Monthly Community Noob Challenge February 2014 (16)
interpolator
Welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge February 2014 (16)!
Join our Skype group too if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Skype: alexmasterofcats
You don't have to join the skype if you don't want to though, you don't need to ask to participate or anything, just start doing it and post in this thread!
This month's concept:
GG arts
Feel free to approach this however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized:) It's up to you, as long as you are learning then it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up the concept a bit as some people wanted feel free, interpret this concept how you want.
There are some things that I would like to point out to for newcomers,
if you only want to do a few props as best you can, go for it! This way you can work on building up to a full scene.
RULES:
Please read all the rules.
When you are just starting out making a scene can seem complicated or imposing, so break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible plan it out, a lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some refs as well for different parts of the scene, maybe gather some refs and make it your own.
Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.
All that matters is that you learn and give and get advice and are willing to be critiqued.
So here are the specific rules:
Furthermore, I know this was not the most voted concept, but it is the concept, I put a disclaimer on the voting thread before posting this.
Join our Skype group too if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Skype: alexmasterofcats
You don't have to join the skype if you don't want to though, you don't need to ask to participate or anything, just start doing it and post in this thread!
This month's concept:
GG arts
Feel free to approach this however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized:) It's up to you, as long as you are learning then it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up the concept a bit as some people wanted feel free, interpret this concept how you want.
There are some things that I would like to point out to for newcomers,
if you only want to do a few props as best you can, go for it! This way you can work on building up to a full scene.
RULES:
Please read all the rules.
When you are just starting out making a scene can seem complicated or imposing, so break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible plan it out, a lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some refs as well for different parts of the scene, maybe gather some refs and make it your own.
Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.
All that matters is that you learn and give and get advice and are willing to be critiqued.
So here are the specific rules:
Try to do one crit for every post you make, this will make for a better learning environment and help us grow as artists.
Must make your own textures, no stealing, we can't keep you from it, but the goal is to learn, even tileables, I mean you can take someone else's image and make it tileable, that's fine.
You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used, but feel free to use any.
You must try your best and finish as much as you can in this month.
Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique and we don't have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
Well that's about it, if you think the rules should be changed let us know.
I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
Please stay away from Ddo, yeah, it's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, please don't complain.
Must make your own textures, no stealing, we can't keep you from it, but the goal is to learn, even tileables, I mean you can take someone else's image and make it tileable, that's fine.
You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used, but feel free to use any.
You must try your best and finish as much as you can in this month.
Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique and we don't have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
Well that's about it, if you think the rules should be changed let us know.
I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
Please stay away from Ddo, yeah, it's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, please don't complain.
Furthermore, I know this was not the most voted concept, but it is the concept, I put a disclaimer on the voting thread before posting this.
Replies
All the best to everyone that participates!
In a windowed human structure looking out on a hostile environment. In a hostile environment looking at a windowed overgrown human structures.
Oh man, I actually kinda want to try this one.
I was hoping it was gonna be the well...
IS it against the rules to collaborate in these challenges?
It's supposed to be a Buddhist Temple on Mars, from here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=121253
Interesting. That totally changes things. The roof style is actually more similar to a Thai temple. It's pointed on the corners as well as the tip of the gable, and bows lengthwise.
The walls are similar to Japanese temples. (first image)
The roof is similar to Laotian/Thai temples. (second and third image)
Yea I agree, I visited tons of Korean and Japanese Buddhist temples. It seems to be an amalgamation of different temple characteristics but not any particular region (definitely no Korean though). I wouldn't worry too much about trying to make it fit with a particular style/era.
Ok, here's my plan of attack. I'm using UDK
- Blockout: I'll try to get a very basic rough blockout hammered out in Max today. I'm fighting off the flu, so that may take until tomorrow.
- Canyon walls: I'm going to make 3, maybe 4 chunks that I can build up the profile with by scaling and arranging them to build the ridge of the canyon (on both sides). Zbrush, AO bake fed into UDK material, ready to roll. Say 2 or 3 days.
- Rock chunks: 4 or 5 of these are going to be used to break up any tiling along the canyon face and canyon ridgeline, and to build out the inner hillside of the temple complex itself. Same workflow as the larger ridge pieces. Another 2 or 3 days probably.
- Stairs: I'm going to derive these from one of the rock textures with a little editing, and just map it straight onto simple geometry. The edging I'll do with the building's wood beam texture and cover up any seams with the vegetation.
- The actual structure itself is surprisingly simple. It's made up of three components:
- Roof: One tileable mapped onto modular geometry. Probably will include the edge roof tiles as geometry for profile.
- Walls (base): The white material (I think it's stucco or something similar?) is just a plain white tileable. VERY simple.
- Wood trim: the beams, trim, and edging is simple geometric wood shapes. I'm going to make one 2x1 "wood beam" texture and build it all as geometry.
Combination of textures, modeling, and arranging it all on top of the cliff face, call that a solid week.
- The Bubble: going to have to build this unique because of the curvature. Fortunately, it's pretty simplistic. One texture for the frame material and one for the transparency. Probably a solid day and a half here.
- Vegetation:
- Trees are going to be one trunk and clumps of modular leaves that double as ground shrubs
- Vertical vines are going to be strips of geometry with rearranged versions of the tree leaf textures on them, combined with flatter sheets for the creeping ground vines. Probably a good week here for both.
That's three weeks and some change, with a few days buffer to account for materials work, lighting, and the fact that I'm sure I've forgotten something. (I always do).
Danface, before you start modeling at that kind of detail, I would block out the rough volumes of the entire scene to get an idea for placement, silhouette, scale, all that kind of base-layer stuff. You're getting too detailed too soon. Save what you've got there and get the rough forms of the canyon and the hillside resolved first, then bring that back in and get it fitted into the scene.
[IMG][/img]
Then, blocked out major material groups in max:
[IMG][/img]
For this, I'll be using Unity
Building:
- The roof: that really is just made of two parts - the middle parts and the ends - I'll see how far I can push one texture
- Walls: pretty basic
- Wood trims: I can't make out any horizontal beams so a single tiling texture is enough (then again I need new glasses
- Stairs: I'll make then from stone, but they'll need their own texture.
Vegetation:
- Two trunks (or one just scaled down) + modular foliage
- The creeping foliage isn't that hard - it really is just a polygon strip + the modular foliage again
The cliffs and rocks:
- 2 or 3 'base cliffs' models
- 4 or more stone pieces to cover up discrepancies
The dome is pretty straight forward - two pieces of geometry, but might take a while to get right, and I don't think unity comes with built-in shaders for glass...
@GarageBay9, after coming back from Japan I've found that you have a choice of 2 texture types for the walls - stucco, as you've mentioned (used in restoration projects), or painted wood (used in preservation projects like at Todaiji in Nara). I guess it depends on your preferences
I can see a few ways to make the temple part of the map accessible to the player.
I was thinking of extending the wall (marked in black) all the way down to the floor on the players level (just an idea.. spitballing) in order to make the right side of the temple accessible to the player. In the spaced colored in teal i would put a plane .. this would be the floor. ANd the entire temple would be surrounded by either mars or earth rocks (marked in red.) This could create almost a surrounded paradise effect and the rocks would limit the players mobility just enough so that the huge bubble could be less detailed at the base because the player cannot see it.
Sorry for my crappying marking.. using a mouse. But im sure you get the idea.
Took me a while but i found a way to make this dome. Still needs some adjusting but it works for my blockout. Now i just need to learn zbrush and get some rocks made.
You don't want to know how warped I had to make the rear of the dome to make it start even come close to lining up with the far right side of the concept. If the valley runs north-south, the temple complex and dome aren't facing west. They're actually facing closer to exactly southwest, possibly west-southwest. Don't be afraid to take some liberties with that framing. I still have some tweaks to make, the bottom of my hillside is too high and it's compressing the composition vertically.
and something that really helped me visualize the large task of foliage was this Pipboy3000s deviantart piece :
http://pipboy3000.deviantart.com/art/Tower-on-Cliff-Environment-Breakdown-382514122
My PC crashed so ill post a max aligned view of the blockout, but for now heres a mood test in Unity, figured understanding the light as im working is better than winging it at the end.
My initial breakdown. Not sure if I want to do this in UDK or CryEngine yet.
[EDIT]
I'm not aiming to hit the concept exactly as I don't think it was concepted with a modelling stage in mind. I'll be tweaking a few things like making the bubble structure work with the far side rocks and I'm thinking of adding an airlock as right now where the bubble meets the stairs doesn't allow for entrance or exit without losing the inside atmosphere. My brain won't allow me to model without it!
I like your tower interpretation better (it's a more interesting shape) and it works more effectively for that spot on the hillside.
it looks like people are choosing to either have a large structure there to cap of the front; or have a smaller building and use that as a open point to walk around the building like Aquas is thinking. I like his idea of having an Airlock or something visual to identify entrance and exit. I came to the same rationale but was just going to be lazy for the sake of the concept, but youve motivated me to try something too.
I was actually thinking that it was a building of some sort at the start, but I might go my own way with this, and make it a pergola instead. For me, it looks like support beams not walls - that, and I already begun modeling it :poly136:
I totally see the tower there now after you pointed it out. Haha time to model that as well.
Dose anyone know a good way to model the terrain. Or at lest some tips.
I was just going to make a plane and then add some geo to it and push and pull the verts. Then model some rocks as well.
Heres the max viewport, with the concept and wires overlayed. The sphere aggravated me to much to try and blockout the actual shape. I really think the artist painted a nice landscape with housing, but felt it needed more of a story. So they added a bubble right at the end a bit hastily. I think i'll just judge what i come up with as i go for that, its the presence of it more than the aesthetic detail.
Aerashi: Nice breakdown
Here's my update:
The way I'll approach the terrain is, if it's inside the bubble, I'll model it myself, and then add geometry to add to its form, and everything outside the dome will be Untiy terrain with the same rocks, but scaled to suit the purpose.
Here's what I have so far, not much, but a start. I had a lot of trouble getting all of the scales and angles lined up with the concept, so I took a quick-n-dirty approach where I didn't try to make anything look good, and all the shapes are a bloby mess.
I'll probably try and clean this up into some sort of usable low-poly base-mesh tomorrow.
I did some quick rocks just to have something a bit stronger to play with, already im remebering why i dont use unity much, it always feels like my normal maps are EXTREMELY muted. Its probably down to my own poor low poly but UDK does have more strength in its display.
I just started blocking everything out in 3ds max. Nothing detailed, just trying to figure out where everything is laid out and how the terrain will flow around the building.
To get the best out of your textures in Unity:
- Set your texture filter to Trilinear
- Aniso level to 9
Set rendering path to Deferred Lighting
Color space to Linear
That should be a base to get those textures popping.