Environment - Glacier Crash

Think I'm going to go say this one is finished.  

This is the first new environment I've added to my portfolio in over a year, and the beginning of a revamp of my work on there.  I definitely feel like I've improved since then.

This environment is based off a concept by Adam Brockbank.  

I had a lot of fun experimenting with DX11 features with this one, especially with the displaced Icicle deal.  Also made some nice looking displaced footprints in the snow.

I've already been spending the past few weeks thinking about what I want to work on next for a portfolio piece.  I'm going to jump right into another one today after work! 

Main Beauty Shot

Displaced Icicles on the 3 chains and steps in this shot.  Notice how none of the chains have the same icicle pattern.

I was really happy with how I got the snow to glimmer.  Bokeh DOF really pushes those specks as well.

Displaced Footprints.

UV tiling Using Params for Material Instances in UDK

Nothing big here, but a guy on polycount was looking for a way to instance a material in UDK and adjust the TexCoord's U and V scaling independently.  I never really thought about doing that so I had some fun for a few minutes figuring it out.  I came up with a really easy solution, actually:

UV Tiling Using Params for Material Instances

Just figured I would throw this up there in case anybody else was curious about doing something like this.

DX11 Displaced Icicle material

Showing off something that I'm doing with my current environment WIP.

When I started this environment, I was thinking a lot about tessellation and displacement...how its starting to be used more commonly in UDK, and how I think its likely that well see more of this in the next generation of games.  Early into the environment I picked myself up a DX11 card and started toying around with the new features.

Ive seen displacement mostly used to add blobby details to rocks and things like that, so I wanted to try something a little different.  I had the idea in the back of my head from the beginning of the environment...I thought it would be pretty cool to create Icicles with displacement and be able to paint them wherever I wanted with vertex colors.

Here is what I came up with:

Displaced Icicles painted on a chain

Displacement happens in World Space, so the orientation of the object doesn't matter, Icicles always displace downwards towards the ground.  Also, I'm using the Up-Vector to only allow bottom facing geometry to displace, so the top of the object doesn't sink inwards.

Being able to us vertex painting is really nice.  It allows you to break up the repeating patterns that you would otherwise get with several instances of an object in close proximity.  

Here is an example of me painting icicles on the chain in UDK:

Vertex Painting Icicles onto a Mesh

Already had several people ask how I set this up.  Its actually pretty easy.  I painted a height map for the icicles by hand real quick...just made circles that got whiter towards the center.  I set up the min and max displacement using a Lerp node with  height map as the Alpha.  I Lerp between this and having no displacement based on the Up-Vector, then I Lerp between the Icicle Displacement and No Displacement using vertex color.

Here is the snipped from the shader network that deals with the displacement:

Icicle Displacement Material in UDK

I had a lot of fun setting this up.  I haven't seen any other examples of displacement being used to paint details onto objects yet.....so maybe this will be of use to somebody who has a similar idea..or just wants to improve upon the idea.  I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of things other people do with it.

Sci-Fi Surveillance Camera

Another little sci-fi prop here.

A surveillance camera.  Set up as a skeletal mesh.  First time I did anything with skeletal meshes in UDK..I had a lot of problems figuring out how I could pose this using bones in the editor.

Not certain, but this might be the last prop I do for the indie game for a while...  This gives me a good chance to jump straight into doing some portfolio work.

Sci-Fi surveillance camera.  My finished model on the left, and concept on the right (I did not make the concept)