Ancient Pilgrimage - Breakdown
Breakdown post for this space: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/V2m63P
Primary goal when authoring assets for this scene was to focus on modularity, so the assets could easily be re-used to make an entirely different feeling scene without bloat.
Rock and Prop workflow for this piece:
Zbrush Blockout + Sculpt -> Houdini Optimize and UV -> Painter Bake and RGB Mask -> Engine Import
I used 2 grass meshes in the scene. Generated the clumps in Houdini and assigned a vertical gradient to the red vertex channel to drive the color, roughness, and wind controls.
Decals used around the level for blue paint over spaces, as well as to blend dirt to rock transitions that RVT blending couldn't account for.
Really fun to challenge myself to focus on modular setups for the materials.
Seems like Michael Gerard's water material tutorial was taken down. :(
Rock Master Mat Features:
RGB Mask - Edges, Dirt, Moss
Shared base mask drives BaseColor + Roughness
Normal Up Mask to blend with B channel for moss.
Vertex Painting
Water Level Heigh Adjustment - Adjusts BaseColor + Roughness
RVT Landscape Blending
Grass Master Mat Features:
Base Color, Roughness, and Wind driven by Red Vertex Channel.
Subsurface Scattering
Irregular wind driven by world space masking.
Directional Wind + Grass Deformation
RVT Landscape Blending
Made the base Water Master Material from Michael Gerard's Tutorial. (No Longer Available?)
My Additions:
Improved controls for opacity of Deep vs. Shallow water.
World Space Mask to drive wind appearance
Custom Tex Maps for Caustics, Foam, Waves, etc.
Large Rock A - Scene uses just 3 large rocks and 3 pebbles.
Large Rock B
Large Rock C
3 Small Rocks/Pebbles for scattering
Smaller Totems 1-5
Large Hero Prop Totems
Landscape Materials. Tex Maps created in Designer.
Master Material uses a similar system to the Rock Master material to control color, roughness, and displacement in engine as well as Height Masking to drive water level appearance.
Unlit Key Shot
Detail Lighting Key Shot
Rock Master Material Graph.
Re-routes make it all so much cleaner.