3D Environment (inspired by) Katha Island

[IVotF]

Recently I was looking for a new environment to create, and my mind kept bringing my back to the concept art that Stephan Martinière did for Katha Island. Those pieces have inspired and captivated me the moment that I first saw them.

I took some cues and pieces from the "Courtyard" and "White room" paintings specifically, and pieced together my own interpretation of one of the hallways in the mansion.

The environment was created in Unreal Engine 4. Thank you again to Cyan for re-tweeting me the other day, I appreciate it!

Full-res images are available on my website (2kx1k)
https://blakebjerke.wordpress.com/gallery/kathaisland/





[All assets within the images were created by me, and are in-engine renders. Images have only been modified for size]

[area51]

Very classy! Me like it!

[Acorn1]

gorgeous!

[Teknobubba]

Wow!

[belford]

Oh, very nice.

[janaba1]

Very impressive and sublime ... I love those classy and majestic interpretations and illustrations of D'ni too ... Great job, IVotF ...

[Yali]

This is what I've been waiting for! D'ni brought to modern engines! The artists in the community like yourself should all collaborate Starry Expanse style and build a D'ni/Myst fan game in UE4 with this amazing talent. This is what UE4 is made for!

By the way, can we download this?

[IVotF]

Thank you everyone for the kind words, it was definitely a fun environment to work on.

As far as downloading; I made a few quick adjustments for optimization, threw in a first person camera, and packaged up the scene. The requirements to run it may still be a little high, but hopefully it will run ok on most machines. I've left in the console as well, so you can adjust resolution, show fps, go fullscreen, etc.

It's up on my dropbox now, all you have to do is unzip and there will be a shortcut right inside.
If for any reason that shortcut doesn't work, navigate to: (WindowsNoEditor/KathaIsland_Playable/Binaries/Win64/KathaIsland_Playable.exe)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/djwckgxzbb987ve/KathaIsland_Playable_withConsole.zip?dl=0

[Jaytee]

You have done a marvelous job on this! This is how I pictured in my mind the way Terahnee must have looked in the Book of D'NI . And how the house that Veovis had must have looked like. Keep up the good work. looks amazing!

[Yali]

Just want to add that I've waited since 1998 to see D'ni in Riven quality graphics. Design wise, I'd say this even surpasses Riven. THIS is the game I want to play!

[IVotF]

Thank you for the kind words

Technology for real-time games has come a very long way - and we're finally catching up to pre-rendered mediums because of the new rendering method that's been rolling out for games (Physically-based rendering).

I've been keeping up with what's coming next, and it's only getting better

[janaba1]

When I finally got it to run I knew it was really worth that little extra effort lol ...

I had to reinstall that MS Redistributable 2013 and to get rid of the 'application failed to initialize properly 0xc00007b' error ... don't ask me how I did it, but it finally suddenly worked lol (I couldn't activate the console with the tilde though, but np, I can jump with the spacebar and I force quit with Alt+F4 ) ...

Yeah, it is absolutely classy as already stated above and even more so, when you're moving through that hallway, seeing this all up close and you almost hear or wish to hear your own footsteps, and you can even observe the radiation or glowing of the rays of the sun shining through the windows, it is so beautiful and real ... Thanks for putting this together, IVotF ...

[Yali]

I just posted in the backers forum that 3d artist Joe Perez got hired at Cyan for his Obduction house environment. I really hope they hire you for Obduction and any new Myst game afterwards as this is phenomenal. The level of design goes above and beyond Myst, Riven, Uru.

[IVotF]

Thank you Janaba1, that really means a lot! I'm glad that you got it working in the end, and that it was worth the effort
I'm happy to have shared this with all of you, I had a great time making it, so it really makes me happy that it's been well received.

Thank you Yali; honestly, that would be a lifelong dream come true for me. I would jump on that if given the opportunity. I'll keep an eye out
That's awesome to hear that he got hired for that, congrats to him!