Tunnels Continued + Limit Break Mentorship Ends

Since my last post I have assembled the scene, give it light, done some in engine post production, added some water and experimented with Unreal Engine's landscape sculpting and foliage tools! I'll add to this post, going into more detail at a later date.

Here's a preview run around of the scene so far and a render.

Tunnels: Scene Building in Unreal Engine and World Alignment

Continuing on from my last post, the initial plan I had did not work for me. I had a low poly mesh with the high poly bake on the rocks but I had the problem of visible seams - it was obvious where my different sculpts met and real tunnels aren't like that.

Decimated and untextured - visible seams where rocks touch each other

So how did I disguise those seams? 

Unreal engine has a node called "World Alignment" and it doesn't use UVs to project textures instead it uses real world positioning instead and if you've got a tileable texture there's no problem! In the image below, those rocks are decimated high meshes that have had no UV mapping done whatsoever.

Base Colour World Alignment Set Up

Normal Map (not a bake) World Alignment Set Up

World Align Result

Close up of removed seams

Fun material update - I've incorporated oil coming from the walls. In the books the Everneath is guarded by creatures called "shades" who are basically people who have turned into figureless floating shades of oil who have access to areas of the Everneath no one else does - not even the Queen.

If you are trying to use a world align node on a mesh with a very low poly count you will get poor results as shown below:

Using the rocks below, I put a lattice on them to give curve shape variation so the tunnel can curve over. Now I have my pieces, time to build the scene and light it!

Tunnels Art Direction and Stylisation

The aim of this post is to figure out the art direction I'm going to go with and here's the final result (for now) that I plan to use for the main texture, the white represents emissive which will be used as a mask for the VFX I completed in unreal engine.

I started initially with a couple basic rock sculpts and layered them to see what that might look like. I also tried out some brushes I found online and accidentally made cookies:

• Orb pack: https://orb.gumroad.com/l/nOkHw
• Free Stylised Rock Pack: https://80.lv/articles/free-stylized-rock-brushes/

I then started looking into making lava rock material and just my luck - there were a bunch of tutorials on how to do this in blender - small problem, I don't think you can export material maps you've made in blender. Also when I clumped the rocks together and put this material on... Looked like very unhealthy poop haha!

So I started looking away from this more realistic style towards something more stylised. My research led me to an amazing tutorial by Luc Chamerlat: https://www.artstation.com/chamerlat/blog/daPE/how-to-create-a-simple-stylised-lava-using-substance-designer

Stylised Lava by Luc Chamerlat

This served as a great base to start experimenting with what I want my rock textures to look like! Taking into account how lava tunnels form, I want it to look like there's layers of solidified lava with remnants of ebbing flow patterning the walls.

Modular Rock Pieces:

My scene will be constructed by placing modular rock pieces I've made like lego bricks as demonstrated in the example below from: https://80.lv/articles/clinton-crumpler-closed-quaters-environmen-design/

The sculpts will be a canvas for my textures. The workflow for my sculpts started with the clay build up brush to find the main shapes, I then used the trim dynamic brush to flatten it which created some cracks and then I used the trim smooth border brush, (found in the lightbox tab > trim folder) to create better edges and some more cracks. I also occasionally used the clip curve tool to create clean slices and cut into the edge of the stone wall. 

In blender, I then used a lattice to create some curve variations.

Ready to decimate, UV map, bake and bring into unreal engine.

Tunnels VFX Progress 2

In this update, I explore using iridescent colouring and lighting for the main vein of my VFX part.

This I thought was great to show the transfer of people's souls but it's emotional energy the tunnels drain, not souls and the whiteness gives off too heaven-like, purity vibes whereas I want danger, dispirit, unnerve, wickedness etc. So then I looked at dark cosmic colours, I went with blue for sadness, purple for anxiousness and orange for energy.

Next Steps:

Figure out art style/direction I want to go with and how to mask the VFX so it looks like it's coming from inside the wall and travelling through it rather than being projected onto it.

Tunnels Moodboard, Research and Initial Ideas

Above is my moodboard, at first glance looks a bit random but it covers lighting references, VFX, style variations, materials and most importantly, tunnels and cave structures. So here's what I'm thinking for each...

Tunnel Structure

The first question I asked myself was, "How did these fictional Tunnels get here?" I believe they would have existed before any human, immortal or god walked in the Everneath. The Everneath trilogy is based around the Hades and Persephone myth, so looking in my Greek Mythology book at world creation I found this. Gaia is Earth and Tartarus means the Underworld. I imagine the Everneath would have appeared the same time as these did since it is a world between Earth and Hell, I also imagine it's location would be reflected in the world's design by being a blend of the natural Earth, and preternatural underworld. The tunnels wouldn't be an exception to that, even if it is the deepest, darkest, unnatural part.

Here's a map from the second book Everbound, the tunnels I think run underneath the world's centre like the underground tube system in Central London.

Because of its nature and purpose, I think it would look like an ethereal hellscape - an unholy divinity. I looked at several different types of caves and tunnels and decided the best one to base this piece on would be a lava tunnel especially after researching how they are formed. The walls in the books are described as coal, coal also looks like lava rock and both are used for burning.

VFX

The tunnels is a place of power and energy, a place of transfer so I will use VFX - more specifically animated materials in unreal engine to achieve this. My initial thought was to imitate electricity using a colour to reflect human souls, at first I thought blue, white or green, maybe even a mix in a chromatic aberration kind of way. Then I came across a tutorial on creating a cosmic material with a limited colour palette in different variations. I felt brought me closer to what I wanted even though I didn't know exactly what that was yet. The material used caustics, stars and what I'm calling a main vein. When someone dies some say a new star appears in the sky, including this subtly felt right. Now I was getting somewhere, however energy surges - I needed to add a pulse to make it come alive. With what I have, it needs more detail in the vein, it needs to look like there was something being carried inside the vein.

A iridescent colour like a bubble would be a perfect colour representation of souls, but now I'm going off track because it's not so much souls that are being drained, the Everneath isn't interested in souls - that's for Hell and Heaven. It's concerned with emotional energy, so how could I convey negative emotional energy and with which colours? I still believe iridescent is what I'm looking for because of how it changes colour when viewed at different angles so I'm going to experiment with making a dark iridescent material. On a final note, I will need to all the VFX I do look look embedded in the wall, not projected onto it, the light is coming from inside the wall.

Lighting

Lighting is going to be a challenge because it's underground - there is no light source. The VFX is what I intend on being the main light source. I know I want some fog and some shadows to create an unnerving sense for my audience - but what would give off a shadow? Well, the Everneath have inhabitants called shades, they're a floating figureless mounds of oil. Their sole purpose is to serve and protect the Everneath, they have access to hidden places and can go through materials - Everlivings become shades when they miss a feed. The game Torchlight II gave me the idea to include this.

When is comes to warm and cool coloured lighting, I struggled to make a decision because cool reflects the eeriness and goes with a coal colour and theme of death. However, warm lighting goes with the theme of hellscape and lava. After doing some research both can be done! So this is my intention.

Style

Art direction is hard to pin point exactly right now but I know it's NOT going to be super realistic or super stylised either. I'm thinking somewhere between realistic and over-exaggerated stylised as defined by this article: Realistic vs. Stylized: Technique Overview (80.lv)

Another great article I found was: Building Underground Environments With UE4 (80.lv)

Tunnels VFX Progress 1

Below is my first progress in experimenting with VFX in Unreal Engine. I have been focusing mainly on the emissive element. For now, I've made a quick place holder mesh in Blender (tutorial here) so I can see what it looks like on a tunnel shape and size. I also downloaded coal and dirt materials from megascans to act as placeholder textures.

To achieve the lighting above, I used a combination of the 3 tutorials below:

Making Cosmic Materials: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-cosmic-material-ue4-vismay-soni-1c/

Flowing Noise Tutorial:

Pulsing Light:

What I'm trying to achieve for now:

• A sense of energy, that this place is alive.
• A look of something unearthly - the ethereal element to 'hellscape ethereal'

Next steps for VFX:

• Working out some colour to represent negative emotional energy - dark iridescent.
• Make the veins look like it's carrying something inside them.
• Figure out a way to make the light look like its coming from inside the wall/travelling through the rocks.

Limit Break and A New Project... The Everneath Tunnels

Back in April, I signed up to Limit Break, a 6 month mentorship program aimed at underrepresented people working in the UK games industry. I was lucky enough to be paired with a lead environment artist. During our first meeting we agreed it would be best to drop the Panda Hut project and work on something more original as Panda Hut has been done by other people quite a few times. I also realised that I've never made a 3D space, I’ve only ever made 3D sets in front of digital cameras, which is why my goal for the end of this mentorship is to create a real-time interactable environment in Unreal Engine!

The Project...

I've had an interest in Greek Mythology ever since I learned about it in primary school. During my secondary school years I discovered (and fixated on) a book called "Everneath" - a modern day retelling of the 'Hades and Persephone' underworld myth. The Everneath is a world between Earth and Hell where immortals called Everlivings live. Everlivings gain 100 years of life each time they drain the emotional energy of a forfeit - a human who has given up their life on Earth to unknowingly nourish an Everliving via a 6 month long feed. When the feed ends, the forfeits emerge as numb, elderly people with 6 months left to live on Earth. They spend this time regaining their emotional energy before the tunnels come for them in the form of a smokey whirlwind, they're then taken to the tunnels to spend eternity being a battery for the Everneath.

There's something about the tunnels that captures my imagination, the books' description leaves a lot to be imagined. It's described as being a long dark tunnel with walls of coal where hands stick out, some limp, some still, some waving frantically trying to grab something. It is a feared, forbidden place - no one has seen it but it’s existence is widely known throughout the Everneath. 

This trilogy has captivated my imagination for years, the morbidity of the tunnels in particular left a lasting impression on me and now, I finally feel I have the skills to visualise my interpretation with some help from my mentor.

When this project ends I might visualise the opposite of the tunnels next: The Elysian Fields, in other words: the heaven in Everneath, a place of only light and happiness.