I started a small fan art piece quite some time ago (before art station blogs were even introduced) and I haven't worked on it for well over a year now, but I recently started back up again. I had been posting my progress on polycount, but I thought this blog would be a good place to update everyone as well. So this post will be a huge dump of the polycount thread + my latest update.

Hope you guys enjoy and please crit me!!! I am at a good point for feedback and would very much welcome it!

Post 1

I started by collecting reference from the game and some materials I thought were nice. I trimmed this down as I collected a lot!

Then I jumped into modo for a quick blockout.

From here I went straight into zbrush and high poly's, starting to build out form. I didn't take many screenshots at the start but these are the ones I have. I went through and pretty much built everything to a rough state, decimating them down and throwing it all into unreal on auto unwraps.

From here I started to explore some possible camera angels.

Now that I had a pretty good idea of what meshes I need, I started going back through them, finalizing the sculpt/ingame mesh and uv's. I also started looking at what I can do with lights. I still can make up my mind so you will see it change a lot =D I have been using a mix of substance source and my own substances so far.

The egg shell was my first substance and was very simple

Then I created a barnacle/coral material to blend with all the flora elements.

I had a bit of trouble with the larger coral flora at the back. My first attempt came out pretty weak.

But I went back and re-did them entirely. This time setting up a 3 material layer blend which I plan to use on all the assets.

I went a little overboard on the other flora bits, not sure if I like it or not.

But all that detail got lost anyway!

Continuing progress.

This was the point I started my mentorship with Josh and have been working on these three materials since, bringing me up to where I am currently.

My plan going forward is to finalize these materials and start to resolve the ground. I have been going slow lately so want to try and get everything in with textures to have the full scene to look at. I feel lighting is my weakest area so any advice about how to light the scene would be greatly appreciated. 

Post 2

Thank you for the kind words guys! I did a pass on the albedo for the first ground material and added some more foliage bits around.

Post 3

Hey all, its been a while as iv been super busy the last few weeks. But I found some time this weekend and made a start at addressing the ground. Touched up the sculpt and took it in a slightly different direction again, then put together the blend shader. Hoping to tie everything together with some foliage later but its a start for now!

Here is the sculpt for the ground

another ground blend material

and the progress ingame so far.

Post 4

Thanks all! Again its been a while, iv been a bit lazy recently but you were right @DInusty! I spent most of the day working on this again.
@Sirdelita I actually ended up making some alpha's from the warped rock substance material, that really helped tie the sculpt and texture together.

I implemented a bit of feedback iv had so far, darkening the ground a little and trying out some emissive mushrooms. I was trying to get them to light from the emissive channel itself and I think I may have gone a little overboard in the process. What do you all think? It might be better to try to light them manually instead. I also tried out the new megascan grasses, mushrooms. They seem really nice and really helped me speed up foliage part of this.

It was suggested to try a very soft lighting setup too but im totally unsure about the best way of doing this? Any suggestions would be great!

  

Post 5

A small lighting update tonight!

Post 6

Well.... Its been well over a year since I last worked on this, but I havent forgotten and I am back to it. I don't really have a good excuse for you, so instead some updates!

I set up a simple rig and first pass textures for one of the characters.

I plan to get all of the characters rigged, posed and with clean bakes, so I can work on all the textures together. Speaking of which, I also have finished the bake for the helicopter.

Thanks for the awesome feedback too! I will be looking to address that after all the art is in.