[WIP] University Project - The TARDIS
polycounter lvl 5
Hey folks,
Our assignment is to produce a polished piece of environment art based on a film, book, television program - basically any media which isn't a game. I'm not the greatest Doctor Who fan in the world, however I thought the current Doctor's TARDIS (Peter Capaldi) would be a fun challenge for me as I tend to drift away from interior stuff.
I've got three other big University projects going on but I'd like to post this one to Polycount as I go along. We will be using UE4 to realtime render, as well as a PBR workflow.
Here's a few initial screenshots of the Blockout - I'm trying to get most stuff blocked out in 3D Studio first; both to scale and a workable standard.
Will try to keep the thread updated with progress. I appreciate that this is only a start, but if anyone does have any early feedback then feel free to post it!
Our assignment is to produce a polished piece of environment art based on a film, book, television program - basically any media which isn't a game. I'm not the greatest Doctor Who fan in the world, however I thought the current Doctor's TARDIS (Peter Capaldi) would be a fun challenge for me as I tend to drift away from interior stuff.
I've got three other big University projects going on but I'd like to post this one to Polycount as I go along. We will be using UE4 to realtime render, as well as a PBR workflow.
Here's a few initial screenshots of the Blockout - I'm trying to get most stuff blocked out in 3D Studio first; both to scale and a workable standard.
Will try to keep the thread updated with progress. I appreciate that this is only a start, but if anyone does have any early feedback then feel free to post it!
Replies
- Adjusted the interior dimensions, the TARDIS's control room has a diameter of 60ft.
- With the above in mind, correctly re-scaled everything
- Shaped the central platform to fit the newly-added stairs
- Improved the shape of the columns, thickened them so that they appear more supportive
- Retopologised the doorframe area so that it correctly fits with the columns either side
I've also imported the blockout to a playable UE4 level - which has helped a lot with guesstimating the scale of stuff that is without reference.
Here's some more screenshots!
I'm unsure as to how long doing detailed blockouts of remaining forms will take, I also have other projects to cater for.
Once again, any early-stage feedback is appreciated.
A little bit stuck at the moment trying to finish off the discs on the wall.
In the future I'll probably have a go at the one you posted above, or the TARDIS Matt Smith had for a large portion of series 5. I imagine out of all of them Smith's would probably be the toughest.
This is Smith's:
Thing is that the amount of triangles in the wall is pretty overkill, it's at around 7K per wall, and there's a total of 18 of these in the scene - I'd rather not ruin the accuracy of the design by having to take detail out, but is 7k for a modular wall completely unacceptable in terms of triangle budget?
7k seems fairly high in my opinion, but I maybe I am wrong
I'm baking the little indents on the three orange segments in, as well as the indents on the inner silver circle.
This is a bit too ambiguous for me. :-P I'm not really sure how I'd go about using the modifier here (I'm assuming that's what it is.)
The upper-catwalk area is playable, so the player could get quite close to inspect.
Ultimately I'm trying to keep the project highly accurate to the real TARDIS set, with as much detail as I can pack into it in the allocated time period (which is why I'm hesitant to bake it down if it means the object won't look as accurate to real things.) I'll definitely be baking the little hinges on the central-most circle, the indents on the segments, etc - I'll probably have a go at baking in the three large segments to see if they look alright from the in-situ angles.
I could LOD them too, and probably will do if it's the alternative to having to cut back on the quality of the overall silhouette too much.
Basically reshaped some major areas such as the columns to be more in-line with the TARDIS set, I then tweaked the shaping of everything else to match it. About 50% of my hours must be literally reshaping stuff; when I change one thing, such as the curve of the columns, I need to change other stuff to match them. Unfortunately this comes with not having the plans for the set and having to eyeball everything - though I'm relatively happy with it overall at the moment in terms of shape and proportion.
If anyone does spot anything outstanding as wrong then please do let me know.
What I've got so far:
MARMOSET TEST
ALBEDO
NORMAL
ROUGHNESS
METALNESS
To me, the material in the TARDIS looks like it's supposed to be some sort of alien, rysted metal - It doesn't really look like metal because of how (little) it's reflecting light, but it does look almost rough and rusty. Hence, I've textured it like I would try going about doing something that is totally rust.
References:
Chair:
Wall:
Rotating Time Rotor:
The shaders look too flat as well it looks nothing like metal, again if i'm critiquing on these things too early I apologize but play around with it.
Either way, keep it up!
Hey, thanks for the feedback.
It's still WIP, the main issue I'm having with a lot of the materials used in the actual set is that they're not actually metal - they're painted to look like metal.
The blue material for example I think is literally just Wallpaper which has been rolled around mdf wood (or some other cheap building material), that happens to look like rusty metal. I'll remove the Normal map as you suggested because it isn't really adding anything at the moment.
I think it's the same with the ledges - they're not actually made from Steel because it would be more costly to use than mdf wood - it doesn't look like it reflects how rust, or metal would, anyway. Overall I'm trying to create it similar to the set's look.
The wall texture is pretty awful at the moment - it's literally just flat colour with AO and Normal - I left it to the side for a bit because I was getting frustrated at not being able to achieve the correct PBR look (aforementioned because the materials aren't really... Real?) I'll likely do more work on that then post it up soon.
Again, the criticism is much appreciated - nothing here is final, and really I'm just trying to get everything to a good standard, then when/if I've got time towards the end of the project start polishing in Unreal 4 and going back to add "optional" detail to textures such as intricate decals, etc.
Yeah definitely - the reason it's grayscale like on the one above is because originally I was texturing the blue material around the TARDIS as if it was some form of alien rust - now that I know that it's just thick wallpaper used on the set I'll be texturing it with Metalness of 0/black.
Any criticism appreciated.
References
One of the main difficulties was that the lighting in the Google Maps HDR photo was quite harsh on everything, meaning that it was difficult to see whether or not something is stained with a colour, or is just reflecting that colour.
Texture Maps
My Metalness map has midrange grey values in it because of how the panel in the TARDIS set has been created. I imagine the BBC set designers have put wallpaper (or something else that they can stick on) over MDF Wood and then painted it with metallic paints to make it look sort-of like metal, even though it's not actually metal - again making it difficult to texture things; because I'm trying to make it look like the set.
Toolbag Screenshots:
As always, any feedback would be appreciated - this is the best I've been able to do so far but to me it still feels wrong; I'm just not knowledgable enough about texturing to know what exactly is wrong with it at this point (I.E. what texture map needs improving?)
Stairs:
Railings
I've also added more stuff into the UE4 scene but the lighting is still pretty terrible at the moment. To be honest I'm not really sure how to set up proper lighting for this scene considering everything is lit by lots of small lights, and using Emissive/Glow to light in Unreal is incredibly inefficient.
There's 54 lights on the rotating time rotor (the big mechanism in the centre with the symbols).
34 discs on the walls, each disc contains 36 little blue lights on it. Each wall also has three white lights at the top.
The rotor in the centre has 6 "lightsaber-like" lights in it, underneath the central control panel there's also lighting in the stand.
How do I go about setting this up? I surely can't create one light for each of them, but if I don't then I fear my shadows will be inaccurate.
I've also noticed that there's something wrong with my mipmaps. If you look at the stairs in the UE4 screenshots, the texture is blurring very soon and I have to go very close to it to get the full texture resolution.
Here's reference imagery of the sort of lighting I'd like to aim for:
- Tom