The Desert Sessions, PT. 3

Ahoy! More modeling progress is abound. Everything is currently modeled except for:

-fire pit
-crashed airplane
-shack
-terrain

I know. The four biggest, most important parts, right? The reason why I'm putting those on hold is due to not having any concepts sketched out yet. My minions have yet to complete this task, and I still don't know when this will happen. I've got a bunch of new models to show for now, as well as some bushes modeled in Speedtree. Observe:

A camera on a tripod, a hand-carved grave, and a big ol' slab of ribs. I've been thinking about using a simple concept that the guy who is stranded here was not alone on his disastrous trip. He had a buddy that was killed in the crash. So, he buried his body and made a grave with his hat nailed to it in remembrance, over time. The camera and tripod suggests that either the player or the dead friend is/was a photographer. The rib slab, along with all the other bones and meat you see throughout the level are from animals that the survivor has eaten in order to survive. There's a sort of thought process behind all this stuff where I want to tell a simple story through prop work, and I think what I've got so far is pretty good. Especially since I'm no story teller to begin with.

Here we have a make-shift table with some items on it that include: flashlight w/ top screwed off and battery, med kit, notepad w/ pencil, passport, and Ipod. Once again, simple story implication. The table is just thrown together by the survivor to have a place to organize his stuff and think about his situation, maybe a place to plan his departure for help.

Bug spray, sun hat, leg bone, meat chunk, and jaw bone. Not much to say here.

Two examples of grass patches found in the level. Grass tends to clump together in this type of place, so I just decided to make it as separate static meshes. If there's an area where there's alot of grass, i can clump it together. The tree stump is an example of trying to break up the environment a bit more. Just having some speedtrees thrown in doesn't do the job well enough for me. It needs some custom mesh work to give it some character. Plus, it's stuff that you just can't achieve in Speedtree. The grass is Maya paint effects, which works well enough for something as simple as grass. Try modeling it from scratch, and your head will explode.

A tree that has been hit by lightning. A lucky thing for our survivor, who has stripped the branches for firewood. I had to really watch the poly count on this one, plus it would take way too long to model it with lots of branches as if it just fell. The firewood concept remedies that. It's weird how story elements can lessen your poly count. Ha!

Bushes to help once again, break up the environment. Once again, everything will have its own custom textures, especially the leaves which will look drastically different.

Well, now I put the level together in the editor and then start texturing. When it's generally composed, I'll post some pics of it. Unreal is refusing to build my lighting at the moment, and I'm probably going to physically harm it. If I find a way to actually do this, I'll let you all know.