Myths Reimagined - Pandora's Box

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Hi everyone! This is my first time participating in a community challenge ~ woo!

It’s been super exciting seeing everyone’s awesome concepts and ideas so far, and I’m really keen to start sharing mine with you as I go too!

My idea for this Myth challenge is Pandora’s Box (or jar, depending on which version of the myth you read), visualising the exact moment it’s opened, unleashing evil into the world, with nothing left behind except a handful of hope.

To fit the sci-fi / high-tech theme, this is my current high-level re-imagination of the myth;

Pandora’s Box is contained within a purposely abandoned space vessel. The “evil” released is a bio-weapon/alien plague-like substance that’s deadly to both humankind and hybrid mech-like beings, but paradoxically restores and allows other forms of life, like plants and animals, to flourish again (after being pushed to the brink by humanity for centuries). This vessel’s path has been set directly for Earth… but by who?

I’m still figuring out the final style and environment scale to best fit the challenge specs, but I’m currently leaning toward a smaller, chamber-like room with a semi top-down view (think Diablo-style camera), and a hybrid semi-realism / semi-stylised look. I’m still pulling all the ideas together so I can break them down into game assets and properly get started; more updates to come soon!

~ thank you for the visit!!

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Heelllooo again! Boy has time been running fast lately

I wanted to share my rough concept/sketch to show how i plan to go about the layout and a preview on the general vibes (please bare with me im very much not a concept artist ), there’s still so much to flesh out but its a start!

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I wanted to strictly adhere to the 2x 4k Texture Set Rule as an extra challenge (instead of the original plan; breaking it up into smaller maps ~ unless i end up really needing to), so i popped on my tech art hat and got to testing what i could do with shaders in Unreal in order to get the most out of the texture space!

Theory: Cutting up an atlas’ed texture set, using the texture coordinates node and some fancy math to re-create the tiling, then using custom primitive data i can assign and flip through the tiling materials/trim sheets at any point on any asset! Added bonus, this means i can UV assets as i normally would at the full UV 0-1 scale instead of to a set Atlas square.

After finally a sucessful test of this (followed by many… many rounds of bad math fails) my plan now is to atlas all my trim sheets and tilable materials into a single 4k texture set and use the remainder 4k texture set to tightly pack all my unique/hero assets into, making verrrry well use of all my packed channels and alphas too!

Super quick example of the texture set up, and how the material works on assets below:

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Will see how much spare time i get in the next couple weeks in order to flesh this out with proper blockouts and assets next!!

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[SkullCat3D]

I’m not an environment artist, but I’m a big fan of the concept! I also love how you’re approaching the texturing with the contest limits, sounds like you’ve got a good grasp on where to go from here!

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Thank you so muchhh @SkullCat3D! ~ I cant wait to see your final submission for your cat sidhe too!

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Quick early blockout update from me, and have also been playing around with camera angles! Not too sure which one i like most but i have some options to play with now ~ woo!

[UnsaltedPeanut]

I havn’t had as much spare time this week as i would of liked unfortunately, but I’ve been slowly chipping away at my sculpt for the loosly inspired Atlas sculpture (that is in the center of the environment holding up the floor), and I’m happily calling this done enough for now so i can move onto my modular pieces!

This was particularly difficult asset for me and i knew it was going to be (becuase why make my life easy right) but I wanted to use this challenge as the perfect excuse to fit in some improvement on my anatomy/forms and marvelous designer skills; Also in tackling this first, it meant that it was out of the way, and if it wasnt going to work i could at least know ahead of time that i need to replace it with something else instead

I’m also planning to duplicate a few of these statues and bake them down as part of my trim sheet, that way its being re-used as a pattern for the columns, and maaaaybe also for the skirting/architraves too…

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Small progress, but progress nonetheless!

• All of my core modular pieces are modelled, set up, and ready for materials! I’m finalising the trim sheet textures atm
  • all the modular asset pieces in the scene right now total to just under 29k tri’s (excluding the wip statues), so i thankfully have plenty of room left over to play with for all the other props or if i need to make any further adjustments post texturing.
• I did a quick lighting pass focusing on the doorway lighting. I didnt do much changes to the middle of the scene lighting just yet as i think ill wait until i have the final textures in there to do the proper edits and colour grading

Still plently left to go:

• I still need to finalise the statue meshes so theyre at a reasonable topo res + hands are better alligned to the rim; as i moved some things around they no longer line up
• I also still need to finish, and continue on more props and hero assets to flesh out the rest of the scene’s story:
  • pandoras jar (top priority following the modular’s textures)
  • disease-spreading-pile-of-gross-stuff-thingiiis (that i clearly dont know what to call right now haha)
  • plants!
  • energy ball of ‘hope‘
  • [stretch goal] Solar rings above the jar area
  • [stretch goal] planet outside the window
  • [stretch goal] a few more disease encapsulated people
• final passes over lighting, shot set ups, and any colour grading/tweaks

Hopefully i can run those out quickly over the next few days!

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Jar mesh + wip of one of the trim sheets (both still needing some more love)!

[emiliestabell]

Reminder that there are only 5 days left of the challenge Remember to post your final results here before the deadline is up: Myths Reimagined - Real-Time Game Environment: Final Submissions

[UnsaltedPeanut]

An update on my main Trim Sheet! (first pic is the finished textures in painter, second pic teh high poly meshes in maya before the bake down). I decided to go with more metals and golds/copper instead of stone as i felt it fit better with the space aesthetic.

I’ll be submitting my project early as after today i wont be available again to work on it untill after the deadline date; so with the couple hours left at the end of my day today I will be locking in and wrapping up as much as i possibly can! ~ I already know I’ve for sure overscoped what im able to get done in this time but i’m still aiming to add in as much textures, props and story elements as i possibly can with what time i have left, more updates to come then!

[UnsaltedPeanut]

I ended up having waay less time yesterday than I was planning for so not nearly as much progress as i would have liked, but on a positive note im very glad I double checked time zones again because I realise now I originally miscalculated to AEDT, and will actually be able to get some sneaky last second time up my sleeve riiiiiiight towards the end, just before deadline (which is cutting it real close but i will work with what i have!)

So with the small time I had last night i was able to jump into photoshop to create my earth and stars texture for the giant window so it shows more of the space setting, get the final statue pieces into the scene (ended up making them larger, fixing up the hand positions and was able to reduce the poly’s down to 5k for each of them, there are 3 of them in the scene now), and aligned trim sheets to some of my modular assets. Also spent far too long debugging why my reflections on the window asset were looking super wobbly, turns out i accidently had Nanite activated in the mesh settings and that was causing unexpected changes to both the mesh and UV’s, so that was fun but great to know for next time!

so far im tallying: 45k tri’s for the entire scene, & textures so far i’ve used up 1x4k texture set so im feeling pretty happy with my budget bandwidths its just the battle of time thats against me now haha, see ya’ll in a few days for some serious last second crunch!

~ happy last few days of the challenge for everyone else in the meantime, wishing you all the best of luck

[UnsaltedPeanut]

Unfortunately i ran out of time, and only had an hour to smash the rest of this out as much as i could this morning before submission cut off hit , so thought i would still submit what i had anyway even thought its not finished to the level i was hoping to get in this time!

Here are some more info and wip’s (just lumping these last few together here in case they arent eligible to count towards the wip thread for the official submisssion, as this is being posted after the cut off time):

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My final submission’s post: Myths Reimagined - Real-Time Game Environment: Final Submissions - #13 by UnsaltedPeanut

Here are my final renders for the challenge!

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Some other wips from earlier progress:

Earth Texture; created in Photoshop using procedural textures, masks and layer effects

final texture with stars used for the window glass mesh:

the procedural earth pattern before being clipped to shape, and bend deformed:

Hologram version: (exorted as rgb so i could use the red channel to plug into the emissive channel)

Scifi Trim Sheet (unfinished): I ended up not having the time to finish the rest of this trim sheet but the plan was to get some wires and emissive/lighting pieces into the bottom section and have the grate area see-through so you can see cables underneith and added some depth to the floor pieces.

Roof:

the original plan was to paint something intricate like seen in some ancient greek architechture’s (clouds, sun rays and sky gradients) similar to the reference picture below:

I ended up with my backup plan of using my greek trim sheet instead to meet submission:

Some other super quick draw overs and self-feedback i was planning to add to my scene if i had the time to complete (it’s a bit chaotic i know, my appoligies haha)

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THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!

I will be coming back to this project to fix things up and finish it off for a nice lil portfolio piece! (took quite a few shortcuts you wouldnt use in production towards the end to speed it all up a bit, so will need to fix those up). Im very excited to continue on this though and learn more unreal and environment workflows along the way too!!

This was such an unbeleivably fun experience to participate in this challenge and getting to connect with you lovely lot! Thank you so much for everyone who took the time to chat with me and check out my progress ~ i appreciate you

I’m so amazed at all the crazy cool submissions in both the environment and character categories, well done on making this some tough picking for the judges! Good luck everyone and i cant wait to be a part of the next one!!!