The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask Clock Tower by Kevin Adanan

Idea
This piece was my final year project at Teesside University. Since a child I have always loved Nintendo games and "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" inspired me with it's quirky, eerie and often dark style. The original game was released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64, in 2012 a Spanish artist Pablo Belmonte made a modern intro trailer for the game. This gave me the idea to make a game ready version of the clock tower in the Unreal Development Kit.

Modelling
Work began in July 2013. At first I gathered reference images, drew rough concept work and thought about the asset content of the level. Once I had the look and design of the level I made a block out in Unreal. Once that was locked in I started making individual assets. The first asset I made was the iconic Legend of Zelda pot. I made the low poly in Autodesk 3DS Max and then sculpted the high poly in ZBrush. I brought the asset back into Max and used the projection tool to get the ambient occlusion and normal maps. In Adobe Photoshop I made a cavity map from the normal map and then textured the asset. Practically all the assets went through the same process. For the texturing phase I placed a large focus on making colour specular maps, that would add a contrast to the diffuse texture so to make the asset more interesting to look at and add to the overall feel of the level.

Animation
Basic animation went into the scene in the rotation of the water wheel and the attaching structures.

Material Effects
For a lot of the metal in the level I added subtle reflection effects. I didn't want them to be too strong as I felt with the particle effects and the lighting that having strong reflections would be too much. The roof port hole in which the light shines through required glass/ reflection effects. I placed a texture of the Majora's Mask moon in there as well and subtly added some animation on the stars in the sky. After that I placed a light cone to get the light effect.
For the walls I worked on some vertex painting, I used two types of texture, one was a bright green for general lichen but the other was a dark green for a wet rock look. On the wooden water wheel and mechanism I added some animated caustic effects.

Lighting
The most striking effect comes down from the top of the tower and the sky light. Originally when I envisioned the scene that was the most important feature of the level. I used a dominant spotlight and directional lights with a blue tint and light shafts to get the effect coming down the tower. I animated a directional light for the torch fire to gently flicker it's radius to give the impression of a moving flame. For the rest of the level I added soft blue spot lights.

Particle Effects/ Miscellaneous
To get the fauna effects I made a basic floating effect and plugged into a fire material. This I believe gave a crucial touch to the feel of the level. Afterwards I added fog and wind effects to give the grass some movement.

To present the project I recorded a camera animation in Unreal.

The project received an "A" 74% grade and it was selected to be exhibited at the Expotees Exhibition 2014 at Darlington U.K. in May 2014.

If you have any further questions about the project feel free to contact me at kevin.adanan@gmail.com