THE GIANT THRONE

THE GIANT THRONE

Mighty kings ruled the world from this throne. Their hearts turned as cold as ice, sending them into darkness and oblivion. Almost 100 winters have passed since the last king was sitting on this throne, and it is ready. It is ready for glory and war, gold and blood, fire and ice.

References

God of war has been a focal point for my reference gathering, given that both projects shared background (Viking folklore), and that I am a big fan of Raul Aparicio's work. Since I met him at a conference he did for our school I've been inspired by his work, always trying to reach at least half of his quality as an artist.

I always try to group my references into what I think I can split the concept into. In this case, there was a lot of rock sculpting and I needed some nordic cave/dwarf mine inspiration. 

Block-out

This is my first step for every project, I analyze the concept and select the main pieces that will help me figure out dimensions, scene design, proportions, and the amount of work that is about to come. This is a great part of modularity and deciding which assets are going to be re-used. 

Sculpting

Given that almost the entire environment is ROCK, I used the Dynamesh - Trim Smooth Border (Square alpha) workflow. I added some realistic rock surfaces that I had in my library and added some details with other brushes like Dam Standard or Trim Dynamic. 

Baking & Texturing

For this step, the software that I used was Marmoset Toolbag and Substance Painter.

In Marmoset:

Given that my goal was to use Nanite, I could use "low-poly" models that had a big amount of geometry. So, depending on the details I decided to bake them with a model with even more geometry or to bake it with themselves. The maps that I usually export are Normal, AO, Curvature, and Thickness. 

In Substance:

After baking the remaining maps (ID, position) I used the famous PBR workflow for texturing. I had some realistic smart materials from previous projects that I could reuse adding some details for the specific parts of each prop. 

Lighting

I have no doubts that this was the hardest part for me. I requested a lot of feedback from a group of artists that I joined a few months ago, and my environment escalated from a dark unbalanced room to a foggy hall with an epic atmosphere. I would like to thank Kenji for being so patient with me texting and spamming captures, and also all the artists that gave me feedback in our chat. 

If I had to choose a technical aspect that improved the scene it would be RIM LIGHTS, they are a game changer when you need to elevate a hero prop. 

Nanite & Lumen

Unreal Engine 5 is and will be the next step for videogames, and even now (in early access) it has such great potential. Since it came out, I've been willing to try with my own hands how Lumen and Nanite work, and this is what I found: 

- Nanite's performance with heavy assets is IMPRESSIVE. As you can see in the photo right below, the amount of geometry of this environment was demanding and I could perfectly navigate and work in real-time. 

- Lumen is a game-changer for lighting workflows but it has some turnabouts (that are easily fixed, luckily). I think the one that bothered me the most was the fact that I couldn't use combined meshes. 

Feelings about the project

First of all, thank you for your time reading and checking my last project. 

It has been a great adventure, given that I consider this the highest quality project I've worked on (you can check my previous projects here: rohom3Des).  It's been 1 year since I started my journey in 3D environment art and sadly the final quality of my master's degree wasn't what I was aiming for, given that I've been improving my skills to be able to upload something that I really feel proud of, and this is it. 

But I have to say that I felt overwhelmed a few times during the process, this is why I feel so relievedafter managing to finish it and call it done. 

I really hope that you like this and probably some of it was useful for you. 

See you soon!