After our talk with procedural 3d modeling expert and alumni, Venny, we were tasked to create a 3d piece using these techniques. I opted to attempt to make the house that will be explored in my game idea. Before starting on this 3d prototype of my game world I did some research on abandoned places and old buildings. I looked at various eras of building and after some searching settled on edwardian architecture, specifically the style of edwardian manors. These buildings typically have red brickwork, framed porches, and mock tudor cladding at the top of the building.
I put a simple moodboard together for these aesthetics.
I also knew that I wanted it to look abandoned in the present and unkempt in the past flashbacks. Inspired by peer review talks with about abandoned places, I spent a day cycling to and exploring some abandoned places around the winchester area, after finding some promising locations on a UK urban exploration forum.
These buildings were largely too broken down to match the look I want for my gameworlds main building, although this level of degradation could be applicable to less lived in parts of the world, i.e. a barn or shed detached from the main house. This exploration was very helpful in exploring how nature reclaims un maintained places, and in investigating colour pallets of these abandoned places on an overcast winter day, which is how I envision the gameworlds weather and colour pallet in the present time.
First 3d Prototype
The first piece was created in only a few days to demonstrate use of procedural modelling methods. Starting with the reference images I had found, I drew a sketch of the basic structure I was aiming for, as well as jotting down some basic ideas that I wanted to incorporate, at the atmosphere I was aiming for.
I used various displacement modifiers for the trees and much subtler ones to displace the hard surfaces of the building, giving each surface a rougher more detailed texture while maintaining a low poly look.
I wasn't overly content with the model in this state, I felt that some of the features that I thought I wanted in the design, such as the church like windows, ended up looking out of place, and the overall design of the building was too flat and repetitive. I did however use this as valuable practice on texturing and combined with the additional talks with Venny, a guest speaker and professional 3d modeller, I felt it would be worth while to start from scratch and make a version 2.
I again started with inspiration images and sketches. This time I decided to focus more heavily on a single reference image for the form of the building.
I chose this, an Edwardian manor in south west England. I was interested in its subtle asymmetry, abundance of windows, and traditional chimneys.
From this I sketched a floor plan and front view of the building.
While I didn't end up using the internal floor plan, having a plan to work from these orthographic view points was greatly helpful in getting the main structure of the building right.
I was much happier with the result of this piece, and again learned several new techniques and skills. In particular, I learned a lot about texturing and UV unwrapping. I used bump maps to give the brick and roof textures depth, and noise texture displacement to give them a rough feel, resulting in a much more detailed, 3d look to the otherwise flat surface. I feel its a huge improvement on the previous versions.
I also developed a method of creating ivy, using the grease pencil to draw the paths of the branches onto the building, giving a huge amount of control on the shape of the ivy, then using a particle system to distribute leaves across it.
I created two versions of the scene, one in the past and one in the present. For the present one I added more ivy, a new, overcast sky, and darkened most of the textures in the scenes, giving it a more weathered look.
From these renders I used photoshop and Premiere to create an animation showing the process of opening a window into a memory of the house. Showing how it might look and how it would be activated by the player. I also did some colour correction to get the tone at atmosphere closer to what I wanted.
