Further Environment Planning

When we started working on the project, we all had a general idea what the environment looked like: we wanted it to be a mystical forest; a place for Herbil to live. However, we never discussed exact details such as tree aesthetics. Are they normal maple or oak trees or are they Wonderland-style curvy mushrooms? In doing some tests and looking at references, we knew that the most important part of making a forest look mystical was by playing with the lighting. As well, it's not always the look of the trees, but the forest ground that gives it a mystical ambiance. Unfortunately for our project, we do not have time to play with the environment too much. Thus, the land is going to be comprised of mainly grass and some flowers in distinct locations.

Below is a quickly drawn out map of where the characters are going to move within the sample environment. We had to plan out the landscape and decide where hills, tree clearings, characters, and the sun will be placed. The sun is located on the bottom left of this bird's-eye-view, and the robot will have his back to the sun for the intimidation shots. This way the light will not light up his face until the end scene when the tree crashes. The main clearing in the forest is a flatter area because we want Herbil and the robot to be on an even plane to show a proper comparison between Herbil and Behemoth's size.When Herbil feels scared by the tree the land will be uneven to parallel how he is feeling.

We have named our main tree that gets thrown the 'mystical tree' for simple reference (on the map it is the purple circle). This tree will be placed on a hill with flowers near the base. To create this tree we took a paint effects tree without its leaves and played with the settings to get the base shape of a trunk, branches and twigs. To add on the long strands we painted blond curly hair onto the object's tips, then created a preset to be applied to each strand. This preset converted each strand of short curly blond hair to a long straight strand. A material was then applied to all of the strands to give them a uniform colour pattern. To make each strand move when the tree gets thrown, we added spring dynamics to the paint effect we used.

Tree with default paint effects brush on tips mixed with sample strands.

Completed Mystic Tree Sample 1