Among spruce trees and mountains
polycounter lvl 14
Here we go!
So here we go again, some of you have seen me on Facebook or Twitter saying that I'm doing all-nighters every friday-saturday... Yep this is what I'm working on.
I've decided to spend some time with a long-term environment that I will constantly improve over time, either by renewing textures, trying new techniques or simply adding more props to the scene.
I also decided to go for CryEngine with this one so I'm learning the engine from scratch and it'll be a good learning experience to set things up. It is also the reason why it has taken such a long time to get things set up. Right now I wouldn't really say that I'm happy with the visuals but it's a work in progress.
This environment will also be used for me to place props in when I decide to get more into high-poly stuff or want to try new things. It's not really meant to be something that I finish in a month or two but it should also look and be presentable at all times.
FUTURE TO-DO LIST:
* Bushes and Flowers
* Roots and Vegetation Particles
* Add another type of tree (only got spruce in there)
* How do I make medium distance terrain look good?
* MOAR ROCKS
* How do I make a proper river?
* Maybe a waterfall
* Adding displacement/tesselation in cool ways
* Delete all previous CryEngine SDK assets (like the road)
* Adding context to the scene by introducing more meaningful props
* How do I reduce overall noisyness of the scene?
* Harmonize textures and colors
* New awesome skybox
* Clouds ?
* Post-processiong/Time of Day/Fog and other tweaks.
I've decided to spend some time with a long-term environment that I will constantly improve over time, either by renewing textures, trying new techniques or simply adding more props to the scene.
I also decided to go for CryEngine with this one so I'm learning the engine from scratch and it'll be a good learning experience to set things up. It is also the reason why it has taken such a long time to get things set up. Right now I wouldn't really say that I'm happy with the visuals but it's a work in progress.
This environment will also be used for me to place props in when I decide to get more into high-poly stuff or want to try new things. It's not really meant to be something that I finish in a month or two but it should also look and be presentable at all times.
FUTURE TO-DO LIST:
* Bushes and Flowers
* Roots and Vegetation Particles
* Add another type of tree (only got spruce in there)
* How do I make medium distance terrain look good?
* MOAR ROCKS
* How do I make a proper river?
* Maybe a waterfall
* Adding displacement/tesselation in cool ways
* Delete all previous CryEngine SDK assets (like the road)
* Adding context to the scene by introducing more meaningful props
* How do I reduce overall noisyness of the scene?
* Harmonize textures and colors
* New awesome skybox
* Clouds ?
* Post-processiong/Time of Day/Fog and other tweaks.
WIPPAGE & CURRENT PROGRESS:
So yeah, that's it for now.
If you guys have any cool comments or crits, just lay em on me and I'll see what I can do.
Replies
The only major crits I could think of have been covered in your to do list, mainly tree variation and colour variation in the grass areas (should be covered by bushes and flowers).
The only small, really picky crits I can come up with are: The majority of the smaller rocks in the second screen shot look duplicated. The smaller spruce tress on the left in the second screen shot look a little squashed.
That is being really picky though, this looks great and really makes me want to give CryEngine a try! It would be nice to maybe see a fantasy street light or direction sign at the cross roads. Subscribed and I'm looking forward to future updates!
Oh @PixelSuit: Ofc you should try the CE3 it's a great piece of software
to help reduce the noisiness I d suggest to cluster the trees up more and use bushes later on to fill the space. In the 2nd pic the trees are all over the place
Cool progress nontheless
* Adding context to the scene
Designing roughly what this area is like at the start should make this project much smoother as it will dictate your decisions down the road. Having a clear art direction you can be more relaxed and focused with your 'to do' list, rather than fall in the 're-desiging the look' loop.
I quite like this idea that it's a popular tourist area for the views and so you can introduce little pockets of interest, fishing area, observation centre etc. Have areas in the terrain that clearly show it's been weathered by humans and contrast it with natural environmental weathering such as destruction from fallen trees or rocks from above.
Anyway looking forward to your progress
Yeah, looking at it I agree. Considerding I use the small rocks alot I really should make sure I make them look more varied in the shape and size. Maybe even denser as well. The spruce-trees to the left of the 2nd image do look a bit squashed as well. I'll take a look at it!
@odium
I will probably post some kind of workflow of everything later
@FlynT
Thank you! I'm anxious as well xD
@Cube Republic
I understand what you mean, the grass actually bends with the wind but maybe not enough? ^^
@Guriamo
Hey Ben! Yeah It's probably a good idea to get a more varied feeling. Oh yeah the path will be changed for sure, that's just basically a test of how the road system works. It's pretty straight forward. I was going to use it to switch between my road textures to see the result. I'll probably have a big bend somewhere with some cliffs or what not
@Ex-Ray
Thanks! Yes! Context, very important. The scene started out as just a natural environment but I will surely add more stuff to it with more thought behind it.
@e-freak
Yeah I've tried to use the terrain color blending with the grass, however it's not giving me the result I was expecting since the grass looks a bit washed out then as well. I should probably look into it more and experiment. I do fear that my grass texture might have too much AO baked onto the diffuse. Then when using the color-blending it changes the color of the dark-spots of the textures as well giving it a weird look. But thanks for the advice! I will look into it
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Thanks guys for the crits! It's always good that you crit on everything, sometimes it's just better to point stuff out or it will easily be left behind.
Another WIP, made a road-texture, still just adjusting colors on textures, starting to spend a little bit more time on Vista stuff as well as doing some level art stuff & planning. I'm not doing anything fancy yet, soon I probably have to optimize my assets more and create LODs. Oh well, at least it's going forward =P.
I have lots and lots of blockouts just waiting to be done xD
Baby steps!
Keep it up!
Just a minor crit on the trees, maybe you could just add some random scale on the XY axis ? It might feel more natural if some trees are slightly thicker than the others.
Keep going !
Yeah I really should, I think I should probably do the high-passing myself on the terrain textures, I'm still not used to the idea of it xD
@TeriyakiStyle
They are nudged, believe me. =P At a distance though they read as straight. Take a closer look and you'll see some of them actually bend. But yeah I need to add more trees to make it more varied, I'll probably have some proper pine trees in there as well sooner or later
@Snader
If I knew how to do in CryEngine I'd do it a long time ago =P
Good crit
The road texture is lacking in resolution and detail, the material/shader there needs some work.
Needs more grass variation, just slight change in color, more yellow/brownish, but not to a strong degree, and mix it in with the grass you already have.
Besides that, looking really good! And I know it's early WIP, cool that you're showing it to us from the beginning. Please do post some workflow tips here and there and your experience working with the CryEngine SDK.
TL;DR: The border between the mountains' snow zone and non-snow zone should be almost horizontal.
http://ak9.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/2201965/preview/stock-footage-timelapse-of-snow-cap-mountain-landscape-tibet.jpg
http://wiki.fis-ski.com/images/thumb/300px-Snow_line.jpg
http://travelingev.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/mountains-snow.jpg
Yes it's WIP but it's a good crit, I'll definitely see what I can do about it!
@Xendance
Thanks for the crit!
So I took some of your advice into account for this update, it's a minor one, I didn't have a lot of time to work on it.
where I actually spent more time on the mountains. I also made sure that I made them lower. They looked out of scale and a little bit stylized for the look I'm going for. I also made sure they had a little bit more detail.
I'll wait a little before I post the next update after this I want to make sure I optimize my trees, making LODs and more bushes, pines, flowers, rocks etc etc. Sooo I don't know how much time it'll be until the next one. Maybe a week or so ^^
(obvious WIPs in the shot but crit away anyways!