"The Wall" Screenshot Before and After
Added 2023-08-25 11:44:06 +0000 UTCI am so excited to start to share the almost final version of the "Wall" level! It's been close to done for a while and I've been meaning to post it.
- The Wall itself is made out of 4D eroded cubic bricks. The same bricks can be seen in front of it, so it is clear that they come from the wall. This is way better than the random tesseracts I had before, which didn't look like they were made of the same material. I removed the weird red pyramid piles I had made to try to make the scene more interesting, and which made no sense. Something interesting also is that I could make something way more complex, but since this is the second level in the game it needs to stay simple.
- The tree is "slightly" better lol. It is custom made for the level. Yet another amazing work of art by Lauren, our lead artist. It is a Bodhi tree: the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment under such a tree. It look incredible when sliced, with all the roots morphing around each other (it is a 3D tree, so you can see the inside of the roots).
- There is sand coming from the desert world to make the two worlds more cohesive visually.
- True 4D grass. Looks amazing when sliced, especially the tall grass version (not shown here).
- All textures are truly 3D (the old textures were 2D and used to deform during the transition, as you can see in the old trailers). The look is more uniform, and we reduced the visual noise.
- PBR Lighting gives the scene more light, as every surface has a specular component, and tone mapping allows the shadows to be less dark.
- Got rid of the water around the level. I originally did this because the levels themselves used to look very simple and I didn't know what else to do to make the game more visually interesting. It also became extra confusing when I implemented real 4D water. The way the shadows continue outside the level looks great! I call the outside of the level the "table". The colors are picked to suggest the sky and ground color.
Comments
The first version excited me to play the puzzle, this new update makes me want to explore and play in the space!
Samuel Loy
2023-08-31 16:07:23 +0000 UTCThank you! Since this is a 3D tree the sculpting was done with the same tools as usual; however because of the 4D Lauren had to spend extra effort to make sure the inside of the tree was modeled properly. For example, the roots do not overlap with each other. A 3D game doesn't have to care about that, they only have to worry about what the prop looks like from the outside and can just fake it. But since a 4D being can see inside *any 3D object*, the inside must be always done properly!
2023-08-27 10:05:24 +0000 UTCThank you! Yes about the readability: the old screenshot was taken right after I was able to have tetrahedral meshes, but before I decided to make the hypercube tiles more than just perfect cubes. So I was trying hard to make the scene more interesting by placing lots of 4d objects everywhere... But the balance was off because the cubes had to remain cubes, so I was over-correcting. As soon as I found ways to make the cube tiles more interesting visually without sacrificing understandability, the rest of the scene can become simpler again, which helps readability a lot!
2023-08-26 18:43:49 +0000 UTCWoah I was not prepared for such a change, groundbreaking work as usual! While looking at the tree in the old screenshot, within a matter of seconds I could determine the planes the leaf textures were rotated too... but after examining the new tree for a minute, I could not identify a repeating texture anywhere! (And the crispness of the tree shadows... wow!) I'm impressed by how smooth the tree roots / trunk and how natural they look too. Sculpting it in 3D would be a non-trivial task... let alone in 4D! Hats off to Lauren. I think the choice to change some of the flowers to blue instead of white helped make those bushes pop too (I didn't notice the flowers before when they were white).
Benjamin
2023-08-26 17:59:37 +0000 UTC
