Reply To: COLLAB2021 – The Spice Must Flow (TSMF) Blog
Team Project Updates
COLLAB2021 – HQ – Stylized Fantasy Environment
19 April 2021 – The House on the Hill
Since the beginning of this project, we have been faced with a dilemma. If you look in the back of the house in all three views (left, center and right), the terrain slopes down and the tree tops are at the same height as the ground. The house sits on a hill. But, there is a creek running through our scene. Based upon the way the watermill catches the creek’s water, the flow of the creek runs from the back of the house to the front of the house. If a creek defied gravity and flowed uphill in our project, a camera view in the back would not look convincing to the viewer.
There were lots of discussions on this issue. This is a stylized fantasy scene, does that give us license to run a creek uphill? Can we break from the concept art and just raise the elevation of the back so that the creek flows from a higher elevation? What about using a waterfall? Or, a dam? Can we have the water flow from the front of the house to the back? In which case, we would deviate from the concept art in that the watermill would catch the water on the backside. Each suggested idea had its drawbacks.
Kent came up with a clever solution to this problem. From the Master Camera view, the creek in the back of the house comes into view from the left and in front and in parallel to the hill horizon.
It then continues to the center of the back of the house. The creek’s source is a mountain to the back left of the house.
On first examination, it doesn’t look like the terrain’s elevation has changed from the original modeling that matched the concept art. It can’t be argued that the creek is taking the path of least resistance. We will see when we start putting the assets in their place, but, it is possible that the fence could hide the stream from the Master Camera view. If not, then Kent plans on judiciously placing shrubbery to obstruct the creek’s view from the primary view. Better to see some bushes instead of the creek.
Considering all of the undesirable ideas that were discussed on how to solve this problem, this is a great example of Occam’s Razor. The simplest solution was the right one.
End HQ Update
