Settlers of Catan is one of my favorite board games, and I love the diverse terrain on the island. I wanted to bring these biomes to life and transform the 2D board into a 3D environment.
The camera follows a dice roll that leads to the 2D board on a table. Once the dice stop rolling, the board comes to life as if awakened by the result of the roll. Terrain grows through the bottom of the board and game pieces fall from the sky into place.
Skills
Storyboarding, 3D Modeling, Textures, Animation, Rendering, 3DS Max, Autodesk Inventor
Animation
Design Intent and Storyboard
My inspiration for this project came from the intro to the tv show Game of Thrones, with a big sweeping camera path and immersive, live terrain. I used the physical Settlers of Catan board as a reference for all of my textures and models.
Materials, Textures, Lighting
To further develop this project, I’d remake the terrain pieces to be full hexagons (without the corner cut out). This way they’d fit flush with each other. I’d also remove other pieces like roads and settlements because after doing the project I realized the appeal is the terrain more than the game pieces. I’d also like to add more little dynamic details to the terrain. I worked on this aspect of the animation a bit, with sheep moving around on the field, cactuses/trees growing as they came up, and windmills turning on the wheat fields, but this could be more exaggerated.
A big part of this project was applying materials and textures to the elements in the scene. In order to make objects look realistic, I sourced images online and applied bitmaps to my surfaces. I focused on scaling and orientation to maintain a consistent appearance across the whole scene. Textures added depth and complexities to flat surfaces and interacts with lighting. I set the scene on a wood surface, like a game table, and added even lighting to mimic an indoor atmosphere
