UGAC - Master Chamber - braincell84

#1

Title: King’s bath

This is a royal bath, located on top of the tallest mountain in the kingdom. The rain is collected from the top of the structure and drips down into the pool below it. Under it is a system for leading excess water into a natural stream. It is beleived that this mountain peak has healing powers and so the royals of this vast empire prefer to take baths here. The rain being an essential part of the kingdoms economy, there is also ritual importance in having the king touch the rain before anyone else as it streams downwards from this point. This is a fantasy world very similar to that of the historical 18th century.

The structure is largely made of marble, stone and wood with large glass murals, one acting as the collector on the roof and another as a window which let’s the sun in, heating up the structure. There is fine furniture for the occupants to relax and perform other tasks if needed, perhaps inbetween taking baths. The pool itself is incredibly deep and the bottom cannot be seen.

3D Concept:

2D concept:

The 2d concept was planned to take 3 hours but it took 5. :frowning: I’m happy with it considering that i haven’t drawn anything in 2d since 5 years ago and this is my first concept drawing ever… So far i only conceptualised in 3d or as i worked. I decided I want to do this project fully professionally so a concept is a must for serious work. It helped a lot with visualising things, now the modeling will go smooth. Hopefully i’ll finish it in time.

The rain collecting “mural” was inspired by the Palau de la Música Catalana of Barcelona. Something similar to this will be directly above the pool.

About me: i’ve done game art for a few years as a hobby, and a few months professionally. Now i’m moving into current and next-gen 3d graphics and I need to make a portfolio. This competition came up just as I decided to start work on my portfolio which will include an interior space. After the competition i’ll make the exterior and plug it into the truevision3d engine and make a small third person demo (including an animated character).

#2

After my 4th hard disk died I had to spend 15 hours getting all my software back into functioning order. So I wasted 15 out of 80 hours I had designated for this project, however I’m sure I will find more time and will probably end up spending 100 hours total (lets be realistic).

Now, instead of further conceptualising and starting work on the model itself I worked on my 3d engine (Truevision 3d 6.5) and I’ve modified a .fx shader which can take a lightmap and a parallax map and create a realistic looking scene. Anyway, since I havent made any normal maps for the map I have only tested the light map with a mockup model of the interior space. Here it is:

I will start modelling the wals and floor next, and once I get a few pillars normal mapped I’ll post a screenshot to show you how well it works! My other test scene looks awesome and realistic, and I will probably include specular phong highlight in the shader as well so the marble floor will be shiny while the carpet and wooden furniture won’t.

Also the lightmap will be more accurate in the final work with windows on the cieling present and the dome casting a sort of coloured translucent lighting (rendered in VRay).

#3

Nice concept, good luck :slight_smile:

#4

Thanks, I might need luck because a few obligations are coming up and I’m not sure how much time I will have. Anyhow, I am still managing to push in 6 hours a day for now but it is mostly going into working with my 3d engine. I want to put this into the engine at all costs, and to be honest I’m amazed that the competition doesn’t require this. We can all build good looking stuff with a bump map and area shadows in 3ds max but as the judges should know, a huge part (i’d say a third) of the effort in creating game art is making it look good specifically for an engine and/or shaders you have to work with. Optimising game art for technical superiority in games is a big part of creating good art.

Anyhow, i’ve modelled the whole base interior and now I need to optimise it for ZBrush so that they are convex (capped) objects without holes to make normal maps in them. This is proving to be quite a challenge because to have capped objects I have to UV them for ZBrush but then to destroy the polygons i dont need for the 3d engine i will also potentially destroy the UV map. However I know a workaround for this issue.

Other work i did was to optimise the .fx shader I have so that the unneeded lookups aren’t there and FPS is higher within the engine. Right now i’m considering if I will have enough time to UV everything onto a single map to even further increase FPS and overall efficiency of rendering the interior. I’ve made a small test interior with lightmap + parllax map and it looks very real :slight_smile: especially with moving coloured lights.

Then I also tested some particle creation within my engine so that I have water dripping down from the inverted dome cieling. I’ll make a realtime video of the interior for the end of the competition.

I planned on looking up some HDRI postprocessing shaders, or at least Bloom, but I doubt I’ll have time for that as things stand right now. I will surely add them afterwards when I build the exterior also.

#5

I thought I posted here before…

Either way I like the idea a lot. And since your going to put it into an engine that is great also.

You are right the biggest diff for games have to do a lot with the engine you making the content for. With mine I am aiming for the the Unreal engine since I know how the old one works pretty well I can kind of guess how the new one mgiht work.

This will look really cool with the plans you have going.

Hope you have time for this if not please do finish this anyhow.

#6

Here is my first normal mapped and textured object:

It has no lightmap or ambient light so it looks kind of too darkened/contrasted. It is part of the entry next to the stairs, like a small fence. I’ve also textured the floor, carpets and wooden platform. I just thought I’d post something to show that it’s beginning to look a lot like a combination of Gaudi (a clear architectual influence) and the Myst games (especially Myst V)!

The normal map was done in ZBrush.

I still think I’m way behind according to my realistic schedule but bursts of optimism say that I might finish this if i dont overcomplicate and spend too much time perfecting unimportant parts. So far the least amount of time was spent on creating and most time on getting the stuff to look/work the way i want it to within my engine. Oh well, my choice, my peril.

#7

Edit:
Removed the old shots so they don’t take up bandwidth, and I have changed too much since then and it’s confusing. :slight_smile:

#8

Well, it turns out my height maps required for the parallax shader need to be regenerated. This involves a bit of testing to create a pipeline because this is my first time working with this particular shader (and parllax mapping). I decided i DONT want to create a scene which will work in Max only and then having to spend extra time converting it for my engine. This is, after all, a key part of my portfolio and I want to do it propperly. So if the competition deadline isn’t postponed I will surely not finish it. Quality of this piece is more important than finishing on time because it will be part of a larger demo level which will essentially be my portfolio.

If anyone wants an extension, that would be me! :frowning:

#9

Here are some WIP shots from within the engine.

I dont mean to sound negative, but, am I the only one actually showing screenshots from an actual engine? Maybe I missed something, but I think I’m the only one, which is odd. I was looking forward to seeing what other engines people are using. Anyway.

I did the lightmapping but it isnt very high res so some of the edges are sharp/dark. I only have to do the wooden wall and the back window (seen in concept) before I start filling up the space with smaller pillars, furniture, candles and chandelliers!

All objects contain a normal + parallax map in the alpha channel of the texture:

There are only 2 light sources giving such a nice specular on the marble

The diffuse texture has a specular (gloss) data in the alpha channel. You can see how the small sharp edges on this rough stone wall are shining through. It all looks much more amazing when moving around and seeing the phong specular shader show a highly detailed object:

And there are some of the mysterious geometric symbols shown on the arcs. Some of them actually have meaning! :wise:

Here’s how a pillar looks in ZBrush:

Also note, some of the textures will STILL change in tone/lightness/saturation/etc and also the lightmap will be different and more detailed but you can see enough already.

Thanks for viewing!!

#10

If I had a wife now I think she’d yell “We need some furniture!” :scream:

Slightly harder edges due to “unoptimised” lightmap, will change. I touch up most lightmaps manually in PS.

2d0: Chair, table, candles, small pillars, chandellier, bookcase, chair, table, harp, stool… easy

#11

Awesome! This is looking really good!

#12

Keep at it I am looking forward to the final. One thing you might want to add to the texture is a slight spec map of your own enviornment so it has a slight reflection to it. Or you could just add a reflection shader to it.

I really dig the top stained glass window.

#13

Thanks ghostscape.

@RO, I will add reflection mapping, but not for the competition. I dont have time to fiddle with the shader any longer, i’d rather add more furniture and render better lightmaps. I’ll continue work on it after the compo, also creating the exterior, and then you’ll see some directx9 shader magic! :wink:

Also I just added water and it’s looking sweet…

#14

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