Initial sketch and layout. My main direction at this point was simply "Roman architecture on floating islands", so I was feeling out a good composition.
Blockout in Unreal using simple shapes.
After modeling a bridge segment I learned how to make a tool to generate mesh along a spline - had some tweaks to work out but soon I could easily make bridges as long as I wanted in just a few seconds!
The first spline I created was limited to straight line lay outs, and my project lead requested bridges that arched upwards.
So I looked into mesh generation more and made a second spline tool that can both layout mesh along a spline, and distort their vertices!
Started refining models, and adjusted the architecture cluster into a more developed city layout with level design in mind
City level design development and Modular Asset draw-over
City layout refinement with a few more detailed assets
Addition of columns and rails, finding a good camera angle to focus on
Refining more assets and developing the city interior. Added a hero asset/area of focus with a quick statue block out made using the human scale model.
Using the spline tools I made, I was able to quickly lay out long repetitive assets and easily make adjustments to them.
This is what happens to the scene when the rotation of mesh on splines is randomized! Had to add a toggle to that function
I created some ivy to add more visual interest and break up the repetitive shapes and colors of the scene.
I adjusted my spline tool to be able to randomize the rotation to quickly make more natural ivy vines.
Created mesh specific textures and applied materials to the scene. Further refined the statue and made it gold make it more distinct and further match Elysium's color scheme
I received feedback on this pass that the pixelation was coming across as unintentionally low-res textures and it should be emphasized more, so I'll be working with our art director to nail down the intentional style of the textures.
Refined the angel statue, modeled some props to fill in the scene, and made some color adjustments.
A teammate had also noticed the lack of ripples around objects when playtesting the environment, so I added that in using distance fields!
Statue Refinement
I was short on time for this project and gave myself two days to finalize the statue from the blocky placeholder into a more refined statue, and thus took a few shortcuts.
Concept Sketches
Started with the base human scale model provided by the school "Julie" and sculpted on top of it.
Dagger from a teammate - modeled by Felipe Ricardo - I distorted to turn into a cross-like sword
Final Sculpt
Remeshed Model, auto remeshed then cleaned up to bake.