Vampire Ruins

[Nyx.Nim]

Hey Everyone, been a while

This time I’m goin to be attempting to create a Ruined Tower Belonging to a Certain Maimed Vampire ( Concept Art by one of my School Mates ArtStation - aethernia_ )

This will be a bit tricky because I only have 6 weeks to complete everything but I’m going to give it my best shot.

[Nyx.Nim]

Hello Everyone, here with my first Update.

Last week I worked on my blockout and modelled some of the more repeated meshes.

Made Dead trees with the new MegaTrees Feature in ue 5.7 and setup a BP to populate trees in my level.

Made a Mesh Spline BP to be able to blockout some areas

and just spent a ton of time modelling.

No Textures are in place yet, any color or texture you see is just visual help for myself.

Im still having difficulty Creating my Z-Up Material with proper normal Blending for my bigger Stone Assets, and Struggling with creating a realistic sinkhole where the castle has sunk in, and blocking out the surrounding area.

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

Hello Everyone, Back with my Second Update.

Pufff… busy week, did a ton of work which still feels like I haven’t done anything.

Changelog :

1. Did a First Lighting Pass with small revisions over the week for the spooky scary aesthetic
2. thought about the blockout and modelled/Sculpted a TON of assets.
   1. Stone Steps ( stacks of 1,3,5,10 with variation )
   2. Fountain
   3. Deformed Statues ( from fab but destrroyed them furthermore while still maintaining the uvs so i can use the normal texture, Genius Nima moment )
   4. Stone Bench
   5. Urns
   6. Plinths
3. Deformed My Gate
4. Changed the Bounding Fence
5. Make Creepy Crawler Vines for overgrowth
6. Destroyed one of the Bridges in the distance
7. Added Water to the Fountain
8. Started with Bevels and UVs on the Castle Assets ( Halfway Done )
9. Sculpted the Landmass and Broke them apart to give that distorted land feel.
10. Did vertex painting on the landmasses to separate the parts ( needs revision tho )
11. Assigned a World Aligned Texture on all the new Rocky Assets with their Personal Bake Normal Maps

As for stuff I’m still struggling with, I know the reference and original concept is very stylized and fantasy, but I want to make the environment feel very realistic and creepy at the same time, I feel like my lighting right now is going against that, I might need to change the Lighting to make it feel like Somewhere pseudo-Abandoned / Magnificence Lost and Bygone.

I Also Don’t Like the Trees right now, I Feel like Leafy Trees will Help with the abandoned mood i wanna go with.

Aside from that I Feel like Everything else will look much better once I’ve Textured Everythinng Properly.

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

Hello Everyone, Back with another weekly update

Weekly Change Log :

• External Light Source Assets
  • Sculpted a 3 melted candles on a skull
  • made a handheld lantern with a candle inside
  • made a torch and holder.
  • altered a previously made fire niagara particle sim with green colors
• Separated my gate into different parts and started texturing it in unreal ( took a whole day of work and alot of back and forth making the textures between maya, painter, sampler and unreal )
• did the same treatment to the step rails outside the grounds
• did another lighting pass and added volumetric fog rays to the scene
• got rid of the previous blue hue on the lights

there were more things I wanted to do, but the texturing back and forth really halted the progress.

For next week

• early optimization pass for lighting and textures ( the scene is running heavier than id like )
• definitely changing the skulls, they’re too fake currently in my opinion.
• Finishing my Z-up material
• Continuing textures and might change the skulls on the gates and rails.

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

Hello Everyone Back with another Weekly Update.

Rough week, I did a lot because of the issues from last week.

• Full Optimization Pass ( we’re running at 60fps again )

• added Lightning / Weather System through UltraDynamicSky (it’s really helpful but because im new to using it, im still struggling to get the same results as i want that i usually get through the normal built in things in ue like Exponential Height Fog )

• Discovered Parallax Occlusion as a solution to the surfaces i had been using Displacement on.

• Made New Trees in Speedtree.

• Creeping Vines on the fence ( was gonna use speedtree to make it natural but got stuck with some sort of thing im doing wrong )

• Added SubSurface Scattering to my candle’s material.

• Created Moving Fog Cards ( for the magic mist in the env. )

• Made Water Puddle Decals ( but for some reason when using the decal actor and going to game view, they disappear [***] )

• Camera Adjustments

• 3 Lighting Re-dos… ( i wish i had used ultradynamicsky from the first week so i had time to learn it )

• Wetness On Materials

i have added some shots where i wanna do set dressing and im already creating those assets like flags and torn shrouds. but theres only so many hours during the day for me to work.

For this week :

Im Gonna Re-Sculpt the candles because compared to everything else they look really bad.

add wind to the trees.

and start on cinematics while still adding the new assets.

The Lighting is really bothering me, everytime i come back it just looks wrong.

and megalights is making every single light source flicker.

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

Hello Everyone, Back with my final Pre-Holiday Update

Change Log :

• Managed to fix the lighting with the new ultra dynamic sky
• added some flags with cloth simulation
• some skulls and set dressing
• water puddles
• blood spatters
• New Bookmarks
• New Cinematics Cinematic Preview
• Added Some Rubble
• Additional Foliage ( although its looking very plasticy right now )
• Added Water Drops to some Assets and Foliage for some extra little detail
• Fixed my previous issue with the disappearing decals
• Changed the fire for the torch to an animated Plane with a media player material
• changed the candle flame to an animated texture
• Lighting Tuning

Overall it was a busy week, there are some stuff that are still going wrong with the renders because of the rain and the wetness i can’t use anything else other than TSR with lumen because otherwise i will get Light flickers and artefacts that look like bloom,

and thats making a part of my wetness on the stones go away…

also there are some issues that the media player flame has with TSR

its not rendering very smoothly to say the least

as for the next batch of changes ill have to do :

• Vines on Fountain, Fence, Benches
• Camera Shake to Cinematics
• Wind movement to the trees and foliage
• Another pass on the trees
• nanite debugging with some meshes because they break
• Bird/Bat Flock Simulation
• Optimization Pass
• Some more Set Dressing

[Nyx.Nim]

[The_M0ss_Man]

Hello again @Nyx.Nim ! Your lovely Alastor photo and amazing scenery are always a sight for sore eyes.

I will always admire the amount of detail that you craft with these scenes. Your angles, lighting, and framing during the capture of it all are absolutely gorgeous. I’m not sure if you’ve played the game V Rising at all, but it makes me think about some of the gorgeous aesthetics you can achieve in that game, but much more up close, and I find that so charming.

Keep up the amazing work!! I’ll be waiting for the next update!

[Nyx.Nim]

Hey Everyone, First Update after the holidays.

Changelog :

• Optimization Pass
• Flock Niagara Simulation
• Animated Textures for the Flock Static Meshes ( AnimtoTexture Plugin, amazinggg )
• Material Changes, added moss to the bricks
• Animations for skulls tied with ropes so they move with the wind
• Crack Decals on the Castle
• Crawlers on the Benches, Fountain, Gate
• Stained Glass Material Re-do
• More Cinematic Revisions Cinematic Preview ( with volume turned up )
• Better atmosphere Setting in the Cinematic with tension and Buildup
• Added a free antagonist Asset for the cinematic
• Collisions
• Animation Re-targeting for the Character
• Flag Re-Texturing
• Lighting Pass

Issues to tackle :

• WPO vertex Movement isn’t being Rendered on my Foliage while Using TSR for the Wet Reflections
• Stained Glass Still Needs Work
• I’d Like Better Directon in the Cinematic
• Had no Access to Zbrush over the holidays to sculpt some changes

[Nyx.Nim]

[Nyx.Nim]

haha, you’re always so kind
Appreciate the constant encouraement.

Hope you enjoy the Changes