Some more Landscape and Cliffs

As I was writing in my last post I needed to fix a lot of things in my landscape first of the fluid actors would leak into areas where it shouldn't be. I first tried simply moving the fluid actors down but unfortunatly the rivers would get to small so I had to go back and forth between mudbox and udk to bring the affected areas up. This was a fairly long process since I also found some of the rivers to thin as is and rendering out the height map to make it usable in udk made it pretty much a waiting game.

Additionaly I hated the transition between the different textures. As a response to that I created a shader, that would assign a texture depending on the angle of the area this was the result:

Furthermore I have been working on cliffs to flesh the map out.

Thanks for reading and have a good day.

Trees and Landscape

It has been quite a while since my last post so I have a lot to say at this point.
for the past few weeks I've been working on several thing that being trees, cliffs and landscapes. First of trees. after doing a few attempts at the way that James Burton made the trees for Ether (http://www.jhburtonma.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-trees-of-ether.html) I realized that kind of simply assembling trees quickly doesn't work very well for the style of our game so I had to come up with a new way of making it work. My solution was creating a set of tree trunks and branches following that I would take them into Autodesk Mudbox and sculpt each piece individually making sure I sculpt a smooth transition between trunk and branch so at a later point I can simply mix and match trunks and branches to get variation.
Here is a tree that I have created in that way:

Secondly I have been working on Landscapes.
The Process I went through was a fairly simple one I just created a plane in Autodesk Mudbox and from there started sculpting with the specifications our level designer gave me. Following that I generated a height map with which I created the Landscape in UDK.

For one I need to go back into the sculpt and fix some of the height information, so I don't have puddles in some areas where there shouldn't be. Secondly I'm not happy at all with the blending of the textures for the landscape so I need to do more research into that. A second solution for the bad blending would be to use a mesh with vertex painting rather then a landscape.

Thanks for reading and have a good day.

changing gears

So while I was working on my skydome I got a bit sidetracked by snow and moss shaders on trees and rocks. I started with the moss and since moss mostly grows on the north side of the of objects in the northern hemisphere I wanted the shader to be able to only be active on one side of the mesh that being the side I specified as north.

The second thing I wanted to be able to do is control the growth of the moss.

Moving on from that I wanted to be able to quickly add snow but I also wanted to be able to show a slow build of snow.

Lastly I wanted to be able to show a slight build up of snow when there was a lot of wind so I created a shader in which i can determine where wind is coming from and that is the direction that the snow will build up on.

Thanks for reading and have a good day.

More Skydomes

In the Past few days, that I've been working on my sky dome I've run into a number of problems. First of all the simple rotating sky dome didn't quite look right  

I then showed this to Josh Taylor my MA tutor and he suggested going back to basics and also using panning rather then rotating clouds which might give a more natural feel to it. He also suggested I use two sky domes the outer one being to show the moon,stars and higher clouds and then a second one slightly lower to show more clouds and get a good variation by slightly altering the direction. I first decided to see if I can make the clouds work with a panner since the stretching on the outer edges would be quite significant. I also tried to use two sky domes which did improve the clouds when looking straight up. The initial result was this:

After thinking about the dome a bit more and literally going back to the basics that being the shape of the dome I decided to try a disk similar to a saucer. The initial result looks promising so far but needs a lot of work.

Thanks for reading and have a good day.

Dynamic Clouds

So I've been working on the Skydome for a about a week now and have been stuck on the dynamic clouds for most of it. The reason for this is, that I need varying kinds of clouds to really get a dynamic feel to the scene. I will need normal puffy clouds on a sunny day, light cloud cover, full cloud cover and storm clouds and getting that is quite difficult. I've been trying to analyze the procedural Skydome in the Unreal Engine 3 which has been difficult at best. I think the best way to go about it is to create a simplistic Skydome that works and then slowly build on it with what I know works with my limited knowledge.

As a final thought I want the Skydome to have the possibility of working on an Alien planet so I'll start with a realistic and then build on top with alien aspects.

Night , Day and Weather

After speaking to James Burton on where a good starting point would be I decided to start with a fully dynamic Skydome in UDK which would include day, night and weather changes. While I create the Skydome I will also work on creating environment pieces, that would allow me to create a forest environment to test the dynamic lighting.

For workflow improvements on trees and other foliage I've been looking at Curves and Nurbs in Autodesk Maya.

So that I don't get carried away by this task I've set myself a deadline to the 1st of November. If I cant get the skydome and the dynamic lighting to work by then I'll reevaluate my project.

A day of work

So today we were talking about how we can start our Masters and I decided on combining mostly Technical Art and a little Environment Art. I'll be basing my Masters on James Burtons work who has been working at White Paper Games as a Technical Artist. Since White Paper Games is a very small team he focused on optimizing work flows and since the project I am working on also has a small team I am striving to continue his work and adapt it to our game. First of I will look into making high quality plant life like James Burton has but in a very different style. Following that I will try to adapt what I've learned to larger objects like Mountains and Caves. Further more I'm curious if similar work flow improvements can be applied to buildings.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

I'm going on an Adventure!!!

Hi everyone my name is Christoph Lehmann and I'm a video game artist. I've just started my MA in Games Design at the University of Central Lancashire and with this blog would like to document my journey.

However before I start I'd like to tell you a little bit more about myself. I recently completed a BA Honours Degree in Games Design and over the course of the Degree I have mostly been focusing on Environment Art however in recent months I've been looking more and more into Technical Art which I've found fascinating.

Now as for where I think this Adventure will lead....well I wish I knew. I would like to bring Environment Art into it since I've always loved working with Game Engines like UDK and I also enjoy Technical Art since it's new and exciting but I would also like to make a game with some friends. So my Masters could be on Environment Art, Technical Art or my experiences as a Lead in a small Indie company maybe it'll be all of it or non of it.

At the end of the day it is the Journey that matters I may not know which path I choose or where I end up but I do know it'll be an Adventure.