Home Featured Artwork

U4 - 'Welcome to Campobasso' looking for feedback

polycounter lvl 10
Offline / Send Message
Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
Latest




------

I would like to hear impressions regarding this scene. I've been looking at it too long so I'm not 100% regarding the light, colors, assets, etc. 

It's kind of supposed to be more on the stylized, exaggerated side of things. Think Overwatch but not quite on that level of everything being bulky and modular. Also not sci fi.




Used Evgeny Lushpin's painting as a starting point for the composition and the setting, but I'm not trying to match it. The colorful buildings are inspired by Burano, a fancy looking fishing town in Italy. The real Campobasso actually looks pretty depressing in comparison.

Replies

  • lotet
    Offline / Send Message
    lotet hero character
    Looks beautifull!

    I wouldnt mind more depth, the sky is looking a bit dark and it would be nice with some more detail on the streets. now all the rocks are normal mapped only. some small rocks, papers, things lying around could ad more life.
  • hellokritty
    Offline / Send Message
    hellokritty vertex
    Looking at the reference picture, maybe adding some dirt between the cracks of the street. Maybe add some wear and tear where people would normally walk just to make it seem more lived in. Really awesome work!
  • EricElwell
    Offline / Send Message
    EricElwell insane polycounter
    Looks awesome! I think you might try adding some more warmth and bounced light in the shadows. The shadows currently feel very neutral/gray, and I think you could get some mileage out of brightening and saturating your shadows. That's a stylistic choice of course, but it sounds like that's the style direction you're headed.
  • David-J
    Offline / Send Message
    David-J polycounter lvl 11
    I love it. 

    I would say that it needs to come alive. Right now the street looks dead. There are no signs of daily life or if you are going for abandoned you need things to populate. Right now you have a beautiful setting but I think you could make it tell a story by adding stuff to it.

    Other than that I think you have done a great job and I love your use of color.

    Cheers!


  • PixelMasher
    Offline / Send Message
    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    right now the lighting is really flat and dull. boost the overall exposure and get some more light bouncing around in the shadows. for such sunny blue sky day the overall brightness is really low, and the shadows are super black/not nice. did a quick Photoshop adjustment of what I mean. 

  • FreneticPonies
    Offline / Send Message
    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    Agreed with @PixelMasher a lighting overhaul could really finish this. Boosting both exposure would be great EG




    Setting bounces to 10+ would help, and pushing diffuse boost beyond 1 would really work with this art direction, allowing the bounce light to get pretty saturated.
  • Martoon
    Offline / Send Message
    Martoon polycounter lvl 2
    Nice take on the Overwatch look, very clean and nice texture work! @Bedrock I know the foliage strong contrast is a stylistic choice , I think a little Subsurface would give it a little more pop :D
  • radiancef0rge
    Offline / Send Message
    radiancef0rge ngon master
    I hate to be a party pooper but I totally disagree, the lighting in his image is on point. I think its slightly underexposed but the colors are gorgeous the way they are. That looks like stylized realism in my opinion. 

  • FreneticPonies
    Offline / Send Message
    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    I hate to be a party pooper but I totally disagree, the lighting in his image is on point. I think its slightly underexposed but the colors are gorgeous the way they are. That looks like stylized realism in my opinion. 

    All 3 have vastly upped the brightness in slightly different ways, so I think there's agreement there  :D
  • polygonmonster
    Offline / Send Message
    polygonmonster polycounter lvl 8
    Man, you made me look at this picture for a couple of minutes looking at every detail. Good work with the style and composition. In my opinion I guess that a little bit of bloom or saturation will help to pop out the focal point. Keep it up the good work. 
  • romy
    Offline / Send Message
    romy polycounter lvl 12
    Excellent composition ! I really like the overall texturing & design of your scene. I would agree with lotet though, maybe add a bit of life in your street through decals meshes like papers, leaves, peddles etc... Maybe a few birds in the sky would help as well !

  • Doodlok
    Offline / Send Message
    Doodlok interpolator
    Fantastic work! This genuinely looks like a place I'd like to go exploring. 

    Regarding the color scheme controversy I personally agree with @radiancef0rge  and his adjustments, but nonetheless if the atmosphere you're trying to go for is sort of that lucid, dreamy feeling than the edits suggested by @PixelMasher  would fit very nicely too. But personally I find the realistic yet vivid tone that you have now more intriguing to look at. 

    Really, this is a great work! I'd love to see this in real time or see characters playing in it. 

  • Michael_Ingrassia
    Offline / Send Message
    Michael_Ingrassia polycounter lvl 5

    One of the things I always do is to "flip" the image. It helps give you a better perspective and a new "eye" on the composition. One thing that immediately stands out is the lack of interest on the right side alleyway. There is a lack of foliage and life happening down there.

    So I brought up the brightness a bit and punched up some of the color contrast. Added foliage in the alley as well as some "interesting" silhouettes at the bottom. Your scene is lacking in the beautiful red flowers dominant in your original reference image. I also didn't realize the center building was a Barbero until I zoomed in. So I made the door etching easily recognizable as well as painted the words in Barber "red".
    I also opened the door on the right side a crack to add some intrigue. Maybe the person on the bike was in a rush to get home? Typical kid leaving the door ajar. Finally a small flock of birds to break up the composition.
    Just a few suggestions. Hope they help. Lovely work and execution :)
    -Michael
  • ttrevan_art
    Offline / Send Message
    ttrevan_art polycounter lvl 7

    One of the things I always do is to "flip" the image. It helps give you a better perspective and a new "eye" on the composition. One thing that immediately stands out is the lack of interest on the right side alleyway. There is a lack of foliage and life happening down there.

    So I brought up the brightness a bit and punched up some of the color contrast. Added foliage in the alley as well as some "interesting" silhouettes at the bottom. Your scene is lacking in the beautiful red flowers dominant in your original reference image. I also didn't realize the center building was a Barbero until I zoomed in. So I made the door etching easily recognizable as well as painted the words in Barber "red".
    I also opened the door on the right side a crack to add some intrigue. Maybe the person on the bike was in a rush to get home? Typical kid leaving the door ajar. Finally a small flock of birds to break up the composition.
    Just a few suggestions. Hope they help. Lovely work and execution :)
    -Michael
    I think those red flowers and added contrast on the right front plane steal the focus from the image. It's actually darkened quite nicely in the original
  • Bedrock
    Offline / Send Message
    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    Wow fantastic feedback guys! And thank you for the compliments.
    Progress: Spiced up the floor with some leafs, reflections, more normal map variety (got two materials blending). Added mail boxes, newspapers, birds and some sporadic detail. Going for a slightly more autumn/late summer theme with the colors.



    @lotet
    Agreed the floor is a bit barren. Considering this is my no1 problem with the scene I'm going to push more of an autumn theme and shower the floor in leaves. The streets IRL are just so clean there's no way I'm going to use trash :p

    @hellokritty
    I've got like a smooth/cracked vert paint going on with the floor but I wasn't making the best use of it. I actually reduced the normal strength on the smooth one that created a much better contrast on the floor. 

    @EricElwell
    With the whole autumn thing going on I did bump up the warmth in the scene!

    @David-J
    I totally agree it's just a bit annoying when the real streets all look barren.. 

    @PixelMasher
    Can't really get more light bounce without making it look really fake. I can see that light setup working if it were more mid-day ish although it does look a little over the top.

    @FreneticPonies
    Already got bounce light at a 100 and I'm boosting bounce light to 5-6. At the end of the day though bounce light only travels so far. I'm overall pretty happy with the shadow though, I don't want the entire scene to pop. 

    @radiancef0rge
    I was wondering if it's underexposed, photoshop told me it was but leveling it seemed too bright. I will level it a bit. 

    @polygonmonster
    Glad you like it, I don't fancy using bloom much though. I think better light levels will help with the saturation.

    @Doodlok
    Well realistic but vivid is very much the goal here so it's good to hear it's coming together somewhat. I might make a video, getting a much better sense of scale and depth even with a tiny amount of camera movement.

    @Michael_Ingrassia
    Very good suggestions, adding detail to the alleyway is pretty difficult because the empty streets are kind of Italian characteristics, but in this case it does feel like it's working against the scene. 
    Red flowers work in the original concept but I have a much more contrasting scene and I need to juggle detail a lot more carefully. I want to keep the focal point on the orange building and adding a bunch of red everywhere would go against that. I had the same idea with the open door! And I do need birds.

    @t_revan
    Agreed and thanks!


  • lotet
    Offline / Send Message
    lotet hero character
    Much better!  
    love the atumn feeling and extra detail on the streets, the gloss variation is a nice touch as well, would still love to see some more depth in the ground texture. what I mean by that is maybe model out some of the stones or ad tessellation or something.
    modeling out the manhole cover might be a good thing too.


  • Bedrock
    Offline / Send Message
    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    Fair enough, looks like a really cheap parallax (bump offset) will do the trick. Don't really want to commit to tessalation or just throwing more geo at it as I want to keep the scene fairly low poly.


  • radiancef0rge
    Offline / Send Message
    radiancef0rge ngon master
    One of the easiest ways to tell if the image is underexposed is to add a grey card with a value of .125 diffuse in front of the camera. If it reads as 99,99,99 in PS that its exposed 'correctly' 
  • Bedrock
    Offline / Send Message
    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    That's a neat trick! Makes sense tho.. I'm getting 116 for the original exposure setting that everyone thought was too dark, hmm. 
  • radiancef0rge
    Offline / Send Message
    radiancef0rge ngon master
    Might be the that card should be where you would want to expose for, so in this case Id say put it in direct light as opposed to the shadowed foreground 
  • Scruffy606
    Offline / Send Message
    Scruffy606 polycounter lvl 2
    Hey!

    The scene is looking really awesome! i love the use of colour and think the lighting is looking good.

    Have you considered doing another version of the lighting (as well as this one) but setting it late evening/nightime?

    Your initial concept looks like its set evening time and has some windows glowing and street lamps on. Applying these elements to your scene could be really interesting. i would have the windows softly glowing and the street lamp on. it would make this sleepy little town feel even more cosy! :)

    I would do this as an addition to strong daytime lighting you have already. A nighttime version would give the scene a different focus as you would have more control over smaller local lighting than a strong directional one.

    not as dark as this, but along these lines.

    https://www.venetoinside.com/files/images/tours/veneto/shadows-of-venice-grand-tour-by-night/misteri-venezia.jpg

    The scene is looking great though, cant wait to see more! :)








  • Bedrock
    Offline / Send Message
    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    @radiancef0rge
    Yeah I've put the material on a sphere and in direct sunlight next to the main building and made a strip of the 99 99 99 going through it in photoshop to see how it blends. Long story short Unreal 4 did a good job with the auto exposure but it's still kind of dark for people so for a portfolio shot I think I will boost the light a bit. 

    @Scruffy606
    Thanks! Yeah I'm planning to practice lighting on this map for a week or so. I don't think the geo needs changing at this point so I'll probably start today. 
  • bigodon
    Offline / Send Message
    bigodon polycounter lvl 8
    your scene has more painting feeling than your reference and inspiration
    is that what you had in mind? or this is something i just tough? by the way, it looks great and don't think wrong because i liked!
  • Bedrock
    Offline / Send Message
    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    Yeah that's mostly what I went for! Thanks
  • lucianomunoz_
    Offline / Send Message
    lucianomunoz_ polycounter lvl 2
    reminds me a lot to the old "italy" level in counterstrike, but how it would look now.
  • Dragonar
    Offline / Send Message
    Dragonar polycounter lvl 10
    wow it's really look like a painting ! It's really cool !
  • malcolm
    Offline / Send Message
    malcolm polycount sponsor
    Looks great, nice job. Definitely don't tint it cyan with post process.
  • pixelpatron
    Offline / Send Message
    pixelpatron polycounter
    This is great, but I feel like right now this image is a great background without any sort of character or plot. If it's purpose is to be a portfolio piece it's almost there. I'd suggest adding something to the foreground. Maybe a bicycle rack with bike or a vespa scooter? The image is in dire need of a main character; shoot for that visual focal point to multiply this fabulous stage you've created.

    I think it's as simple as opening the door to main yellowish building and parking the bike next to it, tell me a visual story.
  • Bedrock
    Offline / Send Message
    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    I've dropped some blockouts (scooter, bike, table+chair) into the scene and moved them around to get a feel for how it would fit, I've also tried opening some of the windows with some interiors visible. They could look nice but it's also fairly noisy considering how everything in the main shot is far away other than the door on the left (which is not a focal point). 

    At the end of the day it would've been just more work doing something that trades one thing for another rather than adding to the scene if that makes sense. Clarity and composition vs story and noise.

    I could see the open door working nicely in a night scene because there's less visible detail/contrast and I'd have more control over the focal point. I will get around doing something like that but as far as my portfolio is concerned I need more sculpting done first.

  • SittingDucky
    Offline / Send Message
    SittingDucky polycounter lvl 10
    oooh love it!!!
Sign In or Register to comment.