12 FEB
I was inspired by a traditional myth and would like to create a myth world with fantasy. The myth story is about the river god who provides a multiple choice for a boy to test his honesty. The boy is a carpenter and he lost his axe in the river. Then the river god showed up with a golden axe and asked him if that is his. But the boy answered no. The river god then took out another axe which is a silver one and asked him again. But the boy still said no. At last, the river god took out the original axe and returned it to the boy. In addition, to reward his honesty, he also gave the boy the other two golden and silver axes. Initially, I would like to design my own three choices and by choosing different options, the scene will change as the story goes in different ways. But considering the focus of this first project and the feedback from the professor, I decided to only keep my first scene at this moment. So I would like the character to picture himself/herself in a story and myth, which can raise his/her curiosity to explore in some sense and create a feeling of alternate reality.
Different from the original story, my main character here is lost in a magic place and he/she wants to find ways back home. The river god will show up and give the three options at a time. It’s not testing the honesty anymore but can possibly help or hinder the main character going back. To start with, I have some online pictures about the river as reference, since my story is going to happen near water. I don’t want it to be too bright and cute but maybe focus more on the feeling of mysterious.
Aside from that, I created a simple storyboard to illustrate the positions of my main objects in the scene, which includes the god, the three options (three flowers in this case) and water. I originally have four scene in total and this is just the first one, so it’s very simple but also direct. But I will definitely add more stuff like more lands or creatures in the water.
For the possible difficulty I may come cross, I think one of the biggest one is how to create a god, because I don’t want it to be too realistic and hopefully it should echo with the style of the whole environment.
13 FEB
I firstly created the terrain and built the water surface with online assets. The water material is dynamic, and I adjusted the parameters to make it match my desired style better. I pick a spot for the main camera which is a small piece of land separate from others, by which I would like to create a sense of isolation for the person who is going to look around from that spot.
Then I started to plant trees on the lands. I initially planed to have trees all over the islands. But it seemed that it would take too much laptop power and time. So I randomly create some different plants, mostly at the side the camera will directly face. To create a spacious view with spatiality, I tried to make the plants relatively small than the landscape and also played around the field view of the camera a lot. However with a larger field view, there will be more easily distorted view at the corner when rotating the camera. So I changed back the camera view to normal. One more detail about the plants is the contradiction between the two islands, where one is full of withered plants while the other is more vividly growing. It’s one more setting I made aimed to make the world feel tricky and abnormal.
To increase the sense of immersive, I tried to fill up the space in the field view. For the sky part, I wanted to add some clouds. I made the 3D model of the group of clouds in Rhino and then imported them into Unity. And I decided to apply water material to them as well. In this case, the floating clouds can also be viewed as bubbles, which can indicate the unrealistic and alternate part of the environment. And it also raised the question that whether it is on a lake/sea or in an underwater world. I duplicated a couple of clouds to make them surround the whole piece.
In terms of the creating river god (in this case water god may be more precise), I also imported a model I made in Rhino. It is a human face in low poly and I still apply the water material to match his identity. Since it is boring if it’s static, I modified the material a little bit to separate parts of his face and they are also dynamic, which again match his identity as a floatable and abstract god figure. Besides, I made this face super big compared with other elements, so that he can be emphasized in the whole scene and it also indicates the god power is beyond imagination.
18 FEB
As for the skybox, I meant to make the surrounding dark with the only strong light behind the god face. Instead of a harmless fairy tale, I want to present the mystery with uncertainty that there could be potential dangers or tricks when the user is exploring this world.
I also need to create three options that the god provides. Basically I picked the tree branch model and applied three different materials. I also added emission to make themselves glow a little bit. To further highlight them, I made three glowing water spheres to wrap them. To decide the position of these three spheres took me a while. At first I placed them in front of the god in a row, but later I found it would cover part of the god and look loose in the scene. So I then placed them surrounding the camera in three directions. In this case, when the camera rotates, there can always be a main object, the tree branch, in the field view. It indicated the current situation and I believe can raise some curiosity.
19 FEB
Since my water is very dynamically floating, so I think adding some audio can help strengthen the immersive feeling. So I added some peaceful water floating sound here.
At last, I manipulated the directional light mainly to make the environment dark but some building details still visible.