Mithraeum - Candles Lowpolies

This gallery shows a kit of candles I have made mainly for the Mithraeum level within the Order of Giants DLC.
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The idea with these candle clusters came from the desire to double down on the mood and direction of this level in terms of having this area as one of the main hubs of congregation for the cultists belonging to the Mithras cult.
Together with Juan Ocamica, who was responsible for the lighting of the level, we decided to have these candle clusters as the main lighting fixture that would be used throughout the level.
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The way we put them together was through a Houdini HDA that created the base meshes. Florian Zender put together a tool that allowed me to import reference geometry (selected from within the different structures used in the level), paint on top of it and have the tool generate candle base meshes in the area that I painted. The generated meshes would provide variation in size (diameter/height, the boolean operation for whenever the candles would be close to eachother, the wax melting main volume as well as a base noise deformation across the mesh for the melting effect.
Once this was done, I took the meshes into Zbrush where I added further melting as well as further integration in trying to sell the clustering effect.
Here is a link to the gallery showing the sculpts:
- link to be added soon -
The ingame meshes were then created via decimation from the sculpts.
One other thing I did on the engine side was to take the shader that we had for the ice formations in the main game and repurpose it (via the input textures) to create the wax material. One of the properties that the ice shader had was a cheap SSS that helped create the wax effect when combined with the emissive component.
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Thanks to the MG team and the people who helped bringing this level together, including
Axel Torvenius for the art direction and the creative freedom afforded
Florian Zender
https://www.artstation.com/florianzender
Juan Ocamica
https://www.artstation.com/juanocamica
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Related content:
Mithraeum level - ingame:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qJrwbn