Monthly Community Noob Challenge May 2015
polycounter lvl 11
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge for the month of May.
Welcome to the fifth installment of the challenge for the year of 2015!
I really do not have a skype account, but you guys like and if you have a google plus account we can set up a hang out, and discuss the challenge more.
Artist -Alexei Samokhin
http://sidxartxa.deviantart.com/
Artist -Christopher Hayes
Feel free to approach either of the concepts however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized. It's really up to you, and as long as you are learning, it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up either concept a bit, as some people wanted, then feel free. Interpret these concepts to your liking.
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, then feel free to go ahead and do it. This way you can gradually work on building up to a full scene before diving head-first into the whole ordeal.
Please read all the rules before starting.
When you are just starting out making a scene, it can seem complicated or imposing, so take the time to break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible and plan it out. A lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some reference images 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.
Here are some specifics.
- Try to post one critique for every post that you make. This will make for a better learning environment and help us all grow as artists.
- You must make your own textures, no stealing. We can't keep you from doing it, but the goal is to learn. You can use other textures and images to create your final texture, but please, no blatant copying of another artist's work.
- You must use a game engine to present your work. Unreal Engine and CryEngine are very common engines that can be used, but feel free to use any alternatives that you want.
- You must try your best and finish as much as you can in the time frame provided.
- Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique. We don't need to have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
- 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 using Ddo. 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, so please don't complain.
- Well that's about it. If you think that any rules should be changed, or there should be new additions to the rules, please let us know.
All that matters is that you learn, while being able to effectively critique others, as well as accept critiques on your own work. Remember to have fun. Cheers!
Replies
Not sure why but I decided to start with the barrels. I've actually not made one of these before despite them seeming to be a very beginner friendly model.
How do I tell if this is a decent UV unwrap or not? I assumed it is if the squares are warped on the model.
I think you want to minimize warping on your UVs.
Thanks, that's what I was thinking. I am starting to feel pretty comfortable in modeling things, not that I can model amazing things but I have the basics down enough. UV unwrapping and texturing is still something I need to work on, both seem to take a considerable amount of time.
edit: in the concept, whats that floating thing? looks interesting, looks like a pool table? It looks like it would be really easy to manage and do, I might try to do this as a low poly, diffuse only environment. Might try with Unity, Maya and photoshop
Not sure how you'd do it in your program (I think blender?) but maybe you can glean some info/ideas from this
[ame]
This has saved me a bunch of times for making rectangle textures instead of square ones which is what I tend to do for ones that will have lots of extra space like that barrel.
Which one is it?
Yes they actually both started at the same time without the other one knowing. The reason for this is the person who usually does these environment challenges hasn't done one for the month of May.
I would say just choose whichever concept you like better and run with it.
At least it wasn't just me, I saw the other and was like cool then saw this and was like...wait whut?
Chest is more or less done, now on to bones and gold.
My block out of the scene so far, though not yet done.
In my opinion, if you are using this challenge as a means to explore different software then by all means go for it and learn all that you can from doing it!
I also see that it says noob challenge, I'm not new to 3d modelling but I do fill like a need to improve my skills and portfolio. Please let me know
Great work Slapunas, I look forward to seeing what you can do with this scene.
And guys this is my High poly of my chest let me know what you guys think!
Here is my base mesh, I am moving to zBrush now to sculpt those planks and cracks.
Just about finished blocking out the scene, almost ready to start taking things into zbrush.
I wanna keep it pretty low poly and go for diffuse-only textures. If I can get away with it, I'll try to texture the whole thing with a single 1k map
Looking forward to see what everybody comes up with!
Having that said I had a massive headache trying to camera match it and gave up as I figured that the concept has a warped perspective. So you saved yourself some time for sure
Just finished baking the high ress sculpt from zBrush
[IMG][/img]
Sorry for marmoset render, never used any engine besides the one made by my fellow student but I will have the final done nicely in UE4 (learning it along the way)
Yeah, once I realized the concept wasn't going to lend itself to exact measurements I just came up with ones that looked good. I'll just say it was inspired by the concept and not trying to reproduce it 1:1 :P Besides, I love punching in those exact numbers and seeing my geometry line up perfectly
Your sculpt looks good for sure! Might I ask how you are going to handle the materials, since you're going for Unreal Engine? Are you making it more realistic with PBR materials or more stylized shading?
I usually grab the normal, AO and curvature map (Zbrush materials for this mentioned in tutorial) and then compile them in photoshop. Then I add in a gradient map, some colour variation, and paint in some extra details I want.
This is hands down my favorite way to make textures
The chest is on the right and on the left are so reff I got from the net. cc if you can.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=152490
Just posting my progress so far. Almost done, I still need to model the small details. The potions, the scrolls, the books, etc. I don't have a lot of texture space left in my 1k map, but I think I'll manage.
I still need to tweak some values, and probably make other edits, but I like to think its coming along nicely.
Gaiascope, nice progress on the textures, I'm curious how it'll turn out with lighting (unless you plan to keep it that way?). Nice pool table
So I was wondering, what's the plan for next month ? Has anyone gotten news from Wulf ?
If I'm looking at the right Skype profile, it would appear he's 17, so he may be busy with school and exams. That might be why we didn't hear from him for this month, I don't know...
Is anyone taking over the duties for June (or permanently) ? Preparing a concept voting thread ?
I'm posting in the other May thread too so we can coordinate this time
[SKETCHFAB]87fd1e38ba424cc9949109bf02dae5e2[/SKETCHFAB]
And the final texturemap
Texture (should be) displayed at 100%, those are the actual sizes the model uses. It was a really fun additional challenge to limit myself to 1024x1024. I could have probably been more efficient, but I think it looks pretty good with what I had. The props were an interesting challenge to texture, and I'm not too happy with how the vials turned out, but hey, it works! Kinda.
Im noticing Sketchfab is messing up the transparency sorting on some things, Ill look into fixing that at least.
And that should be it, really. I learned a lot doing this and enjoyed it a lot, I'll certainly keep coming back to these challenges next month!
I am also done with this month. Here is the result:
So far I have only modelled low poly with diffuse texture, so this one is a first. A lot of things could be improved obviously. Actually I learned a lot during the process and if I did the chest again right now I think it would probably look much better/cleaner. Looking forward to other people posting their chests (hopefully someone else modelled the prop
Marmoset Viewer on Artstation