The Robot Graveyard
My most ambitious project, Learn Unreal 4 And design Robots. As I found out, just as impossible for someone of my skill set.
Inspired by Samurai Jack's episode "The Traveling Creatures" where Jack explored a huge robot graveyard, and Planetary Annihilation, I set out to make my own take on this, and create a level where the player can explore surrounded by giant fallen destroyed robots.
Yeah No.
Shit's hard, and I found out the hard way. The project took me two months, as I had no idea how to design, nor how to find references. I couldn't, even though I tried, type into Google "Giant Destroyed Robot Hand that's 50 meters large." and get instant references. For the longest time I couldn't even think of words to type into Google. It was really interesting though that by the end of the project I had discovered tons of references.
Main Shot!
Close up of the hand muscle fibers.
Inspiration, Samurai Jack; Episode "The Traveling Creatures"
My Refboard! When I started, Art Station wasn't jam pack stuffed with Horizon Zero Dawn's work... Just my luck that as soon as I completed this, they started posting.
Block out...
Final!
Block out interior~
Final!
Design Fail Number 1, this is how I originally wanted the hand's internal mechanitions to look like. I taught myself fiber actuators, inspired by those odd fiber bundle hands in robotics. I couldn't make it so that I like it.
There was a construction site in my neighborhood. I stooped to observe it for a bit and I was amazed at the sheer speed a earth mover the size of a two story building moved. I abandoned the "Fibers" and went to teach my self hydraulic systems.
The final hand in Blender. 300k polygons.
Original Crappy Concept I drew. I wish I was a better 2d artist.
And now for some Tec! I taught myself construction script. This one can spawn main entities in a radius, and then spawn child entities around them. Another script did the same but on a global scale.
My Little script had its own property panel, where I could load what objects to spawn and how to distribute them.
Rock blending shader. The seam props have when intersection always bothered me, so I set out to correct this issue.
An entity read the terrain tangent normal, and texture, then wrote those into a shader that would bend the rock edge normal to match the terrain's as well as blend in the proper texture.
Learning how to use the Light Propagation Volumes. There was no other way, the Robot hand was 300k polygons, you try making a lightmap UV for that.
More lighting tests.
Early scene shot while I was working out the little details.
And finally, after all the headaches of learning Unreal, fixing my pet peves, making materials and learning scripting, the final image was rendered. Too bad a real game would need at least 100 more of these.