Part 1 - Concepts
I decided to change up the narrative for my environment. In my previous work, the idea was that the Cycladic Idol was an ancient treasure made by a farmer in honour of his goat. Because this project introduces the idea of a being that has the idol as its own head, I changed the narrative.
In my new piece, a secret cave has been discovered behind the ruins of a Greek bank. Years of negligence have left it in a state of disarray, only revealing itself due to a rock in the roof having fallen down. The hole left by this rock illuminates an ancient Idol in the cave, and its guardian: a satyr made of solid gold!
A requirement for this assessment is an animated character based off of the Cycladic Idol. Because I opted to make a goat-idol instead of a traditional human head, this gave me the opportunity to look into Greek mythology. I decided on making a character inspired by the satyr, which I thought might look fancy with animalistic, elongated ankles
Part 2 - Development
The Satyr
After I was done with the rough design, I took it into Mudbox in order to make it look and react better with smart materials.
Being a statue, most of the surface is kept smooth. Because the character is a Satyr, hair details were added around the chest and the legs, which are actual goat legs. Masking was used around the ribs in order to give the chest hair details more volume.
Because of my work in Mudbox, the neck of my Satyr no longer connected evenly. My solution to this?...
A scarf! The scarf was made of one cylinder, with each row of vertices representing a place on the Satyr's head. Once complete these rows were scaled, pushed, and rotated around in order to make the scarf look crinkled.
Next came the texturing of my character. I used Substance, however it appears that in my development, I neglected to keep a save of my Satyr's materials. Below are some images of my final model rendered in UE5 (plus my scarf material, which I did save apparently).
The methods or making my material were similar to how I did my head. I used the same components for the gold on both models- using a smooth and shiny gold for the hooves and hands, with a less polished gold on the body. To give it the illusion of age, I also used a simulated dirt and dust layer using two different simulation methods.
The scarf was not developed in Mudbox, and thus did not react as well to smart materials as the rest of the body. The material I used had two layers to it, which helped get that "old and worn" look. I also then dropped a dirt simulation on it to make it look dirty (in retrospect it kind of looks like blood but whatever).
Animating our character was also a priority of this assessment. A discovery I made from constantly importing and exporting my model was that the Satyr's mesh had become irreversibly disconnected. This hindered much of my early work with the model. Fortunately I was able to resolve this, but at the cost of some development files (like the aforementioned substance files).
Because of the uniquely shaped legs, I worried that the model would not be able to generate using the automatic rigger. Fortunately this was not as much a problem as I envisioned, because the legs of a goat are fairly similar to a humans with the condition that the heel of the animal is much more elongated.
Mixamo was used to get animations for my Satyr. I chose to use two animations: a fighting stance, and a dance just because I thought it looked funny. Because of the rigid nature of the Satyr I modified these animations to move a little slower than normal which helped add to the illusion of a golden guardian.
The environment
Developing my scene, a requirement of the assessment were modular shapes. Below are the two designs I came up with: a cave wall, and an decadent stone wall with trimmings around the roof. Both shapes are separated by pillars holding torches, helping illuminate the details within the room.
In order to get that god ray effect, there needed to be a hole in the roof of the cave. First I created a static mesh to simulate the direction of the light. In order to make the shadow look less octagonal, a ring of rocks were developed to fit around the hole. This helps make the hole look more natural, and also fits into the narrative of the hole appearing when the roof collapsed (a rock fell from the middle, and can be seen within the cave).
To make the scene look more real, I added some details to this hole: first I created a hanging rope, used by an explorer to get into the cave. I added some grass on the outside to make it seem like there is a hill outside the cave. Finally I inserted a single crow looking into the cave, which I feel helps give attention to the roof, and makes the scene look more alive.
In order to emphasize the time period of the room, I envisioned a great tapestry in the background depicting ancient Greek figures. Because I knew this would be impossible to find on the market, I went out of my way to design it myself.
My program of choice for this part was Blender, which I used because I was more familiar with its settings. I began by creating a flat plane, and then simulated the physics of it slumping over for the final scene. Using another program; Krita, I constructed the art of the tapestry, representing the gods of knowledge and prosperity with an owl in the center (the owl was on all the coins of that period and represents wisdom).
A similar method was used to create the carpet underneath the Idol. First the steps were placed in the final scene, then I attempted to emulate this shape in blender to make the carpet look as natural as possible.
Part 3 - Implementation
Below is an animated render of my final scene. There are three animated characters in the scene: two Satyrs of my design, and a crow atop the opening in the roof. Modularity was used to split the environment into the cave area and the back of an ancient building. And finally, of course, an Idol stands in the middle, illuminated by sunlight.
I would have liked to implement some fire effects for the torches and candle, however I could not find an asset that worked with the new UE5.
And now for a tour of my scene
In the back of the room you can see my tapestry, which has fallen down due to one of the pillars collapsing.
On the cave side, there are an assortment of treasure boxes stacked atop each other. In the middle is a candle which illuminates a pile of money.
On the other side, you can see an assortment of ancient figures, with a coin laid in front of them.
In order to make the walls look less similar, the trimmings have their own unique shapes, as they have broken apart in their own separate ways.
And finally in the center of the room is the Golden Idol. The pillar has coins laid out in front of the idol as a tribute. Surrounding the centerpiece are little plants which have taken advantage of the sunlight coming into the cave.
