THE ICE TOWER
CONCEPT
For this project I really wanted to make a fully fleshed environment surrounding the centerpiece that would be the tower. Conceptually I wanted to make a wizards tower, situated in a cold, icy valley. I really wanted to make the tower look lived in, and focused on color, contrast and temperature.
This page showcases the exterior of the tower while the interior will be showcased on a different page.
MODULARITY AND DESIGN
I knew I wanted to design several modular assets for this project. Mainly wooden frames, plaster walls, stone textures, snow and Ice. I wanted to use a library of various texture resources and assets that could be applied to a vast amount of the models for the project. I intended to make fewer custom assets, and rely on more modularity for the more refined hard-surface models.
Textures were made in Designer, certain design techniques and stylistic choices were often repeated and remade for other assets, and some were adapted to fit the style of the overall project.
SUBSTANCE PAINTER
I knew I needed to produce a great deal of assets that would shape the entire tower. After I had whiteboxed and modeled most of the tower, I decided to make a few Kits for various assets such as planks, special planks, walls etc. For the most part I simply applied textures in Unreal, but certain assets required a little bit more love, and so I worked on making a general material for certain types of assets such as wood, steel etc.
Generally making assets followed a distinct direction, sculpting was done in zbrush if it needed a sculpt pass. Often times to get a decent shape, carving down the shapw using various brushes and eventually adding details using alpha maps made in Designer. Usually the low poly would be made directly in zbrush and adapted somewhat in blender. Loads of testing were done with something like rocks or special meshes that needed a sculpt pass. However with the base material in painter, the texturing process was generally streamlined.
UNREAL
I knew I wanted to make this map somewhat playable. I wanted to see a walkthrough of the surroundings and be able to discover the various parts of the map, before heading to the tower.
Knowing I wanted to make a surrounding enviroment for this project, I put a great deal of effort into developing the enviroment assets and design a small valley surrounding the tower. There were a few elements I knew I wanted to include, so I focused a great deal on whiteboxing the entire place.
1. I firstly included the whitebox of the tower and started shaping the nearby enviroment. It took a few attempts to shape the rest of the terrain, and some changes were made along the way. When I knew I wanted to make the tower within a lake and I knew I wanted to have mountains nearby, many ideas would spawn from that perspective.
2. I made sure to focus on the tower firstly, using my various wood assets to switch out the whitebox. I made changes in the direction and did not make the assets entirely modular as the tower itself had some unique shapes and parts. Instead I reused wood parts and often times deviated from the whitebox to avoid having to redo my kit. While not entirely modular, it still was a very flexible kit to use, and it allowed me to create a fuctional space both inside and outside.
3. After shaping the terrain roughly to form the valley, I would make various materials to use on both the terrain and on various assets. I created a range of basis materials which I would adapt later such as snow, rock, ice, and some variations of the assets I would use. While I had some experience in making terrain mateirals, some research would go into making it more viable for my use.
4. I created a nature kit for populating the valley, such as stones, trees, ice pieces and some shrubs. lots of them shared the same properties of the snow materials to give the snow tipped look for branches or light snowcover on certain assets.
5. I allso made a kit for ruin pieces. I knew I wanted to make some fences, arches and a bridge to the tower, and it turned into a modular kit that I reused for certain parts.
Designing the overall valley using the various tools, meshes and prefabs was a matter of stating, playtesting using camera movement and even walking around as a unreal player character.
I started with the tower, shaped the terrain, painted roads, and began populating with trees, shrubs, rocks, and even ice details. I then went on to focus on the centerpiece itself giving it extra care and attention.
