[WIP] Castle Grayskull

DudeinCA

Hello Polycount,

Started working on a Castle Grayskull here and would just like to show what I have to so far. Most things are pretty set like the towers and windows, but still a lot of work left.
The rocks and spine still have a lot of work left. I really would like an opinion of how the skull is looking so far. I don't usually do characters, so it was kind of fun to work on the skull, but I feel like it could still be better. I do plan to combine all the teeth into one mesh to save a lot of polys and make it look more like a solid piece.






Referance (the statue version)

http://www.actionfigurepics.com/2012/10/nycc-2012-icon-heroes-castle-grayskull

Snafubar7

This is going to be pretty awesome, can't wait to see it happen.

As an environment person with no character experience at all, I think the skull looks great.

I'm curious to see what you do about color variation on the castle, as obviously it would be a bit boring if you stuck with the reference and went all green :P I love spooky stylistic stuff and use lots of greens/purples/blues whenever I go for that look. Seems like a fit here too maybe?

DudeinCA

Just did some quick renders in Maya to show what I got so far. I have my normal and alpha maps on it with some color. Gonna get it into UDK next. Still a lot to do...

JoshWilkinson

found this concept art that may be of use to you"

DudeinCA

Got it textured and in UDK

Tobbo

This is really inspiring. I love this. Hope to see more!

foredea

aww... nice work! I'm looking forward to see final

DudeinCA

Update!

Mr Smo

cool, i really like those rocks and how they sit in the terrain

DudeinCA

Thanks. I still feel like I'm missing something. Probably need to add some vegetation.

aajohnny

Looks pretty cool, I agree with you, vegetation, maybe some moss in between the stones. There isn't too much going on in the environment, maybe fill it in a bit more.

X-One

Hey Man, nice work overall, but you're painting in too much lighting information on the bricks. By painting in the crevices of the brick as strongly as you have, you're flattening out your normal map completely. On that same note, you might want to play with your spec/gloss map to help sell the brick more convincingly.

Beyond that, you might want to consider blending the castle into the ground via vertex colour. Additionally, dressing the environment with some creepy dead trees, rubble, and whatever other props you might expect to see will go a long way.

Once that stuff is tackled, it'll be time to look at lighting.

DudeinCA

Thanks X-One

I added some trees, rocks, and more grass. A couple of problems have occurred when rendering now:
- The trees are not casting shadows
- Some weird shadows are appearing on the bricks of the castle

I'm guessing both problems could be occurring from the light maps. But the trees a light map (UDK Generated). The rocks are casting shadows on the ground so I don't think its a problem with the landscape. The bricks never had this problem before.
I was messing around with the LODs and might have messed up the castle when testing the options with it. So I might just re import it and see if that works.

Last question, this takes 2 hours to render on production lighting. Is this normal? I do have LODS set up, I have a lightmass importance volume around just the middle part, and the LightMap Resolutions arent too high. The highest is the castle at 128, the rest are 64 for the close meshes and 16 farther away. I'm sure it is because of all the transparent tress and grass though.

Thanks!

Bolt

Nice progress here, it's looking much better with moss on the walls and some trees filling up the environment! Did you place all trees by hand or did you paint them with a brush in UDK? I do feel the rock placement is a bit random though, especially in the last screenshot. Maybe position the rocks in clusters or more natural places. For instance, think of where water could have eroded the soft ground away and revealed the underlying stones.

DudeinCA

@Bolt - Thanks, I placed the trees that were near the middle by hand so I could get the shadows and vertex paint them. The rest I used the were placed with the foliage tool.

I don't even know why I asked those questions, I figured out the answers the next day, lol

peanut™

looked lowkey at first, but im starting to like this piece.

shrogg

Really cheesy suggestion, but it may look awesome to have a badass volcano to give some life to your background.
Something like this, Its from a game called Chivalry (They have some seriously cool maps in that game)