Moving Parts

In order to bring my scene to life I want to have a few different moving parts so that it will feel like a real scene rather than just a camera fly-through of a stationary diorama. I have chosen to have spinning doors, clouds, foliage and a few birds gliding around to show off how high the scene is in its landscape. The grass will be on top of the cliff so it will be affected greatly by the wind which I hope to have a hard breeze to make it move properly in the wind. I will do this from the use of materials within unreal engine 4.

The doors and clouds are moving with the use of Blueprints and the timeline functions, however these are only for the time being as they start from the beginning and keep looping until it finishes which I want to change so that they move properly, especially the doors which I want to only move when the camera is focused on that point. Overall I am happy with the progress that I am at and can turn my attention to getting the rest of the scene up to standard, I also need to work on the particle effects such as the running water flowing through the middle of the scene.

I have also included an image of my cloud material as it shows how it all works together to get the desired effect. I followed a tutorial to get this result however my material is a little different as I have connections in the world displacement not the world position so when the mesh moves the material stays still in a way in which the clouds look like they are properly moving within the world.

Updating Old Meshes

Following on from development of the mountain range I have gone onto update most of the other meshes to bring them up to the same standard. I started with the pillars as they wouldn't take much time to make as I can just take them over into Z-Brush and use a combination of Z-brush tools and alphas to get the desired look. I wanted to make the scene look abandoned and disused so I decided to put a lot of damage onto the pillars so I have done this by breaking them in half and then sculpting the damaged onto them. Below shows the differences in what the mesh look like now compared from the block-out, I am going to use a variety of normal map techniques to get them to a high standard.

I have also decided to update the tree mesh as it was at a really poor standard and bugging me when I was working around that mesh. I have made another base mesh of the tree now which I will take over into Z-Brush and then make the high poly version.

Progression

Having taking the feedback from the block-out presentation on board I now have a clear idea on what direction I need to take and also what I need to focus on however overall everyone liked the idea and the stage of progression that I am at. One thing I need to look into is more camera work everyone felt that the camera was too erratic and there were too many camera shots for the scene and recommend that I have fewer camera shots as it will flow nicer together in the final cinematic. This is very helpful as I will be able to get the best shots of my scene with a more coherent camera fly through.

The first thing that I chose to develop was the opposing mountain range which I will be using in the far distance across the valley which will be seen in the backdrop of some of the shots when the camera is looking from within out to show the sense on size and scale of the whole scene. I decided to look into using the sculpt geometry tool within Maya as I found it to be a quick and easy method in creating a low poly mountain without a large amount of detail on.

I started out with a plane to which I then imported a height map to get the original shape of the mountain, I have decided to use a plane as I will be able to use basic planar mapping for the UV's in which I will then use custom materials within Unreal Engine 4 to create the texture for the mountain.

I then tweaked the vertices on the plane to get a taller mountain as I feel it would fit my scene more to have a very tall, random mountain range. After that I smoothed the edges to make it more organic and lifelike as it had very hard edges which didn't look like a proper mountain.

Following on from this I put the mountain into the engine and duplicated it around to make the whole mountain range while also making sure that I am looking through the camera's to make sure that I cover the whole field of view. I then went onto put a basic material using constant3Vectors and a normal map on the mountain to give it some colour so that I know what kind of atmosphere that I want my scene to have. I want to try and get everything up to the same stage so I am going to concentrate on other area's of the scene so that I don't put off one area to work on another.

Blockout Progress

The block-out presentation is in week 3 and I am pretty much ready to show off my work at the stage it is at now. It has all the elements that I plan to properly implement into the project. I have made all the low poly assets which shows off the whole scene and how it will look at the end and I have also looked into camera work and have implemented that into my scene also to try and give off what my final cinematic will look like as well when finished. I wanted to make sure that I had camera's in as it is an easier way to show the audience what the final scene will look like. I have also made the particle effects to go in the scene such as the water and fire, however I am yet to get anything else moving such as the doors and birds. Looking at the cinematic at its current state I can see where I need to add more cliffs and rocks in so that you can't see the edge, however overall I think I am happy with the stage that I am at, from here on out I need to look at photo-grammetry and where I can implement it into my scene and also improve all the meshes in the weeks to come.

Gathering Reference

Before I start making the assets for the scene I want to get as much reference as I can find as it will benefit the modelling process as a whole if I know what the asset I am making actually looks like. One bad thing about choosing this topic is that there isn't many picture references of each assets that I am looking to design however I have found a fan-site that has screenshots of each frame of an episode of the "Avatar: Legend of Anng" which I have used as my reference shots due to the fact that If I were to do this on my own I wouldn't be able to capture each frame perfectly. One thing that I have taken away from this is that I need to make a better choice in what I am going to create to make sure that I can either get a large amount of references for or if it my own design then I need to be 100% clear in what I want to design.

Decision

After a lengthy decision I have chosen to go with the Avatar idea basing it more towards the smaller water-fountain area with an enclosed section showing off a large focal piece being a door. I want to show the fountain as a large focal point within the scene as well as it will show off a number of skills such as modelling and the use of materials and particle effects within the unreal engine.

I will also be able to show off some of my level design skills which will enable the use of this scene within my final portfolio at the end of year. It will also enable me to progress in my sculpting skills with the use of Z-Brush as the scene will be on the side of a mountain so I will first need to make the mountain itself then all of the other rocky structures. I am planning to have the scene overgrown with foliage and the rocks itself will be withered to create the atmosphere of it being abandoned for a long period of time, However I still want the scene to have some life within it, so I am planning on having the water-fountain working with running water and also small things such as wind blowing the grass and bushes, maybe even a bird flying around to give off the sense of scale and height but I will have to do some research into these area's to get them to a high standard.

Overall, I am happy with the choice that I have made as it will feed into the skills that I have already got while also making me look into other area's of research to make the scene as a whole look better such as the animated parts of the scene. I am looking forward to the development process and are very hopeful that I can make the scene into a piece of art.