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[WIP] Dragon Creator

Posting this here to mostly just keep track of my own thoughts as I try to work through this. I want to make a little character creator for a dragon in Unreal Engine where users can flick through different body parts like horns, spikes, wings etc. As well as being able to select body colour and different markings. This is basically an arty excuse to learn how to use blueprints and potentially mutable.

I've been noodling in ZBrush on and off for a few evenings smooshing together a couple of older sketches into something a bit more cohesive. I'm very much flying by the seat of my pants in terms of art direction and style, I just want it to feel like the dragons I drew as a kid! I've also played around with adding some scales in this evening but not sure if I want hand placed scales or something more tileable in the long run. Probably a mix.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/oq/ksnfupfmn96r.png

I also hate rigging and skinning but I do want to be able to have little idle animations playing. I also don't want the wings to be stuck out at all times, even if the mesh is static. So I VERY quickly made a little test in unreal with a cloth sim running on the wing membrane. I think it's pretty successful - although I won't speak to optimisation - but it's good to know it's a possibility rather than spending hours weight painting the membrane

HarlequinWerewolf

3 ·

Re: Unreal 5 and not using Nanite

That makes sense.

Basically sounds like you hadn't hit the complexity threshold where nanite "should" start saving you frame time.

Nice to see someone making decent lods in this day & age, I thought it had been banned by some artist's union

poopipe

3 ·

Re: Unreal 5 and not using Nanite

Really solid stuff, heh.
Glad to see devsusing UE5 while not falling for Tim Sweendley's marketing slop, and doing things the way they're meant to be done.
The art of optimization shouldn't and can't die.
Nanite was not invented so everyone could import infinite density meshes and just let the engine handle it, costing all of your RAMs.
It was invented so the Fornite dev team wouldn't have to manually create 18 further LOD instances to manually battle the eventual pop-in they would encounter in a pub-g type open map with hundreds of meters of render distance.

Seeing stuff like this makes me instantly trust a dev to make good decisions.
Well done all around. Your effort absolutely show!

Did you use perlin noise as a blend method to avoid that simple blurred lerp look?

Thanez

3 ·

Re: High-fidelity pixelated futuristic character models for a GoldSrc game in development

New devlog has been published:

https://youtu.be/mwdR_gJcAuE?t=23

RAWconcrete

3 ·

SOJOURN – (Concept) Game Trailer | Unreal Engine Sci-Fi Short Film

Hi all

“Sojourn” is a short cinematic trailer I created in Unreal Engine that I have just finished. With a background in directing, animation and visual effects for Film and TV, this was my first project using Unreal — a challenging but incredibly rewarding learning experience. I handled the full pipeline—from motion capture through to final grade and sound—The project was built primarily in Unreal, with detours via Blender, Substance Painter, Motion Builder, Nuke, After effects and DaVinci Resolve.

I hope you enjoy the film!

https://youtu.be/zToajVm7g98?si=BWzVpHflLOUmmfdb

Leabags

6 ·

Unreal 5 and not using Nanite

Hey,
I have been posting a couple of projects on the work I did for Fading echo. I have just finished working on a new one where I discuss why we took the decision to completely remove Nanite from our project and how to optimise a game using old techniques rather than blindly trusting new features.

You will see that it is pretty standard but I thought I would share it with people for insights

If you want to see the full breakdown with videos and extra explanation head over to artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q0A9OR

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/vx/xi9ct6birirl.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/2b/ddsd5etjc8jg.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/p0/34mdcr907zd3.png

Lucas_Duguin

5 ·

Re: Game Industry Layoffs - WTF?

You know what?

Now.

Now is the time to go all in on gamedev. Game developers make their own fate.

When life gives you Savathûn, don't make lemonade! Make life take the Tyranids back! Get mad! May CHAOS take the world!! I don't want your damn Skooma! What am I supposed to do with these? Have sex with a bear?!

Stolen breastmilk is the mindkiller! Make life rue the day it thought it could give the Elden Lord lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the lyin' khajiit whose gonna burn your orc statue down... with the lemons!!

zetheros

3 ·

Re: Game Industry Layoffs - WTF?

I've been laid off several times - when it happens the best thing to do is go and get another job.
Blaming society/corpos/the man for your problems is fun but you can't exchange self-righteous indignation for goods or services in most places so it's ultimately kinda pointless.

poopipe

3 ·

Nissan VR38DETT Engine

Hello,

I have been working on this engine for a car project. The engine is almost there so i wanted to show it off a little. Its based on the R35 GTR engine but isn't strictly a copy. All modeling is being done in 3Ds Max and rending is in Redshift.