This announcement was pulled from the Resonite Discord. Made by Aegis_Wolf, modified by @Xeravax for the sake of formatting.
Now collecting all the WIP progress of the Sojourner Island Redux map, this showcases where we started and what we learned on the way to nearing import into Resonite. First of all one thing we considered is re-scaling the map to not have the island too big for people walking around in the main areas as the whole island is now 75% of its original size without much compromise as well as smaller outer islands in the distance making the environment feel less isolated. Next was figuring out a sort of blockout of what we wanted to keep/add/cut from the original. During this blockout phase, I thought about and documented the ideas of environmental storytelling we had prior plus new ways to flesh out the world as this creates a good baseline how to design the world as we go. After getting a good set of references we set ourselves a good set of base assets to create that this project can be built on with its source material in mind with arranging them in the blockout to populate the Island with many social/interactive places to have. Then was the terrain… We wanted to have it both as performant but as detailed as possible. Were achieving this by creatively bypassing the limit of 4 textures per splat map by using multiple splat map materials on the same mesh as long as it blends between each material seamlessly. Additionally utilizing blenders “multi-resolution” modifier to create an incredibly detailed terrain mesh with various natural textures easily to then use the high detail normals as a “mask” to create a detailed splat texture map that uses the crevasses and edges of the normals to add natural detail to the different textures on the terrain. Later on we can use the high detail normals for future custom shader work too!
Upon using procedural sculpting Ryuvi started out using a low poly mesh trace of the original main island and used laser scanned rock brushes to create the terrain with some edits by me to add even more detail using CC0 textures as brushes too. (on a side note were thinking of making a overlay emissive for the lava flow in blender to port to Resonite to add some baked lighting FX.
Here are test renders of the procedural base shaders/lighting in blender by Ryuvi
(I wasnt able to post the image of what the new island started out like as i dont have nitro, here is a start, and after sculpting the multires as the first 2 images and the same process of sculpting was done to the external islands too) With designing the world some explorations on various things that likely would be needed for this project were done.
- Water FX will be important to this environment as well as hot magma for the volcanic caves. I went to blender with the help of RueShejn to learn some liquid simulation for textures and particle sprite sheets.
- Furthermore the individual “hero” assets that define the style is still currently in progress but it is coming along, with also land and aquatic plants done by RueShejn too.
Figured I’d copy down the inspiration sources and notes we have for this project too, bringing a sort of setting/lore/style guide to what this environment is about.
During the days I worked on the terrain I went with some friends to a local park to see the Mississippi river to see IRL references after a few walks and stumbling upon a perfect walking stick fit for a wizard for the day got inspirations of how to do some of the FX and terrain setup too.
I also went into some digital beaches of Zanzibar/Mombasa in Kenya, and the ancient mysterious stone ruins/islands of Delta Halo for inspiration. (Seeing what Bungie/343 did)
Sources/Inspiration
Aqueduct
Aqueduct of Segovia - Wikipedia
The Taino people
Taíno - Wikipedia
91.02.06: The Heritage and Culture of Puerto Ricans
https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/article/taina-route-indigenous-culture-puerto-rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico - Wikipedia
Spanish fortress architecture
Castle of San Felipe de Lara - Wikipedia
Castle of San Felipe de Lara - Qualla
On the side I explored Music composition for this project in FL studio, its at a good base where to start with making them into ambient tracks and I have yet to master audio mastering as well though I had fun finding and learning new samples/vsts to mess around with.
Music composition
