The Prize
In the original version of the story, the prize the main character sought was a spear. In the expanded version, the spear was an artifact used to pierce the tree of life, laying waste to the world around it and creating a horde of monsters with too much life, so to speak. I thought it would be fun for the object to be a possession of the antagonist. Eventually that spear would have been stabbed into a big monster and there would have been a big, exciting chase that would take me years to finish. But in this current, stripped back version that proved to be too much to ask. Without the time to make a horde of monsters with too much life, so to speak, I had to resort to a more traditional macguffin. So, what better way to retain that idea then to make the monster the prize? So I came up with the idea of an embryonic creature trapped in an otherworldly amber, which was held and guarded in a chamber. I have lore reasons for all of this, but it's a lot to go into and that's best for its own post. My girlfriend, who is far better at painting than I, was gracious enough to render my description into an actual tangible drawing:
From there I modeled, textured it, and placed it into the scene. The prize was one of the very last things I set out to make for what is now the first public release, which I internally refer to as Part II. Seeing as it's introduction as the driving force of the story will appear in Part I, it doesn't have much presence in Part II, as this release is focused more on Kaelis and her confrontation with The Angel. But, I wouldn't feel right without it being in the scene, so I made sure it was in there.
For the texture I hand painted the colors and used a modified ice texture setup in Unreal to give it the amber look. It proved quite tricky to get it to look right, and at one point the material system broke completely for no reason, and I had to duplicate strings of connections and reattach a lot of things to other things to make the network remember it had no reason to be broken. Regardless, it was a sizable pain. Thankfully it works in the end and I am pleased with the result.
From there I modeled, textured it, and placed it into the scene. The prize was one of the very last things I set out to make for what is now the first public release, which I internally refer to as Part II. Seeing as it's introduction as the driving force of the story will appear in Part I, it doesn't have much presence in Part II, as this release is focused more on Kaelis and her confrontation with The Angel. But, I wouldn't feel right without it being in the scene, so I made sure it was in there.
For the texture I hand painted the colors and used a modified ice texture setup in Unreal to give it the amber look. It proved quite tricky to get it to look right, and at one point the material system broke completely for no reason, and I had to duplicate strings of connections and reattach a lot of things to other things to make the network remember it had no reason to be broken. Regardless, it was a sizable pain. Thankfully it works in the end and I am pleased with the result.