Alpha Hymenoptera 001

After feedback on the disparity between the geometry of my hercules beetle rock formations and the puckered volcanic rock textures I completely changed the design of my accent pieces to imitate the smooth form of the beetle horn. I also redid the design of my moth feeler fern, the test piece in my last update was enough to show me that the shape wasn’t quite reading as completely fern. I added Quixel Megascan rock assets and ground textures and played with breaking up the horizon line. 

Progress made since my last update has mainly been centered around the creation and refinement of foliage assets. Both the Moth Feeler Fern and Wasp Leg Grass have been converted from poly-heavy geometry to planes with opacity maps. The Scorpion fly bamboo pieces have been created and textured as individual pieces to then be combined in various formations to easily create variation. Two different Hercules Beetle Rock Formations have been sculpted, retopologised and textured and deformed to create a total of eight variations. I have also spent time tweaking the atmosphere and skylight properties of the environment, as well as tweaking the landscape material to include noise and panner nodes to give an unnerving moving emission. 

I have chosen to create an environment centered around insect physiology. As pilots crash land they are faced with a sense of dread, familiar yet unrecognisable features fill the view before them. Unlike Earth the entire planet functions as one ecosystem, connected by a bioluminescent liquid similar to the open circulatory system haemolymph found predominantly within insects and some crustaceans.