#practice media 1

[marcokovacs]

Props are other important element we must have in our library, in the case of the train scene, I was missing something else in the scene, it was only the nature with a train bridge, mountains, river, waterfall... 

Then I made a station, neer to the end of the bridge, but then the station was lonly and I’ve created a water tower, following some references of my moodboard.

I’ve tryed to make it with wood, but my texture didn’t “fit” in this case then I made it metalic, some kind of coper.

The dificulty was to position this tower in a good place to make a composition for camera angles.

[marcokovacs]

Building a library of authoring assets like objects, plants, furniture and technical presets is a great way of practice your skills, save time on modeling and building scenarios, specialy when you use the same style of design for different scenes.

In these two projects I’ve created pines and trees to use in my landscapes, first I made 2 or 3 variations of log / stick then I’ve started to multiply it in the body of each stick ando so on, until I have 6 different variations of trees in scale, shape and number of “arms”.

I’ve used this “dry” or  “naked” tree in the forrest scene, but in the train project I needed green, then I added planes with handpainted leafs texture and its alpha mask to make 6 more variation of trees with different leaf colours and positions.

Some problems I’ve faced was with masks, where in the first time I could see a white edge around the leafs which with distance looked like white trees or very light green.  But I simply fixed this adding a layer in photoshop behind the leafs with stroke using the same colour of each leaf.

[marcokovacs]

Almost done with this project, further I can change the character and use a good wizard, learn more abour fog and lighting, fix some lighting bake problems and ajust the material of the water.

Final adjustments I need to make:

-Revise the light and post process effects

-smooth the hard dark areas and reduce vinetting effect

-change the texture of the rock

-remodel or fiz the log in the swamp as have some smoothing groups problems

-revise the position of the trees and add some grass around the floor.

[marcokovacs]

The painting tool of the terrain mode is interesting as allows you to paint with blend layers of a material, it requires an understanding of material creation with layer blend. in my case I’m using 4 layers with different textures, grass, dirt, mountain wall and pebbles.

Some details I’ve noticed when building the environment, is to follow the right texture for the right ground, when using plants and trees or an area with human construction, natural walls and specific areas such as the pebbles under the rail.

I have to learn more about making more complex material to use as these layers, with different reflextion, alpha and normal maps for each texture layer.

[marcokovacs]

Adding vegetation in a scene is essential to bring some natural life for the image, I’ve used the tree that I made for the first project and added leafs, using planes and alpha masks with variations of colours and shape. I’ve used also the pines from the first project to start create a different biome in the back. 

The tricky step was to distribute these trees on the land, calculating the scale, density of plants or trees, understanding which type of plant usually goes near to a river, water fall, mountain wall etc..

One problem that I’ve faced was to place the trees in the vertical position, because the folhage tool, distribute the plants using the normal of the land poligons as a reference to position the object, so if the land have many curves it will place a tree bent to the side. At least I haven’t discovered a way or configuration to fix this.

I’ve tryed to make blueprints to distribute procedurally the trees on the landscape, but I have to study more about blueprints code to understand how to make the trees been placed using the land as reference. The BP I’ve created only distribute the trees in x - y plane. So it only works for small flat places.

[marcokovacs]

During the process of the creation of the landscape I’ve faced some technical dificulties like particles creation to simulate the water fall foam. First problem was the material of the particle that depending on the type of shade you use it changes the opacity behaviour of the sprites with the alpha mask you use.

Second, the particles settings it self are a little bit tricky as it offers to many options of configuration like speed, colour, velocity, shape, many settings related to the time life of the particle. Again I went look for some tutorials to help me.

An other interest point that I’ve developed in these projects was how to make rocks. It really looks easy to make it when we see in stylized games references, as it looks simple, without many detals, but I’ve learned that most of the result is due to the hand painted texture which needs to be very carefuly done, and many times we dont even need to use normal map. Thus, understanding your UV is essential to find the edges and cracks of your rock and control the colour variation like the light colour in the edges.

I still have to practice to reach a good result comparing to the rocks I see in references I study.

[marcokovacs]

Landscape, terrain or the “world” we have to create for a game, or some times only for a level, requires patience, spacial knowhow, knowledge of photography and composition. I had some trouble with the scale of the landscape, I was strugling to make it in the proper scale comparing to the models I’ve made. 

We lose the sense of the size of the scene when start to create the terrain, which usually in open world games are big. I’ve wached some tutorials from the Unreal Academy to understand better the tools available in the terrain editor, folhage distribution, types of tools to sculpt the land and more. I still have much to learn in terms of landscape building includin illumination for big scenarios, sky sphere adjustments and some technical aspects like water materials, particles to make foam etc..

Also, recently I’ve found a great picture from Jacob, an artist that I follow in ArtStation that usually works with stylized modeling. The most impressive is not even the quality, but the idea, composition and the movement he expressed in this scene. Its about a mine cart going out the rail from a place about to explode.

I will try to think more about this kind of scene, with movement that reinforces the story been told in that place.

Reference:

Jacob Wheat , (2017), Goblin Escape [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qBomD [Accessed 2 January 2019].

[marcokovacs]

To begin creating the project, I’ve studied the focus of the scene which is the train in the train bridge that usually have this structure. I’ve created one, based only in mind experience, I haven’t followed any reference of bridge structures because I was afraid of making some model to similar to the reference, thus, making authoring design of the models. Basecally those old bridges are made of wood and iron, so for the textures I will make some variation of colour for the wood, some rusty details for the iron colums. I’m following the basic pipeline of modeling props for games, model the first object, imidiately map its UV, then start to coppy this object with some small modification in the shape, rotation and scale to create a natural variation.