Secret Sorcery shared a nice story on how the team created the worlds of Tethered with the help of ZBrush, Substance Painter and Unreal Engine 4.
Once sculpted, a template file is created using Substance Painter. By layering up tones using MG mask builders, the goal here was to highlight the rock edges, with tints of green within the occluded areas to help push the forms of the bold rock surfaces.
With this template file setup, all rocks for subsequent levels can then be batch processed for efficiency and continuity by simply changing the project mesh, high mesh and re-baking.
06. Generate the custom landscape
With the landscape layout locked down, we can now use Unreal Engine’s landscape system for the raft of navigational benefits that it can offer. The proxy terrain is imported into ZBrush and with the level that’s been viewed top-down, the document is ZGrabbed to create a heightmap.
The heightmap is then imported straight into the Unreal Engine 4 landscape system and, with a bit of tweaking, it creates an almost identical layout as the proxy mesh that was provided. From here the sculpting tools within the landscape system can be used to refine any areas that didn’t quite transfer correctly.
Make sure to read the full article here.
This article was originally published in 3D World issue 225.