Everything Ivy + Hanging Plants Volumes

Get_DOVAH_it · January 10, 2022, 12:12am

Thank you so much for your timely response, @Immersive-Games !

Yes, I can see how things have evolved and are now more automated. There is something precious to be appreciated in handmade, hand-carved art - which is why I was curious about your opinion on Japanese joinery and any projects that you have built with your own hands. I have a few antique furniture pieces that I am sure were made the old-fashioned way - only, the facades have been damaged by time, and I don’t know enough about restoration to take on the project of restoring or improving it.

You’re most welcome! My mother used to collect Asian blue toile china before she changed her interior design style, and to see it in your collection brought back fond memories. I’m amazed at your gallery/body of work! Is this Immersive’s Steam page?

I find it extremely impressive that you went from Carpentry/Joinery to 3D modeling for gaming and interactive scenes for various fields of interest! I got into game development in 2007. I’m a hobbyist. I just like to get in, tinker around, and we what all I can do, or imagine and bring to fruition. There isn’t anything I’ve created that I feel comfortable releasing publicly, though. LOL! I still have a lot to learn and am quite the neophyte. I continue to be impressed with models that artists create and belong to a few chatrooms, discords, and forums where artists share their works.

I mainly use models created in Blender for my Sims 4 game. I remember when artists creating meshes for The Sims 2 had two versions - a high poly and low poly version. The high poly meshes would crash PCs that had low specs. I finally have a more robust machine that can handle high poly meshes. I just started downloading mods for TES Skyrim on PC. Not only is the gameplay epic, the scenery, as you can imagine, is what I gravitate to appreciating the most. Anyhow, I am astounded with UE5 and how far the tech has come to allow seemingly limitless polygons to be rendered in a single frame!

Thank you so very much for the scene of your Oaks! This is absolutely breathtaking! I love it! This shot, from the lighting, the shadows, the perception of depth, the details of your meshes, and the angle at which you took the screenshot is everything! This is much appreciated! Do you have a 4k link for it? I would love to use it as a screensaver!

Immersive-Games · January 10, 2022, 2:43pm

First, the link to the picture… Oak Forest
I hope you enjoy it

I/We do have a Steam page, but have only paid for 2 games to be hosted, but a full list of games released so far can be found on itch here
I/We sell more there than on Steam even though we use steam keys for sales. Each game has a demo version, please feel free to try any of them out, you may recognise some of the scene props.

It is still a trick used today, to make a high and low poly version of a model, use the high poly to bake your lightmaps, normals and ao’s from, then hang them on the low poly to increase its look. Very useful for Mobile apps/games. I am old school, in that I always remove backfaces of my models to reduce the ticks from the engine in having to work it out and host them in memory.

You maybe surprised to learn that the screenshot you like, all came from Unity. There was a time when I would use a Photobooth template in Unreal to grab screenshots, but since the introduction of the URP (Universal Rendering Pipeline) and HDRP (High Definition Rendering Pipeline), I now use Unity. I have spent a lot of my free time doing/studying photography, so that helps a bit . I have also been published, so must be doing something right.

I have experimented with UE5 and love the concept of nanites as a pixel rendering solution, but at the moment, they do not handle vegetation lods, the leaves and branch meshes all disappear leaving just the trunks visible from a short distance. Lumen on the other hand is a terrific lighting pipeline, when it comes of age. I am not keen on the new editor layouts, but will recreate my own layout soon enough.

I just love exploring anything creative, I prefer to self teach most things so I get a greater understanding, and what breaks things LOL. I started in 3D world creation back in the days when I taught myself AutoCad, 3D was just the next visualisation step. I spent 5+ years in SL (Second Life) developing all sorts of frontiers albeit things have declined greatly in that arena. It was a great sounding board to get deeper into 3D. Adobe Atmosphere was the first 3D platform I created scenes in and the prop building began right there. That was back in 2002.

I love renovating furniture, it has been a hobby and a profession. Unlike modern furniture, solid wood can be cleaned back and repolished.

Immersive-Games · January 11, 2022, 5:55pm

We are pleased to announce the approval of our latest release, Furniture Pack 02.

Immersive-Games · January 12, 2022, 2:20pm

I have been experimenting with Alien Fauna, your feedback would be invaluable.

All the materials are interchangeable so would fit a theme.

PresumptivePanda · January 13, 2022, 1:24am

Spectacular work. Truly beautiful

I’d love to go into an environment in an mmorpg with this sort of plantlife. If you end up making a level with these please share! Would be honored to see it.

Immersive-Games · January 13, 2022, 12:07pm

Spent a few hours creating these ConeWhirls… adds a bit of variance. Then created/added Razur Leaf Clumps that can be use standalone or as a base for other plants.

Took me longer messing with Unitys terrain.

Immersive-Games · January 14, 2022, 12:14pm

Added another to the growing list, may consider this enough for the first pack in this series.

This is called a HangingLumiGlobe, it can be used as a hanging plant, or as an upright one, maybe growing from a RazurLeafClump.

Immersive-Games · January 15, 2022, 10:31am

All the screenshots you see here were taken in Unity using the HDRP, the emissions work well along with the glass materials. I recreated the same scene in Unreal, both 4.27 and UE5 but both glass and emissions do not give the same effect, which is odd. I know both UE5 and 4.27 updated themselves yesterday and I wondering if they broke something.

Immersive-Games · January 15, 2022, 2:40pm

I have added another plant called Thorny Cup. I think this will be the last addition to this pack. I’ll focus on preparing it for uploading and submitting for the MarketPlace, see what happens.

Get_DOVAH_it · January 16, 2022, 1:49am

Hi @Immersive-Games !

It has been quite the busy week for me. Thank you so much for the picture link! It is now my desktop screensaver! I also appreciate the link to your released games! I cannot wait to try out the demos!

Of course I was surprised to learn that you created your projects in Unity! I see that Unity is widely used for mobile games.

I can imagine how Nanite affects vegetation meshes in UE5, as impressive as it is. I’ve seen other creators choose Lumen in their UE5 projects since Nanite doesn’t work for their builds and causes rendering issues - especially those who moved their projects from UE4 to UE5.

I assume you are self-teaching with photography as well? Congratulations on being published! You have quite the accomplishments under your belt, and that is both commendable and honorable.

How did you gain access to AutoCad to be able to be self-taught?

Wow! I used to play around in Second Life about 15 years ago. As a matter of fact, a company that I am familiar with started their own company based on the experiences they had within Second Life.

Yes, my antiques are all solid wood. Since you are familiar with renovating, perhaps when I go through my storage, I can send some pictures for your opinion.

I’ve seen your Alien Flora, and I find the pack very imaginative and out of this world! I love the glowing aspects! I feel like harvesting LumiGlobe seeds for creating a mystic potion! Are there any transparent parts of the crystal pods? Are any of the flora animated? Would you consider adding any alien trees to the pack?

Immersive-Games · January 16, 2022, 4:26pm

Hello again, glad you enjoyed the screenshot and it is my pleasure to offer it.

Nanites atm don’t work for a lot of things, except the megascan offerings that are distant features. It doesn’t work on any landscapes that are generated by heightmaps. The advice apparently is to breakdown your meshes into small ones, even a simple component like a solid box would benefit from being 6 meshes

I setup a ‘photobooth’ scene to exhibit my projects but, I simply cannot get the same results that I can with the Unity version using its new HDRP and its shaders. Neither in UE4 or 5. For instance, the glass shell on the HangingLumiGlobe, it is either a black colour without proper refraction and the inner seed shader is either on or off as far as emissions go. I setup a series of constants to feed multipliers on the various outputs to make adjustments. The outcome in UE is disastrous compared to the now refined rendering pipelines in Unity.

I have been using Unity for quite some time, creating projects for Healthcare Universities, Jet training organisations using eye tracking and my most recent was for Military training, as part of a group of companies. In most cases I supplied/created the scenes, graphics and props.

My teachings for photography was to study the greats such as David Bailey and Lord Lichfield, using a manual camera and exploring. I later went onto lots of different subjects including motor racing and was published into national magazines. Then I bought an Olympus OM2n camera along with bellows cameras for portrait and landscape, even a pinhole camera (a brownie is also in my collection). This was over a 40 year period.

Back in 1997 I purchased AutoCad R14 and taught myself to use it. I was designing housing and commercial projects at that time and needed to move to a more formal media. I already had a A level in Technical Drawing, so that helped with the jargon. At the same time I was using 3D engines to recreate commercial and domestic constructions for visualisations. I discovered Adobes Atmosphere, it was a decade before its time but was one of the first online collaborations available. You could host complete worlds in a PDF document, or on a webpage. That led to Second Life where I created a host of companies, including the worlds first commercial company doing 3D advertising, WBA Advertising, this led to the development of the Silver Stream (a secure way of linking multiple platforms), that led to EML Entertainments where I sold streaming equipment. Ink Free Media was making newscasts for the RL networks in America, we also had a Modelling agency Nexcore which doubled up as actors for the advertising media. Scene creation and prop making was all part of it, moreso when SL included the importing of meshes.

When I had one of my building/construction companies during the 80-90’s, I won many contracts refurbishing solid wood furniture in schools, colleges and universities, I also enjoyed refurbishing 14-17 century buildings. I had contacts where I could buy 300 year old english air dried oak, that was laid down when the company first started. Teak from wooden ship reclaimators, I would travel the country sometimes just looking for a specific handmade brick etc… somethings I would have cast using onsite moulds, very satisfying.

The Alien Fauna pack is supposed to represent a type of plants, i.e. ground bush and plant types. I think trees and larger bushes may come as soon as I can think of anything to add to it

Without doubt, I will publish this pack on both Unity and Unreal, maybe even other engines. I would say, all the packs contain FBX meshes, PNG textures, it is only the shaders and their settings that are not transferable between engines. Unity holds a greater selection of my meshes, their methods of uploading and posting to the AssetStore are far superior to Unreals.

To make the ‘textures’ semi-transparent, it is a shader setting, along with the right texture that actually has something in the Alpha channel for the shader to work with. Transparency and Alpha masking are two different entities. I did experiment with Alpha transparency in the Modelling Programme, which did look good on the Crystal based models. I may add that Instance Material in Unreal as long as I can recreate it faithfully in Unity as well.

Immersive-Games · January 19, 2022, 10:50am

According to the Marketplace assessors, 9 unique alien plant species, with variations using supplied materials and texture maps, are insufficient content for a submission. They have given no indication exactly what is ‘sufficient’ and cannot signpost me to anywhere in the rules to a definition. I put this at the lowest price allowed by Unreal $4.99, that’s less than 50 cents each, 35 cents after UE take their cut, each. Unity allow the potential buyer to make that decision of value for money.

I have noticed with the variety of submissions I have made, that the rules become blurred between assessors. To test that, I renamed a submission that was denied for the same reason, and represented it and it was accepted, in fact there was less content in the second submission!

I may add to this collection, or make some variations, but TBH I make a lot more selling trees.

Immersive-Games · January 20, 2022, 9:27am

I have added a couple more meshes yesterday, will add another unique mesh today and resubmit and see what happens. One of the new ones ‘RootClump’ was my first attempt at sculpting. The mesh in the picture is hosting a Titanium texture, I have experimented with other textures such as Brain Surface, Heart membrane ect, even Orchid which I particularly like. I may include them.

Immersive-Games · January 20, 2022, 9:35am

Here is the next growing stage of the ThornyCup, as the buttress roots emerge and lift the plant from the soil, called the ThornyButtress.

Immersive-Games · January 20, 2022, 9:36am

I have added a ‘root’ for the HangingLumiGlobe, which is also comes in an optional mesh.

Immersive-Games · January 21, 2022, 10:10am

Again, added more content to the package and was again rejected as ‘having less than 50 unique models in the content’…

Immersive-Games · January 22, 2022, 10:52am

I have chosen not to waste anymore time with this project on Unreal, clearly their assessors know better than their clients as to what they want.

I will now focus my attention to the next generation of Trees. I am using a new workflow that will mean I can produce a tree species at various stages of growth.
I am planning a series, starting with Willow Trees, creating several models of the tree at different ages. This will give a 4th dimension to the packs and for scene creators.
If successful, the packs will develop with a greater range of tree throughout its life, so they can be blended within a timeline to show changes as it ‘grows’. For now I will create the tree species packs to show maybe 3 stages of growth, that when placed in a scene as a mixture, should look more natural and less ‘farmed’.

The workflow will evolve to include dead trees/branches for general scattering in a forest. Bushes that are indicative with the same biosphere, and some very interesting grass/flower combinations.

I’ll post progress screenshots here.

Immersive-Games · January 22, 2022, 11:51am

Alien Fauna

What I will do is give a link where these models can be purchased and another to the Unreal Materials. This workflow would mean purchasing the pack for another engine, or from the ilks of Turbo$quid, dropping the folder into the project, then downloading the Materials into the correct folder, that should remake the texture map links, otherwise I will display screenshots how the maps can be relinked.