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Stylized Fantasy Town

polycounter lvl 8
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Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
Yes, I'm back with another one of these. I didn't finish my last handpainted one sadly, but I'm a big fan of this genre and really want a nice portfolio piece.

Pulling what I learned from the arenanet art test and applying it here (but without low poly limits :D )

My main source of reference will be this building here:
http://www.tabletop-world.com/merchantsHouse.php

The plan is to finish that building, meanwhile making it modular. Then I'll break down those modular chunks and start making other buildings with the pieces.

The setting will be a forest clearing probably.

So first up, textures
mat_tests_by_julionicoletti-d5vy231.png
retgredredgt_by_julionicoletti-d5vivo3.png
gjjjgjg_by_julionicoletti-d5v87fz.png
fsdfsfs_by_julionicoletti-d5w56jb.png



Working on windows right now, and my brother said I should redo the tiling grey brick texture so it matches the stone blocks, so that'll be next. Also the tiling wood could probably be tiled three or 4 times to match the door.


Let me know what you think so far!

Replies

  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    the grey bricks don't really fit in with the rest of the textures
  • MeshModeler
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    MeshModeler polycounter lvl 11
    Textures rule.
  • JamieRIOT
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    JamieRIOT polycounter lvl 6
    I like the textures overall, but the contrast in the grey bricks is clashing with the rest of the scene so far.
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Alright guys redid the brick texture. Added wood beams right in the texture to get a better transition between materials. Onto windows and then shingles.
    grggrtg_by_julionicoletti-d5wbn8c.png
    asdsaed_by_julionicoletti-d5wbn63.png
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Bit of an update
    showthread.php?t=117342
    srsgsdghd_by_julionicoletti-d5wd3ce.png
    dddsfdfsfg_by_julionicoletti-d5wd3b1.png
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    I'm loving this clean style! Looks very modular and loads of fun to put together.
  • Aerashi
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    Aerashi polycounter lvl 9
    Very crisp nicely reading textures. Really liking this. I also like that you've hit the "masses don't read text" issue by commenting straight on to the pics :D

    I liked the extra beams around the door that you removed. Maybe too much but personally I think you've removed a bit too much. I'd also try maybe cutting the lower stone wall in half horizontally and having the top half be the wattle & daub / plaster. The base currently looks a bit too much like a smithy or fortress. [Edit - just saw the original ref, fair enough! :)]
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks guys! Yup, it's been a lot of fun so far.
    I'm probably going to redo the base (again -.-) because I'm still not quite happy with how it's looking. In UDK it looks awful with tesselation (triangles are very visible, despite having a polycount of around 200 tris on the flat planes of the wall.)

    So, update time. I was helped with the shader for the brick/plaster (I had no idea how to transition more than 2 materials without vertex painting them separately) Pretty happy with it so far. :D

    I also made shingles. Decided to have geo for each shingle. The roof for that small bit there is about 1,200 tris or so. I think overall it's totally worth it.

    Still not sure about shingle colour...blue looks very goofy...


    And I started making the wall pieces modular. Here's how it's all looking in UDK so far:


    ggdcgbgdg_by_julionicoletti-d5wms9u.png
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    Lovely! I really like where this is going!
  • snah
    Looks great dude! I have a question, how did you transition more than 2 materials without vertex painting them separately?
  • sybrix
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    sybrix polycounter lvl 12
    This is looking stellar, Selaznog. Love seeing your work develop to even higher levels. The blending of the plaster and brick textures looks great, I'm also curious how you did the material. Keep these awesome updates coming. ;)
  • Jessica Dinh
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    Jessica Dinh polycounter lvl 10
    Love your materials :)! I like how you gave the shingles geo, looks much better!
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Here's a quick update. I've been workin hard since my last post :P

    @snah and sybrix: What you need to do is lerp 2 materials into one material (plaster lerped into dirt, and that lerp lerped with brick). Then you need to remap the 0-1 on the vertex colours. Here's the shader network:
    dscsdcsd_by_julionicoletti-d5wnv04.png

    Roof chunks are finished for the most part:
    cedfrsrge_by_julionicoletti-d5wnucv.png

    Trying to place the shingles randomly was a royal pain in the butt:
    fsdffdsf_by_julionicoletti-d5wnve3.png

    And would someone be able to give me pointers on the shadows in UDK? I don't want them that dark. I want them to be similar to the default Marmoset lighting (check some of my early Marmo screens). I used red in the screenshot so it's easier to see what I'm talking about (my lightmaps are all 128x128).
    asdasdsa_by_julionicoletti-d5wnv34.png
  • danpaz3d
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    danpaz3d polycounter lvl 7
    To improve that shadow there's many different ways. Here's easiest I can think of.
    - Just above the Env Colour you mentioned there's 'Num indirect lighting bounces', put it up to 4/5 and see how it goes.
    - Put in a skylight. Content Browser > Actors > Skylight (in search bar). It's basically ambient lighting.
    Great improvements and nice style. Looking great!
  • DWalker
    It looks like you've lost a crossbeam on the second floor around the corner from the two lit windows. There's a solid black section that is suspiciously beam-shaped...

    You might want to add some chimneys. Before central heating, each room needed a fireplace if it was to be heated. Servants were fine in dank, dismal, frozen rooms, but for quality folk... :P
    chimPot64tudor.JPG
  • JamieRIOT
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    JamieRIOT polycounter lvl 6
    I really like how this has come along. The shingled roofing looks really nice, but also really expensive.
  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    Hi.Looks nice, especialy the roof.I made a fantasy house, with near the same geo detail on the roof, and it looks a lot more better then any material tricks like normalmapping or parallax, except pixel displace, but i cant deal with it yet. A little idea about that roof. Why dont you make a modular chunk, and copy paste that?you can vertexpaint dirts,moss,etc to it later to hide the modularity.btw, this is, how my version looks:
    http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4552/roofgeo.jpg
  • _DMage_
    dddsfdfsfg_by_julionicoletti-d5wd3b1.png
    Looking like the good old polygon technique amazing!!
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    danpaz3d wrote: »
    To improve that shadow there's many different ways. Here's easiest I can think of.
    - Just above the Env Colour you mentioned there's 'Num indirect lighting bounces', put it up to 4/5 and see how it goes.
    - Put in a skylight. Content Browser > Actors > Skylight (in search bar). It's basically ambient lighting.
    Great improvements and nice style. Looking great!

    Thanks Dan, the skylight worked like a charm!


    @DWalker, the beam situation has been fixed, thanks for pointing that out :P
    I'm going to do some chimney sketches next, and try to come up with a unique silhouette. Maybe a big chimney and a smaller version that I can sprinkle around.

    @Jamie, the roof is pretty expensive. I have 3 sizes; 10k tries, 20k tris, and 30k tris. I can probably reduce each one between 15-20% by taking out the faces that aren't visible.

    @Obscura, yeah I made a modular chunk and duplicated it around (you can kind of notice the tiling in the screenshot of the coloured shingles). Definitely saved a lot of time :P I like the way you did yours...makes a lot more sense having the beams going down the edges. I might do that, but I'm worried about losing the silhouette of the shingles.



    Time for a window update. Played with my textures and existing models a bit, and made some window variants.
    dcvcvdv_by_julionicoletti-d5wqk0b.png


    And here's how they look in UDK
    town_wip_by_julionicoletti-d5wqk2q.png


    Still a lot of lightmap issues giving me headaches...
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Post your light map uv's and where you are having issues.
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Hey Zac, I figured out the lightmaps for the most part. Just really time consuming (didn't notice that when I hit "layout uvs" some of the shells overlapped on my lightmap).

    New issue. Whenever I import my large roof into UDK, it's all messed up.
    The one on the right works, but as you can tell, the one on the left is all gooby

    ascasascxa_by_julionicoletti-d5wwon9.png



    EDIT: As for actual art, here's what the roof material looks like when vertex painted. I also added more variation to the tile colours. Critiques appreciated!
    adadwdwqd_by_julionicoletti-d5wwp74.png
  • Fwap
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    Fwap polycounter lvl 13
    Loving this so far! Keep it up!
    As for the roof issue, i can only take a stab at it but are your Xforms reset?
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    To be honest, I don't know what and xform is : S However I did try separating and recombining the mesh, and exporting it to a new scene and package. I think this is one of those situations where I'll just have to remake that asset.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Are those roofs like 7500~10000 triangles apiece?
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Yes they are.
    Isn't it wonderful? :)


    I may go back and use a displacement map instead...
  • AtticusMars
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    AtticusMars greentooth
    Selaznog wrote: »
    To be honest, I don't know what and xform is : S However I did try separating and recombining the mesh, and exporting it to a new scene and package. I think this is one of those situations where I'll just have to remake that asset.
    What happens when you run into the problem again? you just remake the asset every time?

    Even if you decide to remake the roof so that you can keep on going, I think you should make a thread in the tech talk forum to try to solve this. An asset failing to import correctly is a showstopping problem, not the type of thing you want to ignore in my opinion.

    Reset xform is a button on the far right tab of your command pallette. The tab with the hammer icon. Press it with your object selected and it'll add a reset xform modifier to the stack that you can collapse or export as is.

    Lookin really sweet so far man
  • Aerashi
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    Aerashi polycounter lvl 9
    The new roof looks sweet. I think it's a hefty poly increase but if you're not worried about that for your final usage for the piece then that's all good :)

    One thing I'd say as no one else has mentioned it - I'm personally not liking the new 2nd level wall. The plaster peeling away to show bricks underneath doesn't make sense. I believe that kind of wall would be built so that as the plaster pulls away you'd see insulation materials, not brick. Also, the fact that you're placing brick on a wood frame just looks visually unbalanced.

    Keep this up, enjoying watching your dev on this!
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks guys, I figured out the issue (well, one of my buddies did). Just needed to separate it into 2 meshes and that seemed to work fine. Somewhat of a small update, but here's what I worked on today. Dragon head (in my reference picture, theres that lion head...I like dragons more than lions...)
    dragon_head_by_julionicoletti-d5x0etr.png

    Sculpt:
    drgdrgrsd_by_julionicoletti-d5wz5vx.png




    Kind of worried this won't fit with the rest of the scene...fingers crossed.

    Aerashi wrote: »
    The new roof looks sweet. I think it's a hefty poly increase but if you're not worried about that for your final usage for the piece then that's all good :)

    One thing I'd say as no one else has mentioned it - I'm personally not liking the new 2nd level wall. The plaster peeling away to show bricks underneath doesn't make sense. I believe that kind of wall would be built so that as the plaster pulls away you'd see insulation materials, not brick. Also, the fact that you're placing brick on a wood frame just looks visually unbalanced.

    Keep this up, enjoying watching your dev on this!


    Thanks for the input! With the brick/plaster, I was following the reference in the image I posted. For the vertex blending I googled "plaster on brick" and found a lot of reference to that kind of material. Not too sure what I should do about the wood beams though...They are kind of a staple of the scene :/
  • Chase
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    Chase polycounter lvl 9
    That shadee looks completly overwhelming. Anyway to break it down for a newb?
  • PhoenixWolf
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    PhoenixWolf polycounter lvl 9
    i love the cleanliness of the textures gives it a welcoming feel to it keep it going and man those textures pop
  • SaferDan
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    SaferDan polycounter lvl 14
    Love the texture on that head, looks beautiful <3
  • 3dcaspar
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    3dcaspar polycounter lvl 10
    I want to have sex with these textures! :D!!
    Nah, seriously, you created some beautiful art here! I love the style!
  • E_Hollaway
    Nice, props for that website you provided, table top world. I will definitely be using it for reference in the future!
  • Impala88
    your roof problem may be caused by a large amount of verts.

    Using multiple smoothing groups (which i asume you are for all those tiles) will add a ton more verts to the mesh as it's basically detatching every single poly as a seperate element on export. If it makes too many, your mesh is fucked when you bring it into the engine.

    However, this only happened for me on a skeletal mesh, can't say i've tried it on a static object, but it's worth a look. Try cutting the mesh in half along splits in the tiles to hide the seam and then bring it in as 2 objects rather than one, see if that fixes it.

    That's if resetting xform doesn't work.
  • sybrix
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    sybrix polycounter lvl 12
    Selaznog wrote: »

    ascasascxa_by_julionicoletti-d5wwon9.png



    Oh god... been a while since I've seen this problem. Giving me nasty flashbacks.

    This happened to be when I would re-import an FBX that was already in my scene into my package that had edited verts. Freeze/Resetting transformations didn't solve this, I had to export another FBX, import that into UDK with a new name, and replace the mesh with the newly imported mesh.

    And yeah, better to figure this out before it happens again, you shouldn't have to remake an asset because of something like this.

    EDIT: You could also try exporting it as an OBJ, then importing the OBJ into your modeling packing and exporting that as the new FBX
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Sorry guys, no updates yet. Tonight I'm working on a cobbly road. I'm going to livestream my workflow because some of my students were having trouble with tiling and stuff today (first day of teaching :D )



    Anyways, here's my livestream. I'll try and keep it under 4 hours or so, feel free to pop in and throw critique at me!
    http://www.livestream.com/julionicoletti


    Here's what I did during the livestreaming. I have a road now!
    cobblestone_by_julionicoletti-d5xrlb9.png
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Hokay guys, not a huge update as I've been pretty busy with other stuff lately.

    I made a dirt material (multiple photo textures using ndo2)
    0027_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gwg.png

    I started making house prefabs:
    0032_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gnw.png
    0031_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gom.png
    0029_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gq2.png
    0030_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gp9.png


    Also I blocked in a big fantasy tree. Grabbed a bunch of inspiration from old oak trees. I love the way their branches are so heavy that they sink low to the ground.
    0033_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gn4.png

    (disregard the brick texture, I just can't stand default UDK material)
    0028_by_julionicoletti-d5y8gt2.png

    As you can see I also made a brick chimney, some smoke, some more vertex colour experiments, and played around with the colours of the brick and plaster some more. I spent ages trying to get the windows to look good, but I'm still not happy with them. I guess what I'll end up doing is generating a cube map of the final scene and using that as a reflection vector.


    Time to stop noodling though, I want to have this level blocked out by the end of the week, rocks, cliffs, forest stuff and all.


    I've sort of been getting tunnel vision on the house stuff...are assets repeating too much (like the windows and parts that jut out)


    (vertex colours on the small houses were obliterated when I made them prefabs)
  • AkiRa
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    AkiRa polycounter lvl 6
    This looks really, really great so far! I love your texture work and the shapes and shilouttes of your houses are also awesome!
    I always wanted to build a medieval fantasy town like this but failed every time which makes this even more amazing for me to see how you do it piece by piece.
    The general shapes of your tress looking really cool and fantasy-ish. I really like stuff like that.
    I'll definatley keeping an eye on this and looking forward to see more progress! :)
    Keep up the great work!
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks AkiRa! Your sci-fi scene is really coming along by the way, loving the high polys

    Re-did the tree. Studied more pictures of oaks. Much happier with how this turned out. Tomorrow I'll start sculpting it, but before I do I'm open to critique
    tree_block_in_by_julionicoletti-d5yf7c7.png


    Tried to make each side unique enough to duplicate it into a forest, but similiar enough that you don't notice the tiling.
  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Still chipping away at this slowly.

    Went for a walk in the park today which was kind of inspiring

    I'm not too sure what I'm going to do about the bark... not too happy with how it looks so far.

    043_by_julionicoletti-d5yuhf0.png

    044_by_julionicoletti-d5yuhel.png

    037_by_julionicoletti-d5yqinc.png

    I'll also put a gradient on the tree, like this
    042_by_julionicoletti-d5yqike.png
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