Nate's Hand painted cottage

NateMasterFlash

Dusting off an old unfinished project. Concept is from the WoW:Cataclysm artbook. Been tweaking some shapes and proportions. I'm using tiling textures for the majority of the cottage and a single unique texture for the windows/chimney and other accessories.

Everything is still WIP and able to change. I am considering trying to create more modular meshes and put everything on 1 texture instead of 4 currently. Feedback and critique are more than welcome. Screen grabs are from Maya, I will be using UE4 for the final presentation.

skodone

the grass is so intense it really steals the show

Cheeky_Pickle

Hey it's looking cool.

I think your roof tiles are a tad large and could be tiled more. Maybe add some variation in your wood texture too it's looking a bit plain, perhaps two different types? Finally, all your windows have the same image, change it up a little :

NateMasterFlash

Thanks for the crits

@Holly good points, I adjusted the roof. Windows and wood will come soon.
@skodone I plan on using a terrain or or setting up a mesh for vertex painting in UE4.

I dug up the concept. I wasn't trying 100% to match it when I first started but I may reconsider. There are a lot of little details that I overlooked when I first started. Some of the trim pieces might even be metal.

A little update:


Current Texture Flats

Rawbert

It's a good start but personally I really dont like the color of the roof and it also feels waaaaayyy to flat.

It would help a lot of you actually model some half cylinders on the edge of the roof to "break" the flat roof lines.

Kid.in.the.Dark

This is a good start to it all,

The roof is a bit over saturated to it makes it quite uncomfortable to the viewer's eyes...
what are your intentions with the way this model will be used / lit? Will it be flat lit or lit within UE4? will it be a full level or a diorama like piece? because knowing that I can give you a lot of crit for lighting if it's flat lit but if it's going to be lit in UE4 I can give crit on the texture details itself instead.

NateMasterFlash

Thanks Rawbert and Kid.

@Kid.in.theDark I do intend to light this model in UE4. Its going to be a small to medium diorama that may become home to other props to eventually. I switched to another style of shingle to match the concept better although it currently may have the same saturation issue.

@Rawbert I like the suggestion, I will make some breakups or small sections of modeled shingles to help on all edges of the roof.

NateMasterFlash

Bit of an update.

Unlit. Need to make uv sets for lightmaps.



unbuilt lighting


Plenty more work to be done. 
Finishing lightmaps next and then another texture pass.

ozzy310

You should play with the levels a bit more to make your textures pop. At this moment they look desaturated. 

NateMasterFlash

Updates.  Building out the environment.  Working on trees currently.  Going to replace the ground with a terrain and do another pass on the grass.  Grass cards on the way too.


Using the same material as the wood from the cottage.  I plan to change it but I like the idea that they used nearby trees to build it.

NateMasterFlash

Update to the trees.  I tried a different approach but I want to follow through with the other tree as well. 

My flat for the branches.

zetheros

Heyy, it's starting to shape up. Try adding some ambient occlusion, more dirt, and bits of moss/weeds. You also need more vibrance; throw in some subtle warm and cold colors into the textures, as well as painting in specular. As for lighting, add more sources of light, and turn down the intensity for the top-down directional light. Add in some torches for mood, campfires, or glowing windows.
Also, WoW architecture is really exaggerated. Deform the mesh a bit more to add character; the walls are too straight.
You can also try adding barrels, crates, and a wooden sign that says "Nate's Cottage" hanging over the door for more character.

NateMasterFlash

Thanks for the ideas and feedback Zetheros.  I'll take a crack at adding some cool deformations to the cottage.  Will be doing another texture pass on the cottage soon but want to get these trees looking decent first.


Got transparency sorting working in Maya LT

Small lighting adjustments.  Preview quality.

Windows... soon

ZombieDawgs

It'd be cool if you could unhook some of UE4's tools to help you present it a bit more, even a skylight would help with your shadows and instantly make them less harsh.

Some bounce lighting to fill up the area and then some minor post processing on top of that. 

Terrain for the ground, even subtle breakup. Then add a stone texture and blend the grass using the landscape painting tools. Small pebbles and little clumps of foliage dotted about will break up the repetition as well. You could also add a stone base to the house as well, so it's planted on something rather than just wood going straight into the floor.

Just my 2c.

NateMasterFlash

Thanks for the tips Zombiedawgs

Have a couple quick updates.  Terrain system changed more than I thought from UDK to UE4.  Reading up on it, hope to implement soon!

Did a quick lattice on the cottage.  Need to tweek the geometry for better deformations but I think this is a step in the right direction.


Added a skylight, seems to help a bunch already.

NateMasterFlash

bah, forgot to downscale to 512.  Working on the new grass texture.

NateMasterFlash

Have a bit of progress.  Landscape functional, hoping to find a fancier way to blend textures together.  Foliage... I have some things to read over.  

NateMasterFlash

Updates

Made some nice mountain/rock shapes and replaced the old ones.  Lighting is getting better.  May crank up the repeats on my landscape.
Ground breakup is on the horizon... 

NateMasterFlash

Foliage set up in the landscape now.  My grass clusters are looking kind of like cabbage.  I'll take another stab at them.



Current Grass statics.

AtticusMars

You need ambient light in your scene man... your shadows are super dark. I'd also suggest switching to dynamic lighting only instead of using lightmass. If you insist on using lightmass then you need to significantly increase your lightmap resolution, because your shadows aren't even the right shape right now.

NateMasterFlash

Thanks for the suggestions. Made some improvements, still trying to get grass cards to cast shadows.

AtticusMars

Looking much better. Also it's better if your grass planes don't cast shadows in my opinion, they'll just make everything look flat. Your main issue is that the color of your cards doesn't match the grass terrain texture.

AtticusMars

Other things you should consider:
1) Removing your house from the concrete slab and just putting it on the terrain. Right now doesn't really feel like it fits in the scene.
2) Using a mask to help blend the transition between your dirt and grass terrain texture. Right now you just have a soft linear fade which could be improved with a mask.
3) Filling out your trees better with more foliage and a more clearly defined shape. Similar to your grass, your leaf planes are sort of sporadically placed around the trunk. I'd suggest looking at reference and trying to match the shape of the tree to something from life.
4) Adding more smaller details, especially to the terrain. Your environment is basically empty right now. You've got a treeline and a ground and that's it. You should consider adding some rocks, perhaps some different trees, shrubs, maybe flowers or something else to add accent colors.

I'd suggest taking a look at some of the images in the Allod's Online environment design notes that are on the polycount wiki. It's fantastic. Particularly page 14 where he describes clustering the same object together at different sizes to get variety. Should help you a lot with your terrain.

NateMasterFlash

Quick update.  Went back to the old color on grass cards.  Gonna play with my card shapes more next.

AtticusMars

Point your vertex normals up on the grass cards so that the shading matches the terrain

NateMasterFlash

Read those design notes.  Very helpful. 
Fixed the vertex normals on the grass cards.  Played with fog a bit more.



Got distracted trying to take screen caps and started to sculpt my landscape.  Trying to implement some things I learned from those notes.  Mostly creating some hills to separate fore/mid/background.


Going to take some time and plan out my foliage and ground clutter.  Annnd gather reference.  R&R... reference and research

@AtticusMars Thanks for all the feedback and tips
1) had a suggestion to put the cottage on a foundation.  Just slopped a bsp box as a placeholder.  I'll remove for now and revisit that when I'm closer to finishing.
2) I was attempting to do that in the landscape material but it's different than UDK and i do
3) will do, going to work on some nice card shapes too
4) on it

NateMasterFlash

Just updates to landscape, foliage, and fog.  "fixed" the vertex normals on my trees even though they're going to be rebuilt soon.  
Gathered some ref for my trees and ground breakup.  Can't wait to get them made.

NateMasterFlash

Got some new foliage in the works.  Scale seems a little big on the new pieces right now.

Tried a different technique with my trees, ran into a small road block but used the foliage system to reproduce it by panting on the tree geometry.  

AtticusMars

I'm guessing you're trying to replicate the Airborn/Pingo tree look by using a solid mesh with a tiling texture with leaf planes pasted onto it? It is very important when using this technique that:

1) Your leaf planes are the same color as your tiling texture, they should blend in seamlessly. Right now your colors are VERY different.
2) Vertex normals all match a simple shape. If your vertex normals don't match then your tree won't shade correctly and the illusion will be broken. I can't say for sure if your vertex normals are off until the colors are corrected, but if you're using the UE4 foliage system, they probably are.

Your fog is also incredibly strong right now, I've had trouble getting decent falloff using UE4s atmospheric fog. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I've been considering making something similar to the Fog Sheet they have in UE4's sample documentation. It should give you better separation of your foreground and background, and more importantly it gives you some stylized control over it.

May I ask what the problem you were having that required you to use UE4s foliage system to paint on the trees?

NateMasterFlash

Yes to the Airborn look.  I was painting foliage on the trees and a temporary workaround.  I was attempting to find a faster workflow than duplicating and manually placing each card on the other underlying mesh.  I had planned emitting the leaf cards from the solid mesh or using the paint geo tool, but they may not exist in Maya LT.

Also, thanks for all the crits Atticus

AtticusMars

Does Maya LT have the ability to snap to a surface? Placing objects by duplicating them should be very fast with surface snapping, you should be able to set the gizmo orientation to local to do fast rotations too. It won't be as fast as painting it, but it shouldn't take unreasonably long.

Edit: And I'm happy to help, you've worked on this a long time and it's come a long way, I hope you get to finish it!

NateMasterFlash

More progress shots.  Updated all the textures on my pear tree.  No pears yet though.
I was able to snap to geo, made the process a little easier.




WIP for the new bark texture.

NateMasterFlash

Couple updates.  Made some rocks, updated the cottage textures a bit finally.

NateMasterFlash

new stuff. mostly just foliage updates

NateMasterFlash

More grass tweaks.  Adjusted lighting and fog a bit.

NateMasterFlash

Got rid of the old trees and replaced them with some variations.  Still getting used to this method of making trees.  Can be tough to choose the right shapes. 

Thanks for taking a look.

Caiterade

Wow, this came along super nice

wirrexx

start playing around with lighting a bit more, it kills off the mod! Otherwise, this is comming along nicely!

NateMasterFlash

Thanks Caiterade and Wirrexx.

Will definitely work on the lighting more.

Cordero

nice work the scene improwed a lot from the first images! texture flats you painted look nice aswell! 
what I would change would be the environment, presentation a bit! It would be a good idea to always keep the house ( the thing you worked on the most ) in the focus! so I would remove it from the fog (bring it closer to the camera ), and make the house the focus of the scene, both with the composition and lighting. I would also make the grass and the top of the trees similar to each other in color, and huse, right now the grass is very saturated and bright, and the tree tops are dark and desaturated, maybe brining them together would help!

I would also recommend looking at pictures from maybe World of Warcraft to see how they made environments similar to yours! This one is zone called elwynn forrest, but if you want to go for a fogy dark style then you could google silverpine forest. You cans see the grass and the trees are very close to eachother in tone and hue. They also use three different textures on the ground, you can do that aswell! Also good idea to create some usable objects around the house, like barrels and stuff.

NateMasterFlash

Got distracted by some other projects but I am back to cleaning this scene up.  Most things could use more more work but I'm happy with how this is turning out.   Going to build some lower poly trees that would be more appropriate in WoW.

@Cordero  I have been keeping in mind what you mentioned about the trees/grass and will be sure to implement that fully when I update the trees.

NateMasterFlash

Adding variation to the foliage and working on better clumping.

NateMasterFlash

Added glowy bit and leaf particle effects.  

Maxilator

Lookin good, but I think you overdid the particles a bit there, and the lighting could have a bit more of a color and mood to it imo, it looks pretty white and stale atm, I think It would looks really good in a dusk or moonlit night setting.

Keep up the good work!

NateMasterFlash

Thanks for the suggestions  @Maxilator

Trying for night time lighting.  The white glow is from exponential height fog and I plan to adjust it more.

gsokol

I think overall your textures are lacking some depth.  I'm seeing a trend of sticking pretty strictly to the same hues and saturation levels.  Adding a little bit more subtle variation overall will help I think.  The tiling grass texture seems a bit contrasty to me.  I'm not a fan of the dark green underside.  Unless dirt is showing up under the grass blades, I would try to remove that contrast.  Doing such would make the grass look softer and voluminous.  Right now it looks hard and edgy.

NateMasterFlash

@gsokol Thanks for the suggestions.  I will keep them in mind when I do another pass on the textures.

Did a little more work with the lights and fog.  

NateMasterFlash

Updates.

Still playing with the ground textures and values.  Grass cards aren't quite the right color right now but will get updated as I finalize the grass texture on the terrain.  Did a texture pass on the rocks and stones.  Coming up with some ideas for lanterns as well.

Unlit

Lighting only

Lanterns


NateMasterFlash

Small update.  Spending some time with the lighting and sculpting the landscape into more interesting and natural shapes.  Pretty sure my the cottage light maps could be better.  Will address them when I update the model.

NateMasterFlash

Started blocking out a lamp.  Exaggerated proportions a little in the 2nd image and tried to make things a little less perfect. Still think I could mess it up a little more.

NateMasterFlash

Spamming some beauty shots.   Done with this scene for a little while but will come back in a month or two. 

Thanks again everyone who has offered suggestions and critiques.