Here's an update on the block out. I added some clouds, edited the lighting a bit, and painted some basic colors on the landscape.
Next, I'm going to block out a few more areas along the main road and start on some of the landscape materials.
I'm taking a break from the Bigfoot project to work on something with a smaller scope. My plan is to make an environment inspired by the tea gardens in Darjeeling.
So far I've made some hills and placed some tea plants throughout the scene. I also made a blueprint to scatter the plants along a spline.
In terms of assets, I want to limit the scene to the tea plants, ground materials, and some background trees and mountains. Next I'll block out the background elements to fill in the rest of the scene.
I worked more on the badger burrow area and some general lighting and material updates. In front of the badger burrow, I added some blood decals. Hopefully that draws more attention to it and makes it seem more dangerous.
Aside from that, I started to mask material layers for the background terrain. I used some basic tiling materials for now. My plan is to bake a new texture from some of my foliage meshes to make the distant mountains look more like they're covered in trees.
Another thing I've been working on is a balsam fir tree. So far I have one normal variation and a more windswept version. Next I'm going to make a web covered version that's infested with gypsy moth larvae. Hopefully I can add the webs in Speedtree. That would allow them to react with the wind consistently with the rest of the tree.
My next priorities are importing the trees, placing them throughout the level, and baking some textures for the mountains. I think that will help fill in a lot of empty space and get it to feel more like a forested mountain top.
