BA3a - Week 5 Summary

BA3a - Week 5 Summary

Task 2

This week I finished our second task and I am very pleased with how it turned out! Since I last week finished the low poly and baking this week I could focus on the texturing. To do this I used Substance Painter with a PBR workflow. While texturing this weapon I tried to keep specific details in mind, such as where blood would drip on the hand guard if you were to slash something with the blade, had the wielder punched someone if so where would the metal bend and so forth. I think this greatly benefited the result and added more story telling to the texture. 

And finally here are some renders of the finished piece.

I am super happy with how it turned out and I think it's definitely one of the best textures I have created so far. It's my first post apocalyptic themed asset ever and it was a blast to create! When I had finished it I thought that it would fit super well into the Fallout 4 universe and since I have previous experience with modding in weapons in the Engine it uses I thought I would give it a go!

Video demonstrating my sword in Fallout 4.

Creative Practice

This week I imported my rocks I created last week in to Unreal Engine 4 to start building a test scene, here was the result.

I'm really pleased with how modular they turned out to be, it was very easy to build with them by using the various range of placement tool available such as rotate, scale etc. However, i didn't like how generic grey they were. It looked too much like a skyrim dungeon rather than a dungeon set in the Caribbean so I went into substance painter and did a complete texture overhaul while looking at lots of reference of what the colours rocks in the Caribbean had in caves.

As you might noticed I also managed to get some water in there! After doing some research after what approach to take the water I found that Epic Games (Developers of Unreal Engine 4) have a free package of water planes that you could download and use in any project. This was a rather basic kit but it's a great start for me to later modify to my needs. 

It was now time to create some vegetation, just to get that tropical feeling to it. To start off with I created a mood board of various tropical plants that would fit inside a pirate cove.

I then created two plants using Maya and the textures are photos of plants I found online. I also created a few smaller stones which I could use to fill out the environment with.

Using those assets changed the scene a lot, I also used the plant to the furthest right on the image above to sort of build vines with. It really impressed me how much of a change just these few plants did to the environment. I will build more vegetation as i progress with the pirate cave.

Texture Practice

Since I will use Substance Designer for this project to create tileable textures for the environment I figured i would follow a tutorial to refresh my memory of how the software works. To do this I followed the awesome cobblestone tutorial created by Rogelio Olguin who works as an environment artist at Naughty Dog. 

Instead of just copying his cobblestone texture precisely I figured i would go with a more wet sort of version where my goal was to achieve the look that it had just been raining. Following this tutorial was amazing and learnt me tons of new tips and tricks within the software.

My substance created by following the above tutorial

And here are some renders of the final result in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

Vegetation of the Caribbean

The Caribbean are known for its diverse and varied vegetation. Because of the volcanic past the soil is very rich and as a result all kinds of flora thrives on the many islands. Some island are covered of what is known as ‘Cloud forests’ which contains a cluster of trees that consist of the same height. The high moisture levels in those forests promotes a rich biomass and diversity of flora, plants such as Orchids, Rebellions, Lichens, mosses. This combined with a massive number of ferns and flooring plants, results in the very rich and dense tropical forests of the Caribbean. Cloud forests are very rare, they only make up for one percent of the worlds woodlands and can only be found in the tropics. In the Caribbean alone there are 272 Cloud forests, the appearance of these forests depend on a range of different things, these can be altitude, temperature, cloud cover, soil conditions and lastly the exposure of wind the forests have.

Images of various cloud forests in the Caribbean

The average tree at some of these tropical forests are 35 meters tall, while some parts even reach 45 meters. Meanwhile, in the taller mountains of the Caribbean the vegetation is shorter and the moss coverage increased. The reason for this is because clouds often surround these mountains which result in a lower amount of light provided for the vegetation. Another effect this has is that tree trunks become very crooked and their branches form dense and compact crowns. The palm trees get replaced by bamboo as the undergrowth species.

Image of a bamboo covered area

All the cloud forests serve an important role in maintaining the water quality of the area while also containing the natural flow of the streams and rivers. They do this by collecting the water from the clouds and by the help of their tree trunks be able to spread the water to the area. If these forests were to be removed the amount of water provided to the streams and rivers would decline considerably and break the natural order since many of the plants in these areas are dependent on a high amount of water and moisture.

Epiphyte’s are also spread across these tropical forests. These are a type of plant that grows on top of other types of vegetation. They also play a big part in the matter of supplying water to the forests, they make up for about a quarter of the cloud forest species and they gather their water directly from fog and clouds. It has been calculated that at least half of the total input of important nitrates and other irons/neutrons comes from the help of Epiphyte’s.

Image of various Epiphyte's growing on a tree

The Caribbean forests, because of its rich bio diversity provides an area where many of the worlds threatened species of plants can thrive. Some of the plants found on these islands can be found nowhere else in the world.

Cloud Forests also contains many variants of crops species such as Tomatoes, Avocado and Coffee. It also contains many variants of medical plants, herbs and of course a wide range of different fruits.

Photograph of a coffee plant in the Caribbean.

The iconic coconut palm is a relatively new plant in the Caribbean, the originally come from south Asia and arrived in the Caribbean five thousand years ago. Each palm tree can have up to 4000 roots which makes them the ultimate tree to deal with the many tropical storms that hit these islands. The hurricanes are what allowed these trees to spread so rapidly throughout the Caribbean. The strong winds caught the coconuts which the by strong currents in the sea spread out to the different islands to then start growing on that island. It took around 500 years for the coconut tree to spread to every single island in the Caribbean.

Image showing a coconut floating on shore.

Sources: 
Natural Wonders of the Caribbean 2 (2012) - Cloud Forests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYEilIbX6OQ
http://lifeofplant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/caribbean-flora.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean