Hello everyone! Hope everyone's keeping well, wherever you may be in the world!
Through the portal, here in Neyyah, lots of developments are taking place - working on backdrops for the characters which will feature in Neyyah! These backdrops are for live action actors, which will be filmed against green screens!
Current work in progress
Finished backdrop
One of the last things I needed to create for this scene was the terrain which sits in the background. Very early on, I realised that terrain would be a great element to fill out the scene, which was otherwise quite flat - with a wide expansive ocean surrounding the mechanical contraption the player is faced with here.
One of the original 'blocking' test renders, minus the terrain
Terrain added - basic models
Although the terrain is quite far away, the detail shouldn't just stop at the foreground! Maybe the terrains are explorable, maybe they're not. However, adding the right amount of detail will enable the whole scene feel whole - and more realistic, too!
Render preview work mode / solid state Open GL work mode within Blender
While I add details such as flora, extra rocks to the terrain, I like to see how this effects the rendered view, which is why I take out the terrains from the rest of the scene, and add them to a brand new scene, so I can render preview things and model things much faster!
Closer view on the Open GL Solid state view in Blender
As you can see, within Blender, I can view various windows to create the world of Neyyah. Usually, I have a render preview, maybe two open GL views, a shader node view and a UV texture map view. However, UV view tends to run things down quite a bit ... This could be due to the size of textures being used! However, sometime I like to keep things a bit more simple, as shown above. I can jump to the detail of what I'm creating! While the render preview shot shows the camera view in which the terrains will be seen upon this particular backdrop scene, I can adjust my view in the open GL view to add the flora and rocks as neccessary, and focuss more on the effects seen in the render preview view.
Editing in Photoshop!
Of course, Photoshop takes over a lot of the time! This is where I can bring more life to the 'windows' into Neyyah! Sometimes I use action sets I already have for other areas of the game, whether that be interior or exterior actions, but now and again, I have to start from scratch! This is what I did for this particular backdrop :)
Feel free to check out the dev log I created a few months ago, exploring my work flow in Photoshop!
Thanks for tuning in guys! :)
- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment