With the help of the alt modelling workshop and the mystery puzzle workshop, I decided to set off and create an environment in Blender - using the knowledge that I have gained from the workshops to do with common gameplay mechanics (the alt modelling, the mystery puzzles and the dialog system workshops) and how they could possibly be used within my game.
To start things off, I created a plane mesh and I started to put the shade smoothing and the subdivide and cut the mesh to about 30 squares so that this makes constructing the scene a lot easier in the sculpt mode, then applied the subdivision modifier and it did turn to an octagonal shape but from what I learnt from the alt modelling workshop is that I should level out the render, viewpor and the quality in the modifier section and switch the button form catmuli-clark to simple, this will return the shape back to the original square shape that the mesh had before.
Then I apply the displace modifier so that the plane will be able to be sculpted properly on the sculpting section of blender and I changed the type from image or movie to clouds so that this can give a bumpy hill appearance and then changed the size of this to 1.0, then I went to the the sculpting section of blender and used the draw tool (the tool selected is highlighted in blue on the left side of the screen) to build up the grassy hill environment whilst constantly turning the environment around, zooming in and out and adjusting the strength of the tool to build up the environment slowly upwards the one on the top right corner was taller than the bottom left corner area.
Then to create the cliff side, I used the same method that I used to create the buildings in the alt modelling workshop, but instead of changing the mesh into blocks like how I did to create the buildings, I instead kept the noise form in the displace modifier and increased the render by 4 in the subdivision modifier, then I continued this until the cliff was connected to look like it was joint together whilst constantly changing the angles and sizes of the cliffs and slightly moved them to the surface of the ground to give the appearance that it was naturally a part of the environment.
Then I went back to the sculpting mode and I used the drawing tool and built the hill from earlier to try and cover the top of the meshes so that the spiky parts of them don't show up when I render the environment, with constantly applying and taking away the sculpting to make sure the hill wasn't covering up the entirety of the cliff but high enough to ensure the spikes do not show up.
Next was to create some grass, which although it could have been quicker to use a grass hair modifier but there was a constant problem I kept encountering whilst using this, firstly it did make my computer run quite slow when it was trying to render or even change to the texturing tab of blender and it would also appear to be floating in 'mid-air' around the environment, so I only included smaller bits of grass on only certain spots of the main environment.
So to make this grass, I used a plane mesh and reduced the width of the plane to try and be as skinny as possible then used a loop cut to cut the plane into separate pieces and then was able to move and twist these pieces of grass and put them together to make it look like a bunch of grass on the environment.
Next was to texture the grassy environment, I changed the base colour to a dark green and the subsurface colour to a light green in the principled BSDF box (the dark green box) and then added a colour ramp to connect the base colour point to the colour point of the colour ramp and changed the black colour that was in the colour box to a green to make it appear to look like grass, then changed the white part of the box to a dark green to achieve a shadow underneath the bottom of the grass with some brightness on top without it mainly looking like a solid green colour.
I repeated the same process to change the colour of cliff with the only change to the colour being brown instead of green.
Next was to create the mushrooms, so to start things off I use a cube mesh and change it to a sphere mesh then applied a subdivision surface modifier to refine the cuts of the typology, then I went to the edit mode and selected the bottom of the spheres face then stretched the bottom of it slightly and created a loop cut sideways of the sphere and dragged the cut downwards to make the bottom look more elongated and wide and the top more smaller and skinnier, then flattened the top part of this shape using the resizing tool to make the shape look like a mushroom and turned on the shade smooth option to make the shroom easier to sculpt in sculpting mode and continued this until I had at least four mushrooms to work with.
Next was to create the stalk of the mushroom, I start off with a cube mesh and shrank it down to be slightly smaller than the top of the mushroom and lined it up to the middle of the mushroom, again just how I made the top of the mushroom, I changed the cube mesh to a sphere mesh and applied a displace modifier and changed into edit mode and selected the top of the face of the stalk and extruded the stalk upwards to create an elongated tall shape until it reached just about in between the middle of the bottom of the mushroom top and shrank the very top of the stalk to make it look skinnier at the top and flatter at the bottom of the stalk.
Then to connect the stalk to the edge of the mushroom, I selected both the top part of the mushroom and the stalk and pressed Ctrl+J on my keyboard to join these two objects together and when I select it on layout mode it will be one whole object instead of having to select the individual pieces when I move it to the environment, then I noticed when zooming in inside the mushroom that the top part of the stalk was showing in the inside of the mushroom which I needed to figure out how to make it look coherent with the mushroom as a whole.
So firstly, I needed to apply the subdivision modifier to the mushroom before jumping straight into sculpt mode otherwise the appearance of the mushroom might alter if I don't apply the modifier beforehand, so with that applied when I'm in sculpt mode, I need to use the remesh option to get rid of the small portion of the stalk thats inside the of the mushroom and change the voxel size to about 0.8 so that it can remove the portion of the stalk that's inside of the mushroom but also to give the mushroom and fleshy appearance to it as well - if I increased the voxel size any higher than 1.0, then I will lose the clarity of the mesh when I chose to remesh it so anything under that number is okay.
I also changed the dyntopo to constant detail which will help me make sculpting this mushroom a lot easier to manage and control then used the draw sharp tool to create the detail you see commonly in mushrooms which is the flesh underneath the mushroom and then used the draw tool to create small indents and details on top of the mushroom (the reason why this footage hasn't been included is because I lost the footage whilst my computer was updating itself).
Next was to create the fireflies, I first added a isosphere mesh and decreased the size of it and then went into the surface section in the material properties tab (located on the bottom right side of the screen) and changed it to an emission surface and changed the colour of it to a bright intense blue so that it could be noticeable in the environment and changed the strength of this to 2.0, then I decreased the size of the iso sphere to make it identical to the size of a firefly and added a plane mesh and decreasing the size of that mesh.
Next was to applying the particle system to make the fireflies well fly, in the emission section of the particle system tab, I changed the number of particles to be 50 instead of 1000, then went to the render section and chose to render as an object and selected the isosphere that I created to be that object to appear on the particle system and unchecked the show emitter box so that the plane mesh won't be seen when I render the environment, then underneath the render as box, there was a scale box which I changed from 0.05 to 0.24 to make it look like more of a group of fireflies.
Then in the physics section, I changed the physics type to boids and as soon as I did that I started to showcase the animation of them flying around in the environment which I was really happy about but disappointed that I wasn't able to render the animation due to my computer not being able to handle the rendering of animation.
Next was to texture these fireflies to look like they're glowing, so I started off with an emission box (small dark green box) and connected the emission point to the surface point of the material output box then connected the colour point of the colour ramp box to the colour point in the emission box, then in the sampling section in the scene tab I changed the radius to 20.0 and the intensity to 0.10.
Then I changed the background colour on the world tab (which is directly underneath the scene tab) and changed it to a dark blue and changed the strength of the colour in the shading tab in the background box to about 0.7 and then added a darken box (the beigy yellow box) and connected the colour point from the background box to the colour point of the darken box and changed the fac to 0.417 to make it slightly lighter to create the misty type effect (which can be seen on the final images), then changed the colour 1 tab to a dark blue and the colour 2 tab to a close to black type colour and that was that for adding the night time background and adding the glowing firefly effect.
Finally the last step was to make the top of the mushrooms glow, so to start off with I needed to basically separate the parts of the mushroom I originally had joined together as otherwise the glowing effect would appear on all of the mushroom but I only want it on the top part of the mushroom, so to do that I switched into edit mode and selected all of the mushroom first then had to deselect the stalk by using shift+click until only the top of the mushroom had the orange dots around it and not the stalk, it was vital that I had this on the vertices mood as I needed this to be precise as possibly and not accidently disconnect the wrong part of the mushroom.
Then after I had deselected the entirety of the stalk, I then went to the mesh tab (next to where you can select the vertices and the faces icons) then pressed the separate box in the mesh drop down box and then selected separate by selection so as you can see in the object list you can see there is a number highlighted in orange which is now the new separated object, then I needed to add the emission modifier to the top of the mushroom so still in edit mode I clicked on the number on my objects list (the top right hand corner of the screen) and then on the select tab I pressed all which would select all the vertices of that object and then assigned the modifier to the mushroom and that's how I made only just the top part of the mushroom glow.
I did create different versions of this build, one environment that didn't include the dark blue background and without the emission modifier on top of the mushrooms and an environment without the fireflies themselves and were only added after making the very first version of my environment, then finally there's the final version of my environment with glowing mushrooms serving their purpose via the help of the emission modifier with the fireflies also glowing and flying around the environment.
Here are some pictures of the final version of my prototype environment showcasing if from different camera angles from a far away shot showing the entirety of the whole environment and a close up shot of the mushrooms and the fireflies creating this misty effect in the night time scene of this environment which made the scene quite captivating and wanted to explore this scene for myself.
Overall, this environmental scene was slightly complicated but really fun to make as I myself learnt a lot of new techniques which not only did I learn from the alt modelling workshop but I also learnt some techniques that I've never used before whilst creating the fireflies for example, I never knew how to create a particle system to allow them to fly around the environment, I do have an animation of them flying around the environment but due to technical issues with my laptop, I wasn't able to animate it properly and the framerate of it is quite slow unfortunately.
How I would like this environment introduced into my game is that I would like it showcased in terms of a puzzle mechanic, how the puzzle could work is in the form of a sequence puzzle, the player must touch the mushrooms in a specific order in order to solve this puzzle, the fireflies could work as a clue indicator so that they fly around the mushroom the player needs to touch next if the player is ever stuck on trying to figure out the specific solution to the sequence.
If the player manages to solve the puzzle then this could connect to the scenario that I constructed in the dialog system workshop and this could reveal the home of the alchemist that the mysterious mushroom character the main character encounters and they get to the location of the alchemist, but the house doesn't seem to be here where the mushroom NPC told the main character they would be here, suddenly one of the mushrooms that they are surrounded by starts to glow subtly and the main character is shocked and stunned that these mushrooms are glowing and curiously decides to approach and touch one of them, then suddenly a group of fireflies start to fly around the character then slowly flies to each of the mushrooms one by one to show that the character has to interact with them.
If the player gets the sequence wrong then the mushrooms would blink red and then stop glowing all together and would have to repeat the process again, if the player starts getting the sequence right then the mushroom that is right stays glowing and when all of the mushrooms have been touched correctly in the right order, then they start blinking and the fireflies form together and a group of them collectively form together and form the alchemist's house which is how this puzzle could work in a narrative setting and the whole ideal about my essential experience of manipulating the environment and everything isn't as it seems.
This puzzle would mainly benefit through a nighttime setting instead of a normal daytime setting as the glowing effect would work beneficially to create the effect of mysteriousness to the scene as the player wouldn't properly be aware of it at night rather than in the day time as the mushrooms would be more obvious in appearance and wouldn't cause that dramatic sense of surprise but luckily through the use of time manipulation the player can skip to the night time if they approached the area in the day time so that they don't have to wait for the environment to naturally change from day to night and will be able to complete the puzzle as some of the puzzles in my game could require them to be specific times of the day to complete or freeze objects in time to complete puzzles as well.
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