Cody Peltier - "Liberation" Game Environment

                                                        Cody Peltier - Games Environment Artist

This is my Think Tank Mentorship Demo reel that i made with the help of my mentor, Chris Larson! The whole project took me about 4 months to finish, from blockout to final render! I was inspired by one of my favorite game series, Dragon Age and so i wanted to make a scene based on its in universe lore! this scene is depicting a Qunari Dreadnaught outside of a Tevinter Coastal town. the ship and the sea fort are the main focus for the scene of course so they got the most detailed but i made sure to build a background that was detailed enough at a glance to be able to create a feeling of a realistic environment and that this takes place within a real world, not just as a floating display as i have always loved world building on the macro scale the most! Everything in this scene is modelled and textured by me with the only exception being the trees and vines! please check the artstation page too for better renders and breakdowns! 

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qemxWz

Qunari Dreadnaught

The hero prop for this scene is this Qunari Dreadnaught! its a warship of one of the races and also my favorite race. However, it has had almost no depictions within any game or media yet beyond some basic comics like this one so i felt itd be a really fun challenge to try and recreate it in a realistic and functioning manner. Th elook vaguely reminded me of Roman Quinqueremes, so i decided to use some real life and historical references from those to build as a base and then to expand upon to get the end result. i also used a mix of trim sheets and tiling textures in order to keep the texture quality at a minimum, to make it potentially game ready while still looking as great as possible! 

I also wanted to create a mini environment within the captains area and along the deck so as to make the ship really feel like its used and lived in. to do so i gathered as many references for the qunari style and both recreated them as well as created some of my own props that i based upon their cultural and artistic styles! 

Captain's Deck

For the Castle, i wanted to get the Tevinter feeling of a Slave Empire ruled by mages, so it needed both a mystical feel along with an oppressive sense. so i loked at concept art from the games as well as used a mix of roman and gothic styles to try and create this imperialistic but brutal sense to them. I knew from the beginning that the best way to make it more efficiently was to rather than create an entire unique prop, was to instead create a modular kit so i could use and reuse a few parts to create many different iterations. i also built a wood plank set that i could just swap out the textures to create various looking woods while having minimal mesh iterations. I then also used the modular kit to create an entire port city in the background, just swapping the tiling textures where i need to create even more diversity in the buildings to eventually end up with the full city in the background! 

To help further add the idea of oppression, I knew from the very beginning it wanted to have the statues and art reflect that. so I created these statues in zbrush and maya to help add to the ambiance of the scene! 

Modular Set

To help fill out the spaces, i created a variety of props too, some inspired by other designs, some of my own design to help really make the area feel used and lived in!

This was an incredibly fun project that helped me learn a lot of ways to model for games including making masking materials withing unreal, using triplanar, tiling and displacement to get even more work out of my textures and how to itemize and create a solid plan to decide what i need and how to make it as well as estimate the average time it'd take me to make so that way i could know if it was worth the effort or not and if it added to the scene or not. thanks so much for taking the time to look over my project and hope you liked it! am always happy for constructive critiques so i can improve and also am interested in anyone who wants to just connect some time and maybe work on some projects together! Cheers!