Like most of my work, this one also began with a couple of sketches.

Like most of my work, I wrote some backstory for this as well. This story is also an old tale in my other work in progress project. You can skip this next section if you want.

Story

Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled by a tyrant. He was ruthless and ruled with an iron fist. His only adversary was a resistance group and much to his anger his only daughter was also a part of it, since she did not agree with what her father was doing. 

One day something unexpected happened. A loud explosion was heard from the mountains and on inspection a newly formed cave was discovered with an ancient temple within it. And in this temple the townspeople found an unconscious man wearing strange clothes.

The Tyrant takes an interest in this strange man and makes sure he is brought back to health and tricks him into doing his bidding. It is revealed that he has inhuman strength and agility because of which he becomes the tyrant's best weapon. But soon the strange man realises he has been tricked and offers to help the rebel leader instead. An attack is planned and on night the rebels storm the tyrant’s castle. But the fight does not go in the rebels favour. When all hope is lost a dragon appears and tears off some parts of the wall behind the tyrant’s throne turning the tide of the battle. The battle is won, the tyrant is thrown into the dungeons. 

The strange man rips out the tyrants marble throne and keeps the rebel leaders wooden seat in its place. The rebel leader is crowned king and the days go on to be merry for a good few decades.

Work

One of the things I wanted to put emphasis on is the wooden seat. I wanted it to have some sense of regality but then not too grandiose either. I wanted the setting to be a short duration after the story bits, meaning its somewhat new but the throne room hasnt been used as much.

But first of all, I needed to create the room itself. I used cuboids initially but that didn’t work out well for the wall which needed windows. I ended up doing that wall on cinema 4d.

I found some pillars on sketchfab, I settled for a slightly dwarwish style pillar. You can check the credits for the link. 

Luckily, I found a good wooden seat and a good chandelier model as well. (It was super high tris cos it was too realistic, so I replaced it at some point, some whopping 4million tris)

Till this point I was intending this to be a still or video from a static camera, but I realised that VFX graph is not supported with path tracing, so I had to ditch that idea and make the scene an explorable environment, but I did intend to use ray tracing for reflections and GI.

By this point I have added window models, a carpet, another chair model for the new kings ministers as well as a new banner behind the throne.

The scene still felt a little empty, so I ended up adding some banners, more chairs and added some features on the wall as well to add paintings later. You might also notice some yellow/golden ish features on the ceiling as well. I thought it just makes it look a bit more interesting.

The next thing to do was populate the room a bit. I used the Unity splines package to place some chairs. Also, the area behind the ministers' chairs looked a bit empty, so I found some assets to place there as well.

This might not be an obvious thing but when instantiated in perfect lines i felt like it felt a little off, there is some added random rotations to add just a bit of human touch. (+/- 3 degrees along one axis)

I had to pick paintings fit for a throne room, obviously I went with Ted Nasmith .

Absolute legend, check out his work if you can.

Cloth sim

The other things that make the scene look interesting all the cloth decorations on the ceiling and the curtains. While the curtains were easily available on skethfab, the hanging cloth decorations were not found ( mostly because I don't know what theyre called ).

So I ended up modelling a simple oval like shaping and using Cinema4D for the cloth sim and baked the simulation at a relaxed frame and exported the model as FBX.

But now there was another problem, I simply couldn't make just use these everywhere, the structure looked deformed on scaling, so I did what any sane environment designer would do.

I exported the scene as FBX and made specific models for each unique use case and instantiated meshes when the distances were common.

Completion

Here's the completed video. I might update this post, but for now this is it.

Demo

Controls:

WASD - Movement

QE - Elevation

Mouse - Rotation

Credits

https://www.tednasmith.com/site-map/j-r-r-tolkien/

"Gothic Interior Kit (Mid-Poly)" (https://skfb.ly/pzEJC) by Zver 3D is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Table and Chairs" (https://skfb.ly/6Ussy) by Graham is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Chandelier" (https://skfb.ly/oHGVD) by myhalchuk2000 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Red Curtain" (https://skfb.ly/oxRBu) by fellowem is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Throne" (https://skfb.ly/6ZsxQ) by Nils Folker is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Some Props" (https://skfb.ly/6uTpO) by soidev is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Anduril the "Flame of the West"." (https://skfb.ly/6T8Eu) by Imperial Snow Eagle is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Hunting Knife" (https://skfb.ly/oKYp7) by Andriy is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Lewis Chess Set" (https://skfb.ly/6srNq) by The British Museum is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

"Persian Rug" (https://skfb.ly/KWsy) by Nicholas Record is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Curtain" (https://skfb.ly/oHQXO) by milaink is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Goblet (GAMEREADY) Lowpoly" (https://skfb.ly/oGHAv) by vincentkiss is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Alcohol Bottle 02" (https://skfb.ly/pqAoT) by grimmotron is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Ink Bottle with Quill" (https://skfb.ly/oFHzM) by Matthew Collings is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Scrolls Low Poly" (https://skfb.ly/6WRzO) by AzTiZ is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Music by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/sonican-38947841/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=202336">Dvir Silverstone</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=202336">Pixabay</a>

"Medieval Dagger" (https://skfb.ly/6WPTP) by Whatevvs is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Paper Stack" (https://skfb.ly/oI98E) by Vivify Productions is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Image by rawpixel.com

"Kerosene lamp" (https://skfb.ly/onDVN) by AERO3D is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Book Stack" (https://skfb.ly/6RVVB) by Paubr is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Medieval Open Book 1" (https://skfb.ly/6QUXt) by J0Y is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Antique Book Set" (https://skfb.ly/oFYn6) by FrodoUndead is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).