Greetings and salutations!
For this week's screenshot, a look up into the branches of one of the trees that surround the barrow-courtyard:
The week just past was dedicated almost entirely to work on the outdoors region of the first level, including the tree above. Let me expand on that:
To start with, I made some tweaks to the outer wall, making the stones of it a little less uniformly straight. I also popped down to the lower tombs again and added pillars to the final room thereof, having noted that I'd neglected to do so previously.
The next addition was a start on the undergrowth of the surrounding woodland: broad-leafed plants, ferns, and the occasional taller-stemmed plant, along with some shader-work for them. While the models are done, I believe, I haven't yet scattered them about--I'm waiting to have the trees in place first, so that I know where to put the undergrowth.
Speaking of which trees, it was into these that a significant portion of the week's work was put, I think.
To start with, I created new colour- and normal- maps depicting their bark. This includes a "dead" variant of the colour-map, used for a fallen tree that provides a platform for a particular bit of traversal, as well as, I intend, for fallen logs and the like scattered around the woods.
But perhaps the biggest task was in the construction of a living tree. Part of this was figuring out what the tree should look like, but most, I think, was in figuring out how to represent it. To what degree should I represent branches and twigs? Should limbs that would not be traversable be represented differently to those that would? And then, of course, was the challenge of implementing these things, in art and shader.
You can see some of the result above (since it's a close-up shot, you don't see much of the leaf-clusters that are used when a tree is viewed from a distance). Overall, I'm fairly happy with it thus far, I believe!
One thing that I'd like to mention that's not shown above is that the leaf-clusters actually move aside a little when the player passes, hopefully reducing incidence of the player clipping through them when climbing a tree. While not perfect--the twig-bases don't move (because that would look off, I feel), and the clusters will happily clip through branches or each other in avoiding the player--it's an effect that I like.
That then is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^