Final Renders: The Odyssey Plaza

Finished

Here it is everyone The Oduyssey Plaza. Happy it's finsihed but actually had a lot of fun learning and creating it and have really learnt a lot along the way and can't wait to get stuck into another project to put into practice everything I've learned and try and expand upon it!

City Scape

Put in the rest of the buildings to fil the skyline around the plaza to make it feel actually situated in a city!!!! The outside is as important in bringing the scene to life. Nearly finished a few more tweaks and i'll have some final screenshots of the plaza all finsihed and we can call it a day!

Finishing touches

I'm still working away on the lighting to try and get it just right and fix a few minor errors here and there. I've tried to vary the colours and make sure there is a distinct shift between each section of the plaza and try and balance the relationship and harmony of the colours. Using the photofilter post processing helped to push the coulours in a more dramatic way to and helped give a richer tone.

Fountain lighting

I strated to make some adjustments to the lightings to make it more dramatic and interesting. I decided to add lights to the fountain and tried to make the water really satnd out a bit more and really bounce the light around.

Odyssey Tower

Heres the Tower after a few tweaks as I still wasn't quite happy with it from the last few posts I did a few days ago. But finally have what I wanted and stands proud over the plaza at last!!!

Entrance Shutters

Oh here are the entrance shutters with the nice alpha maps that give it that great see throughy goodness!!!!!!!!!!!!! Really glad they worked so well as I was worried that resolution maybe an issue!

little sign

Just a sign that I forgot to post a while back!!!!

water feature

Just putting together the final touches to the plaza, going to create some buildings for the outside of the plaza to make it feel like it's in a city and add some decals here and there to lightly scuff the floors and walls up a bit. Here are a few more assets that have gone into the plaza. This is the Foutain a small water feature for the center for people to hangout at. I used the cubemap I created with a water volume to get the realistic look of the moving water in the piece. Works really in game and behaves very realistically.

Front door

Heres r=the entrance I've adjusted the lower texture a hundred times to achieve the look I wanted but i'm happy with what I have got now Also tried to really inforce the corporate brand in the plaza and have this as the main focal point that will spill throughout the plaza. I tried to think along the lines of the enivronment design in Brink and how they said the environment should tell the story without rampping it down the audiences throat and spell it out for them so they want to explore the space.

Plaza Name....

Heres the curved planter that holds to two ramps nicely together and has the name of the plaza for all to see and lead the player up to the main Odyssey Tower! The next update will be some changes I made to the entrance and the Tower having a nice night texture that was a pain to make!

More Posters

Just been busy pulling all the pieces together but here's a couple of quick screenshots of the posters I created last time with those great reflections!

Posters and Reflections

Had fun creating the designs for the posters and made up companies being showcased in the plaza. I think they work really well! I also discovered how to create a global cubemap, which means I could have everything that is reflective actually reflect the surrounding environment instead of rendering out each one and having lots of wasted memory of having alll those extra unused files. It has really made everything feel so much more realistic now and has been a great learning experience as it allows to really take my work one step closer to what I wanted to achieve.

Shops: - Branding

Tried to give the indetity to some of the shops and the brands so expanded a little for the shop fronts. I created some decals which arfe shared throughout the other shops as well as a unique one to, to help break it up. Also started work on the posters around the plaza to, more updates to follow.

Rubbish???

Started filling up the plaza with some smaller props and assets. I designed a company called eco-cycle who are meant to recycle everything and have their bins about the place. I was quite happy with what I came up with. Max render and one in engine: -

Ramp

Put the front ramps in leading up to the entrance of the plaza. I used the floor lights I made to illumninate the ramp and draw the player in. I also made the floor reflective as well to simulate the effect of polished concrete.

stairs

Got the stairs in properly so I could actually stop having to do a crazy jump up the first tier!!!! Made some little glow strip lights on them to.

Hot Shops part deux

The shops I had been working on!

some more graphics

Made some more designs for company branding and those corporation style names. Added one to the textures for the shops I've been working on just not updated them on here, but will get screenshots for when they are ready.

Shops

I went on to use those graphics to create one of the shop fronts. I followed simon fuchs tutorial on making realistic glass in cryengine and found it very useful as it then dicovered from further reading how to generate my own cubemaps for my level so icould have the plaza reflected in the window and make the area more realistic. I broke the front shop section into its own piece as I wanted to lower draw calls in the level as the material would be quite expensive especially if I had teh illuminated signs attached as well. So I unwrapped some the sign ahop toppers on  a sepearte texture sheet so they would have the same material and glow effect and help to tie the plaza together as places like this have very strict rules on having the same architectural style inside the area (such as santa monica place I mentioned in my earlier posts). The front looks a little plain at the moment but I'm planning on adding some decals which say "sorry, we are closed for the night - please return soon" over the front or something to that effect.