The Desert Sessions, PT. 5

Greetings y'all. So I've gotten a bit side tracked by some happenings in my life, but I'm still plugging away. I just finished sculpting out the majority of the terrain, and next is texturing it. UDK has a pretty nifty way of blending between textures based on the height of the terrain that I'm using. I have it set up so that on flat surfaces you have some flat sand with some rocks here and there, raised surfaces have a more bumpy feel to the sand, and the cliff side that overlooks the sea has its own rocky texture. The game engine automatically calculates which texture to show based on height, and I just have to sculpt it out and play with the numerous settings. Another cool feature that UDK terrain has is the ability to simplify its geometry based on the player's view. If the player is right next to a hill for example, they see the high detailed version of it. But, as they walk further away from it, it loses more and more polygons until it's at its lowest poly version. Definitely saves ALOT of processing power, and allows me to make a higher res landscape, so that's awesome. As for all the little dots on the cliff, I'm not sure. I'm sure I'll find some way to troubleshoot it.

Another thing you'll notice is that the water is done. I followed a tutorial on www.hourences.com (if you mod with UDK, check it out, it's an EXTREMELY useful site) , that was very useful in teaching me how to make water look realistic without making the shader itself too complex. I'll no doubt change some stuff about it, like making the reflection of the sun more accurate. But, I'm very, very happy with how it turned out. Which reminds me, another reason why I haven't had too much to show lately is that I decided to take a week to get really in depth with unreal editor's material system. I feel like I can make my objects look ten times more realistic as a result. It'll be the last thing I do to the desert, sort of the icing on the cake if you will.
I also fixed the skybox up a bit, textured some more objects, and I also have some concept work coming in from Bryan. So far it's just one pic showing the overall "feel" of the level, and he's currently working on pics of the shack, plane and rock formation. Here's a little taste:


Pretty sweet, eh? So what now? I finish texturing the terrain, then I place the trees, then some rocks, and then make the crashed plane, shack, and rock formation. I'm sure there will be things in between that come up unexpectedly, but whatever. That's the joy of making game art. :)