more on the storytelling of this scene. I'm pretty happy with the result of today, I have the "NightHaunt mood" I wanted at the first place =) I will probably need to work on a better fog, I found the exponential very artificial…I need now to work also on proper vegetation assets, the placeholder are not working very well now.
I will also add some overgrown plants on the rock
This is looking great so far. Definitely a fan of dark twisted forests!
The tree art looks like it was also done by Billy Wimblett https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/01/the-art-of-fable-legends/
A couple tricks I used to get that dark foreboding look was to set distance fog to be 100% black at the camera, and fading to zero at camera far clip, so it's actually an inverse-fog which darkens near the camera, an example here. Another trick to emulate rainy skies off camera was to use inverse height fog, dark gray that falls off from high height to low height, another example.
Hey Eric ! Thanks for the tips ! I will try this 🙂
I have to get rid of this too dark image too, it appears good enough on my computer screen but on phone screen it's super black 😅
Yes ! I'm a big fan of dark fantasy and especially Age of Sigmar and Warhammer.
I love it so far. Great that you choose Bambi as a reference. It's not obvious - it's cute but I can see that mellowy and gloomy vibe there.
Can't wait to see the next level of vegetation ;)
Thanks Zazu ! Yeah I like a lot the Bambi painting. Even if it's not something I will exactly have in may final image, it's great just to look at it sometimes !
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So… I told you in the introduction "I will try to stay on thoses tracks as I usually change my mind a lot during this process of creation !"
Don't be scared, my mind is quiet messy sometimes, I have a millions ideas in a minutes 😂
I think I got lost a bit during the process of looking for a good layout and trying to be original (who is original theses days ? 😄 (concept artist are…!) .
That's not my strong suit, I'm better when I follow a reference. So. I took the main reference I had at the first place (in my artbook of Fable, will take a photo of it later to show you) and kinda replicated it. This is more what I wanted the first time.
I also prefer the colors here, closer to what I originally wanted (looking at the Bambi reference).
Even with the experience, we always do mistakes…And I do a lot sometimes but it's part of the process of creation. I'm not scared erasing days of work for greater good. I like to share this mistakes tho.
So now the base it set up again next steps are :
One of the mask I will export for the tree
So, some updates !
I worked on the grass shader this time. Grabbed some cool tutorials on youtube helping me with the shader/tech side where I'm not so comfortable with.
I basically used Virtual texture in order to get the terrain material color on the grass blades. For the grass clusters I simply made them in Speedtree, three of them using a hand painted atlas.
I also added a material function in a spotlight to get this fake canopy shadow projection on the ground. It brings some cool color variations on the grass and breaks repetition.
As always I updated the lighting and reduced the height fog intensity.
Now I need to work on some other ground vegetation clusters to add diversity (flowers, bush..)
I also want to add some moss on the base of the trunk/roots. It will be a mix of base mesh to cover the surface and cards on top of it to create cool silhouette shapes.
I also need to make proper ground materials because for now it's only megascan