The golden age experience

Artwork Works in Progress
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Hi all,

It’s been a while since I posted some work, most of the time it is in development and it takes month to optimize the scenes.

The project where I currently work on is the golden age experience. Some of you know my previous project the golden age 3Dwhat I released in 2011. In the same year I started working on the next project what is more focused on 1 city and more experience.

I’m working fulltime on the project, we have some great sponsors and that allows me to hire some great artists to bring this all to the next level. Last year I also worked on Tears of Steal, it was a hell of a year but working in a great environment with a lot of talented artists was 1 of the most valuable learning points.

About the project, it’s about a Dutch city called Hoorn, you can watch the first teaser here. Some of you maybe ask yourself, what is the project all about, well, I think I can describe it as a project with no story no clue , just the experience. How does is feels to be there for a couple of minutes in the past, what are people doing etc etc. Cool thing about the projects is that I build everything on old maps and a lot of painting reference, so it has a very realistic feeling.

In Holland this project is very popular, without even releasing anything the project was picked up by national Dutch television and they are going to use it for a prime time TV program, so that’s a great start of maybe something beautiful.

In the end this project gets a wonderful place in a nice big Dutch museum with a huge 3D screen. I’m also working on a Oculus rift port, I have the development kit so I rebuild some scenes to have a game experience. This works with the external blender massive engine created by thorworks.

Enough talking, down here some screens, I hope you guys like it. I hope there is some community who is interested in old medieval city environments.

Thanx to Jeremy Davidson for some fantastic character rigs + animations
Thanx to Dimitri Kalinin and Bruno Cesar of some epic characters.

More info on www.thegoldenage3d.com

You can follow the project on this Facebook page

I also have a twitter account, so if you want to be up to date you can follow me

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Sea Picture
Oculus rift testing

1 Like
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Great that you’re using Sony 3D goggles, but I was wondering: wouldn’t an Oculus Rift with the game engine provide an even better ‘being-there’ experience?

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Good question, when i started this project with the promotion teaser, there was no oculus rift. But today i already have the device and porting the project to the rift. There is also a picture in the thread with my oculus devkit. so there is no more sony goggles

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It just kicks my butt to see things like this. All the walkthroughs that are being generated are such amazing works and this one is beautiful. When deciding to do a project like this, how do you decide when to stop? How many buildings can a visitor walk through? What happens at the boundaries of the model? Is it an open world or do visitors select an area and get a 360-degree look or a guided walk around the block? (I’ve never been to an installation of this sort, 2D or 3D.)

I can’t imagine how hard all this must be and how difficult it is to stick to it and keep improving a scene instead of just calling it DONE and moving to the next part! Fantastic work and congratulations on recognition well deserved by the media.

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I’m flabbergasted! Amazing work, really. I would like to experiment an actual walkthrough with goggles on, for now I have to be content with a 3d player!

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Wonderful work, and undeniably Dutch. The 3rd render is almost like a Dutch Master.

No wonder this got picked up. Amazing work.

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Good point, a scene is never done, but there is a moment that you realise that it’s hard to discover how to improve the scene. When that happens i start working on another scene and after a month, sometimes longer i look again and think… hmm i can fix the issue and start working on the other scene. So scenes are never done, it’s not a big deal because it’s reflecting a moment how far you are in your own progress.

Great example is the following link. I started a thread in 2009 about one of my first projects. Over the years i learned new techniques and the scenes looks way better now. But i also know that the scenes look totally different over 3 years. If you keep that in your mind you know when a scene is done :wink:

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Hi rob, i just want to say that im thrilled to hear more about your future blender - unreal workflow tutorial.