Since the last update the deadline for the Masterclass project brief set by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has been and gone, and although I didn't keep this blog updated I made sure to keep a record of my progress as I worked. As a result I have around 50 screen captures and renders that I intend to talk through right now.
Before I arrived at the above result I had to finish the modelling and unwrapping stages before moving onto texturing, lighting and finally rendering.
Once the models were 90% in place I turned my attention back to the generator. This was one of the more intricate models and was important to the environment and so I modelled and textured it separately to the rest of the scene. I decided to use an entire 1024x1024 map just for the generator. Although this wasn't consistent with the pixel ratio of the rest of the environment I felt it was necessary to achieve the look I was after.
I wanted the generator to be leaky and dirty and not look clean and sophisticated as people may expect from alien technology. I used Photoshop to create the colour and specular maps and then used Crazy Bump to create the normal map.
I then started to texture the rest of the environment. I started by planning out how I would utilise the remaining 4 maps. I chose to split the textures up into walls, wooden objects, alien objects and organic objects and assigned a 1k map to each of them.
Before I could actually texture any of the objects I had to re-arrange the UVs to fit into the maps. For duplicated objects such as the fence posts I had to use the 'Transfer Attributes' feature in Maya to map the UV co-ordinates to multiple objects.
After the UVs had been organised I started to texture the wooden areas.
At this point I was pretty excited. I'd applied specular and normal maps to the wooden areas ontop of the colour map and I was starting to get an idea of how the end product would look.
Moving onto the wall textures was a challenge. I knew that the large wall in the Oceanarium was decorated with a mural of a tropical beach. To make the texture I had to grab some photos of a real world mural and stitch them together to roughly re-create the design of the actual Oceanarium. The problem was that the mural was really saturated and looked too new. This is the texture before I worked it over in Photoshop...
...and this is the texture afterwards.
I really wanted to make the wall look dilapidated and broken. I like the symbolism of an image depicting paradise being subjected to the harsh reality of an alien invasion. I used the normal map to give some depth to the damage; the cracks look like deep crevices and the paint stripped spots on the walls are recessed. I had to hide the mural layer in Photoshop when creating the normal map or the palm trees would appear recessed too!
I made a hole in the wall at the rear of the environment to open it up and also to liven up that area which I found to be lacking details.
I took a quick break from texturing to complete the rock wall faces which make up the walls of the lower level.
I could then apply a mossy rock texture. The normal and specular maps did a good job of making the rocks seem more 3D, hiding the simple geometry that they were made from. Ideally I would have loved to have taken the rock mesh into zBrush to sculpt but I ended up not having enough time.
I duplicated the generator twice and placed them into the scene. I placed one up high onto one of the lateral beams (not there in the render) and one to the right of the tunnel, which was also textured by this point. I found that from the entrance to the tunnel the player had an interesting view, with the spikes silhouetted against the sky making them seem daunting.
I added in the cables coming from each of the generators using the 'Extrude Along Curve' feature in Maya. I made them droop low into the players field of view, which really made the generators feel imposing and give the impression that they're active and plugged into something. I'd also textured the broken frame of the tunnel and other minor areas such as the rusty edges to the platforms.
I had been using the Mental Ray Physical Sun & Sky to light my scene realistically and found that my textures would always appear more 'washed out' than in Photoshop. I found that the problem lay in the gamma correction that the indirect lighting added. I changed the gamma in the Render Global settings to 0.45 from 1.0 which corrected the problem. My textures looked much more saturated and made the scene look much more detailed.
The next step was to model and texture the alien eggs. The model was really simple but the textures, specifically the normal map, gave me some real trouble.
Once I'd wrestled with it enough I placed the egg into the scene onto a mound that I modelled and duplicated it a few times, varying the scale as went.
The environment was pretty much fully textured at this point. If I moved the camera to the entrance of the tunnel, to the same location from the concept, the silhouette and general layout of the scene was just how I wanted it.
The lighting stage was all that was left. I chose to stick with the Mental Ray Physical Sun as it gave a realistic lighting solution, especially with Final Gather enabled. The only problem was that wherever I positioned the directional light, the lower level would appear too dark. This was a problem as the player needed to be able to see the alien eggs to their right.
I positioned a couple of area lights to properly illuminate the space.
After a couple of quick tweaks to the models and textures, the environment was complete!
After some very quick adjustments in Photoshop and Nuke the environment was looking even better.
I'm extremely proud of the final product. I find it hard to believe that this was spawned from my concept and is now in 3D. I've learned so much about the processes and workflow associated with environment creation. I had a lot of fun and I'm definitely considering pursuing it as a career.
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