Process of A 3D Biome

While I've been tasked with finishing some changes on my platformer in my game design class, I was also challenged with developing a weather-mirroring biome in my 3D class. Essentially, I've been able to write down and display my process through the last two weeks as I worked, and this essentially is my process book on the subject:

My Biome of choice this project is a winter-themed forest with a clearing in the distance in mind. It's to provoke feelings of being lost, bewilderment, and wonder. I've gathered much reference for this project, and with it I intend to develop a complex small scene with my abilities and tools. Here's a basic run down of what I got in mind:

Here's some digital paint art that of which I am drawing reference to as well by Aaron Limonick:

The color palette will follow heavy shades of light blue, followed by dominant features in black, white, and brown. I'd like to push the contrast by adding in orange or yellow sunlight to add to the scene's look. Here's a quick digital painting of what all I want to direct my location as:

Working from this, I made a basic grey block-out. From this, I'll work on some custom mesh models and textures to work towards the "blueprints" I have above in terms of composition. A screenshot from the block out as follows:

I've managed to make some minor changes to the meshes, and develop a small winter-y particle for weathering effect. I chose to adjust composition locations to keep off-center, add fog, paint the landscape floor and move the camera appropriately. Here's the changed variant:

Adjustments have been made. Simple meshes have filled in open spaces where block-in cylinders took place. The composition didn't feel strong enough, so I adjusted and tweaked some locations of the meshes and added/removed others. Developed a stronger vertex paint for the landscape, and modeled out two more types of trees, as well as added cards of branches to the older ones. I took the liberty of developing some small tufts of dead grass to populate the ground, as well as roots. Within my time, I was able to play with a post processing world node, capable of generating the depth of fog to a certain distance, elevating light passively. Current set up:

After gaining some feedback on what to improve on (floor too flat, vertex wasn't too naturally blended, shadows broken up incorrectly, etc.) I pushed to make the environment to a lot more complex by adjusting the floor, it's vertex paint, adding some treeline cards in the back to provide depth, and developed a new tree to replace the thin, leafless ones to add more thickness to the outside forest. Here's the current view:

I felt the environment wasn't going where I intended it to go. I powered up the snow VFX, and developed a complex vertex paint that also generates tessellation values on the rocks to show snow buildup. I toyed around with adding a lot of new foliage such as dead brushes, and changed the grass to be less tuft-y and more-so patches. Snow buildup was a huge thing for the bottoms of trees and logs, and I decided to add more rocks for extra silhouettes, and moved around some of the logs till I felt satisfied. Lastly, I built up areas that were negative space to get a better focal point, and I felt the light was too bright to be caught in a blizzard with, so I toned down the brightness (but retained the color for the sake of contrast) and added a strengthened height fog value. Adjusted changes are now as follows:

Now that the final adjustments were made, it was time to create a Matinee of the subject matter to generate the environment in a real-time view (helps point out the changes in the VFX). Here's the video (Be sure to hit 1080p!): Biome - Blizzard Forest

The final critique was quite helpful in changing some minor issues. We discussed that perhaps less camera movement is better, and that perhaps using foliage instead of snow buildup around the tree trunks was best, along with other ideas. Changes will be made soon, and updated as soon as possible.

I've considered tweaking the weather particle and perhaps including it on a future VFX reel. It's a strong snowy blizzard, but it could use some more work. Speaking of which - expect a VFX portfolio reel soon!