Once we had finished our Sidescroller project and presented
it, it was time to start another project. No rest for the wicked!
We were given a range of industrial briefs which we could
choose from. So I decided to pick the diorama brief. I had to create a small
diorama scene with a selection of small assets and one hero asset. For the
scene I must have included the following Hero Asset (prop or vehicle), terrain
piece and small props such as rocks and vegetation. We had 3 weeks to do this
project and theme was determined by myself. There was no concept needed but a
key image to work from at least.
The piece I decided to do was a Japanese Cherry Blossom
Tree. I wanted to do this as my diorama piece because I knew for my FMP that
was to come in the new year that I was going to work on a Japanese Garden. So I
wanted to practice my tree modelling and texturing.
This is the key image that I used that I wanted to re-create
for my diorama:
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| Key Image |
First of all I started researching Japanese trees. I didn’t
know exactly what type of tree I wanted to go for so I looked at a wide range
and then felt strongest about a Japanese cherry blossom tree. I felt this would
be good to practice. Once I had found my key image I went ahead and started to
model my tree. I modelled it using splines and then path deforming the cylinder
I created. I purposely went ahead and used a lot of tris first of all so I
could then merge all the branches together so it flowed nicely into each
branch. Once all the branches were merged I then went ahead and got rid some of
the tris that weren’t needed and got rid of any n-gons. I took this into zbrush
and worked into adding details such as bumps, folds and knots like a normal
tree. I then used an alpha brush to add some texture. I then decided to start
focusing up on the leaves. I created a high poly leaf which I then duplicated and
FDD modified to make it slightly different to the rest. I then created two
smaller high-poly branches in which I would then object paint the leaves on. I
used the rump object paint so that the leaves towards the end of the branch
would be smaller. Once I was happy with that I then went ahead and edited the
leaves separately, so that there was no negative space. Once I had done that I
then baked it down onto a plane so I could then use it for alphas later.
Once I have finished that I then went back to my main tree
and baked down the high to low poly. Once I had done that I then went ahead and
arranged my alpha branches on one singular low poly branch to then object paint
on my tree. Once I had roughly painted my alphas onto my tree I manually
rotated and moved them to fill in the space left.
I created my terrain by putting it into zbrush and then
baking it down.
Once done I took it then into Unreal and worked in a
particle system to create falling blossom. I took my plane of my blossom and
then created an alpha in which I then created a particle effect to create a
falling blossom.
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| Final UE4 screenshot |
