Friday Week 2: Environment Project

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Finish blocking in forms

May be not have a flat wall texture, may be add geometry.

If the room is were not pure bright white, but darker then the light being emitted from the centre would appear much more dramatic.

Make the centre even more dramatic, even lager. 

Work

I spent the first half of this week white boxing out the room. After showing people the basic block out I realised that everyone naturally places the scene on the surface. This is due to the nature of the tree and the obelisk, these are assets that we associate with being out side. Because of this realisation I now began to research large existing hollow structures. I settled on the interior of an Oil/LNG tank.

This is a real construction, it’s an extremely interesting space and it should contrast nicely with the Fantasy centre seen.

Not all these tanks are as complex as the first image above. I did initially plan on making a tank closer to the second tank interior. This tank has much smoother walls, the same with the ceiling, also if you were to imagine that the tank was brand new and had absolutely no ware, newly painted etc, this could be extremely simply to create. This would put all the emphasis on the centre of the scene. 

After some feedback I decided to actually go for the first tank design. This was because here there was an opportunity to cast lots of complex shadows. If the light source is coming from the centre of the room and my room had all these complex geometric forms, the room it ‘self should become quite dynamic.

I also saw an opportunity here to learn how to create parallaxed textures in Unreal. I thought that that if I managed to create a good texture, then this could be applied to all the main interior surfaces. This would quickly finish the majority of the room with one single texture, and the texture budget is the main constraint for this project.

This is actually all that is required to create a very basic Parallaxed texture, a Bump Offset Node and a Heightmap. I would have liked to learn how to add more layers to the Heightmap as can be seen in the following Unreal Texture.

But I really wanted to move on from blocking out the room, and start creating the assets in the centre.

The piece of this process that took the longest was creating the heightmap. For some reason I couldn’t get it to bake correctly, also Heightmaps take ages to bake far longer than Noraml and AO. I then also tried to Projection map the pattern in Max. Eventually I managed to create a sufficient map.

This is the result of my Parallaxed Texture. Although the Bump Offset has worked and I was given an OK from a tutor I actually wasn’t happy with this texture. The texture just isn’t as vivid as actual geometry. I just don’t think that it looks real. The problem here is that paralaxed forms don't cast dynamic shadows, I didn't realise this until completing this process.

After talking to a tutor about how to bring this texture forward we added the following nodes to the texture. This sequence creates a random value that is then randomly allocated to a single tile of UV space. This then when Added to the Normal channel alters the normal information slightly for every single tile. This gives a much more realistic light bounce from single tiles, creating the impression that they all sit at slightly different angles, creating a realistic level of imperfection. Below is the result of this. It would have been nice to have called these assets done at this point (apart from Albedo, roughness and Metalness).

 This is the finished result.

This is the white box scene as it sits at this point. Here I have also tried to multiply in an additional normal grid pattern that can be seen in the Ref image I am basing this off. The additional normal map after some tampering was simply doing odd things with tile variation that I was already using so I stopped trying to add it. 

More Design

Here I’m researching additional props, the environment, the wall texture and trees. I settled on a Yew Tree as they all ways have a mystical, ancient and warn/stressed quality to them. I wanted the tree to have a dramatic bend in it and still appear ancient. Oak trees for example when they are young enough to be tall handsome trees they don’t look all that gnarly. But when an Oak is truly ancient they tend to collapse and become broad stumps, this wouldn’t fit the form that I want the tree to have. Yew trees even when young always look twisted and Gnarly, it’s always believable that a Yew tree is ancient. Although a truly ancient Yew does follow the same form as an Oak. Both these trees hollow out and lose any kind of  defined trunk.

Here I have further added to the design of the room. The most important change here is that I have raised the walk way.