Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Jotunheim kit assets
Jotunheim, according to the Norse mythology, is the mythical world where the creatures known as jötunn live ( sometimes they are described as giants, but that’s not all they are )
In AC : Valhalla we recreated this world, together with it’s capital – Utgard, and the large roots of the cosmic tree Yggdrasil surrounding the place and even disappearing in the sky .
Here I was responsible for the asset kit used to build the large rock Keeps that tower above the village, as well as other types of assets, such as large stone blocks ( to recreate the more ruined parts of the fortress) , the bark covering the roots of Yggdrasil, and some ornamented stone props.
The Keep was definitely a challenge, because it needed on one side clean modularity- carved flat wall parts, windows, doorways, and on the other it needed to mix & blend these pieces with a more rough and organic patches of solid rock that create a varied silhouette in the distance.
Contributors:
-the tileable textures were made by Tsvetelina Valkanova, our texture artist
- the procedural system for placing the bark pieces along the giant roots of Yggdrasil was developed by Georgi Hristov, one of our technical artists
-my Lead, Andrey Stefanov - he provided me with valuable ideas & feedback
- Martin Kamburov used the assets to create the level art in a lot of areas in the game world
This stone gate, the creature and the surrounding ornaments was heavily inspired by the real-world Urnes Stave Viking church, the hardest part actually was doing the initial masking of the ornaments in Zbrush
The stone circle was a pretty big piece, I made initially a quick sketch on a paper dividing it into modular 45 degree pieces that can be combined in a different variations.
Since initially was supposed to be used only near the witch Angrboda’s house, I made the stone piece with her image on it first, and then came with the rest of them
For the bark, covering the giant roots – I did find one pretty awesome tree near my place, so I scanned part of its bark, which later I divided in Zbrush into separate parts that could be used for procedural placement on the roots
For this one, I used a material that used the unique albedo from the scan in the distance ( to avoid texture tiling) but transitioned to similar tileable textures in the middle and close distance to the player
For the smaller pieces that were placed near the playable parts of the level, I added additional details such as moss & lichen growths using alphas. Level Art by Martin Kamburov
For the interior of the stone Keep, I made some more organic-looking and not carved yet pieces of rock that could be placed in the corners of the giant structure
the stone blocks used to populate Utgard with ruins varied in size but using unique baked normal blended with 2 tileable textures on top helped them keep good detail up close
For the exterior, I made some corner assets consisting of more rough& blocky rock in different sizes that can be combined in a lot of variations, as well as flat pieces that can be placed on the keep walls and create additional shape break-up
Since this is a harsh, frozen world covered in ice, I made some ice decals ( inspired by photos of frozen streams and water on cliffs ) that could be placed on the vertical walls of the giant Keeps.
Most of the assets were using unique baked normal mixed with two tileable textures for providing good detail up-close and variety in the texture blending
