Western Winter Hideout - WIP

Stockwell

This is a new portfolio piece I've been working on for some weeks now. I have one week to finish it up, so I thought I'd come seek the wise council of you scholarly Polycounters. Feel free to stab, jab, punch, and burn!

Update:



Older:



Things I plan to do before final:
Red = Done
-Redo UDK Landscape for hills in the background
-Atmosphere fog.
-Finalize a few last props and textures. - Started
-Anything you fine folks think can help improve the piece.
-a Boulder...

My next project is going to be a stagecoach, which will eventually end up as the hero prop of the scene.

Stagecoach Update:





Thanks!

-Stockwell

JoshWilkinson

This is a very strong piece! A couple of things stand out to me though. First is that the planks in the silo are massive. I'd add a TexCoord node to it and repeat it a couple of times over. Second is that the clumps of snow on the roof don't seem to make much sense, particularly the one that's sloped on the top.

Keep at it, and I look forward to watching this grow stronger.

Tcell

Hey there! It's a nice piece you got there and I agree with sunkist also. I noticed right off the bat too, the ground texture right near the open barn door seems wavy.. I don't think it goes well with your barn atmosphere. Also, add some more objects or detail inside the barn where the door is opened. It just looks like an empty space. But the scenery and look is a great start!

Stockwell

Thanks for the comments Sunkist and Tcell!!!

@Sunkist - I was most definitely going to rework the snow clumps on the barn, as well as add some to the silo and windmill, the sloping one I think could be pulled up far more and the one closest to the camera should stay flush with the edges of the roof and not clip through it either. And thanks for the shoutout on the silo. Not such an easy fix though as each plank is it's own 6 sided cube, I did this for the barn so I can have ambient lighting coming through the seems but I guess it's not very necessary for the silo. I'll put some work into making those smaller. Thanks!

@Tcell, I've been thinking about what kind of assets I could use here to populate the scene a bit more, I was thinking a Hay Bail, barrel or chest, and Horse Stables (using the fences in the scene).

As for the wavy mud, I was kind of at a loss as to what kind of sculpt to knock out for the mud I wanted to pull off so that's what I came up with. Any reference to anything you think might work better?

Thanks you guys!! Gettin back to work...

-Stockwell

Stockwell

Did some work this morning, mainly breaking up the Silos' planks, started my final textures, and worked on atmosphere fog and lighting. Also redid my landscape as well as started my skydome



Still want to revisit the mud, snow clumps and work more on the skydome texture more

Moosebish

You might want to mess with the sky dome, its way too small and you can see the mountains curving towards the top. If you are just going to have a couple beauty angles, you'll be fine with a couple planes... The rest of the scene looks really nice though, good work on the wood texture

Stockwell

Thanks Moosebish!!

I decided to just rid myself of the skydome and decided to see what a mountain backdrop mixing landscape and geo would look like. I used a UDK asset as a placeholder just to see what the effect could be, I'm not crazy happy with it but I thought id get your opinions:

If I made my own Mountain peaks, would the mountain backdrop be worth it?

and Which lighting setup do you think is working best, warm or cool lighting, with or without a background?



Thanks!!!

-Stockwell

Stockwell

Got back to some serious work here, I've done a big lighting and post-processing pass (I think it may still be a little blown out, maybe i could get some of your opinions on that) and I started work on my Hero Prop which you may have seen in another thread but I'll just start posting progress here.

Scene:



Stagecoach:



Comments always appreciated

-Stockwell

MeshModeler

Nice fixes

Im really glad you kept it as a scene rather than a turntable.

keep it up!!

Stockwell

Thanks man! It would be on a turntable right now if it hadn't been for your in put. Post Processing definitely helped out big time on my newest lighting pass so thanks!!!

I'll make sure you see the final product when it's done!

DWalker

The snow on the inside of the barn on the ceiling (the underside of the roof) is very odd. Unless the barn has been long abandoned, the roof would be mostly water-tight; even if there were large holes in the roof, most of the snow would fall through, exposing the sky.

The snow on top of the roof looks too linear, overall. Snow tends to be more irregular, coming off in more rounded sheets.


The snow drift at the peak of the roof looks very blocky, more so since it is on the silhouette - a few dozen extra polys would really help here. I'd also expect more of a drift on the leeward side of the building, both at the upper roof-lower roof junction and at the ground-wall junction, created by the slowed wind depositing some of the blowing snow.

The broken vertical planks on the walls also seem very odd. Unless the roof is collapsing under the weight of the snow, wooden beams don't generally break like this. Wood rot might eventually destroy individual planks, causing them to fall out, but even those don't buckle. You really don't need to create visual interest here, anyway, so I'd keep them whole, possibly removing an individual piece of wood if you find it necessary.

For overall lighting, remember that direct light is much weaker and ambient light much stronger on overcast days. I'd expect softer shadows overall, except for those cast by the interior light.

Stockwell

Almost done with the high poly of the stagecoach, I want this piece to fit well in my scene as a hero prop but be well enough executed to stand alone as a portfolio piece for vehicles, which I would someday like to develop my work towards more, as well.

Comments welcome!!!





-Stockwell

Stockwell

Thanks everybody! I just finished up the last high-poly details so now it's on to the low poly and baking, this will definitely be the most tedious bake I have yet to do but I'm excited. Will post updates soon.