Development – BA Animation: Game Arts

Landscape: Further Development

Once I had gotten to the ‘almost-finished’ point in my project, I started going over certain details I needed to refine.

The first thing I did was work into the actual ground material to diversify it. I started by taking three different seamless textures and blending them together, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of exactly how the Paint tool in UE4 worked. I wanted to change up the colours as I think it would help make the composition seem less artificial and much more dynamic.

I also added more hills and trees in the background to create more depth into my scene. This way, the fog seems more realistic and further accentuated, giving the scene a more eerie atmosphere.

As I took great inspiration from more stylised games such as Genshin Impact and Legend of Zelda, I wanted to keep this somewhat ‘handpainted’ style in the material I use for the landscape as well. Thus, I decided to use the following textures:

By doing this, I aim to make the whole scene more homogenous, and also add more character to it as a whole.

UE4: Fog + Atmosphere Experiments

From the very beginning, I wanted my landscape to look gloomy and somewhat eerie. I aimed to achieve this mainly through the addition of fog within the background of my landscape.

So, I added an ExponentialFog element in my UE4 scene, and changed its colour and intensity until I had several different versions I could choose from.

I am concerned that the intensity of the fog might overshadow the detail on the Tavern itself, so I will aim to make it less intense or add more light in the overall atmosphere of the scene to accentuate the main model.

Hidden Tavern: Almost-Finished

After several rounds of landscape reshaping and designing, my landscape started to look very similar to my initial design. I am quite happy with this, as I am keeping up with the estimated deadlines I had given myself at the beginning of the project, which will hopefully allow me to have more time to edit and refine certain issues with it.

Having now essentially finished the bulk of it, I am now starting to think of ways I could further upgrade it. These are my ideas so far:

Adding more rocks and trees in the background – make it look a bit busier?
Adding actual grass to the ground/ changing the texture
Changing the colour of the stream – make it look more stale/ forgotten?

Check-in: Xmas Break

Before we left for Christmas, I wanted to make sure I was still following the estimated timetable I had made.

It seems I am doing alright, as I have started to import my models into UE, and have experimented with the landscape, but they are both yet to reach their final form.

I will aim to catch up over the holidays, and before we come back to class in January.

Problem-Solving: Unexpected Maya Exporting Issue

Unfortunately, I ran into an issue when it came to importing the OBJ pebble archway from Maya into UE4. For some reason, it imported as an incomplete mesh (see above), no matter how I exported it.

I ended up having to use the school facilities to do this – it seemed like there was a problem with my at-home software. Once I did this, the mesh was fine, and I could continue onto texturing normally.

I was concerned, however, that it would take too long to export a series of different rocks for the landscape, so I decided to use the original pebble OBJ and scale and rotate it in various ways to create the rocks within the landscape design in UE4.

I also added the two sculpted and unwrapped background trees I had done, to add more life to the overall landscape:

Texture: Research + Experiments

Tree Bark Research. *Source: Substance Share*

Roof Research. *Source: Substance Share*

Landscape Research. *Source: Substance Share*

As I continued to refine my landscape, I also began to revisit the potential textures I had planned for it when designing it. At first, I thought of painting and creating my own textures and normal maps, but I thought it would (at the very least) be useful for me to look into already existing, professional textures available on Substance Share.

This proved to be very useful, as some of the textures I found were very close, if not exactly what I was looking to use in my scene.

All of the textures I found were both realistic, but not too realistic – I aimed for them to still have a stylised look to them, but not so much that it would look like I used 2D textures.

I also put some of them over my models in Substance 3D Painter to see how it would look, and I was really happy with the outcome, as the normal map really helped emphasize that the tavern is part of the tree itself.

Composition: UE Experiments

**Initial Terrain Experiments** vs **Original Concept Piece**

I began by mapping out the hill-like terrain I had planned to have around the tavern by primarily looking at the concept art I had made for it.

I think this was important as it allowed me to have a visual representation of what I wanted in UE, and to see if it was actually manageable and relatively realistic.

I also managed to add a small stream of water to the landscape to complete the original design for the landscape. I am quite happy with how it looks so far – the depth of the stream seems realistic, and even the colour matches the overall vibe of the 3D style inspirations I had gathered.

I will now have to fix some distortions along the landscape, as well as see if I could find more suitable materials for both the ground and the river.

Tree Tavern: Unwrap

This was by far the most challenging part of my project – I struggled with this a great bit.

In an effort to keep as much detail and shape as I could, I imported the decimated version of my tree into Maya so that I could manually unwrap it.

In the end, I managed to figure out a neat and practical unwarp, which will hopefully allow me to go through this process a lot quicker in the future.

ZBrush: Final Tavern Sculpture

This is the final base body of the tavern – I aimed to make it seem as if the house’ walls were also part go the tree bark, which proved to be a challenge; ultimately, I think I have succeeded at making it seems as organic as possible, whilst also holding true to my style inspiration and keeping it relatively stylised.

I also had to slightly remodel this, as the initial model did not work well once imported into Maya; the second tree had not merged well with the rest of the sculpture, so I had to delete most of its body that overlapped with the body of the house, and connect them again. Once I did this, the model worked fine in Maya.

I now need to move onto modelling the skewed roof and door, as well as the rocks lining it. I have for the moment put the squirrel holes aside, as I was more focused on getting the base form of the tavern ready first.

Final Concept: Rough Value + Perspective Exploration

In some previous posts, I talk about how I like the landscape to frame my project to make the composition more dynamic – I wanted to keep this idea going forward, and so I created a quick colour value study of how I’d ideally like my landscape to look in its final form.

I think it is important to keep the hilly landscape format as it makes the scenery seem much more intriguing and lively, and thus breathes more life into it.