It took a minute, but Epic has approved my cave pack, and it is up on the marketplace! 

Check it out here!

So I decided to make a video which explains the polygon modeling style process. 

There are many advantages to this type of modeling such as great performance and a pleasing "clean" look. Check out the video! It is more of a workflow than tutorial, but could be used to learn the style.  

I am creating some foliage to use with the medieval models. The idea is to keep the polygon style and add my own take. I think these will work great. The trick is to keep the polygon counts relatively low but still convey the fullness of a tree. 

Left to right: pine, spruce, oak, maple and birch. 

So what project am I doing next?

I've decided to be ambitious and create a bunch of 3d models that would be perfect for use in a fantasy game! 

For this project I will take a more stylized approach, combining polygon style modeling with some traditional texture mapping. Polygons will be used to show detail. Normal maps will be limited. The benefits are that the style looks really good, modeling like this is super fast, and models are also very performance friendly. 

First I will work on a tudor building set, and then I will set out to modeling individual props. I plan on making some YouTube videos for some of the models as I go. 

​Here is the first building of the medieval tudor set. 

I'm finally done with the cave pack! It's been a rocky road (no pun intended), but I think the results were well worth all the trial and error. Luckily the info I gained should help me out ton in the future with contracts and with overall quality in general. 

I showed the cave video already, so today I made a video which separates out the models and gives the potential buyer a good look at what is included in the pack. You can check out the video below. Now all that is left is to wait until Epic approves the product for sale!  

With the cave nearing completion, I think it is high time I showed some of my work in motion! I put a together a small flythrough of the level I have been working on. All the art and lighting are done by me. The music is not by me. I added some for nice atmospheric effect. 

In the future I plan to add many more videos. I think they are much more useful for showcasing game art which is much less about a single shot and more about what everything looks like in motion.

The cave is running in Unreal Engine 4. 

Today I worked on a material and base shape that is going to be used to create some roots clusters that will poke out into the cave. 

Check it out! 

After a lot of trial and error, I am finally satisfied with the results.

Here is a sample cave that I put together rather quickly with the Cave Creation Kit I mentioned in the previous post. Next I plan to flesh out the pack by adding a few more crystals, puddles, decals, and roots.

Following my journey till this point you'll see that I've been creating a cave and doing a lot of work on rocks. While things up till this point turned out looking pretty good, I felt I could do better. 

So I kept working at it. 

Introducing the Cave Construction Kit! This is just the beginning. Below you can see a good assortment rock models that can be combined to form a variety or great looking 3D rock formations. This kit can be used for caves but can also be used for any outdoor environment which requires boulders, cliffs, crags, and any other rocks.

I decided that hand sculpting the rocks was the way to go. Now to put together a cave!

I'm back from working contracts and am ready to work on some modeling.

For a while now I have been pondering an efficient workflow for making 3d models of rock formations that are convincing, interesting, versatile, and real time performance friendly. 

Generally, I think, rocks are overlooked when it comes to 3d modeling. The assumption is that they are easy to do and kind of an afterthought. I've found that this is not the case. It's much easier, for me at least, to model many other hard surface props than the lowly rock formation. 

So without further ado, here are the fruits of my labor.  Not too exciting at first glance, but this proves a concept, and I'm excited to see where this workflow leads!