Dare Looks

Trees, Woodwork In Progress

Added 2022-07-18 17:00:19 +0000 UTC

Here's a quick update with where I am with trees, right now!

It's been a tricky process, because I still have to figure out the visual style for the vegetation – I need to find something, that fits well into the rest of the city.

High-poly models of the elements that I'll build trees from; I already have all the low-poly versions of these, but still need the final UV maps

So, the trees you can see in the city screenshots right now aren't actually the final models and textures, but rather mock ups of what they're going to look like, so I have an easier time tweaking their look.

The cube of leaves, in Substance Designer. This is how have created the base textures, for the foliage.

Overall, I think I'm getting very close to the style I want, for the trees. I'm still torn between higher/lower detail and contrasts, in the foliage, but that's something I'll probably figure out along the way.

Current prototype trees (and bush) in the game.

Wobble, wobble

Observe, a simple shader vertex animation, to make it look like the foliage is moving in the wind! The effect isn't perfect yet, but it's definitely better then just having it completely static. For the final effect I could try to add some variance through masks in the vertex colors, or some such.

What's still missing...

Let's see.

UV layouts for final textures
Color variations for foliage–possibly via vertex color channel, to also do gradients
Damage and debris models for destruction (chunks of foliage, trunks, etc.)
Hit/destruction particle effects
...

And oh, I still need to figure out whether or not I'll set it up so you can pick up and maybe eat trees. It sound intuitive, but comes with a bunch of challenges, visually and technically. So I'm afraid there's a good chance the trees will be entirely decorative.

Finally, I do think that the city can become a lot more appealing, visually, with a bunch of nice trees—but getting there will still take a bunch of effort and guess-work. My biggest fear is making the cityscape look worse, with a bunch of ugly trees that don't fit in, stylistically. So I really hope it all works out fine, in the end!