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Realistic Cave Environment

ATEC Capstone Spring 2022

By Alayna Wilson

Project Description

Project Description

My project is an exploration of cave geology and human interaction, specifically how it can be used to create interesting spaces for games. The environment aims to show how humans could potentially affect a natural cave area, and how this habitation can be shown in both large and small details.

 

I chose this project as a method of combining what I have learned from both my ATEC classes and from my geoscience classes taken for my minor. I chose to minor in Geosciences to better understand the history of the earth and how environments are formed naturally in real life, so that I could create environments more realistically. This project allows me to put that desire into practice, focusing on how a natural cave environment can be used in creating game spaces without sacrificing realism.

Gallery

Gallery

A video showing small clips of my different still images in full animation.

A collection of my final compositions.

A breakdown of all final assets.

Credits

Credits

Audio Credits:

Flamiffer - Dungeon Air
PhantomCreations - synthetic inside gradually collapsing cave 
with water droplets, stones of various sizes falling
- CC BY-NC 3.0
from Freesound.org

Particle Credits:

Unreal Engine 4 Starter Content - Fire and Smoke Sprite Sheets

Process

Process

My project began with a watercolor painting of a limestone cave I created a few years ago as environment practice.

Watercolor Cave

Since it was based on a limestone cave but also contained human elements such as the bridges and torches, I felt it was the perfect base for my capstone project. However, the original concept was very water heavy, and at the time of this project's conception, I hadn't begun to learn water shaders, so I chose to modify the project to cut out the water heavy features and focus instead on the natural rock formations.

Whitebox

My next step was to flesh the idea out in Unreal Engine as a whitebox. Here, I chose to create a cylindrical chamber with a center 'island' of cave features similar to my original concept, with two paths going around it. I brought over the torches and wooden bridges from my concept in the form of wood planks lining one of the paths and torches lighting the chamber. I wanted the chamber to feel torch lit, but otherwise rather dark, as opposed to the more common full illumination seen in natural cave tours.

Modeling Pass

Next I brought form to my environment in a modeling pass. All of my features were created with Maya's sculpting tools to give them a natural look. Several of my models went through multiple sculpting passes as my initial models for my stalactites and drapery were too rounded and soft compared to my references. After several weeks of tweaking, I finally was able to get them to the rough shape and feel I wanted them.

Base Textures

In my texturing pass, my goal was to create natural looking rock that appeared to be glossy and wet, as if they still had water dripping over them.

 

To do this, I created two simple seamless rock textures in Photoshop, one a more traditional pale limestone color, and the other more orange, as is common in stone containing iron.

I then brought these two textures into Substance Sampler to create normal maps and add water and gravel effects. From this, my two textures multiplied into six, consisting of the two original dry stone textures, a variation with gravel, and a variation where the stone appeared wet with small puddles and gravel.

I was able to bring these six textures into Substance painter where they formed the bases for each of my textures.

Post Processing and Lighting

After my texturing pass, I ran my first serious lighting and post-processing pass. Here, I focused on creating an atmosphere that wasn't so dark that the cave features were lost in it, but still felt natural. I was able to achieve this by toning down my primary torch lights, adding additional faint lights towards the ceiling, and adding a fog effect.

Decal Breakdown

With lighting and post mostly where I wanted them to be, I was able to move forward and add decals, animations, and particle effects.

With decals, I mostly focused on creating variations in similar areas and adding extra details, such as rust or wet spots, or darkened areas on stalagmites where people had touched them frequently, stunting their growth. I also added a small cave painting decal to create additional interest on some of the more open cave walls.

For particle effects, I added three simple effects: dust, water droplets, and torch flame.

For the dust, I wanted to keep it fairly small and minimal, since there likely wouldn't be much dust floating around a wet cave. However, due to the large hole I created in the ceiling, it wouldn't make sense for there to be no dust at all either.

With the water droplets, I attempted to create fast falling particles that were attached to the tips of several stalactites, as I wanted to show this cave active and alive.

For the flame particles, I borrowed the sprite sheets from the starter content provided in Unreal Engine and created small balls of flame with a light smoke.

Other movement in the cave is fairly minimal, existing in the flickering of the torch lights, the slight movement of the water puddles added to the floor in deeper sections, and the shifting fog in the yellow light shaft.

Final Overview

With my final week of work, the changes I made were fairly small. The major ones of note were the softening the shadows of the the torch lights and the changing the color of the light shaft to better match the preexisting blue highlights within my cave.

With this, I was able to arrive at the final composition shown above.

Here are the photos of my project, compiled to show progress over time.

About Me

About Me

Hi! My name is Alayna Wilson, and I am graduating from UTD with a major in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications, Games pathway, with a minor in Geosciences.

I have an interest in environment design and level design for games, two areas which I hope to be able to combine in future work.

 

Outside of game design, I have a love for puzzle platforming games, digital art, writing, and science.

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