UDK - The Backwoods of Mount Vernon

Synaesthesia

I took a trip up to George Washington's Mount Vernon in January and found some scenery that really made an impression on me. Being a Florida native, we don't get this kind of scenery here. I took some reference photos and I've begun laying out my scene.



This project is for my in-laws. They were mentioning to my wife that they've got plenty of paintings and other work from the rest of the family, but nothing from me, so this is going to be my Christmas gift to them. They went up to GW's estate with me and I figured they'd appreciate having a memoir of a place we've all been together. The end result will eventually be a canvas print to hang on their wall, so I'd like to push this pretty far.

I'm not attempting to make a 1 to 1 reproduction of the photo - because really, I've already got that. I could simply print that out if I wanted to. I'd like to put my own personal spin on it, and that's where I'm having a bit of difficulty. I've been out of the loop with UDK for a while now and I haven't had a lot of time to make any personal work outside of my career, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to start again.

I started with creating the wooden fence posts and fence components, then moved on to laying a quick blockout of the leaf cover on the ground.



I feel like the leaves need a lot of tuning to look natural so I'm going to work on it soon. I'm trying to get my trees set up next. I'd like to put in a lot of root coverage on the ground to break up the surface and make the pathway a bit more visually interesting, and to keep the photo in mind as source material.





I've been working on this since last Sunday (10/13), off and on for a couple of hours a night. I'd love some suggestions and critique!

jonas-144

looking good!
Can't wait to see how it turns out

Shiniku

I know this is early on, but once you get more in there you'll definitely need to do a lot with the lighting and colors to evoke the same mood as the photograph.

Looking good so far, though! I'm not really sold on the leaves though, you might work on another underbrush texture to mix in there, and vary up the leaves more. The tree bark doesn't look quite right, maybe too high in contrast, and the tiling is really evident.

Keep at it!

Synaesthesia

Thanks guys. "Early on" is exactly why I posted so I can fix any glaring problems before it becomes too much of a pain later on. I'll keep your suggestions in mind - hopefully I'll have some progress soon.

Synaesthesia

So like most things in my life, my career came first and I forgot about getting this done. This time around, though. This time will be different! I've been grinding out the models needed to start getting this scene together. I'm pretty sure I screwed up the fence poles last year since they look a bit more short/fat than the photo reference does, so that's something to fix as I go along - but as I add more trees to this scene, I feel like I'm making some progress.

Feel free to critique, I'd like to push this farther.

Synaesthesia

Slowly but surely, progress gets made.

snoop

Progress indeed, nice job! The leaves are very nice looking.

Synaesthesia

Thanks, snoop.

I think I'm going to end up going with a different composition, though. I still feel that this is pretty early, so I plan to add modeled pebbles/rocks and more variation in trees with different types of leaves as a possibility. Feel free to suggest what would improve this, though!

Synaesthesia

Getting closer to where I want this to be. I'm having a lot of fun with SSS and parameter-controlled coloration/brightness for the leaves.

My main issue is that I want to get this to print on canvas - so I'd like a minimum resolution of about 3,000 pixels. Unfortunately, tiledshot doesn't work with post-processing very well. Anyone know any work around I can use beyond taking a panorama of images and stitching them together? I'm having trouble reaching higher resolution using the panorama technique.

JedTheKrampus

Maybe this can help: Neogaf Downsampling Guide

ae.

town down the bloom, its way too harsh right meow.

Synaesthesia

I'll probably turn it down. I left it intentionally brighter than I normally would because I plan to print this - every time I've ever printed something, it's darker when printed than it is on my screen - and as far as prints are concerned, I'd rather give my in-laws a print that's a little too bright than give them a print that's way too dark.

@Jed: That's *fantastic* and is exactly the trick I'm looking for here. I can't thank you enough. I'm still at the office, so I'll see if I can check it out this weekend.

Shiniku

I think that goes a bit beyond lightening something up for print. It looks like J.J. Abrams directed that screenshot. Everything is super blown out and the colors are pretty wild. Maybe that's what a forest would look like if I were tripping out on psychedelics.

Beyond that it's looking good man.

Synaesthesia

Shiniku wrote: »

It looks like J.J. Abrams directed that screenshot.

OUCH! That one hurt.

I'll play with it later and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the input lol