The pyramids

My apologies to everyone who is hyped for dragons or the Luggage but with the heat wave raging outside I can only go for one thing: the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi. I have just finished a (very poor) sketch of the scene, and even though you can barely tell which side up it's supposed to be, I'm hoping that creating it won't be that difficult. I might even be able to re-use some of my existing assets.

Oh, and one more thing. I created an account on ArtStation and after looking at all the beautiful art there, it occurred to me that I could do a slide show of my in-progress images. So fingers crossed, if I manage to figure out how to do it, there might be a short timelapse at the end of this post.

Right, let's get into it. The first task is, very unoriginally, adding the ground. Then the river, which needs to be shaped a bit. (I do wish there was a better way of doing it than pushing the vertices around. Oh, what am I saying. There probably IS a better way. And when I find it eventually, I'll feel properly dumb.) I think I'll need to darken the banks a little bit and then I'm probably going to add the translucent layer on top of the river to make it look more... watery? Water-like? Something like that.

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Yeah, as you can see, I haven't added the translucent layer just yet and that's because I'm not quite happy with the river's position and shape. If I decide to change it later it would be a nightmare trying to make it fit. Instead, I added the sky, and yes, it is the same one I used when working on Wyrmberg. I don't think it's the final version and I'm going to experiment with it some more but for now I'm trying to keep things simple.

Hmm, what to do next... The pyramids, I reckon. They are meant to be the focus of the scene so I should better get them right. I can't decide if I want to make them one solid object or build them from individual blocks. I guess I'm going to find out soon.

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Who would've thought that such a simple shape as a pyramid could take so much effort to model? I didn't. I started confidently from a cube and I extruded and scaled and extruded and scaled... I even entered the distances manually to keep things consistent. And the result was complete and utter rubbish. So I scrapped it and started again. I did basically the same thing but this time it turned out slightly better. As to the material, I have three sand-based ones that I assign randomly. I wanted the base to be a bit darker but finding the right shade took me a lot longer than I would've wanted. Anyway, the next step is to add a bit of greenery, so let's open my tropical island scene and...

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And steal the palm trees. And shrubs. And rocks. And then throw away the shrubs and rocks, create my own, be dissatisfied with them and throw them away too. I don't know what it is about this scene that makes placing the clutter so difficult but I don't seem to be able to get it right. It was so much easier with the tropical island. It all fell into place without me really trying. Ahh, one of those projects, is it?

This is the current state of affairs. The palm trees look decent, the rocks do not but I'll keep them for now. I've also added a bit of green to the river banks. I'm not sure whether I should round the edges or keep them like this. I kinda like the way it looks now... Oh well, onto the crocodiles then, I can't put it off any longer.

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Goddamn slimy little buggers! I spent a good part of the afternoon trying to extrude their legs. The rest of them was quite easy, I found some really nice reference images, but those legs! #$@&%*! For one, the faces I extrude from are rotated and of different size. Even if I manage to level them, I'm not able to extrude and rotate them correctly in all three planes. If I somehow do two, it looks horrible from another angle. And then I have to fiddle with it over and over again until it doesn't make my eyes bleed. I think it's one of those cases where practice won't help and I'll have to watch some modelling tutorials to get better at it. But yeah, if you want to see them, here there are, chilling at the river.

I was going to add a herd of camels as well, but seeing that I'm almost out of time, I should focus on finalizing the image. I think the sand needs a bit of recolouring and then I have to do something with the sky. Perhaps a different gradient or maybe an HDRI?

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Different gradient it is. And it doesn't look half bad. But I still have a feeling that the scene is too empty. The trouble is that I don't know how to improve it. Maybe I should have a second go at the plants and rocks...

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And I'm finally finished. I modelled a few grass tufts, changed the rock colour (because it didn't make much sense in the first place), and made the sand dunes look more dune-y. It did improve the scene overall, but I have to admit I'm quite disappointed with the result. Maybe it's time for me to change the style or subject matter. Hopefully I'll be able to think of something.

Oh, and before I forget, there is the promised breakdown (not mine, the scene breakdown). My first GIF, everyone. Enjoy!