Smash that read more link, cause this will be awesome! :D (and very long!)
Now, that most of the inner rocks are placed and we have a good overall impression of the cove’s size and shape, we can finally move on, by making the outer walls. Also, it will look very nice instead of that ugly glitchy green stuff that now surrounds our dear cove.
First, I just made two boulders for good measure. I used the same rock model like I did when creating the rocks. The only difference is their size and their shape. As you can see, they are waaaay bigger, and also thinner.
I repeated that process multiple times, not worrying about accuracy for now, I just wanted to get rid of the green grass and replace it with boulders. After a while it looked like this.
Not bad…not bad at all. It certainly look more realistic. I really like when something like this can be done so easily and effortlessly, yet still make a huge impact on the overall look. Yes, we could call it a day at this point, but I like to be more precise, so I didn’t stop there. As I mentioned in the first post, I wanted to make this level as accurate as possible. So, let’s make it. If you look a bit more thoroughly, you can see that there some features on the boulders. Like, the crack where Hiccup enters the cove, and also there is that huge tree with it's roots growing down in the cove, also there are multiple “floors” and ridges. So... not that simple. But, we get to that soon. Here are some images for better illustration.
Yeah, I boosted the brightness of these images, because they were too dark for me and without it, all the important little details would lost in the darkness. BTW, I used these images to make the boulders and other details too. You can’t get better references than these! :D
So, let's crank it up a notch. What I realized quickly that, I made the boulders too large, so I lowered them. I used the inner rocks as reference for the height. I still didn't finalized it yet, but I like to start roughly, then gradually make it more accurate step by step, then make really small adjustments at the end. The same goes here. So, there is how the shorter borders look like:
Pretty good, but we're still missing the opening and the multiple floors. It's arguable to make them at this point, but I decided, that I make them now, because the more stuff I have, I can get a better feel what's right and what's not. So, I started the expansion with the ledge at the waterfall.
Right after that, I made a rudimentary opening between the boulders. Yes, it's very rough, but it's there.
You might ask, how I made that little hole in the massive boulders? Well, the answer is very simple. Remember when I said the rocks can be very nicely merged together? This is what I meant. It looks like it's a single piece (eh, kinda), but in reality, it's built up with multiple ones, each scaled, rotated and stretched to that point, the seams are not (that) noticeable.
Then, I went back to the ledge by the waterfall and start building up the ridge more, so I can put vegetation on there later.
Also, I made the opening much more realistic, so it's not just a hole anymore.
After that, I started to create the little ridges below the opening. It's hard to see, but it's there. In the meantime, I also begin to make the smaller boulders that I didn't consider rocks. Like the one at the corner. You can see them in these shots. The blue marks the ridges and the orange the small boulders.
While I was making the details and the entrance started to get it's more realistic form, I can't help my self and wanted to recreate the shot when Hiccup first enters and the camera pans around the cove. I even matched how accurate I was, but it turned out, not very. Yeah, the rocks and the overall look was fine and mostly accurate, but the walls were still too high. I knew that because, when I looked down to the lake, it's perspective wasn't that shallow like in the movie. So, that only meant that I'm much more higher than I supposed to, so therefore the edges are still too high.
So, once again, I had to make them shorter. That was an unfortunate, but necesarry fix to make. I still had to rescale and realign a lot of stuff, but I'm glad that I found out this problem early on and not later. Here's an image after the modification:
When I get kinda right the height, I continued to make more of the features on the map, instead of tuning the existing ones. Like this one:
I will show you a little feature, that will put the gameplay to the next level (literary). Originally, I wanted to make the map so realistic, that you can only reach those areas, that you could if you were in the cove. It turned out, that is a horrible decision, cause it will make the map boring very quickly, and less fun. So, I didn't wanted to force the players down to the ground anymore. With this extension, you can surprise your opponents from above, and also the map is much more opened and three dimensional. There will be multiple ways to get up there, (but that is for a much later topic). Of course, you won't able to reach every ridge or "floor" cause that wouldn't be too fair with the guys below, so you had to get enough with only that one. :) But, back to topic.
Also I had a bit of progress with the opening too, now it's start to look like in the movie!
I continued building the ledge by the waterfall. Still pretty dull, but finally it's getting it's form.
Side note: At this point because of the over usage of the rock material, my older video card (AMD 7870) just can't get the pace and started really to struggle. (The most serious FPS drop occurred, when I looked at the entrance (from 20-25 to 10-15)). This really backed me off for continuing the project, because it wasn't fun anymore, it was more like an endurance or patience test. So, I had to borrow back my better video card from my brother, who surprisingly gave me back without any grudge (He said he didn't really need it to this day... If I mentioned my request a whole month earlier, probably he still gave it back, but I don't want to think about that...) So, I ripped this old piece of yakdung card from the PC and smashed back my awesome GTX 1070. Woohoo!
This took place in the very beginning of October, and since then, I started doing huge progression again every day. So much, that I'll be in trouble when I have to note everything here. (Also the images will look much better again, because my old card made the water blurred and blocky. BTW, I made the pictures for this post with the new card). But back to the boulders.
After I made the entrance and the ledge realistic what I considered fine for now, I moved on to another feature. The little(?) bulge on the wall where the giant tree sits and it's roots coming down in the cove.
After that, I started to make the next phase, I covered the inner rocks with moss. (That's will be the topic of my next post). But later I decided to continue making the large boulders and several more levels of ridges.
So that's the current state of the boulders. There will be changes for sure, but I think at this point it's good enough.
I realized, that the post got longer than I expected. Oh well... it was a very important step, so I don't mind it. I covered a lot of stuff, and I'm quite happy with the progression. You can clearly see now, where this project is going.
All right! That's all folks, see you on the next one!
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