ARCH 1390

Terrain Tutorial

I was using this very useful tutorial for to learn the sandbox plugin for sketchup, it shows the uses of each button and also feature a quick way to put trees into the environment (requires the "drop" plugin)

Link: http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-use-sandbox-tools-sketchup-6-256993/

Draft Environment - Raxor

Siteplan

Draft Environment - Homo Sapien

Siteplan

Side extract

The next few images are the rendered images of the environment, it shows images in sequence and display and work in process. This is the environment I chose to further develop.

This is the initial render of the environment, very plain and simple

I textured the mountain to snow, environment is slightly inspired by Alaska, the evergreen forest with snowy mountains

I re-textured the ground surface to a green-er texture to enhance the harmony of the environment

I tried to enhance the water material, but it doesn't seem to be realistic

I took away the diffuse map on water and render to test if it had any realistic effect

I put in an omni light behind the mountains and the water showed some refraction and reflection, it seems to be more realistic now

I toned down the intensity of the omni light and the environment seems more natural and believable now

Reconsider Artistic Approach

After going through a few of the past examples. I was considering if the absolute realism of the environment is needed for this experiment. In terms of realistic environment, I thought it should be related more to the creature than to the viewers, spore creature tend to have that cartoonist theme to them, and to put them in a realistic environment will be contradictory.

Therefore, I am reconsidering my artistic approach to the environment and perhaps creating a more natural, outdoor, simplistic habitat with a video game feel in a fantasy genre as oppose to a photo realistic environment like crysis with buildings and more complex constructs. I believe environment with buildings is a more human environment than the creatures environment.

This approach could also be a lesser load on the polygon count.

Crysis Export - fail.......

One suggestion I had for the exporting from crysis was using the crysis export option into the .obj format. Turns out it only export objects in the scene and not the terrain, therefore.....fail....