Viking Village: Sólarorku - Doug Adair

Polygeddon

Name: Doug Adair
Country: Canada
I have read the terms and conditions and am eligible for prizes

Polygeddon

The Grand Exodus

Humanity has triumphed and expanded to the stars. Technology, both mechanical and biological, has made it possible to travel the cosmos, create new civilizations, and bring an era of human expansion and adventure. New stories will be written, new tales told, and neo-humanity will thrive.

Earth is now a refuge and archive of past biome and culture, with some people choosing to stay and preserve the ancient stories, as a celebration of what made humans, human.

Sustainable technology, integration with nature, and the return and embracing of the old cultures means that society now celebrates what was once lost and has built an amalgam of archaic-futurism.

Polygeddon

Diorama Aesthetic

This Viking village has the vibes of cyber cottage-core and Solarpunk. Embracing the building styles unique to the Vikings, integrating both carvings and wires side-by-side, this hybrid construction embraces both the modern robotic voices of new and the calls of the ancient voices of old. A strong sense of community and natural environment integration is the key to success, through the use of sustainable and long-lasting building practices and traditional food and land use harvesting. The Earth has now healed, people are at peace, and the goal is to celebrate and honor the stories and tales of old.

Polygeddon

Archive (What happened?)

Taking Steph's advice posted yesterday on Discord, I realize that like some others, I may have misinterpreted the concept of what the competition was aiming for. With the initial competition summary stating (Diorama Scale: Participants can choose the scale they want to work with. Even build a full environment if you wish.) I was aiming for a larger environment with a village in a setting that was not diorama in feel. Though comfortable with a larger environment, it also meant that there was a certain amount of quantity over quality that was to happen to fit in the timeframe.

With that in mind and after taking the post to heart, though some time loss has occurred, I was able to recycle one of the city assets and shift the project into a diorama scale and feel, focusing on polishing one critical asset with room to expand if time warrants.

This is something that happens. Scope changes, project direction can shift. Sometimes you loose a few assets, sometimes an entire world. Being comfortable with walking away from prior work is something important as an artist. Not everything made will be used in a final product, so, for the sake of having a lot fun on the prior concept, the prior posts are archived here under details:
I . I
VV

Polygeddon

Mushrooms! Some delightful photogrammetry of our little fungi friends. Mushrooms are always welcome in a cozy farm land, never know where they will be popping up!

Photogrammetry was the catalyst that kicked me off in Unreal and made me remember how much I loved creating games. Forever grateful that 3D scanning led me back to creating assets, environments, and worlds. Glad to be on this path and hopeful for a future in the industry 😊

We have a bumper crop of mushrooms this fall in Vancouver!

So many little mushrooms! Photogrammetry is powerful, but capturing small objects can take a bit of finesse,

I knew I had to add some mushrooms to the project, and since I am using UE5, a mid-poly nanite foliage pipeline is used. Reality Capture, though it has its quirks, is a very powerful for PBR workflows. Though one can get a bit crazy with nanite and virtual texture streaming, I find that it is important for optimization to dial things back a bit still if you are looking to gamify a scene. Instead of HP to LP bakes, it is now HP to MP bakes 😅

Clean UV's for easy editing in PS and Substance were critical and careful manual UV and baking was used. Gutters were made in Photoshop with Substance for baking and roughness (ORM) map generation.

Software used is Reality Capture, Photoshop, ZBrush, Blender, Substance Painter/Designer. Mushrooms were from both dinner table (Shitake) and the lawn that the building cleared shortly for leaves, so I felt less guilty harvesting them.

Polygeddon

10 vegetation types, 123 separate plant components, 8 atlases, and 12gb+ of raw photos of plants from around the neighborhood. All of this made for some wonderful modular UE5 foliage assets to properly set dress up the village environment! It was a mountain of work but the end result is something that I learned an absolute ton from and I am really happy to have so many little plants of my own to use now. A mix of different tech, so very please with the resulting pipeline.

When I changed the theme to solarpunk agricultural, one of my primary goals was to focus on foliage as a key environment asset. Going from rubble to plants, I needed to source, capture, model, and create a variety of vegetation to properly set dress. When the news of the date extension for Dec.6th hit, I decided to do a bit more focus on the vegetation to get me something of a higher realism level. Since we couldn't use Quixel assets for the diorama, why not try and make something similar?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

One can see some of the process through the vine asset. Modular plant parts are used to create a complete plant, which is then sculpted and shaped manually and with deformer modifiers. This gives a high level of control and diversity of foliage assets using base components. Procedural, SpeedTree, Houdini all offer tools to further accelerate this process.

Capture was done with polarization and a glass plate to give very consistent and detailed capture,

Original capture was over 8k resolution, cinematic grade, but the final maps are game friendly 4k. Funnily enough, even when doing 3D capture, you can run into "bugs"!

Example Map:

.

.

Polygeddon

Though some refinements are still needed (and thankfully can be bridged with UE5), the ground materials were also captured from the same locations as the foliage captures. They are scattered painted to avoid repetition and give a nice variance to the ground.

Polygeddon

Beauty Render & Wireframe View

An honored future, tales told late into the night. High tech, high culture, at peace with the world.

This diorama, as mentioned in the earlier posts, is aimed to portray a positive future that honors the old. Technology and tales wound together, sustainable abundance, a lasting sense of calm.

My favorite part of this piece was researching why the roofs are curved, the engineering behind it, and integrating it into the piece as a way to look "Viking" but also a solid bit of engineering. Curves are stronger, the Viking's were excellent ship builders, the spine of the long houses were built in the same fashion, could hold incredible weight (important for snow!) and last a very long time. The mix of engineering, sustainable building practice, and celebration of history really encapsulated what this theme was about.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Can you tell I like foliage and vegetation? 😉

Though with nanite, polygon workflows are changing, I still aim for low-poly to mid-poly workflows depending on the number of instances and hero level of the assets.

Polygeddon

Breakdown Views
_ _

A huge thanks for the follow folks for their great tools/alphas/base materials/brushes/masks:
Jared Chavez
Javad Rajabzade
Jonas Markussen
Jonas Ronnegard
Paul Malla

_ _
Piezo-ceramic Panels
Harnessing energy from thermal changes (expansion and contraction), these panels serve not only as an expression of art and history but as a practical means of power collection and corrosion protection.
(Image Gallery)

The main structural panels, taking advantaged of the arched spine of the building for strength, can gather energy even under heavy snow load pressing down upon it. The old Vikings, master boat builders, realized that the arch/curve offered greatly increased strength, allowing for long and large buildings that could withstand great weight, much like the ships at sea.

Modeling took advantage of a single UV material and deformers to make the seemingly complex structure but with reduced overhead.

_ _
Damascus Forgings
Metal assets
(Image Gallery)

_ _
Granite Stone
Masonry and rock assets
(Image Gallery)

_ _
Solar System
Low poly count for lots of instances.
(Image Gallery)

_ _
Wood Walk
Single sided for main image, 4 sided for regular piece.

_ _
Vertex Maps, UV, and ORM
Color ID vertex mapping played a critical pipeline for this project, bridging Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine. Careful UV's (Wire unwraps for example) kept materials realistic and allowed for easier texture painting and masking. Texture pipeline was BaseColor, Normals, and ORM (ambient occlusion, roughness, metalness), though height maps were also generated, they were converted and blended with the normal maps and nanite (no tessellation) was used in a mid-poly workflow.

.
Vegetation
Refer to the prior postings and process.

Polygeddon

Detail Lighting (Grey)

Sadly I was quite busy this past month and did not finish this project to the degree I was hoping for. I carefully managed what time I did have so I would have a complete submission, but I will continue to work on this piece to add the final details I was hoping for (robot arm, more wiring, gen set). Overall, a really wonderful experience, and makes me wishful for the day where I can do this creativity fulltime 😁

.

.

.

.

.

.