The Environment

Haven’t posted anything for quite a long time because I have been dealing with the scene’s setting and the progress is rather subtle compared with the former models and animations that can be counted.

I created a height map to set the terrain of the whole world. It is an easier way than using Unity terrain brush when you have already got a blueprint of what the world is going to be like, especially for dealing with the scale/position things corresponding to the original painting, while I feel the brush tools are quite hard to control because it is not very smooth, either a big gentle slope or a sharp angle, or a perfect shape for the pool, and it takes great calculation all the time.

One tricky thing about height map is that if you paint it as you can see it, it would turn out to be a dramatically variant terrain. So everytime I just adjusted it to blindly black after I felt it had been done. (Suddenly found maybe I should have changed the terrain height parameter in Unity instead of turning the map like this?!)

Then I used the brush tools to adjust the details in Unity, to ensure that the ground can fit the things put on it, like nothing of the models is underneath and also they are not floating or seemingly unsteady – some models, like the orange stele and the stones behind it on the right front of the painting, are even constructed with the terrain. I would also be careful about the height around the central pool – those humans are going to ride around the pool, so while they are animated themselves without the position/transform’s change, and will have the script to make them move and rotate facing the way they go, it would be very hard to detect the ground’s shape so I should just flatten the path as the identical height for them.

The next is the plants on the terrain. I would like they are low poly flat shaded (I mean the leaves, but not as low poly as that a tree is composed by several balls and a truck) or I cannot reach the level to be very much realistic. But it is not that easy to find free suitable resources. Trees and bushes have much more complicated structure and things like how they would wave with the wind, than the grass which I can just paint by myself, and at this stage I am not going to learn how the tree system works and make my own trees.

(Carefully chose colours, sizes and species to make them fit together and fit with the whole scene. I feel it quite similar to flower arrangement and it is a pleasant work.) I also used some tiny terrain pieces, put them on the models, adjust them as the slope of models and put grass on them, because grass on the terrain can be animated with wind. Should be careful the grass does not penetrate the models.

I put some effort on the lighting and camera effect. Everything seems very plain and the environment is not attractive at all. But so far the effect has not been satisfied since the environment effect should be of course one of the last things to do, with the skybox and mountains canvas pieces.

Now I have just done things in the front part and I am mainly doing the architectural things and putting them into the scene. So I will add the plants around everytime when I put a model in case I would have to remove them and re-paint.