awsome mate! great work on the textures so far!
my only crit would be that there's some problem with the scale. on the floor those tiles look to huge for me and it kills the whole thing a bit, this way it kinda looks more like a smaller mock-up model and not an actual huge room
also i would use significantly different texture solution on the floor from the walls. maybe the floor could be more flat.
but anyways these are just some remarks, you have done an awsome job so far!
@tsabszy - Thanks so much for the critique! I agree about the scale of the textures. The floor in particular is at a pretty large scale... You're right about the stones though, they are pretty jagged in comparison to the wall bricks and it should probably be the other way around somewhat. Nothing a little paint over can't fix; thanks for pointing that out!
Just a great work !!! Can you tell me your workflow especially for the texture ? Do you use a Zbrush base (to bake some AO , cavity etc) or do you make all in photoshop.
@Dragonar - Thank you! Depending on what it is, I might just completely paint a map from scratch, or proceed to do ZBrush > Bake (AO, Cavity) > Paint. I think it all depends on how complex I feel like the shapes may be in the end. The more organic (rock, etc), the more I will likely use ZBrush as a base first. Things like the tapestry and carpet are all painted from scratch though.
Finished up the first archway, so now it's on to finish the other two! Here's a little preview along with the texture flat:
Compared to the first iteration, I wanted details that were a little more readable. I also toned down the gradient overall so that the model could work with any lighting setup. That's all for now!
It's nice to see folks making threads this way, completely exposing their plan. There's always so much engagement and discussion in them from the rest of the community.
@adam - I really wanted to make a thread where every piece of the process is in some way broken down, and I think it's helped in the long run with the project evolving. I'm super appreciative of all the awesome Polycounters that have helped so far!
Just a quick update today, archways complete! Now onto address all the other changes that need to be made.
Lots of coffee and a few late nights, plus some John Williams scores equals a new update!
After finishing up the archways, I went back and followed through with tsabszy's suggestion and tweaked the scale of the floor tiles. I also went in and made them look way less jagged and these changes combined helped a lot. Thanks again for that critique!
Other changes and additions include:
- Changed smoothing groups of some debris and center floor tiles for more contrast in edges.
- Modeled some more center piece debris.
- Revised lifted bricks to match scale of floor.
- Minor scaling changes to walls.
- Stucco now has a blending mask (yay no more strange fog!).
- Upper wall area near throne is now pushed out for edge contrast.
- New archways put in place.
- Side archways near throne area connected to ceiling.
- Reduced saturation of center floor, floor tiles, walls and lower wall area to bring out other props more (roughly by 25%).
Finally the lighting (*shakes fist*)... It has had a rough relationship with the room and I think I've finally made some progress with it. Taking EdGaray's suggestion in to consideration, the center floor now has more focus, the throne has the strongest lighting to direct the viewer though. The new lighting setup is a lot of color balance and trying to blend hues together. All of this combined and it has brought the scene to this:
I'm still battling how bright the scene is and will probably continue messing around with this. In the meantime, I am pretty happy that there is now a gradient coming from the front of the room and leading the viewer to the back to where the throne is (this was achieved by mixing light rays from the entrances around the center floor).
So! I suppose the remaining things now are perhaps looking in to adding a few more props and then finally, texturing that menacing throne in the back that I have left in its block out state.
Any feedback is always appreciated, thanks for looking!! :poly142:
@Iciban - Thanks! The floor tiles are basically several MRGBZGrabber shots from Zbrush that I layered together and then painted over after sculpting. The latest VERTEX gives a great guide on how this is done!
@Uberren - Hey thanks! Now that I've seen the latest shot on a few different monitors, there is a little too much purple bleeding in to everything at the moment. I will see what I can do to adjust it.
@DireWolf - Hey thanks! Just using some varied brushes, in addition to the usual round hard brush with some color picking. I'm finding that often looking in to trying other brushes can give some pretty nice effects.
At a point with the sculpt where I feel like adding anymore might be too much, and I probably have gone a little overboard with details anyways. :poly142:
The front lower pattern is missing and I did try out using an alpha in Zbrush to recreate it, but I quickly found that the mesh in that area would kind of need to be rebuilt, as using alphas like that require a lot of density in your topology. I decided it'd be best to just leave that to be done in the painting process.
Time to retopo and such! First, let's talk about poses though. Right now, it's pretty boring just sitting there with its wings spread out and symmetrical. For some reason, the scene where Chernabog appears in Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia always sticks out in my head. I love the way his wings unfold in that scene, and I really want to bring that in to the throne's pose. I made a little reference collage to get some ideas of how the wing stretches in the clip.
Will probably give Transpose Master a shot and see what I come up with. Will only come after retopo and getting everything baked down though. More soon!
Quite a few contests going on at the moment that I'm checking out, but I really want to wrap this project up. With the throne done, there isn't a whole lot left at this point. Thanks for looking!
Just need to push this with the lighting, go further than you think with the lighting, a good trick is to make certain lights temporarily a neon bright pink, that way you can see what areas they truly are effecting. Then you can adjust the range/intensity independent of the color as that effects the temperature as well. This also helps trouble shoot what the lights are actually doing, more often than not there is something somewhere effecting the scene. I good starting point for me has always been to do the following:
Remove all lights from scene (should be starting from pitch black), set your ambient. You want this to be your darkest color the room will be. Meaning the value of the room when there is no light, this will represent your darkest dark. *so not 100 black but just above that. Get that to a point where your happy, it should have a subtle tint to it, dark green or purple would be good for the vibe your going for. Think of this as your under-painting when working with a painting/art-piece.
Then it's just a matter of adding your point lights/main directional if needed....and possibly a few spot lights, use the pink trick and adjust the color after the fact. Keep the brightest lights for where you want to point the viewer's eyes.
@pixelpatron - Thank you so much for these tips! Your comment really helped with how I've been thinking about the current lighting setup. I followed what you suggested and set the lowest ambient light in the scene to a dark purple and changed the shadows to where they will mix to a very subtle blue. In the process of rethinking the lighting, I had a silly realization that my source should be coming from the throne and directing towards the viewer. By doing so, this is the opposite of my previous lighting setups.
Changing the direction of the source directional light has pretty much changed the scene all together. :poly105:
Anyways, in the process of setting the new direction of the lights, I kind of got the idea that the throne itself is the main source of light in the scene, almost as if it is radiating. With this in mind, the area around the throne has the strongest green in the scene. The light then points from the throne to become a yellowish hue, which hits the edges of the pillars; as it falls off, this is where the texture kicks in to mix yellow to brownish hues.
I then discovered lightmap resolution, which makes a significant difference with how punchy your shadows are on Static Meshes...
My thoughts with this update:
- I like that the main colors in the scene now are the 2 main hues that you associate with Maleficent.
- There are some purple lights coming from the side entrances but for some reason I can't get them to to really shine down the stairs (although the light shafts are definitely rendering).
- Would still like the gradient for the green -> brown be much more present.
- Need to fix the seam that is popping up when zoomed far away from the throne in the scale area.
- More rubble where walls and floor meet (?!)
Feedback is greatly appreciated, looking to call this done in the next update!
Edit: Also, UDK seems to be adding this washed out bloom around the edges of the screen (they are basically cropped out in the latest update, although it is why the upper left tapestry is really bright). It occurs both while in the editor and when switching to play in viewport for screenshots. Not exactly sure how to disable this, but it is killing the gradients in the scene. :poly117:
It's rather dark on my screen, not sure if it's just me. I did a quick and dirty paintover/levels etc adjustment. Just brightened it up a bit and added some green misty stuff.
Killin it dude, this has come a long way and it's fantastic.
afaik the gradients are a resolution based post process. Normally I scale my window a little and they tend to go away as a quick fix but out side of that. No idea what causes it or how to disable it :<
Have been following this for a while now, very nice!
I think you could push the throne area even more and the purple ambient/light seems too saturated now in a few places. Depends on style, of course, but I'd keep the colors around the throne the most saturated.
Anyways, in the process of setting the new direction of the lights, I kind of got the idea that the throne itself is the main source of light in the scene, almost as if it is radiating.
This is definitely possible, but will be quite hard to pull off. You'd make things a lot easier for yourself if you added a lightshaft above the throne or torches around it.
Even a floating light above the throne will be easier.
"Making it almost as if" sounds also a bit indecisive and might lead to trouble further down the path. Is it ratiating or not? Is it glowing by itself or are we talking about strong bouncelight?
With this in mind, the area around the throne has the strongest green in the scene. The light then points from the throne to become a yellowish hue, which hits the edges of the pillars;
Why? If you just like the color, it's perfectly ok, of course, but looking at the ambient light and perhaps some blue light from above it would become less saturated and the colors would be shifting towards blue as the ambient slowly becomes more visible. Yellow is also "hotter" than green.
@ urgaffel, Noren - Thanks for the paint overs and suggestions! I bumped the scene's brightness a bit in the shot below with your suggestions and tweaked some of the contrast.
@ Gannon - Hey thanks! I'll keep investigating the curious case of the washed out bloom and will post what I am able to dig up. Per your request, here is the current lighting setup:
Just ignore all the strange not usually framed geometry. Current lights (including some not framed):
- Purple point lights in side entrances
- Blue/Green point light above center floor
- Green spot lights directed down side stairs
- Green spot light directed at throne
- Less saturated point light with low fall off in front of throne
- Yellow/Green spotlight above throne in the ceiling directed down at entire scene.
@ Noren - Thank you for your thoughts on the scene! I tried to push the throne area some more and got rid of the strange saturation in the shots above. I am interested in sticking pretty close to the shot from the animation and I feel like the light sources are either coming from the ceiling or are a strange magical glow that spreads across the scene. In regards to the yellow in the scene, I am trying to include these hues as it seems the main color palette in the reference shot stays close to blue->green->greenish yellows.
Feedback is still appreciated while I keep tweaking stuff and thanks for looking!
- Added more rubble/prop placement
- Brightened room some more
- Tweaked fall off exponents
- Dusty/musty mid afternoon vibe now (helps highlight textures throughout whole scene)
- Now with god rays! These made a huge difference with the mood of the scene. Will continue tweaking opacity/hue of rays.
- Still need to fix Throne seam from a distance
- More rubble!
I really love the paint over blazed did, your current lighting is devoid of contrast, and your lovely assets are suffering for it. I'd make sure your ambient is in contrast of your point lights, meaning if your using purple for your ambient you'll be fine to use green for your point lights, overall your latest shot feels like it's just a series of washed out greens.
Your also starting to loose the focus of the throne. You may of made your values too bright....your previous shot was better. I also don't know if the god rays are doing much for you, they don't align with the lighting, and don't exist in the reference. Lighting is a bitch, yet it makes all the difference in the world. Keep going.
Hi Andy,
the newest shot has a nice mood in itself, though now the green seems too dominant, perhaps. You mentioned you are still tweaking the volume light and I suggest to not come in with such a dark green from the start but to introduce the green as pseudo bouncelight around the throne area.
@ Noren - Thank you for your thoughts on the scene! I tried to push the throne area some more and got rid of the strange saturation in the shots above. I am interested in sticking pretty close to the shot from the animation and I feel like the light sources are either coming from the ceiling or are a strange magical glow that spreads across the scene. In regards to the yellow in the scene, I am trying to include these hues as it seems the main color palette in the reference shot stays close to blue->green->greenish yellows.
I'd say the lighting in the reference is pretty neutral for the distance shot and colors like the yellow are probably introduced trough moss etc. The lighting for the closeups changes a lot between shots and some have a pretty intense light from below or very green ambient. They could basically do whatever they wanted and what suited every single shot best. (I'd also be a bit cautious with images found on the web, there is hardly a way to tell which are the original colors for an old film like that. )
"blue->green->greenish yellows." That's correct, but I'd put the greenish yellow at the "hotter" spots, not the other way round.
Here is an overpaint over the previous version you did. Not matching the reference completely, but a mixture of what I got from the reference, what I feel you want to do and what I'd do. I also moved the throne forward a bit, which is not necessary and might be counterproductive if you want to show an accurate reproduction. I just felt like the scene seems a bit like a big empty stage, so I tried to push the throne a bit more into the spotlight.
@ pixelpatron - Thank you for the continued feedback and yeah... What you said about lighting... It's probably been the hardest part of this project for me because it's just been blocking considering the whole thing being "finished" and it's an area that I'm just not comfortable with (working on it though!). The god rays to me help focus the scene but currently they are not pointed at the correct object reviewing the shot and what you said. I directed them towards the viewer to make the fall off of the light throughout the scene make more sense but really, the throne area should be what is pointed at directly which the rays do take away from. The contrast achieved in blazed's paint over is nice, although I don't think I want to go that dark with the shadows because I do not want just blackness remaining in the scene. I do want the textures to be visible but still have the contrast needed to make the other assets pop. Will see what I can come up with in the next render. I agree about the throne's focus being lost and will get that straightened out with the next update too. While the god rays don't exist in the reference, I am interested in adding my own twist to the scene, but at the same time want to do so in a sparing manner. I have thought of also trying dust particles instead of god rays to bring more focus in the throne area.
Really though, your reply has me even more hyped to finish. It's nice to hear I'm not alone with the same thoughts in regards to lighting! :poly122:
@ Noren - Thank you for the follow up feedback and for the paint over! You are right about being cautious with the reference, as the saturation of the colors changes in each image (very noticeable in the reference collage too). Perhaps what is making the final mood/lighting setup of the scene somewhat of an indecisive task for me is that yes, I am trying to recreate the same scene but I do want to give my own spin on it. What I am trying to lean towards is more so abandoned with an almost stale air feel, or "sleeping magic". I was a little iffy about placing god rays but now they have given me some ideas to what could be done in the throne area to pull it out more (while still keeping it in its original place).
I really do appreciate your paint over and there's something that can be taken from both your paint over and blazed's. Again going back to the stale air feel, when I look at the shots in the movie, I get the impression that Maleficent has come across this castle and has slowly been building it to be her fortress of command, thus the super contrasty greens and harsh yellow greens to come across as all powerful and radiating because her presence is in the room. I want the current scene to be what the castle is after that - when she leaves and has been defeated. I want that to be the ultimate direction of the final shot. In that sense, I like that it is just an empty room. I like you describing it as an empty stage and it's a very thought provoking way to view it. I don't want the throne to be telling the story though, I want the room and its pieces whispering and spilling secrets about the room's past. Having an empty open room sends that message (with all the rubble and debris silently speaking for itself). There is more that could be done to move that story forward and I will continue toying with prop placement and such. Really, seriously really, thank you for the paint over, as it's helped me focus on where to go from here on out.
Will hopefully get a new shot up pretty soon with all the feedback in mind. Thanks again everyone for stopping by! Any additional critiques are always appreciated!
If you're going for an empty room post defeat, maybe add some creepers and some subtle vegetation like moss etc? Maybe part of a banner on the floor in a heap, some broken torch-holders...
I'm going to be sad when you finish this, it's been awesome to follow your progress!
The lights are pretty saturated at the moment, perhaps you could try playing around with more desaturated, weaker and smaller lights to highlight the bits you want the eye to focus on? You're losing a lot of your amazing texture work because the whole scene now has a green hue.
@urgaffel - I appreciate the suggestions and can see how additional prop placement could tell more of a story. I will keep in mind prop usage moving forward.
@AbKI - Thank you for the feedback! It's been tricky balancing the saturation of the scene in terms of lighting. I've been taking in to consideration all the paint overs that have been provided in the final render below. No more completely green room!
@chrisundrum - Thank you for the tip! I've reduced the saturation of the scene while working on the final render and this has helped a lot!
Resolved issue with throne's scale seam being present.
Resolved issue with back wall of throne area seams being present.
Added subtle changes to vertex paint (fixed strange cut off near throne pillars).
--
Postmortem Documentation
I thought I would take a few moments to analyze the project. Hopefully it is useful to anyone that's been following along!
Goals Accomplished
Become faster and more efficient while painting.
Become faster and more efficient while modeling and UVing.
Become faster and more efficient while sculpting.
Gain more experience working in a game engine.
Obtain a better understanding of mixing colors, color theory, etc.
Create a solid portfolio piece.
Due to implementing additional workflows from Sculpting -> Painting, the time spent on each texture decreased quite a bit. My previous knowledge with UDK was very limited as I had only setup a map for an actual Unreal Tournament game, rather than as a portfolio piece. I now have a better understanding of working inside an engine, and learned a lot about what to plan for in future projects. In terms of building the scene, I did unfortunately learn about UDK units and snapping to the UDK grid after placing the majority of the scene. Knowing this now, I am hoping that this will speed up productivity in future projects.
I have been so set in my ways of only remaining in one program for modeling and by just giving some other programs a chance (mainly 3D Coat and Zbrush) with their own tools, I have found a good workflow with working with objects that are a little more complex. The throne having the largest time spent on it, was mainly made from pulling together separate elements -> dynamesh -> sculpt -> retopo to final mesh. I'm okay with how all the UV's for each asset came out, and am also pretty happy with the knowledge I gained in regards to Vertex Painting and sub object/multi-materials.
Goals Not Accomplished
Work on concept and traditional skills.
Become faster at lighting a scene.
I didn't really get to work on traditional skills with this project and that is something I look forward to improving on in the next. Following the original image very closely allowed me to skip over this step (that is planning out the scene via a concept image). Lighting was definitely the biggest struggle out of everything. It may have been particularly more difficult due to the palette used in the original image but after working through all the kinks (thank you again Polycount!) - I am satisfied with where it is now.
Sculpting -> Painted
I thought I would include this section as this was asked about a few times through out the process. Everything is a mix of what I feel helps the situation. Objects such as the tapestries were photo referenced and then painted over even more to push shapes, edges, etc. Objects like the shields were very basic viewport grabs with different matcaps from Zbrush and painted over. Carpet was 100% hand painted. Below are examples of layering different matcaps together to create a base for the shields (left) and then painting over them (proceeding to the right).
Keep in mind that as the lighting changed in the scene, this caused some conflict with how bright the shields were, in addition to the specular maps that were given to each one. Thus, the final image's value.
Anything that was a tileable was created from several MRGBZGrabber shots from Zbrush that I layered together and then painted over after sculpting. The benefits to this method are mainly that if you have specific brushes and alphas in Zbrush you use, the shapes that are provided from these can allow your textures to be more consistent (and can assist with having to reiterate). If you do have to reiterate, this also speeds up blocking out shapes with lighting information being provided (thus, not having to paint them to begin with). Ultimately, in order to achieve the style I was looking for with these, it did require quite a bit of painting but removing the added task of defining lights and also shapes, saves a lot of time. I unfortunately saved over almost all of the original sculpt images as I continued to tile. I tried to put together an example below from what I could salvage before the final texture render.
Sculpt->First color pass->Pull out edges with overlay/color dodge, begin detail
Continue adding detail/variation->Reiterate
Conclusion
Overall I am very happy with how the project turned out and seeing how it took many directions. I feel very accomplished finishing up a scene and it gives me the confidence to do more (and I am all ready planning the next one). Working on traditional skills is something that I want to improve on and I plan on moving forward with planning an environment from scratch, rather than using an existing concept piece in the future.
It is time to move on from this project, and I want to give a huge thank you again to all of the amazing people on this forum that contributed to this thread! There are still things that could probably be added to the scene to push it some more but at this point, I am ready to look at something new to work on. Thanks for stopping by!
Also, if a mod sees this - if the [WIP] part of the thread title could be removed it would be greatly appreciated! :poly142:
Edit: Uploaded images to imgur as bandwith was reached for Dropbox. Sorry about that!
The texture work on this piece certainly turned out quite tasty, almost makes me nostalgic despite the modern methods of their creation
I love the colouring of the banner fabric in particular.
My only criticism in this is the fashion that the brick and plaster textures blend or rather the form, it appears like an all too familar cloud filter that's been level tweaked to an alpha. It doesn't come across legit.
It's been a pleasure to witness the progress of this!
Such a big difference the last few posts have made. You really pushed it with this one and you can tell with the end results. Awesome job man looks great.
All your images seem to be down, probably because Dropbox stops working after a certain bandwidth is exceeded Try hosting the images on something like imgur.com, I came too late and havent seen all the goodies yet T.T
I second Spudnik's request - I've noticed the thread through FB's feed and can't see any of the images. Any chances on reuploading them somewhere? I'd love to read the whole thread some late evening to get the most from it.
Replies
my only crit would be that there's some problem with the scale. on the floor those tiles look to huge for me and it kills the whole thing a bit, this way it kinda looks more like a smaller mock-up model and not an actual huge room
also i would use significantly different texture solution on the floor from the walls. maybe the floor could be more flat.
but anyways these are just some remarks, you have done an awsome job so far!
Finished up the first archway, so now it's on to finish the other two! Here's a little preview along with the texture flat:
Compared to the first iteration, I wanted details that were a little more readable. I also toned down the gradient overall so that the model could work with any lighting setup. That's all for now!
@adam - I really wanted to make a thread where every piece of the process is in some way broken down, and I think it's helped in the long run with the project evolving. I'm super appreciative of all the awesome Polycounters that have helped so far!
Just a quick update today, archways complete! Now onto address all the other changes that need to be made.
Lots of coffee and a few late nights, plus some John Williams scores equals a new update!
After finishing up the archways, I went back and followed through with tsabszy's suggestion and tweaked the scale of the floor tiles. I also went in and made them look way less jagged and these changes combined helped a lot. Thanks again for that critique!
Other changes and additions include:
- Changed smoothing groups of some debris and center floor tiles for more contrast in edges.
- Modeled some more center piece debris.
- Revised lifted bricks to match scale of floor.
- Minor scaling changes to walls.
- Stucco now has a blending mask (yay no more strange fog!).
- Upper wall area near throne is now pushed out for edge contrast.
- New archways put in place.
- Side archways near throne area connected to ceiling.
- Reduced saturation of center floor, floor tiles, walls and lower wall area to bring out other props more (roughly by 25%).
Finally the lighting (*shakes fist*)... It has had a rough relationship with the room and I think I've finally made some progress with it. Taking EdGaray's suggestion in to consideration, the center floor now has more focus, the throne has the strongest lighting to direct the viewer though. The new lighting setup is a lot of color balance and trying to blend hues together. All of this combined and it has brought the scene to this:
I'm still battling how bright the scene is and will probably continue messing around with this. In the meantime, I am pretty happy that there is now a gradient coming from the front of the room and leading the viewer to the back to where the throne is (this was achieved by mixing light rays from the entrances around the center floor).
So! I suppose the remaining things now are perhaps looking in to adding a few more props and then finally, texturing that menacing throne in the back that I have left in its block out state.
Any feedback is always appreciated, thanks for looking!! :poly142:
Your texture work is awesome.
I do prefer the overly green lighting you had previously, I think at the moment it's too purple (going off of the references).
@Elemenopee, RazorBladder - Thanks so much!
@Uberren - Hey thanks! Now that I've seen the latest shot on a few different monitors, there is a little too much purple bleeding in to everything at the moment. I will see what I can do to adjust it.
Time to get sculpting! More soon! :poly142:
@DireWolf - Hey thanks! Just using some varied brushes, in addition to the usual round hard brush with some color picking. I'm finding that often looking in to trying other brushes can give some pretty nice effects.
The front lower pattern is missing and I did try out using an alpha in Zbrush to recreate it, but I quickly found that the mesh in that area would kind of need to be rebuilt, as using alphas like that require a lot of density in your topology. I decided it'd be best to just leave that to be done in the painting process.
Time to retopo and such! First, let's talk about poses though. Right now, it's pretty boring just sitting there with its wings spread out and symmetrical. For some reason, the scene where Chernabog appears in Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia always sticks out in my head. I love the way his wings unfold in that scene, and I really want to bring that in to the throne's pose. I made a little reference collage to get some ideas of how the wing stretches in the clip.
Will probably give Transpose Master a shot and see what I come up with. Will only come after retopo and getting everything baked down though. More soon!
Quite a few contests going on at the moment that I'm checking out, but I really want to wrap this project up. With the throne done, there isn't a whole lot left at this point. Thanks for looking!
Amazing work!
@Narlyteeth - Thank you! Haha, wish I could say it was!
Remove all lights from scene (should be starting from pitch black), set your ambient. You want this to be your darkest color the room will be. Meaning the value of the room when there is no light, this will represent your darkest dark. *so not 100 black but just above that. Get that to a point where your happy, it should have a subtle tint to it, dark green or purple would be good for the vibe your going for. Think of this as your under-painting when working with a painting/art-piece.
Then it's just a matter of adding your point lights/main directional if needed....and possibly a few spot lights, use the pink trick and adjust the color after the fact. Keep the brightest lights for where you want to point the viewer's eyes.
Good luck.
@pixelpatron - Thank you so much for these tips! Your comment really helped with how I've been thinking about the current lighting setup. I followed what you suggested and set the lowest ambient light in the scene to a dark purple and changed the shadows to where they will mix to a very subtle blue. In the process of rethinking the lighting, I had a silly realization that my source should be coming from the throne and directing towards the viewer. By doing so, this is the opposite of my previous lighting setups.
Changing the direction of the source directional light has pretty much changed the scene all together. :poly105:
Anyways, in the process of setting the new direction of the lights, I kind of got the idea that the throne itself is the main source of light in the scene, almost as if it is radiating. With this in mind, the area around the throne has the strongest green in the scene. The light then points from the throne to become a yellowish hue, which hits the edges of the pillars; as it falls off, this is where the texture kicks in to mix yellow to brownish hues.
I then discovered lightmap resolution, which makes a significant difference with how punchy your shadows are on Static Meshes...
My thoughts with this update:
- I like that the main colors in the scene now are the 2 main hues that you associate with Maleficent.
- There are some purple lights coming from the side entrances but for some reason I can't get them to to really shine down the stairs (although the light shafts are definitely rendering).
- Would still like the gradient for the green -> brown be much more present.
- Need to fix the seam that is popping up when zoomed far away from the throne in the scale area.
- More rubble where walls and floor meet (?!)
Feedback is greatly appreciated, looking to call this done in the next update!
Edit: Also, UDK seems to be adding this washed out bloom around the edges of the screen (they are basically cropped out in the latest update, although it is why the upper left tapestry is really bright). It occurs both while in the editor and when switching to play in viewport for screenshots. Not exactly sure how to disable this, but it is killing the gradients in the scene. :poly117:
afaik the gradients are a resolution based post process. Normally I scale my window a little and they tend to go away as a quick fix but out side of that. No idea what causes it or how to disable it :<
I second urgaffel, the scene looks a little dark.
could you post a picture of your light set up?
I think you could push the throne area even more and the purple ambient/light seems too saturated now in a few places. Depends on style, of course, but I'd keep the colors around the throne the most saturated.
This is definitely possible, but will be quite hard to pull off. You'd make things a lot easier for yourself if you added a lightshaft above the throne or torches around it.
Even a floating light above the throne will be easier.
"Making it almost as if" sounds also a bit indecisive and might lead to trouble further down the path. Is it ratiating or not? Is it glowing by itself or are we talking about strong bouncelight?
Why? If you just like the color, it's perfectly ok, of course, but looking at the ambient light and perhaps some blue light from above it would become less saturated and the colors would be shifting towards blue as the ambient slowly becomes more visible. Yellow is also "hotter" than green.
@ Gannon - Hey thanks! I'll keep investigating the curious case of the washed out bloom and will post what I am able to dig up. Per your request, here is the current lighting setup:
Just ignore all the strange not usually framed geometry. Current lights (including some not framed):
- Purple point lights in side entrances
- Blue/Green point light above center floor
- Green spot lights directed down side stairs
- Green spot light directed at throne
- Less saturated point light with low fall off in front of throne
- Yellow/Green spotlight above throne in the ceiling directed down at entire scene.
@ Noren - Thank you for your thoughts on the scene! I tried to push the throne area some more and got rid of the strange saturation in the shots above. I am interested in sticking pretty close to the shot from the animation and I feel like the light sources are either coming from the ceiling or are a strange magical glow that spreads across the scene. In regards to the yellow in the scene, I am trying to include these hues as it seems the main color palette in the reference shot stays close to blue->green->greenish yellows.
Feedback is still appreciated while I keep tweaking stuff and thanks for looking!
- Added more rubble/prop placement
- Brightened room some more
- Tweaked fall off exponents
- Dusty/musty mid afternoon vibe now (helps highlight textures throughout whole scene)
- Now with god rays! These made a huge difference with the mood of the scene. Will continue tweaking opacity/hue of rays.
- Still need to fix Throne seam from a distance
- More rubble!
Your also starting to loose the focus of the throne. You may of made your values too bright....your previous shot was better. I also don't know if the god rays are doing much for you, they don't align with the lighting, and don't exist in the reference. Lighting is a bitch, yet it makes all the difference in the world. Keep going.
the newest shot has a nice mood in itself, though now the green seems too dominant, perhaps. You mentioned you are still tweaking the volume light and I suggest to not come in with such a dark green from the start but to introduce the green as pseudo bouncelight around the throne area.
I'd say the lighting in the reference is pretty neutral for the distance shot and colors like the yellow are probably introduced trough moss etc. The lighting for the closeups changes a lot between shots and some have a pretty intense light from below or very green ambient. They could basically do whatever they wanted and what suited every single shot best. (I'd also be a bit cautious with images found on the web, there is hardly a way to tell which are the original colors for an old film like that. )
"blue->green->greenish yellows." That's correct, but I'd put the greenish yellow at the "hotter" spots, not the other way round.
Here is an overpaint over the previous version you did. Not matching the reference completely, but a mixture of what I got from the reference, what I feel you want to do and what I'd do. I also moved the throne forward a bit, which is not necessary and might be counterproductive if you want to show an accurate reproduction. I just felt like the scene seems a bit like a big empty stage, so I tried to push the throne a bit more into the spotlight.
Really though, your reply has me even more hyped to finish. It's nice to hear I'm not alone with the same thoughts in regards to lighting! :poly122:
@ Noren - Thank you for the follow up feedback and for the paint over! You are right about being cautious with the reference, as the saturation of the colors changes in each image (very noticeable in the reference collage too). Perhaps what is making the final mood/lighting setup of the scene somewhat of an indecisive task for me is that yes, I am trying to recreate the same scene but I do want to give my own spin on it. What I am trying to lean towards is more so abandoned with an almost stale air feel, or "sleeping magic". I was a little iffy about placing god rays but now they have given me some ideas to what could be done in the throne area to pull it out more (while still keeping it in its original place).
I really do appreciate your paint over and there's something that can be taken from both your paint over and blazed's. Again going back to the stale air feel, when I look at the shots in the movie, I get the impression that Maleficent has come across this castle and has slowly been building it to be her fortress of command, thus the super contrasty greens and harsh yellow greens to come across as all powerful and radiating because her presence is in the room. I want the current scene to be what the castle is after that - when she leaves and has been defeated. I want that to be the ultimate direction of the final shot. In that sense, I like that it is just an empty room. I like you describing it as an empty stage and it's a very thought provoking way to view it. I don't want the throne to be telling the story though, I want the room and its pieces whispering and spilling secrets about the room's past. Having an empty open room sends that message (with all the rubble and debris silently speaking for itself). There is more that could be done to move that story forward and I will continue toying with prop placement and such. Really, seriously really, thank you for the paint over, as it's helped me focus on where to go from here on out.
Will hopefully get a new shot up pretty soon with all the feedback in mind. Thanks again everyone for stopping by! Any additional critiques are always appreciated!
The lights are pretty saturated at the moment, perhaps you could try playing around with more desaturated, weaker and smaller lights to highlight the bits you want the eye to focus on? You're losing a lot of your amazing texture work because the whole scene now has a green hue.
[IMG][/img]
Edited:
Even though the original image is much more muted you can make the scene more interesting, kinda like @Noren did.
Scene looks great though!
@AbKI - Thank you for the feedback! It's been tricky balancing the saturation of the scene in terms of lighting. I've been taking in to consideration all the paint overs that have been provided in the final render below. No more completely green room!
@chrisundrum - Thank you for the tip! I've reduced the saturation of the scene while working on the final render and this has helped a lot!
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Final Render
Scene ends up with a total of 31,507 tris.
Final Change Log
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Postmortem Documentation
I thought I would take a few moments to analyze the project. Hopefully it is useful to anyone that's been following along!
Goals Accomplished
Due to implementing additional workflows from Sculpting -> Painting, the time spent on each texture decreased quite a bit. My previous knowledge with UDK was very limited as I had only setup a map for an actual Unreal Tournament game, rather than as a portfolio piece. I now have a better understanding of working inside an engine, and learned a lot about what to plan for in future projects. In terms of building the scene, I did unfortunately learn about UDK units and snapping to the UDK grid after placing the majority of the scene. Knowing this now, I am hoping that this will speed up productivity in future projects.
I have been so set in my ways of only remaining in one program for modeling and by just giving some other programs a chance (mainly 3D Coat and Zbrush) with their own tools, I have found a good workflow with working with objects that are a little more complex. The throne having the largest time spent on it, was mainly made from pulling together separate elements -> dynamesh -> sculpt -> retopo to final mesh. I'm okay with how all the UV's for each asset came out, and am also pretty happy with the knowledge I gained in regards to Vertex Painting and sub object/multi-materials.
Goals Not Accomplished
I didn't really get to work on traditional skills with this project and that is something I look forward to improving on in the next. Following the original image very closely allowed me to skip over this step (that is planning out the scene via a concept image). Lighting was definitely the biggest struggle out of everything. It may have been particularly more difficult due to the palette used in the original image but after working through all the kinks (thank you again Polycount!) - I am satisfied with where it is now.
Sculpting -> Painted
I thought I would include this section as this was asked about a few times through out the process. Everything is a mix of what I feel helps the situation. Objects such as the tapestries were photo referenced and then painted over even more to push shapes, edges, etc. Objects like the shields were very basic viewport grabs with different matcaps from Zbrush and painted over. Carpet was 100% hand painted. Below are examples of layering different matcaps together to create a base for the shields (left) and then painting over them (proceeding to the right).
Keep in mind that as the lighting changed in the scene, this caused some conflict with how bright the shields were, in addition to the specular maps that were given to each one. Thus, the final image's value.
Anything that was a tileable was created from several MRGBZGrabber shots from Zbrush that I layered together and then painted over after sculpting. The benefits to this method are mainly that if you have specific brushes and alphas in Zbrush you use, the shapes that are provided from these can allow your textures to be more consistent (and can assist with having to reiterate). If you do have to reiterate, this also speeds up blocking out shapes with lighting information being provided (thus, not having to paint them to begin with). Ultimately, in order to achieve the style I was looking for with these, it did require quite a bit of painting but removing the added task of defining lights and also shapes, saves a lot of time. I unfortunately saved over almost all of the original sculpt images as I continued to tile. I tried to put together an example below from what I could salvage before the final texture render.
Sculpt->First color pass->Pull out edges with overlay/color dodge, begin detail
Continue adding detail/variation->Reiterate
Conclusion
Overall I am very happy with how the project turned out and seeing how it took many directions. I feel very accomplished finishing up a scene and it gives me the confidence to do more (and I am all ready planning the next one). Working on traditional skills is something that I want to improve on and I plan on moving forward with planning an environment from scratch, rather than using an existing concept piece in the future.
It is time to move on from this project, and I want to give a huge thank you again to all of the amazing people on this forum that contributed to this thread! There are still things that could probably be added to the scene to push it some more but at this point, I am ready to look at something new to work on. Thanks for stopping by!
Also, if a mod sees this - if the [WIP] part of the thread title could be removed it would be greatly appreciated! :poly142:
Edit: Uploaded images to imgur as bandwith was reached for Dropbox. Sorry about that!
I love the colouring of the banner fabric in particular.
My only criticism in this is the fashion that the brick and plaster textures blend or rather the form, it appears like an all too familar cloud filter that's been level tweaked to an alpha. It doesn't come across legit.
It's been a pleasure to witness the progress of this!
Such a big difference the last few posts have made. You really pushed it with this one and you can tell with the end results. Awesome job man looks great.
Keep it up man!
Can you tell us more about matcaps u used to composite this base texture?
Cheers,
AQ