Warlock Challenge - Rings

[toivohuh]

Good day!

I’ll be creating a large symmetrical hub with an intricate metal structure hanging in the middle. The structure is a computer of sorts with interlocked turning rings.
Architecture-wise I’m going for a brutalist space with large stone surfaces and strong silhouettes, with some runic detailing to give it a touch of fantasy.

Forcing myself out of my comfort-zone with this one; I’ll be at least attempting to make the assets semi-stylized as I usually go for photorealism. Probably will use some Megascans assets which need to be touched to go with the style. Also for the first time I’ll be optimizing the scene to run in real time in UE4, which is a new tool for me.

Here’s a quick dirty moodboard I put together. I’ve already begun to block out the scene and create some placeholder trims, but I can upload only one image.

[toivohuh]

Working on materials & blockout. The final thing will be alot darker, only source of natural light being a small opening on the middle. I spend most of my time figuring out UE, which has been a challenge since I’m not familiar with any engine yet. Currenly learning about deferred decals, trying to utilize tiling textures as much as possible and give the edges natural wear.

[emiliestabell]

This is looking great! Can’t wait to check out future updates on this

[toivohuh]

Mood is slowly settling in. Lighting obviously needs heaps more work, only light currently in the scene is a spot coming from a small opening in the ceiling. Once I achieve a passable lighting setup I’ll do a quick decal/wear pass before playing with foliage tool to give the scene more life. Lighting in UE is a bitch after only doing non-real time scenes before this

[emiliestabell]

I love it! Will make sure this gets shared on our social media!

[toivohuh]

I started some fires to introduce warmer lighting and spilled some water to bring out them reflections. Next I’ll be working on some creeping ivy pretty much everywhere, do a wear-decal pass and toy with the idea of rigging & animating the main feature of the piece. I thought of adding slight sway to each hanging ring and rotating the intertwined rings to create new patterns. Importing fbx animation from Blender to UE seems to be a bit of a bitch tho - I can’t seem to get the scaling work. Might have to look into animating in Maya instead.

[toivohuh]

Working on some ivy, combining Blenders ivy gen for larger roots and alpha textures to give it volume while keeping it relatively light. Not yet sure how much ivy coverage I want. The leaves are a megascans atlas to which I did a quick paintover to reduce fine detail and overall noise.

Also got the rings rigged, I’ll be animating them in a looping sequence in Maya to get some movement to the scene.

[emiliestabell]

Please submit this under “final submissions” so you can take part in the prize draw! This looks so great and it would be a shame not to have it be part of the final lineup