Process on Interior and Exterior

Been Working pretty fast on nailing down this environment in the landscape, as you can see from the previous shots I have been trying to nail down the lighting and lead the player to the focal point. I still feel like this needs some work, have been advised to take lighting out every now and then and just redo it to see if I can come up with stuff I like more. Added some pipes and other sections as well as panning mist and animated floor sections which adds a bit of movement in engine. 

Also been working on the outside which at the moment (until I finish the Interior) is just a placement job, I did make another rock mesh and a couple of decals to fade of snow and moss in areas. The outside really needs linking together with this interior by building the base outside. Should be a fairly quick job as the I will use a lot of the interior pieces. Also want to put little areas of interest as you walk through the landscape too.

Interior Progress so far

Interior Update

As said in the presentation on Friday the Interior is coming along really fast, I blocked out the texture for the gold floor and wall panels with the calligraphy and also a metal panel texture which will texture the majority of the environment. I had worked off my Rooftop template for the panelling  but had to rejig the texture as for some reason Cry-engine textures seem to be a lot lower resolution than UDK, but I wanted to keep the resolution consistent.

As you can see from the shot, this gives a plan off what the flooring will look like, been working off a max paint-over for the location of stuff (Below)

Paintovers and a change in direction

Below is a screenshot of the level with one of the buildings in the level, I also created some paint overs for building designs to see if I could find an interesting design. 

After fighting with this stuff for a week or so I finally decided to throw it in the bin and admit defeat, something was just off to me and if I design something hate I find it hard to get on board and motivate myself to work on it. I made the decision after trying the interior of a leg in the level and feeling how linear and boring it was. So I took it in a completely different direction.

I blocked out a quick idea I had in the level using solids, I wanted to create an environment that was more implemented into the environment, the shapes were loosely based off helms deep from lord of the rings, but I was much happier with this.

I then did a quick couple of paint over's to determine some ideas, I also tried to implement some of the previous ideas so it wasn't a complete waste of my time

Working on building

I am currently at a fairly happy stage with the Landscape so its time to move on to the building that will sit within the mountain, this unfortunately has been causing me a lot of agro. I initially wanted a sci-fi building with plating so I started by looking at nature particularly Coconut crabs (pictured below). I made a quick 3d kit bash and started using symmetry and modelling towers on top to get some ideas, I scrapped this fairly quickly as the designs looked fairly generic.

After looked further into the crabs I really liked there pose and position of legs so thought that I could possible create a walking building with legs that the player could enter through to gain access to the building, these legs would drill themselves into the landscape to anchor the building. Below are some quick leg design kit bashes, with the final designs below.

I made these into quick building blockouts below, with final leg positions below.

Update on Terrain and Grass

After looking closely at the terrain I wanted to work on some areas I was unhappy with, the image below illustrates the terrain as it was (circled in red) I was unhappy with this because it looked a little messy and not natural. I re sculpted and blocked in a new area seen below. This needs pulling up a little for better sillouette but the basis is there. 

I also have been working on the layout for the playable area leading up to the mountains, I knew I wanted a waterfall for the main sci-fi building so I worked out a river and pool system as I didn't want the river ending at the sea so to distribute the volume of water I put in the pools.

I also posted the work on Polycount which was useful for some critique, something that was pulled out was the grass wasn't as strong as the other elements of the environment. I looked at more referance of grass as I wanted a highland feel, I lowered the grass, thickened it up and gave another model which I coloured with a more yellow hue. It was also taller and a lot thinner to give a nice variety. I used the colour of the terrain to influence the colour of the grass which allows me to paint in different bands of colours to give a nice variety for the landscape as you run through.