Stacking Shelves: Gehn’s Lab
There are several areas in Riven that give players a look behind the curtain, allowing them a fuller glimpse into antagonist Gehn’s personal goals and motivations. One of these is his lab on Boiler Island. Its tables and shelves are full of objects that, if examined closely, will provide answers to many of the player’s questions.
Over the last few weeks, our artists Francois Hurtubise and Nathaniel Grove have been hard at work bringing this area to life. Here are some examples of work currently in progress.
A disassembled Ytram trap
Tools for preparing poisoned dart cartridges
We’d also like to extend a big thank you to all those who contributed to the discussion last month! We were overwhelmed by the response, and enjoyed reading through your suggestions. The passion and attention to detail our fans bring to this project continues to motivate us to do our best possible work. We’re looking forward to discussing other important topics with you all soon.
Drawer contents coming soon!
Welcome to our new team members:
Paul Petre (3D Artist)
June 11th, 2017 at 2:08 am
Great job guys, looking absolutely brilliant, thank you.;-)
June 11th, 2017 at 8:29 am
Awesome!! Keep up the great work.
June 12th, 2017 at 7:21 am
Looks Great!
June 12th, 2017 at 8:33 am
Looks amazing!
June 12th, 2017 at 2:22 pm
Gorgeous!
June 12th, 2017 at 2:57 pm
Wow whee! These look fantastic. Love the high quality texture work.
I’d love to see the sort of interesting with these items on the likes of Myst IV, where you can grab the handle and it animates based on how much push or pull you’re forcing.
June 13th, 2017 at 11:05 pm
Indeed, but that’s not the only realistic thing from Myst IV.
I loved the ability to tap on everything around me and listen to the sound. Not that many sounds were actually needed for this, one for rock, one for metal, one for wood, one for paper and maybe some other materials. I think it’s quite easy to recreate that in Riven.
I also liked how I could hear my pants slide over the stone chair you’re sitting in in Spire and footsteps when you walk around or even turn around. Such small details really make the difference between a game that looks real and a game that feels real.
June 12th, 2017 at 11:18 pm
If I didn’t know anything about Riven, I would say these were pictures of some real items. Truly amazing what one can do with a computer!
What about a short fly-through clip of Gehn’s lab or a short demo once it is ready? The background on these pictures looks good and finished, so I guess the lab is getting close to completion.
June 14th, 2017 at 5:00 pm
This is really impressive. However I was even more impressed by the oririnal Riven. I think your textures could still be improved so as to look even more reality-like.
June 16th, 2017 at 6:41 pm
As usual, the models are perfect and the colors are wrong. Everything is too brightly lit and slightly yellow. In the original game, there were bright spots on the desks directly under the lamps, but most of the lab had muted colors.
I would be interested in reading about how you deal with lighting. How does it affect how you choose textures? How do you make sure shadows appear where they ought − something like camera-matching, perhaps? It seems like lighting is harder to get right than model geometry; is that true, or have you just not gotten to it yet?