Starting Off

I started the project by becoming familiar with the Leadwerks Editor and the various other tools that come with the Leadwerks engine, as well as the workflow for importing basic models. I created a loose heightmap based off of my concept sketch and imported it into the editor. I chose an interesting looking part of the heightmap that had slight hills around it, placed a water plane and began laying out the river. I imported several textures for the terrain, and did some experimental painting. Finally, I imported several untextured block models of some of the buildings for scale testing. I then used to road tool to start laying out the base of the roadways, and I used a railroad model to plan out the location of the main railroad line.

Trees and Pavement and Dirt | With most of the rail lines and roadways planned out, I continued to block out models like the highway bridge, the barracks, and the abandoned house. These were placed where the sketch called for them, and in most cases their placement did not change much by the end of the project. I began laying down large sections of pavement terrain textures for parking lots, and I used a pine tree placeholder model to plan out my forests and to test the billboard system in Leadwerks. Thanks to the automatically generated billboards I was able to use the vegetation tool to paint vast forests for the horizon. At this stage, the base for the swampy areas were placed, and the river shape was finalized.

Roads, Railroads, and Bridges | Communities in real life are centered around their infrastructure and methods of transportation, so I continued to lay the virtual infrastructure at the is point so I would be able to base the rest of the level around it. I spent an afternoon taking reference pictures of an abandoned railroad depot in my town, which I used to create a 12 meter section of modular railroad track. These new railroad track sections replaced the placeholder tracks in the environment. Props like wall sections were created and imported, and I began working on a modular railroad bridge to cross the river based off of an actual bridge right next to the Chernobyl NPP.

The Details Start to Come Together | About two months into the project I continued placing basic vegetation and painting rock and dirt textures. I began experimenting with overcast lighting and fog using the sky box that I had created. Dirt road texture templates were created, and I began working on small areas of detail to experiment with micro-detail in the Leadwerks engine. I textured and finished the modular railroad bridge and placed it in the scene. The main playable area was not as high above the river surface as I had planned, so I created a small berm for the railroad bridge to rest on so that it would not be too close to the water.

Vegetation and More Props | Vegetation and natural props were provided by fellow artist Michael Betke of Pure3D. Using Michael's excellent plants, trees, rocks and more (and with the help of the Leadwerks vegetation layering system) I was able to quickly and efficiently create very realistic looking forests and plant life across the environment. More small props were created to detail the scene like road barriers and wooden furniture, and I began work on more debris props, background prop buildings and decals. The road bridge was completed (based on the famed "Bridge of Death" near Chernobyl) and set up in a modular system like the railroad bridge. I finalized the Bober warehouse building and imported all of the textures into Leadwerks, along with another small "railroad outbuilding" structure with no interior. A demo scene was created using all of the models completed up to this point so we could take some beauty renders.

Full Speed Ahead | The next stage of the project required quite a lot of new art creation. I needed to create two military barracks buildings to be the focus of the military base area of the environment. I chose my reference (an actual barracks in a small outpost in the real Zone) and created two versions of the barracks. Besides creating a large amount of new artwork for these buildings (include trash and debris, military cots, bathrooms, sinks and other props), these buildings were the first objects that I used vertex colors on. The vertex colors were used to blend a brick texture with green stucco, adding a lot of interest to the main structure of the building without resorting to decals. This also allowed me to faithfully recreate the style of the barracks that I was taking inspiration from.

Debris, Props, and More Buildings | I also used vertex colors to blend two kinds of concrete textures for the base of the derelict garage, one normal concrete and one stained with oil. These two textures shared a single normal map, which saved texture memory. A large number of debris props were created at this stage to help populate the scene. These range from piles of cinder blocks to large shipping containers to scattered wood and bricks.

The Beginning of the End | By this point the project was moving at full speed, and many elements were being worked on at the same time. Many modifications were make to vegetation and terrain textures, lighting, skyboxes, water and other areas. At this point in the project, I was working on nearly all areas of the map as well as working on individual assets. One of the larger buildings for this project, the railroad station, was completed along with several unique props like benches that went with the main model.

Final Lighting and Detailing | With nearly all of the asset modeling done, I turned my attention to the last few buildings and final lighting and detailing. Several different skyboxes and times of day were experimented with until I finally settled on a partially overcast sunset which allowed me to introduce a warm orange-yellow color to the lighting. Some light fixtures around the map had to be adjusted when the sun angle changed, but the new skybox brought an eerie feeling to the project along with a nice "painted" look. More vegetation layers were added which allowed me to layer grass, shrubs, leaves and add some large dead trees to the basic vegetation. During these last few weeks of the project I finished work on a larger number of additional debris and background props in addition to the "abandoned house" building. An underground lab was created at the back of the military base, and several detail passes were made to the entire map. After some optimization, the project was deemed complete.

For more images, please visit the official Zone Project Blog.