AGI S2 - Week 12 The Finishing Touches

This week, I re-built the entire landscape for the game, added volumetric light and fog and fine tuning in general.

I rebuilt the entire landscape primarily two reasons: a better representation of 'mountains' and 'seas' suggested by the book's title (the classic of mountains and seas), and to make the scene more visually interesting in general.

To emphasis the 'mountain' aspect whilst sticking to the lore for one of the creatures, I've designed a cave as the centre piece for the landscape. As part of level design, this sole landmark will naturally guide players towards it, discovering a creature whose core mechanic is very helpful. The first image records the modelling process for this centre piece. A rough blockout was made in blender, trying to work with minimal faces so I could focus on the overall shape. Using the subdivision and displacement modifier, I quickly gave myself a rough organic shape to work with. Sculpting was done inside of blender, then taken to substance painter to UV unwrap and texture painting. A render of the final result is shown on the second picture. It is just quite unfortunate that the exported version doesn't look as beautiful. (not sure what I can do in this case as I was running out of time)

The whole environment was then setup around this rock, shown in the third image. Finally volumetirc fog and light were added for ambience and bringing the whole scene together (left is before, right is after, bottom are two 'showcases' with post processing). Together with post processing, I think it really blends the environment with the skyboxes, creating the impression of a much bigger land.