Creating the diorama

Now that the presentation was finished I wanted to make a start on the diorama and try to get it done as quick as possible, so I could focus on the character. I started off with the base, I created this by first making a square and adding quite a few subdivisions into it. I then create a high poly cylinder, I then selected both and went to Mesh>Booleans>Intersection and it gave me the shape I wanted. I then selected the edge and extruded it down, so it looked like it was a chunk of land. Afterwards I went and just moved faces and verts up and down, untill I had my desired shape.

I then created a square plane and shaped it to fit the diorama, I would use this for the water when going into UE4

Next I wanted to make the board walk that the soldiers would walk across to avoid the mud, when I first did this for the blockout I just make them blocks like they were wood, but after some research I found that they would actually be shaped like this

While writing the blog I couldn't actually remember the name given for these boards which is annoying. But I have got this image to show as reference. 

https://tce-live.s3.amazonaws.com/media/media/88169b05-0b76-4c13-b5ca-d0b2c3dac9e5.jpg

Here it is placed into the scene.

Next I worked on the trees , I wanted to make a variety as I knew if I were to only make about 3, being it is such a small scene it would be more noticeable to which have been duplicated.

Here are two images I used as reference. From them you can see that they werent really that tall, especially in the image on the left. I also noticed that they were very bare and dead with many branches missing, I tried to show this when creating mine. And looking at it, when I go to texture them they will be very dark and dull as if they have been on fire. 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAtfEhxm9T3rm3FgrpyMk0cv1e7DokXsX_TEiInbPQNA7oce-XJmuXjwcHZeaRbf3xxZu1l4UI6dO6qsUNbu4Chj2_Rwd39vdmoUkV8VQAwcW0xunUD_fQX_VaX4zt-c0dQd6pPPp4EVEM/s400/west-02.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKKa50Bp-AkqJX2blKTN7YS67iv9nwmIPAyBQwb_5mj_VmVm_8xzw5Jbj5LKhnJKAcUddtSS0N_E9XhrcNzh7m2Rj7fuEyVJdcJVKFCNz4uH0G6Qs_ye9TuTOpygemh6TIje351pgADsQ5/s1600/Americans.jpg

Here I have placed them into my scene, I tried to scatter them around well, so it wasnt too full but were still quite a few.

Next I worked on some barbed wire, I was unsure on how to do this as I thought this may be an expensive way on creating it as there would be quite a few polys just in one object, and then for me to duplicate it around the scene, I imagined this may be quite hard for UE4 to handle. I thought about doing it using an alpha, but Im not a massive fan on using them when you can look at the object from a number of angles as it can disappear. So for now I have created it fairly slow poly. I may change these later on and create a variety of them to break it up. I created these by first using the EP Nurb curve tool to create an uneven line which I then extruded a square face along, and then added in the number of divisions I wanted for it. I did this for each of the lines that went across.

Here is the reference I used when creating the barbed wire.

http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/jpg/barbedWire_WWI.jpg

And here I have placed it around the diorama. I feel this is already starting to look quite good and is bringing the scene together.

I have placed it so the planks would lead off the diorama and the barbed wire would stop when it reaches it, I think this looks quite good and makes the scene look like it could be part of a bigger picture.

I then wanted to create another type of barbed wire to scatter around the scene to fill it up a bit more. I created these, and I used the same method to make the wire as I did the other time, however this time I had it curling around the middle piece of wood. I think I will keep it to just one of these as the shape it too complicated to look like its been duplicated, and when I go to create the cinematic the viewer wont really be looking out to see if its just one mesh. As the idea of it is to be background noise which should have an impact on the scene as a whole.

Here is the reference I used when creating this barbed wire.

http://ww1revisiteddotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/20140303-231455.jpg?w=1024&h=678&crop=1

And here it is placed around the scene. There is still an open space in the middle of the diorama which needs to be filled up, but I shall worry about that later ha!