WORLDS | 3D | Lilium Crater | Kampfisken

[kampfisken]

Hi!
I'm not much of an enviroment artist, but it's something I really want to improve, so I thought I'd give this contest a go!
I will be constructing my city in Unreal, since it's an engine I want to master.

I ended up wroting a far too verbose concept brief for the city I want to make, but the TL;DR version is that I want to create an atlantis-inspired primitive "Hive"-city, populated by insect-like humanoids, building on top of an ancient, stranded starship in the middle of an enormous crater. The setting will be low fantasy.

I will probably be adding notes and thoughts on the world I am building, as I go, in this verbose and messy document.
Lilium ramblenotes

[kampfisken]

I spent the first week or so planning out what I want to make, and did some loose sketches to get a rough idea of the major landmarks I want. I'm not much of a concept artist either, but here's a few;

Crater shapes;

Ship shapes;

Landscape;

[btartist3000]

Cool idea. I like the "shards" and "flying bs" silhouettes. Look forward to seeing your design evolve

[splicer]

Liking the last drawing with the overall view of the land. Cool idea too. Will be following this!

[kampfisken]

Just about time for bed, so here's how far I got today.
Spent most of the time setting up an Unreal project, and the initial blockout.

Tried to use Unreal's Geometry Brushes for the blockout, but they felt incredibly slow and cumbersome for the large, non-square shapes, so I ended up just reverting back to Blender. x:

Not happy with how constructed the center piece looks, but it's fine for now, just trying to find the overall shapes and especially the scale.

I think I will spend tomorrow sketching a few hexagonal house concepts - I need at least one "City" building that can be tiled and used to form complex buildings, as well as some wasp nest-like rural houses for the outer cliff farms.

I also probably should do more sketches, instead of just diving into modelling, even though I'm more comfortable in 3D suites.

[btartist3000]

Well you certainly get a good sense of the scale blocking it out in UE. I don't do a lot of blocking out in UE myself but I remember it being a lot more work (for me). But at least you can export out your geo and bring it into Blender if you want.

I'd love to see some sketches for sure. I save tons of time sketching out ideas before going into 3D, but it's hard to resist going right to 3D.

[kampfisken]

Oh man, work crunch came and absolutely kicked my ass.
I lost a few weeks of after-hours work, so I am going to have to make sure I limit the scope of this project and avoid feature creep, in order to make the deadline.

I wasn't happy with the center piece of my city, the ship - it looked too constructed and monumental, so I spent a bit of time doodling up a more aerodynamic shape to build around.

I also spent a bit of time planning out my city layout - what the different sections of the city will be themed around, with the lower level being mostly rural areas and agricultural industry, and the upper level being community structures, schools, and other public services.

I realized I made some mistakes with my whiteboxing props - beveling edges of simple shapes makes vertex snapping nigh impossible - so I found myself having to start over a few times before I really got going. I will post a few blockout shots soon.

[kampfisken]

Some screengrabs;

Currently tossing out my shapes to form major city blocks and flow. Will iterate a bit, add some quick secondary forms, and then move on to asset creation.

[Goat]

Keep it up mate! No reason why you still can't create a beautiful piece in the timeframe, I mean you're already off to a great start! I love the slick look of the center piece and how visually you have a lot of points driving your eye towards it, it's a good composition so far

[marc]

More more!

[kampfisken]

Omg omg fine :V

Lost another week on a camping trip I couldn't weasel out of, but I got tons of amazing foliage reference from the botanic gardens in København.
Finished my blockout, started working on some props, right now chiseling away on the biggest elements of the scene, the shards sticking out of the ocean. Estimating I'll need six variations, two of each size - and I really want them to be a nice-looking solid foundation before I start building on them with my smaller enviroment props.

[kampfisken]

Halfway through crater shard modelling, rocks are very zen to sculpt!
The material is a placeholder - I will need to brush up on Substance Designer once I'm done with these and the main structure.

Medium and small rocks feel good, but the big rock here is a bit off scale, I'll keep chiseling in some finer shapes tomorrow, and then move on to refining the ship structure and the surrounding terrain.

[kampfisken]

Wasted 3 hours today fighting with Substance Painter. Turns out it refused to bake from a highpoly .obj, for some bizarre raisin. Also spent a few hours hunting down and burning rats nests big enough to live in.

Finished the primary "Settlement" shard, which I will be populating for a few close-up shots. I will make unique variations for the other shards if I have time, but I need to focus on getting housing and foliage done now, as well as start designing some substances.

[kampfisken]

Almost done blocking out my landscape, will have to shift my blockout and develop it a bit more, and then refine the terrain.

I want the crater to have some volcanic properties, mostly constructed of basalt - with the
rock fractures basalt columns create (like the Giant's Causeway) - and beaches of black sand.
I will need at least two or three different tiling substances for these basic landscape elements, and I doubt I'll have time to put as much effort into these as I would like to, so I will do a quick first iteration when this blockout is done - one that I hopefully can expand on, if I have time, before the deadline!

Also finally figured out how to get distance fields to behave in Unreal, so I can do some ocean foam to make the edges of the water pop!

[kampfisken]

Started blocking out one of the hillside farmhouses - the general idea is for all of them to look like flowerbud-shaped wasp nests, of different sizes and shapes.

[Bohdan_Lvov]

Love that INSANE scale!

[kampfisken]

The scale will probably be the death of me, every day I ask myself what on earth I'm thinking with the scope. :U

[kampfisken]

Previous blockout ended up looking like a li'l dog surprise, so I started over. Did some loose sketches, found a shape I liked, and did a much better blockout!

The scale seems fine - the buggos are about four foot five to five feet on average, so it makes sense that the mannequin is too big for the doorways!

[Bohdan_Lvov]

Well, suit yourself, but remember that this giant scale will be forgiveness to quality and density of textures, content, etc, and on a small scale it will be harder to fake.
And, of course, it wouldn't look so EPIC.