Rukwa Rift
This was a project I worked on at the GRID (Games Research and Immersive Design) Lab. We collaborated with the paleontology department because they discovered fossils that had never been uncovered before. Our job was to recreate a section of South Africa called the Rukwa Rift as it would have existed 16-25 million years ago, including these new animals. I created a lot of the vegetation and a few of the animals for this project.
This is a quick walkthrough of our "completed" version of Rukwa. Unfortunately, due to our small team size and a lack of time we had to end with this version. If we had more time, we would have liked to create more animals and implement more of them into the project.
These are the trees and bushes I made using SpeedTree. I based all of them off of current existing shrubbery in Africa, per the instructions of the paleontology department.
While there is an option to randomly make trees in SpeedTree, I chose to "hand draw" each branch. This way I could create a more authentic looking asset.
In addition to greenery assets, I also worked on a few animals for this project. I modeled, rigged, and animated this rocket frog from scratch.