Dungeon Crawler Environment Art - Week 9: Spider prison cage and decals

This week I focused on adding additional content that would make the space feel more true to my original idea, creating the model for the chain-spider-prison for lack of a better name.

I created one chain piece which I UV unwraped and then started to duplicate and rotate around 90 degrees. Once i had a section of about 10 chain pieces I did a lattice rotation of the whole length of 90 degrees to add a bit more flow into the chain as I proceed to duplicate it further.

Once I'd got the right lengths of chain I put them into a second lattice and adjusted them in the vertical axis to reflect the chains weight against gravity. I then added any extra one or two chain links to ensure logical connection links at the ends.

sketch plan

I used imported pillars from unreal to ensure i could get the distance correct between the pillars.

I only found out once I'd tried to duplicate it around that the distance varied across the pillars and an improvised chain piece was quickly created to help create a connected asset.

Reflection

Reflecting I would've liked to have developed this asset further and made more realistic connections, bolts and parts which show the movability of central the prison piece to open and close like a rib cage. I would've liked to add some additional gnarly spikes to get more of the diablo theme reference in there too.

Adding a blood puddle decal

I had some edges that were giving out a grey/white outline of the shapes mask which wasnt what I was looking to make and in an effort to try to get rid of this in unreal I made some multiply layers to try and reduce the contrast and this actually made a slightly more see through result anyway which seemed to look better.

It seems I needed to already have fixed the texture before in substance painter before bringing it into unreal. (which I would do but chose to prioritise larger aspects of the dungeon to get the project over the line.)

I also created 4 other decals of licens and spider webs to add additoinal texture to the dungeon.

For the web/fungus type decal I used a brush in substance painter that I beiliev is called organic shapes brush and made some nice patterns with this to create a creaping/spreading effect.

For my licen decals I used a base material and then edited the colours and layered materials over the top with colour changes and simple opacity changes to make some easy variation.