Lost In space

Here we are, after many hours of work I'm happy to show you the last update of my work. It was a pleasure to do this contest, a real personal challenge. Thanks to all my friends who support me and help me with there feedbacks. Also a huge thanks to The Rookies for organizing this Contest!

Hope you'll enjoy it! 

I've worked on a new plant this weekend, I wanted to try "Control Rig" plugin from Unreal. So fun to play with and I manage to setup this little procedural animation that follow the player position. The plant is named Oxalis Hippomanica. it's not very dangerous, just very curious. 

This time I worked a bit on the video aspect of the environment. I made another scene where you can see the planet from space, and the capsule approching it. 

also worked on the FPS view, I had a glass effect with a distort effect. And code an headbob in the fps character. That give to the scene a good cinematic effect. Of course I will also have camera shot in the final render but adding a good fps character add immersion in the scene. 

I love working on this aspect in my environment it's a fun part ! 

Hello ! This week I start thinking about the storytelling of this environment and everything around it, so of course I wanted to speak about an astronaut lost in the space that discover a new planet. This one is beautifull but with some investigation he understand that this planet got is own disease

Those giant organic formation are like heart for this desease and the more you get close the more you understand why, all that pink vegetation disappears

Next step is to add sound, various visual effect for the first person and the last video 

Little update, not that much tech this time, got a little bit more into the story, developing the parasite side of my environment. The big organic thing in the middle of the scene look like it come from another planet and proliferates on a new one. I work a bit more on the displacement shader of it so it really look like alive. added new plants and worked a bit on the composition. 

I also added thoose big roots on the "heart". I want that the more you get close the more you get this blue vegetation

I plan to add many more vegetation, and terrain mesh. I will also start to model all the protagonist assets 

Let's call it a "new beggining",  I was not satisfied with my last landscape, and the composition, and the grass, and ... ok, let's make this again, but in a way I'll feel I'm on the right tracks. 

So I've started with the biggest thing, the landscape. I spend some times in Gaea discovering this new toy, pretty good except all the crash ! And finally I come out with a landscape I'm happy about 

After that I needed more material for this landscape, let's deep in substance designer again. I made a dirt and rock mat, dirt stay in gray so I can multiply it with a vector 3 in UE4

After that I wanted to redo the Master Landscape Material, So I took the old one and add tiling over distance and automatic layer painting, so I have dirt and rock I big slope 

That's the main one 

And that the material format, so I can create many more

After that I wanted to remove one of my biggest blocker, "performance lost because of grass", that my biggest issue, my shader is well optimise but the size of the grass made a bit too much overdraw. Solution was here let's made this grass smaller 

The scene is still empty for the moment, but will solve that soon with all my vegetation and material

Also add those dirt mesh that blend very well with the landscape 

Yes ! I have also finished this huge thing, that also is one of the reasons I wanted to make my landscape again. I really want to focus on this thing, it makes the place live like a huge heart.

I'm pretty happy with what I done in the shader, first it's made with 4 udim because of his size. And I also add some animated displacement so we really feel the life inside it.

The idea is to have huge root coming out of it and that go drink in all the next lakes. 

I still have a lot of work but I feel more confident now, thanks for reading me ! 

Here is Ovum Adminicuria a strange egg that grow in water

Those plants are Boletus Mucida, it kind of grows like a mushroom

I also started to work on the main thing, huge formation at the center of the scene, I want to make a huge organic formation, with root that come all over the lakes of the scene, kind like if it was a hearth for the environment 

After a lot of work I manage to setup parallax occlusion mapping on my landscape material, tessellation would have been so great but sadly my computer think the opposite way ( performance are horrible on unreal Landscape). but I'm very happy with this result 

I had to trick blending AO with my albedo cause of what I understand POM is not very compatible with direct lightning. 

This material setup is great, I got my main shader with all the landscape blending stuff, and on the side all the Materials function

I also start working on my Plants, let me introduce you to the : " Aesculus  Angustifolia" a fruit plant that protect itself from pretador when they get too close

Current animation are not finished but I get the idea. 

I want to have 3/4 plant animated like this one, and also more "basic" one that are only animated with shader

I've been quite busy with the contest this week and did a lot of work:

- Finishing sculpting / texturing the rocks

-Create the foliage shader 

-Sculpting the tree 

-Keep working on the art style and drawing my ideas  

-Working on materials for the floor, and also working on the landscape material

I'm working on a fully dynamic lightning scene so I also worked a lot on the optimisation making LOD settings etc...

I got in trouble with the landscape material, I wanted to make a setup with POM but it's not compatible with dynamic shadowing.  I'm still looking for a solution 

For the grass shader, I've done a setup that I love and did a lot in the past, it's very flat, fluffy and wavy. It's inspired by the kiteDemo setup. I got some trouble with the animated color, cause it tile a lot with distance but manage to find a solution.

I use a modified version of my grass shader on the tree. I like the look they have it's very stylized. for the card I used substance designer. I just made a simple shape on photoshop to get more control and then use the tile sampler to scatter them. finaly I place them randomly in 3DSmax and use the Normalthief tool to get this fluffy look.

There is still a lot to do, but I have to say that I really enjoy making this challenge

I've start my blockout by working on the terrain first, I wanted something very open, with a lot of visibility but also huge dimensions. 

I've made simple blockout props to quickly get a feel of the dimensions 

I also started to sketch some of the plant, they will have a real impact on the scene 

I really like to make a light setup when I feel my blockout is done, this help me a lot. So I decide to learn the new UE4 features The Atmospheric sky and cloud. It was super fun to setup following the MichealKinseys video. I try to get something with an alien look with multiple touch of colors.

I really like this setup cause now I can set it at any time of the day 

(Yeah this is only a huge scaled unreal ball)

I'm actually starting the sculpting of all those cliffs and rocks

I finally start working on my project, I try to keep references number low so I don't get lost in ideas. So i got the landscape and vegetations references and I also did a color palette. Let's launch all those softwares now and make a good blockout !