Passage to the Necropolis
This was a fun scene to put together, and also one where I struggled for a long time to figure out the direction and composition. My main goals were to focus more on fundamentals, get back into Houdini procedural modeling, and develop a more versatile master material to cover as many assets as possible.
I used Houdini to create base meshes for many of the assets here, but found I couldn't quite get the fidelity or specific detail I wanted out of it directly, so I ended up doing a sculpting pass across the assets as well. Everything uses Nanite and are largely the direct high poly mesh with UVs, with a tri-planar shader used to project the stone and striations across most of the scene.
The sand meshes use pixel depth offset to blend into the seams of the Nanite meshes, as well as decals and smaller stones to further hide seams where possible.
Starting with a simple base mesh and then using Houdini to add interesting rock details and layers. I then brought the mesh into ZBrush and sculpted the rest of the details.
Starting with a simple base mesh and then using Houdini to add interesting rock details and layers. I then brought the mesh into ZBrush and sculpted the rest of the details.
Sculpts for the head meshes.
Sculpts for the stones used for the stairs and surrounding platforms.
Sculpts for the pillars and broken variants.
Assembled rock piles used to scatter stones throughout the scene.
Process for assembling the scene, figuring out the composition and refining the overall look and lighting.
Process for how specific sections of the scene were assembled, adding larger meshes, sand, decals, small rocks and foliage.