Pick of the Day: Darkwood Forest

Darkwood Forest is a work-in-progress experience by C3rb3rus, which reminds me so much of the Ewok village on Endor in the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi. It’s wonderfully atmospheric, and worth taking the time to explore at leisure. C3rb3rus has put a lot of work into this experience, and it shows!

You can take an elevator to the upper level where you can catch an airship and go for a free-wheeling ride through the treetops. It’s a great way to see the whole experience!

But the best part is not the airship or the elevator or the boats, or the eerie green light that illuminates the entire experience. The best part is the animated tree-man created by C3rb3rus and placed in an out-of-the-way spot (can you find him?):

Watch the mesmerizing YouTube video C3rb3rus shared with us, a time-lapse of the entire process of creating and animating this creature!

UPDATE Oct. 25th: C3rb3rus has provided some more information on how he created his tree-guy:

The Tree-guy was created in Zbrush and textured in Substance Painter. I first sculpted the character as a complete figure, than broke it down into pieces so each part, like the head, elbows, fingers, is a single object, beacause Sansar for now only supports object animation. In 3ds Max I than linked the parts to a skeleton (basic biped rig), so they just follow the position and rotation of the bones. With that set up I can now animate the bones. For the export I bake down the position and rotation information to a keyframe animation, each part of the body with its own, and that way I can import it into Sansar.

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