Year Two – Page 2 – BA Animation: Game Arts

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.

Composition: Landscape References

It was quite hard to find any reference that looked exactly like what I envisioned my landscape would look like, but these are the closest and most useful ones I did find. At the very least, they helped me visualise the shape and placement of the hills much better, and as a result would hopefully allow my terrain to look much more organically sculpted.

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.

ZBrush: Hero Tree Sculpting

Tree For Game using ZBrush – YouTube

I moved onto modelling the main tree into Zbrush, and watched the above mentioned tutorial on YT to gather information on how to do it.

I found using ZSpheres a lot more comfortable than building it up form a cylinder using Clay Buildup. This technique helped me gain a lot more control of the shaping of the tree branches and roots, and allowed me to really customise it to fit my desired design.

Once I started to actually sculpt it, I found that using the Trim Dynamic brush really helped create the bark-like texture I aimed the tree to have. I am planning to add squirrel holes and more intricate texture details, and to attach the body of the house (as well as the other tree) to this initial sculpture.

Maya: First Block Out

Hero Tree: References

The tree style I would love to have in my project is the type of tree that’s seems to have lived for far too long: gigantic, thick and interwoven with its own branches. I think this will add character and intrigue to the design of the tavern, and it will also pose another challenge for me to refine my Zbrush skills.

These reference pictures are some of the best ones I could find, as I believe they will offer me a lot of precise detail to follow and go by once I start sculpting.

Research: 3D Style

NOTABLE SOURCES: GENSHIN, ZELDA, ORI

The style I am going for is a somewhat stylised realistic one; I wanted to have realistic proportions and dimensions, but also have a somewhat whimsical touch. Considering that I also had the idea to add lights coming out of the ‘squirrel holes’ in my initial linear, I believe this style would really complement the overall atmosphere I want to create with my landscape by making it more engaging and mysterious.

Textures: Map out of Scene

I decided to plan out my scene and how I would potentially texture it in advance, as I believe it would help me out with filtering the type of textures and maps I would like to apply to my scene later on.

Having previously decided on a colour scheme, I was able to quickly establish what types of textures and colours I should be looking to include. I’ve decided to try and make this scene as realistic as possible, and looking up these potential normal maps will hopefully enable me to sculpt the hero tree part of my tavern better than before.

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.