For my final university project, I've decided to do a real-time environment in UDK. It's set to be an abandonned cathedral in a desolate setting with a gloomy-ish atmosphere.

The project has to be done by mid-April and is my main project on which I will spend most my time so I will try to update this thread regularly.

Here's a first concept I've done.

werry beautiful! keep going!

Mid-April? Well, at least you've got plenty of time. Awesome concept by the way.

Wonderful concept!

looks great. Have a look at pictures of some ruined abbeys such as Fountains, Rievaulx, Tintern or Whitby, might give you some additional inspiration.

Amazing concept art, I'm looking forward to seeing the scene take form!

Looking good so far, though I think you could probably inject a bit more color and vegetation/overgrowth in there to break the monotone color scheme right now while still retaining the decayed and gloomy feeling of it. Maybe push the Fall season aspect of it given the orange leaves you have there?

@yubbie: Thanks, those are some great references that I will definitely be using.

@deceiver: I will definitely have to rework and experiment with the colors to get the monochromatic feel of the concept, all while keeping the abandoned/decayed feel.

This was actually my first concept that I did just to get something on "paper" and go from there.


I've also worked on some orthographic views for the the building to help me visualise more clearly the components that I will have to build. With this, I think it'll also help me plan for how I should break down the structure into modules.

I've read this topic and found it pretty interesting (http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87751) and I'm thinking I should go with a similar technique using mainly tileable textures.



Also, following this great tutorial by choco (http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88933) I've started building my landscape/terrain.

In chronological order:




I've need to blend in some detail textures on the terrain, but I think its a good start.

I also followed Choco's tutorials. Your terrain looks awesome. I love the first screen. Excited to see this project come to life!

So... things have been going a lot slower that I would like them to go. I really have to speed up and work more if I want to finish in time.

I've started working on my textures and stuff I'll be using to build my walls. I start by sculpting the main shapes in ZBrush and then I go to add more detail in Photoshop and nDo.

Pretty basic ZBrush-ing


Left: Normal map only
Right: Normal map and diffuse map, no specular yet.
Bottom: Rough mockup of what would be a wall module, only bricks have diffuse


Still need to work on the textures and try to get some walls up my the end of next week. Oh, and does anyone know how to bake ZBrush matcaps onto a low res or something? I wanted to do it for the tileable bricks, but instead I just grabbed the document and matched it by hand in Photoshop

Real slow updates, got a few modular pieces for walls. Still need to do lightmap UVs and get them in the engine.

loookin sweeeet

Got my walls in-engine. I AM SOOOOOO LATE. Gotta get my cathedral up very soon. Lighting and fog is temporary, everything is feeling washed out a bit and is lacking awesomeness.

This is going to look very pretty. Love the texture so far on the walls, stones feel too small IMO though.

Nice work so far! Will be watchin

Great work

Small update, started building the cathedral facade.

Originally Posted by huyk

stone feels very flat, this with or without normals?

Great work, them rock sculpt and textures look just phenomenal!

Progress update:

Got the core of the cathedral in engine
Did a first pass of vertex painting on the cathedral pieces, the walls still need to be done.
Also played aroudn with post processing, sharpen, a bit of chromatic aberation, tonemapping, etc.

Still a lot to do, and time is running out.

It's with normals, in max's viewport. You think I should try parallax mapping? I have the heightmap already, so I probably should try it with parallax in UDK.

really looking forward to this! sexy concept skills + enviro skills! excited i am !

This is great, will be watching

I LOVE that stone texture. Awesomeee, can't wait to see more!

Looking great. I'm not sure I feel that the stone is flat, I think it plays to the light well, especially with all the contrast in the diffuse. I'll keep an eye on this one. Good work.