Electrical Pole and Hand Painted Practice

Uberren

Hallo,
I wanted to make a small diorama to practice hand painting.

I took some pics around my neighbourhood to use as reference for the model and threw some of them together just to show. Mainly the street lamp:



My current blockout:


Still need to add in lots more.

I want to add some plants behind the wall eventually + a small tree. I will also be adding in the cables later on.

Uberren

Was interrupted by a lecture, but I did a bit more for the blockout. Gonna add in more deets and start unwrapping tomorrow.

Odow

Yeah it's nice to see that kind of scenary in handpainting style ! it changes from all the fantasy stuff

I think your modeling is a bit to complexe in places it doesn't need to in handpainting. That strap around the pole or the attack on the triangle thing can easily be fake in paint, anyway i'm going to follow this

Uberren

I hope I can deliver with something interesting and improve then

I went and simplified some of the things you mentioned. Here's what I have for the pole so far, going to start unwrapping later:

Fenyce

I really like your modelling so far. I like the shapes and details.

Jarran

excited to see how this ends up looking good so far

Odow

I think you can still drop way more poly on those cylinder. 8sides is more then enough for a cylinder.

Uberren

Sorry about the silence, been quite busy with uni and a game I'm working on.

Thanks Odow, I reduced the polycount even further. The highest amount of edge on any cylinder is now 12, mainly in the transformer.

I've put in base colours for the main pole (going to have the little cables and other smaller accessory type things like the signs / lights on a separate sheet). Going to try my hand at painting next.

Uberren

Thanks DKK!

Did a bit more work on the texture today. Please let me know if I'm doing something drastically wrong, and any advice is always welcome

Uberren

Well, my file seems to have gotten corrupted so I lost all my texture work.
I took this opportunity to re-layout the UVs to give myself more room.

I started working on the handholds first so here's a WIP:


I'm going to start working on another area and come back to it, I would really appreciate any crits on it so far.

Uberren

I lied, I came back to the hand holds and redid them.

Uberren

Did a bit more fleshing out for the block out and put together a tree texture as well.

Uberren

Slowly plodding along. Getting more colours blocked in everywhere along with some more work on the pole:


Going to try and get a dirt texture put together next.

Uberren

omg, I made such a simple mistake, I accidentally put the stop marker on the wrong side of the road @_@
I siwtched the orientation for all the models and the concrete texture so everything's on the correct side of the road now.

Uberren

Slowly plodding along when I get some free time. Added in some more details on the pole and changed up the colour scheme to something hopefully more interesting. Sorry for the weird rendering issue, it's a screengrab from the Maya viewport.


Still need to add leaves to the tree @_@

S2Engine

Looking cool, you might want to consider adding a few more smaller branches to the tree before adding the leaves from there. It might be hard to get good convincing coverage with the amount of negative space between the branches currently.

gsokol

I think the tree itself looks really out of place with everything else. You are playing it straight edged in terms of scale/geometry on the pole, but the tree is very stylized in its form. Feels like 2 seperate styles getting jammed together to me.

Uberren

Hi
@S2Engine: Thank you, you bring up a really good concern, I'll add some more branches to the tree before adding leaves / flowers to it.

@gsokol: You might be right, but my thought process for it was that everything in the scene aside from the tree is very straight and hard edged, so I wanted something a bit more curvey and organic to go along with it. I was basing it off of these sorts of tree trunks:


Is it really that jarring? I think maybe I should work harder on making the pole's texture more stylised somehow.

Uberren

Okay, I've finished up the main pole texture for now:





I've blocked in the colours for the smaller accesories on the pole, like the metal bindings, the sign and the lamp.

Uberren

Finally got some more free time to work on this.
I finished up the textures on the pole.
I also added a gutter to the edge of the road and started detailing the concrete more.
Still haven't updated the tree or added leaves yet.

Odow

Looking nice ! I definitely prefer the bark this color !

I'm not sure if it was only on odaiba but those manhole are so beautiful ! (picture is huge, don't click on it, I took it myself on my last trip and i'm too lazy to resized it haha)



I don't know if you considered it but it could be a nice addition to your diorama and it would add a pop of color (If you do a blue or green one): a Soda machine, i remember when i was in japan, they were everywhere! Even in the smallest street, i wish i could have that here, it's so useful!

You could also add a little birdie on the cable !

Uberren

Thanks!
Those manholes are everywhere in Tokyo. I took my own photo outside my house


Current progress on the concrete:



I also happen to be working on a bird alongside this but I haven't posted a WIP of it yet.
Here it is at the moment. The eyes are placeholders:


As for the vending machine idea, I think it would be cool, but it would be too crammed to place one at the moment

Odow

Here's a wonderfull mouse paint-over haha. I think the soda machine [Look at those beautiful made int canada hiragana] would fit behind, it's not that visible but it add a POP! of color ! which is a nice contrast to the pink from the sakura ( I forgot a branch >-<) and to all that gray. I would also add some grass, I know tokyo street are super clean, but I remember the smaller street had grass near old structure. I would also move the white writing, it feel really close to the wall.



For your manhole, i would higher the contrast between the two main colors, it look nice from near but as soon as you zoom out you lost everything and it doesn't read as well. It's the same for you bird he's really nice but you put many small details that won't read well when you zoom out. You lose all those details. Bigger detail would like better, like solid colour feathers.


Hope this help ^-^

Uberren

Thanks so much for all that feedback :O

The space behind that wall where you placed the vending machine is very narrow, but I like the colour it adds so I will make some changes to the ground
The street I'm basing a lot of it off of actually is very narrow so the stop line is really that close to the wall :P


I was meaning to add more foliage around the base of the tree, but I'll think about adding some around the bottom of the pole as well.

Odow

oh right that's verry narrow indeed, it seems odd at first to have the text so near the pole but they really are like this in japan !

Francois_K

I think you should scale the tree down , it seems really massive and I don't think such a big tree would be near a power line IN a city.

Besides that , once you add leaves and whatnot on the branches , it'll become even more crowded and parts of the power line could be covered up hiding the textures

Odow

Well sakura are pretty big tree and you can find them almost everywhere.

I don't know where you live but it happen often to have huge tree near power line in city, usually it's because the tree where they long before and people don't want to cut them because they are beautiful, so they just trim the bothering part.

Uberren

Thanks Francois_K, while it isn't too uncommon to see trees beside electrical poles in Tokyo, I do agree that in the case of this diorama it would block out too much of the pole, so I scaled the tree down a bit.

Also, I tried doing some changes to the ground to allow room for a possible vending machine but, in the end, I did not like the way it changed the overall look so I decided to leave it as is.

I worked on the wall and pipe today, along with the street plate.

danieru

Wow it looks fantastic. I love the purple-ish black ground. I'd love to see a tank in the scene.

Yes, I think that is what Tokyo needs: tanks. Nothing could be more accurate than large cartoonish tanks.

BasicallyNormal

I really like the texture work you did on the bird.

Uberren

Thanks

Started working on the dirt + some of the foliage:

Uberren

Worked on foliage more today, along with the water from the pipes:




Also worked on the wren:

Uberren

I think I need to go back in and paint some more lighting info into most of the terrain.

I would appreciate more feedback

jenioss

I love that bird so much XD

Uberren

Thank you :P

I just realised the street plate is missing for some reason...

Odow

the manhole thing is almost invisible, we lost all details, contrasting it more would look better. Currently it looks like you used only 1 flower for the entire tree, i think it would look better if you did 2-3 of them in different shade it would add variety and dimension to the tree

atomander

Looking really lovely! I don't think the bark texture works very well for the roots of the tree though; maybe that should get its own texture.

Uberren

@Odow: Thanks again and you're right, I forgot to work on the manhole after you suggested it the last time
I also changed up the hues and brightness for the different clusters of petals, I think it looks better now.

@atomander: thank you I changed the texture for the roots to something smoother looking.

I also painted in some more lighting information over everything, thinking I might call this done but I would like to hear any more crits if you have any!

Odow

Sorry i couldn't resist, that birdie is huge ! Except for that yep this is pretty finish and looking nice ^-^

Uberren

lol, it is very big, but I didn't want it to be so small that it's hard to see :P
Thanks so much for all your help!