My project was inspired by stark winter landscapes that I have experienced, in particular the contrast between a moving, rhythmic lake or river and the still, barren trees of a forested area I visited last month. I hope to create an environment that is largely devoid of horror, hope, mysticism, happiness, etc. but rather one that invites introspection, free of reflecting our own mental state into our perception of the environment. I am really interested in how we project our mental states onto our environment and perception of space and light, and want this to be as close to a genuine environment as possible.
Below are two pictures that look similar to the scene. Although I realize the environment will look different from these pictures because I intend to use mostly low-poly assets, this is the closest I can imagine the scene to looking like in real life.
I intend for the user to stand on the bank of a lake on a piece of land that is heavily forested. Across the body of water in front of the viewer, there is a small bridge. For my rough sketch, I drew the primary viewing environment, with the user facing the bridge connecting two sides of land. I intend for the bridge to be rustic and untouched. I hope that this will make the user wonder about the bridge’s use, why it is there, who uses it and whether or not they can use it.
Apart from this, I intend to play around with Unity’s environment effects, hoping to animate the water with ripples or small waves. I also want to add mist or fog, in order to re enforce the theme of loneliness in a way that invites self-reflection.
Two views of the environment
Update (February 14)
I was able to make a lake with the help of this YouTube tutorial that gives an in-depth tutorial of how Unity’s terrain tool can be used to create a lake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeRh24-QUoI
This tutorial was also helpful with getting started with terrain painting. As of now I believe I have a strong idea of what I want to do, but I am not sure how to aesthetically implement it. I am also struggling with using the camera, the scene editor and with positioning objects accordingly. I think it will take a lot of messing around with the environment and the assets that I bring into the scene to determine what will be ideal for my scene.
Updated (February 16)
I have continued working steadily on the project and I have made the terrain look more realistic by playing around with the paint texture tool, as well as with the lighting, fog and other objects to make the scene more similar to a secluded forest. An issue that I had was finding ways to make the forest look more like a harsh winter forest, as most of the assets available on the asset store seem to be more geared towards summer environments. Because of this, I have decided to stick to a secluded forest, but have decided to add more elements to the environment that might suggest comfort or the ability to be safe alone in nature. Some ideas that I have are adding a bench and a more visible walking trail.
A big problem that I have had was the trees I would use, because these would be what would make or break the experience of being in a forest. I was set on using leafless trees I was able to create using the tree generator in an asset pack I found, but found this to be too unrealistic and also hard to make each tree in the forest appear as a unique tree. I have switched to using trees in a conifer forest asset pack I found, and I find these to be much more effective in creating a realistic forest.
Lastly, I have also implemented a particle system that creates the illusion of fog. This was not too difficult to do following this tutorial to accomplish this, playing around with the lighting to achieve my desired effect of a light mist.
Update: February 18
Today I added the finishing touches to the scene, adding some ambient sounds (rippling sounds and light wind), more assets to add variety to the environment as well as some post processing effects. I still found it really difficult to make the environment really realistic, even as I played with the painted textures on the terrain.
I am quite happy with the overall result, and I am now very comfortable using the terrain tool and with using manipulating assets within the scene. I spent some time trying to build the scene for the Cardboard, but I ran into the issue of the screen being cut in half within the viewer.
Instead, I found a script online allowing me to move the camera in 360 degrees and decided to build it for my Mac instead. This was quite a frustrating process because I tried messing around with the orientation settings but no matter what the build on my phone would remain split.