The Fall of Orloth - University Final Major Project

Hi all!

I decided to go to university to get a masters in games art and design, and for my final major project, i teamed up with two other students to make what will essentially be a playable showcase.

Here’s the brief backstory and direction for the project:
"In ‘The Fall of Orloth’, the player takes control of an Elf in the order of Custodians. Custodians are special, paired at birth with a dragon hatchling, the pair grow, learn, and mature together as if family, in order to form an unbreakable bond. Their job is to patrol the world, maintaining peace and order… And where needed, to quell the violence of more primitive races.

The Fall of Orloth will take place on a human settlement, built on a peninsula of an island the elves call Orloth. Until recently, the settlement had been well maintained, and the elf attendant there had been in regular contact with the Custodians. But when communication suddenly ceased, the player is sent to investigate.

The player will navigate the settlement, looking for clues as to why it has been abandoned, and try to uncover the mystery as to the literal disappearance of the inhabitants. There are no bodies, no signs of battle. The settlement is just… Empty, lifeless. The player will find clues in the form of crystals left by the attendant, imbued with elvish magic, the Custodian’s armour will react to their presence, alerting the player to a nearby crystal. The crystals themselves store messages in the form of a visual or aural journal, recorded by the attendant."

Our team consists of:
Tudor Morris - Concept art.
Myself (Lee Devonald) - Character/Creature art + Technical art.
Joseph Hobbs - Environment art.

We also have an external support network of:
Jan Kaluza (Kashaar) - Technical art
Adelaide Rose Coldham - Animation
Matt Jenkins - Rigging
Sanna Kempe - Character/Creature art.

We’ll be posting updates, I’ll let them post theirs. We’ve already got a fair amount done, so there will be a back-log of progress updates.

Oh and… Dragons :smiley:

http://i.imgur.com/CJRUGlW.jpg

Some animation work on the dragon (click for HD glory):

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/DenseWindyGopher-size_restricted.gif
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/OfficialMiserlyAss-size_restricted.gif

Looks fantastic. Can’t wait to see more!

I’ll drop some environment stuff in here, but here’s a work in progress shot for now.

Here’s a bunch of stone wall modular pieces.

and an overview of the island

Some updates on the dragon animations =]

Working into the level of detail in the scene now for the playable area.

Whole imgur album here

Today’s asset work result.

I like Dragons! Keep up the awesome work!

The dragon is looking very impressive :slight_smile:

First thing that came to my mind when looking at your little town / village is “it feels like the dragon is out of this world”.

What I mean is if we’re in a world with giant flying creatures being part of our day-to-day life, our construction / towns would be shaped to host them.

Maybe every town have a “dragonplace” where t Dragonknights can land when they come to maintain peace and order.
Or maybe each has a hill nearby with a dragonnest. A bit like Churchs.

IDK but it felt to me like I needed to see a bit more how the dragon fit into the world.

I invite you to read these books if you like Dragonknights.

All of the art looks extremely good.

If all of the meshes, materials, and whatnot are entirely your own work, I would suggest that you sell them on the Marketplace when you’re done. Might as well get paid while you’re making a grade.

Thanks for the feedback!

This was actually one of our initial design considerations. At some point i’m hoping to strong-arm Tudor into doing a concept art dump. We may still have time to add some of the perches and landing platforms we initially thought of, but we’re also being mindful of the scope of the project and the due date of august 23rd.

To elaborate a little further on the plot:
Orloth was originally an elvish outpost, and so there would certainly be some remnants of the Custodial buildings and lifestyle (ie: dragon perches). But it’s long since been inhabited and developed by humans using it as a trading port, with the elves retreating to other areas of the world, but still maintaining a sort of police force. So hopefully in the end you’ll be able to see a couple of tiers to the island, with the top/central being a bit more fantastic/magical and the bottom being much more classic human medieval.

Been working on armour for the elf…

Development progress video. 1/3 of the way there…i think.

Some Concept Art!

Main Gates:

Ramp to Citadel:

Flying Buttress:

Flying Buttress variations:

Elf Character:

Armour Breakdowns:

Armour Breakdowns 2:

Gargoyle Variations:

Gargoyle Final design:

I am having an issue with materials right now. For the dragon, i’ve been struggling to get nice looking wing membranes. So far the best looking solution is two sided foliage, however this seems to bleed into the entire model, even if i bias the value to zero.

Standard lighting model:

Foliage lighting model:

Desired result:

Essentially, i want the membranes to be illuminated from the back, but the rest of the dragon not to be. Short of separating the membranes specifically to their own material type (undesirable, as you would have a very visible seam), i’m not sure how to fix this. Any help would be welcomed!

Also, over the weekend Joe, Tudor and I were at the Childwickbury Arts Fair, working on this project, answering questions to the many people who came to take a look, showed off Unreal Engine and just generally had a great time!

Took a quick snap before it all kicked off on the friday morning:

Apply different material ID’s to the ‘wing’ polygons in your 3D package. Export and apply a different ‘wing’ material to them, which uses the foliage shading model (or a two-sided subsurface model).

Biasing the value will make some difference, but the different shading models usually go down very different paths.

The other subsurface channels blend between lambertian diffuse and subsurface diffuse based on the opacity input. this one doesn’t. but this is the only one that has the backface illumination i require. i think i might have a solution though, testing now.

Solution:

Multiply the subsurface color by the opacity map before plugging it into the subsurface color input.