Props, Textures and Lighting

This past weekend was spent mainly in adding props to the existing levels to flesh them out and playing around with the textures.

It is embarrassing to admit but I only recently discovered the UVTile setting in the terrain mesh properties. I had been going back and forth between my levels and the official ones to figure out why my terrain looked so blotchy, for lack of a better word. I had just decided to post in the BSN forums for help when Eguintir Eligard created a thread about the very same thing last week. After setting the UVTile to a higher number for the levels, the effect was instant. If only everything else in the toolset was so simple to fix!!

I also went in and played around with the atmosphere settings and lighting to get that misty morning effect since the area the players start out in is at the top of a mountain. I might add some fog effects on the ground later too to firm in the idea of a Misty Mountain...then, all we need is Bilbo to complete the picture.

Below are a couple of screenshots before and after the texture and prop/vegetation work done this weekend (you can open the images in a new window to see the full-sized image).

Camp Before

Camp After

Start area - Before

Start area - After

I am really pleased with the effect and have exported the atmosphere settings to maintain some semblance of consistency between the immediate areas the player can transition to. Obviously, there will be certain areas that will have a both day and night version (including the start area) so the time frame of the transition should also be taken into account.

All in all, a good weekend's worth of work given that I was tied up with RL (Woodbury Days took up almost an entire day and I was too tired after that to do any work) and Divinity 2 (still haven't finished it but am close)