Whisper of Nashira
(wip)

For this project, I wanted to try my hand in building my own complex environment. My goal is to ultimately use lighting and texturing to drive the narrative of a temple devoted to a goddess of the stars who blessed her devout followers with the gift of a portal leading to other worlds scattered across the universe.

For a more detailed process blog that I maintained while working on this project, go here.

Programs: Maya, Houdini, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Substance Designer

Concepting

Moodboard

I want to convey the passage of time (from early afternoon to ≈5/6pm) through lighting, so while the overall tone should stay fairly bright/warm throughout the composition, there will be a transition from normal daylight to more of a golden hour/sunset type of light.

Environment References

The general idea is that there's a floating island that has somehow eroded/detached itself from surrounding cliff faces that humanity had figured out a way to inhabit/build on. For the real world references of how I'm wanting to design/texture the island and its surrounding environment, I found really cool images of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China. The park features massive vertical pillars of rock formations and dense foliage resulting from years of serious erosion. Also if they kind of look familiar, the national park was featured in the Avatar (2009) film as the "Hallelujah Mountains" in Pandora.

Sundial/Ruins References

For the ruins on the top of the island, I want one of the main features to be a sundial surrounded by a circular formation of megaliths, like the Druid Temple in Yorkshire or the ever popular Stonehenge. The front of the island will be facing southeast so the sun sets directly behind the Sundial. The idea is that when sunlight hits the dial at a specific time in the evening, it will cast a shadow of a star on the disk relief sculpture of the goddess and reveal the portal to another galaxy.

"Portal" Reference

Instead of the generic glowy, swirly, interdimensional portal that we're used to seeing in the media, I want the portal to be initially read as a relief sculpture of a deity. When the shadow to the sundial is in it's specific position, the deity's mouth will open to reveal the portal or other world. Most of my inspiration comes from the Bocca della Veritá in Italy, which is thought to have been a drain cover featuring the face of the titan god Oceanus. Instead of Oceanus, I'm planning to have this modeled in the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Nut (pronounced "Newt"), the goddess of the sky and mother of the cosmos.

Environment References

The general idea is that there's a floating island that has somehow eroded/detached itself from surrounding cliff faces that humanity had figured out a way to inhabit/build on. For the real world references of how I'm wanting to design/texture the island and its surrounding environment, I found really cool images of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China. The park features massive vertical pillars of rock formations and dense foliage resulting from years of serious erosion. Also if they kind of look familiar, the national park was featured in the Avatar (2009) film as the "Hallelujah Mountains" in Pandora.

Sundial/Ruins References

For the ruins on the top of the island, I want one of the main features to be a sundial surrounded by a circular formation of megaliths, like the Druid Temple in Yorkshire or the ever popular Stonehenge. The front of the island will be facing southeast so the sun sets directly behind the Sundial. The idea is that when sunlight hits the dial at a specific time in the evening, it will cast a shadow of a star on the disk relief sculpture of the goddess and reveal the portal to another galaxy.

"Portal" Reference

Instead of the generic glowy, swirly, interdimensional portal that we're used to seeing in the media, I want the portal to be initially read as a relief sculpture of a deity. When the shadow to the sundial is in it's specific position, the deity's mouth will open to reveal the portal or other world. Most of my inspiration comes from the Bocca della Veritá in Italy, which is thought to have been a drain cover featuring the face of the titan god Oceanus. Instead of Oceanus, I'm planning to have this modeled in the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Nut (pronounced "Newt"), the goddess of the sky and mother of the cosmos.

Environment References

The general idea is that there's a floating island that has somehow eroded/detached itself from surrounding cliff faces that humanity had figured out a way to inhabit/build on. For the real world references of how I'm wanting to design/texture the island and its surrounding environment, I found really cool images of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China. The park features massive vertical pillars of rock formations and dense foliage resulting from years of serious erosion. Also if they kind of look familiar, the national park was featured in the Avatar (2009) film as the "Hallelujah Mountains" in Pandora.

Sundial/Ruins References

For the ruins on the top of the island, I want one of the main features to be a sundial surrounded by a circular formation of megaliths, like the Druid Temple in Yorkshire or the ever popular Stonehenge. The front of the island will be facing southeast so the sun sets directly behind the Sundial. The idea is that when sunlight hits the dial at a specific time in the evening, it will cast a shadow of a star on the disk relief sculpture of the goddess and reveal the portal to another galaxy.

"Portal" Reference

Instead of the generic glowy, swirly, interdimensional portal that we're used to seeing in the media, I want the portal to be initially read as a relief sculpture of a deity. When the shadow to the sundial is in it's specific position, the deity's mouth will open to reveal the portal or other world. Most of my inspiration comes from the Bocca della Veritá in Italy, which is thought to have been a drain cover featuring the face of the titan god Oceanus. Instead of Oceanus, I'm planning to have this modeled in the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Nut (pronounced "Newt"), the goddess of the sky and mother of the cosmos.

Environment References

The general idea is that there's a floating island that has somehow eroded/detached itself from surrounding cliff faces that humanity had figured out a way to inhabit/build on. For the real world references of how I'm wanting to design/texture the island and its surrounding environment, I found really cool images of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China. The park features massive vertical pillars of rock formations and dense foliage resulting from years of serious erosion. Also if they kind of look familiar, the national park was featured in the Avatar (2009) film as the "Hallelujah Mountains" in Pandora.

Sundial/Ruins References

For the ruins on the top of the island, I want one of the main features to be a sundial surrounded by a circular formation of megaliths, like the Druid Temple in Yorkshire or the ever popular Stonehenge. The front of the island will be facing southeast so the sun sets directly behind the Sundial. The idea is that when sunlight hits the dial at a specific time in the evening, it will cast a shadow of a star on the disk relief sculpture of the goddess and reveal the portal to another galaxy.

"Portal" Reference

Instead of the generic glowy, swirly, interdimensional portal that we're used to seeing in the media, I want the portal to be initially read as a relief sculpture of a deity. When the shadow to the sundial is in it's specific position, the deity's mouth will open to reveal the portal or other world. Most of my inspiration comes from the Bocca della Veritá in Italy, which is thought to have been a drain cover featuring the face of the titan god Oceanus. Instead of Oceanus, I'm planning to have this modeled in the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Nut (pronounced "Newt"), the goddess of the sky and mother of the cosmos.

Environment References

The general idea is that there's a floating island that has somehow eroded/detached itself from surrounding cliff faces that humanity had figured out a way to inhabit/build on. For the real world references of how I'm wanting to design/texture the island and its surrounding environment, I found really cool images of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in China. The park features massive vertical pillars of rock formations and dense foliage resulting from years of serious erosion. Also if they kind of look familiar, the national park was featured in the Avatar (2009) film as the "Hallelujah Mountains" in Pandora.

Sundial/Ruins References

For the ruins on the top of the island, I want one of the main features to be a sundial surrounded by a circular formation of megaliths, like the Druid Temple in Yorkshire or the ever popular Stonehenge. The front of the island will be facing southeast so the sun sets directly behind the Sundial. The idea is that when sunlight hits the dial at a specific time in the evening, it will cast a shadow of a star on the disk relief sculpture of the goddess and reveal the portal to another galaxy.

"Portal" Reference

Instead of the generic glowy, swirly, interdimensional portal that we're used to seeing in the media, I want the portal to be initially read as a relief sculpture of a deity. When the shadow to the sundial is in it's specific position, the deity's mouth will open to reveal the portal or other world. Most of my inspiration comes from the Bocca della Veritá in Italy, which is thought to have been a drain cover featuring the face of the titan god Oceanus. Instead of Oceanus, I'm planning to have this modeled in the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Nut (pronounced "Newt"), the goddess of the sky and mother of the cosmos.

Concept

Modeling

1. The Temple

While I didn't initially think to make the geometry modular, I ended up breaking the temple up into sections anyways. So the towers, columns, roof tiles, steps, and the corner porticoes are all individual pieces that can be duplicated and snapped into place; whereas the walls, the central tower, and the roof are each whole pieces.

The shikara (face towers) were especially fun to make since I was able to sculpt on the facial reliefs in ZBrush.

Models

2. The Ruins

For the ruins on the top of the island I started by setting up the center altar that will serve as the gateway to another realm. I took a lot of inspiration from lotus flowers as they're a symbol of good fortune in Buddhism and incorporated the petals into various elements of the altar design in order to signify the blessing of safe passage on those who decide to journey through the portal.

For the stones, I made a few different variations by altering the vertices of a few cubes to create an irregular rock-type look and used MASH to randomize them around the altar and sundial.