BA3b - Week 5 Summary
This week I decided to work a little bit more with the vegetation in the environment. I felt like it was a bit barren and for an environment set in the rain forest I needed a lot more of it. I started off by looking up a lot of reference and other games. A reference that stood out a lot to me was Jared Sobotta's post on Art Station where he shows lots of good photos of a cave environment from the game Uncharted 4: A Thiefs End.
Like my previous vegetation, I used speed tree to create these new ivy patches. Since they will be rather performance heavy I created 4 different LOD versions in speed tree.
I also created a new vine that was more tangled than the other ones I made. These I will use to enhance the cave feeling.
Here are the two ivy patches in engine.
I also created a new vine that was more tangled than the other ones I made. These I will use to enhance the cave feeling.
Here are the two ivy patches in engine.
I am quite pleased with how they turned out and it definitely gave that extra pow to the scene and made it feel a lot more like its set in a rain forest.
I also added water caustics to the environment this week! Its something I always knew I would implement but didn't exactly knew how to. Luckily it was a rather straight forward and easy process.
To explain what water caustics are, it's the reflection that water creates when light bounces of it's surface in cave environments. It can also happen under water but for video game environments its a common thing to implement in cave like environments to enhance the visuals. In real life it's not as visual as in games but it looks natural and makes the environment more alive since it adds something to the scene that's constantly moving around.
Water Caustics in The Elder Scrolls: Online
To implement water caustics in my scene I used a tutorial posted on the epic's forum by forum user 'papptimus'. It can be found HERE. His way of doing this was to add panner node to add motion but then use a 4 way split to make it move in 4 different directions, and as a result create the illusion of it being bounced off the water.
When the Blueprint Material had been created all I had to was to apply it as a light function to apply it to a light source.
Caustics Blueprint Material
Light Function highlighted in Red.
And finally here is the result in the engine.
If the GIF is not working press the following LINK
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