Floor
Evolution
1 2 3 4
Attempt 1
Quick Tiling Floor
As we progressed throughout the project and started to place our assets in the scene, we needed a floor to give a more accurate reading of the scene. At this stage I was not assigned the floor, but we agreed that I would assemble a quick tiling floor texture for reference that would be replaced later.
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I mimicked the same approach as for the original walls and towers, and created a really basic tiling texture in ZBrush.
I then applied the same smart material that I had created for the walls, and brought it into the Unreal scene. This was never intended to be the final floor, but it was useful in seeing the scene in context.
Attempt 2
ZBrush Tiling Floor
After we had received feedback from Rare, I was assigned the modelling and texturing of the floor for the scene. I really was not sure how to approach the floor, so I decided to test out a few different techniques. The issues I faced with the floor were very similar to that of the flat walls - Creating a tiling floor works pretty well for some areas, but for specific areas (like under the tree, or where it meets the wall) were incredibly difficult to model convincingly.
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I decided it would be best to try to create a tiling floor in ZBrush first, using the same bricks I had used for the new walls and round towers. I would then mask the problem areas with loose bricks modelled separately.
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I started by modelling the mortar that these bricks would sit into:
I then exported this as a height map, and offset it in Photoshop to make the heightmap tilable.
The next step involved placing the bricks that I had created in ZBrush previously, and creating a tiling texture using ZBrush's 2.5D painting features, as shown in the video below.
This resulted in a pretty nice tiling texture, as seen below, but as this texture is entirely flat the result wasn't exactly what we were looking for in the environment, so I decided rather than try to fix this approach, it made more sense to move on to an approach that took depth into account a bit more.
Finally, below is an image of this tiling texture in the environment. There are a few clear issues. Firstly, the texture doesn't match the walls perfectly. Secondly, as discussed before, the texture is far too flat. This could have been adjusted by adding more geometric resolution to the floor mesh, but it would never be able to match the undulations of the floor properly.
Attempt 3
After the last two attempts failed, I decided I needed a better approach, one that would give a bit more depth to the geometry of the floor. But I still wanted to keep the floor as efficient and as possible. So I decided to tackle it from a very different approach.
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This time I decided to export the bricks that I had sculpted previously, as well as a tiling mortar texture from Zbrush, and bake the texture onto decimated low poly meshes in Substance as shown below.
I then brought these bricks into Maya, where I could place them randomly around the scene, rotating to use all six sides of each stone for variation.
This definitely added resolution to the surface, while maintaining a relatively efficient UV setup. Below the surface of the floor, however, was a lot of unused faces adding to the polycount of the floor, as seen below.
This required a lot of cleanup using Maya's Boolean and multi-cut functions, but eventually ended up in a relatively efficient mesh.
This mesh looked a lot more convincing in the Unreal Engine scene, as it gave a really nice variation to the surface of the floor.
Errors
While this mesh is significantly better than the tiling textures created previously, there are a number or issues with it. Firstly, because the texture for the bricks are being used in various places throughout the floor it is impossible to bake Ambient Occlusion onto the mesh. This means that the cavities on the floor are not similar to the cavities of the walls, and they don't knit together as seamlessly as I wanted.
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In an attempt to combat this I merged all of the meshes in Maya, and did a simple planar UV projection from the top. I then baked just the Ambient Occlusion onto this UV space, and created an AO map that I could then project down onto the mesh using a Decal in Unreal engine. This definitely improved the result, but it still didn't match the walls as well as I wanted.
Attempt 4
While my third attempt was much closer to the desired aesthetic, I decided to remodel the floor one last time. This time I decided to mimic the technique that I did for the walls and the round towers, and to completely forget about making an efficient tiling material.
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I tackled the fourth attempt in the same way as the walls, and sculpted the entire floor in ZBrush, using the bricks I had sculpted previously as a base.
I then dynameshed the stones and the mud that they sat in together to delete the inside faces, just like with the walls.
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Finally I decimated the entire mesh to produce a low poly. I then brought this into Maya, where I split the mesh into 4 separate meshes, and assigned each with its own material.
Finally I baked the high res information down onto these meshes in Substance Painter. I then applied the same smart material as on the walls.
To add to this mesh I then hand painted some mud into the cavities of the stones, and onto the mounds of dirt.
What I Would Change
While this approach for creating a floor is not the most efficient, it matches the aesthetic of the scene much better. That said, however, there are a few things I would change again, if given the time.
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Firstly the size of the stones is far too big. I wanted the stone on the floor to be slightly larger than the ones on the walls, as I felt the stones on the walls would be difficult to walk on. That said, I definitely overcompensated, as the stones that I sculpted are enormous in comparison.
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Secondly, the texture of the mud needs some work. It is very bland looking and could do with some variation.
