Being my final week I had to think what to prioritise in my project. I know this project doesn't have to be necessarily completed by the end of week 3 as I will get a chance later on to work on it, but I do want to aim to get it to a standard where I am happy with it.
Caged Rocks - Continued
To make the caged mesh I used the conform tool in 3dsMax to mould them around the rocks. I later went in to add some more topology in areas where the mesh was too sharp or harsh.
When texturing the rocks the edge wear wasn't very noticeable, and from a distance the rocks looked like blobs. I decided then to make the edge-wear super intense close up, they seem a bit harsh but as this is for a racing game from a distance it helped define the shapes more.
Even though I had turned the mesh around when tiling I had made the mistake of modelling two corners with rocks that protrude upwards, this caused the problem of no matter which way you turned the rocks there was always an obvious rock on the same side of the mesh. I decided, because of this, to use a small rock I had modelled separately to add in a couple of places to break up the tiling and silhouette.
Vegetation and Foliage
For the plants in the environment I decided to take the approach of using alphas and painting colour into them. This is a very simple way of doing foliage but can be quite effective if it's done well.
I picked out 3 distinct plants from the environment to start sketching a rough silhouette of and then blocked in some rough colour.
As transparency is expensive and more so than polys, I added a few more to cut the alpha down. I shaped and bent the foliage as much as possible to make it look less like a plane and more believable.
After boxing them in I went back and tweaked a few parts of the shrubs to look less rigid and more natural. If I get time I would like to add a decal of dirt to help blend the bridge and road and to make the plants look less clumped and more like they belong there.
I textured them in substance painter and added some detail to help the plants pop. After some feedback I also decreased the saturation as they were too rich and healthy looking for a dry hot location like Crete.
Trees
For trees I decided to photobash some leaves together to get an idea of the shapes that would work best to create the foliage of a tree. I wanted the tree to look full and bushy therefore I added as much thickness to the leaves as possible.
I blocked out a rough shape I thought would work well for the trees and dotted them around in similar places to the scene.
I used these blobs to work out where each bunch of leaves were going to go and duplicated them around until I got a look I was happy with.
Again I had made the vegetation way too saturated! but I was surprised how well the trees came out. I went back into Photoshop and painter and made some tweaks here and there to make them blend more with the environment.
After dulling the saturation and putting some atmospheric fog in, it's starting to shape up and come together a lot more.
More Rocks
To break up the terrain I used my previously made rocks, which I baked and textured in Substance Painter.
I used them only in places that stuck out and looked odd, such as the main patch of terrain that was tiling and the valley in between the two slopes.
Feedback
After receiving feedback and talking to peers I made a list of things that needed to be altered and stuck out harshly as obvious issues.
I did plan on making a few decals already but I hadn't got round to making any yet, and the same goes for mesh skirts, so I thought best to add those in. I have never done either of these before, so working out what would work was rather tricky, so a lot of research and trial and error occurred making these work.
The main issue was the terrain at the back (circled in yellow), as this had a lot of light hitting it and drew the eye too harshly. Even though this is what the vegetation appeared like on the terrain on google maps, my tutor advised to use my artistic licence and go ahead and break it up with trees. I also created a material instance to vary the colours of the trees.
I tried to use as few decals as possible to dress up my scene as they can heavily effect a games performance. I also added a darker value of the road texture and vertex painted it to add some variation to the road. To make this work I did have to add in extra polys to the road for this to be applied well.
It was a shame I didn't have enough time to do the bins and the rubbish around them but I think there already was a lot to do on this project. There are a lot of things I want to improve on, especially the decals and vegetation. It would be great to have a go at making the foliage in Zbrush and then bake it down to a plane. There is also a lot of unfinished assets and parts of the environment I would like to do to enhance the overall project such as lighting and playing around with a different sky box.
For now though I feel like I had a good shot at this project, especially considering I was learning a lot of new workflows and software. I'm happy that I have learnt a lot through it too. :-)
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