The next update is ready! I’ve been doing a lot of Spring cleaning lately, otherwise this would have been posted sooner :), but in spite of all that, the Aspen wind is finally done and I think the audio and movement should be pretty much in sync. There are new game builds that can be downloaded here: http://www.artoflightandmotion.com/downloads
and I did some more relaxing videos with the new wind sounds. This first one is just sitting in one spot with the calm, Fall wind blowing:
This next one is also sitting in one spot with the Fall wind, but I tried experimenting with having some of the spontaneous music playing for several of the sections:
I didn’t do any recordings for the Winter wind yet, even though it’s in the game, since there isn’t too much to look at during the Winter right now.
There was someone who gave me a post process material for Unreal, which was very kind, that adds a little bit of post process sharpening, so that’s in the game now. It’s subtle, but still works quite well and makes the small details stand out just a little bit more, adding more clarity overall.
Also, the idea I had for the bark randomization worked out, so all of that is in the game too. I had to redo the way that the sculpts I made for the bottom were laid out. Originally I had each bottom piece in a strip like this:
https://i.imgur.com/2BkXKup.jpg
then I was using vertex colors and a mask to put a certain piece of that strip on the tree mesh. The new way I’m doing it, I separated out each piece into it’s own separate piece that is one third of a strip, like these two:
https://i.imgur.com/wZERTxy.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Y3KdGjI.jpg
and I have six of them altogether that are then randomly assigned to the mesh using a little bit of math in the material UVs that randomly translates the UVs. Since I have a lot more space to work with though, having basically two strips worth of space instead of only one ( 6 one-third pieces = 2 strips), I’ll have to do some more sculpting work on them so they aren’t so empty. After getting them into Unreal, I also realized some of them are a bit too unique and you start to notice them while walking around, so I’ll have to work on them a bit more to get them looking more similar to each other, so it’s not too noticeable. I thought I would try to do just one on each update or something like that so I don’t get too bogged down in just redoing things over and over. All together though, the new system works quite well and ended up being about 30 less material instructions as well; so that’s a bonus.
I’ve also had some more free time lately, so I was able to record some more spontaneous piano playing. You can find that here and in the game (Sessions 10-12 are the new ones): Stream ArtOfLight music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud
With that free time, I’ve been working some more on the explanation of how the seasons work too, so that’s still coming :). Right now I’m working on the explanations for baking everything into textures to use in Unreal.
The next thing I’ll be working on is trying to do a couple more variants of the Aspens. I still need to do a full grown Aspen where the leaves are just at the top of the tree, and I also need to do some that are about mid height between the full grown Aspens and the bush type Aspens. After those are done, I should be able to start experimenting with putting them over the whole landscape automatically and see how that goes.
Thanks for looking!