- CLEARSPRING GROVE -
- Falmouth uni - Y3 - Search for a star entry -
'Grads In Games' hold a yearly competition for young 3D Artists in undergraduate and post-graduate courses called 'Rising Star' and 'Search for a Star' respectfully. Falmouth Uni encorages us to take part, as a great learning experience and a well worth while extracurricular activity. I saw that they had an environment art category so I was more than happy to give it a go! This was my entry.
- 2024 -
Submission to the competition: https://kaiosmond.itch.io/clearspring-grove
The project bigins with a theme that we have to center our environment around. I went with the option 'Little Wonder' to fit with the scene I wanted to make. Here is what I said in my documentation:
'I had initially had my eye onAtelier as my project theme, as I was very interested in creating a highly detailed environment, however I changed my mind. I wanted to continue refining my ability to create cell-shaded and Breath Of The Wild like environments, as I had done for my 2nd year uni submission. I pivoted to 'Little Wonder' with the idea being some mystical artifact or reasorce that the player could claim from some form of forested clearing.'
Refrence
This ended up being the main reference image for this piece. I had
originally followed the composition of the piece but ended up
only using the foliage designs, mainly the central Sigil Tree and
white flower. I made sure to get permission from the artist (Asure
Misoa), and the person who commissioned the piece (Victoria).
originally followed the composition of the piece but ended up
only using the foliage designs, mainly the central Sigil Tree and
white flower. I made sure to get permission from the artist (Asure
Misoa), and the person who commissioned the piece (Victoria).
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Textures
TREES (Above) - As I knew I had a fair few trees that I would need to texture in a very uniform way, I knew that a smart material was the way to go. I had played around with smart materials before, but this was my first couple of attempts at a full blown one. My aim was to create a stylized painterly texture, almost watercolor. I started with a rustic redwood base color (5) that would serve as the foundation. I used a lighter brown color with a basic dirt grunge to add some color variation (4). This was edited with a level modifier as well as a Blur Slope filter for a more painterly effect. A similar layer was next (3), with the same filters and modifiers, but this time with a grunge texture that targeted raised surfaces. With my high poly being so well made for this, it made all the extended segments pop, and added depth. The top layer (1) served for more color variation. This was a very simple but effective smart material that made heavy use of grunge maps and the Blur Slope Filter to achieve a painted look. This texture was used a lot in the scene.
ROCK (Below) - Even simpler than the Grove Tree Material was the Basic Rock Material. Using a very similar method too. Again, the starting layer (4) was a fill layer, set to the grey that I wanted the rock to be. The next layer (3) was a way to add variation to this color. It is simply a paint layer, with a black mask, set to a slightly darker color than the base. This was then hit with the tried and tested Blur Slope Filter, that created a very painterly effect on the variation. The next layer (2) was used to add some darkness to the recesses of the rock, making the crevasses appear deeper and more defined. This was done using a grunge map that looked for the recesses in the normals. The final, and most important layer (1), was used to add a lighter color along the edges of the rocks detailing, almost like drybrushing. This made the defining lines of the rock pop with color. This ended up being a very effective rock texture that’s present everywhere.
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RVT
I once again used RVTs, or Runtime Virtual Textures in this scene to great effect. Here you can see them on and off to really get a sense for how much they do (Though I misspell it on the image to VRTs). I talked about RVTs a bit on the project that I first used them on, Windcutter Cottage.
Water Texture
I had no idea how to get started on a water texture, as I had never done one before. I ended up following the tutorial below by Kiwax which ended up being very easy to follow. It created some much needed movement and detail to the scene, with the ripples on the shore adding a ton to get that BOTW painterly effect. I really want to look further into water textures to make one myself, as this one did lack a couple of things that I would have liked, such as more foam in the center of the water.
Fog/Lighting
The way this scene is set up, fog and lighting makes or breaks the scene. Right from the beginning of the project I had this style in mind, and I knew exactly how to do it. During my Windcutter Cottage project from last year I experimented with the Exponential Hight Fog in UE5 and I found that the Directional Light worked really well to create god rays that reacted in real time to movement. I knew then that I wanted to create a scene focused on it. As such this scene was built from the ground up with this in mind. I am using the Volumetric Fog option within the Exponential Hight Fog itself, combined with an increased Volumetric Scattering in the Directional Light to adjust the god rays as I please. The actual position of the god rays themselves, as well as the general lighting for the scene, is actually controlled by giant floating bushes above the scene (1). This means that the WindWeight that is controlling the movement of the bushes, is also moving the god rays, to make for a very realistic god ray effect that works wonders on the scene.
I loved this project. This style is defiantly my favorite to work in and I would love to work and develop it further! I feel I have improved a lot since my last work in this style and it feels great to improve. This project has been in my head for a while, so it came to me easily. However, there are definitely things I would have done differently if I were to come back and do it again. First off is time. Due to unfortunate circumstances, I did not have as much time as I would have liked in this project, and it really shows in the lack of smaller details that really make a project like this come to life. I would also very much like to develop my own water texture instead of using a tutorial verbatim, especially because I don’t fully understand how that texture works, meaning I cannot edit it in the ways I would like. Another shortcoming is the texture for the hero asset. Despite having good UVs and a 4k texture, the final result comes across as a little blurry. Finally the VRT that I use for the grass is great, but I need to work out a way for the grass to maintain that look in shadow, as it looses it touch in darkness. This is easily seen at the start of the exported video I made, as the grass along the path comes across as muddy and no where near as good as it looks under the right circumstances. All in all however this project has gone great, and I got the key aspects of this project right. The way the flower looks in the god ray paired with the particle system creating the dust is perfect, and there is a certain magic to the project, which I was hoping to get. I'm looking forward to returning to this project once I have improved!
Submission to the competition: https://kaiosmond.itch.io/clearspring-grove
