Trees!

Been experimenting with speedtree for awhile now but i've only just started to work with it for this project. Had some problems with alpha maps on the leaves but i've worked that out now all i need to do is save them out as png's. Speedtree is great becuase it allows people to make random natural looking foliage for video games, Modeling 10 different variations of a tree would take days if not weeks done by hand but this tool speedtree (which has a free licenced version with udk) makes this possible in moments. I'm not quite happy with my textures yet i think there colours are off - but perhaps thats just becuase of the lighting in speedtree.. Will have to experiment after i compile some of these and actually put them in udk.

Ready for battle

Some lovely swords to scatter around :) nice and low poly aswell. Modeled it in 3ds max from reference, Unwrapped it then ported it over to mudbox to texture it using its own refernce image. Touched it up again in photoshop. Happy with the result although if it was going to be actually useable weapon i'd of spent alot more time on it and it would of been higher poly limit. I'm considering modeling a Roman eagle battlestandard but im not sure whether i'd be able to make one i'm happy with that quickly and i wouldn't want to waste alot of time doing it. I'll have to think about it alittle. Spears soon !

EDIT: Forgot to upload the swords reference image

Been awhile since last update

Made another 2 ruin models, Reused the models by flipping them around, They look better then i imagined they would. Some problems which you can see in the image below is that the ends don't match up to the other side when you join 2 walls together. This isn't desirable but i can cover this up with another prop, helps keep the model reuseable if i can swap them around like that. Had some clipping issues with 2 out of the 3 models, I think this is down to some bad cutting when i was in 3ds max before i took them over to mudbox to texture. The first one i did was fine so i think i might of rushed alittle. But again i'll just have to put some foliage over it to cover it up.

Made this Roman sheild to place randomly around the ruins. Turned out really nice and its only about 490 polys :) Gonna make myself some roman swords / spheres to scatter around too

Wall and ground

Top left shows one of the new walls i've build in max - UVW unwrapped this wall actually has less polys than one of the bricks on its own from the previous post. Looks nice with its normal maps, Might be alittle sharp on the edges if you get close but that seems to be industry standard. Top right shows the first implementation of terrain textures on the map, Mud and Floor textures modifed to be seemless - The normal maps really show off the detail in the texture with the sun lighting i've got on :)

Heres a test i did for a wall. Wanted to try do one that wasn't just a simple block - each brick here is about 400 polys which is way too much. Doing some simple math if i build a building with 500 bricks times 400 polys = 200 000 poly on a building alone. Combine this with everything else in the scene this would make the level run badly on most machines.

Just thought i would upload an image of the custom assets i've finished so far. Been working on some rocks and walls but i've not got anything i'm happy with yet but will upload some experiments soon

in the right you can see the progress on the focal point, added a custom cloth object which can be shot to peices if shot. On the right is an experiment i did with ground hase, Falling leafs, and re using the same rock resized/ rotated to create a rockface. Also an attempt at a daylight :)