Monthly Environment Art Challenge - July & August 2017 (49)
greentooth
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Environment & Prop Challenge #49!
We had a LOT of participation this last round, which is really inspiring. I have to give special thanks to all those who participated in the voting for Challenge 49 - These are some really exciting concepts this time!
Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. There's always some good progress that falls off the radar - we want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!
Without further ado, here are our options for Challenge 49!
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: mikhail rakhmatullin
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: Alexander Shatohin
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: park eunji
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: jake parker
We had a LOT of participation this last round, which is really inspiring. I have to give special thanks to all those who participated in the voting for Challenge 49 - These are some really exciting concepts this time!
Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. There's always some good progress that falls off the radar - we want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!
Without further ado, here are our options for Challenge 49!
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: mikhail rakhmatullin
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: Alexander Shatohin
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: park eunji
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: jake parker
If you want to change up either concept a bit, as some people wanted, then feel free. Interpret these concepts to your liking.
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 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. (Marmoset Toolbag is allowed as well)
- 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.
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
Great choices for this 49th edition!!
Good breakdown. I'm starting the 3d blockout for this
Artist: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aZa2q
Artist: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/o10GW
I'm thinking of doing a head-on shot similar to these and add some atmosphere. Maybe do a day/night scene? Or just night. The lanterns that are hanging up could look awesome when they're lit up. Anyways, I'm breaking down what is modular and what isn't. I'll try and get back tomorrow with a block in for proportion/space/camera location(s). Goodluck everyone
EDIT: Added links to the artists of the two concept images I posted.
Started blocking things out and started sculpting the lions in zbrush
I'm not good with Zbrush, so i need to learn
zBrush was a pretty steep learning curve for me. I think with the environment you chose this would be a pretty good opportunity to pick it up
I too am nervous about the lions lol.
Nothing to brag home about yet =P I had a tough time determining how close to stay to the concept art. I especially had trouble determining the (I'll call it a restaurant?) entrance of the restaurant. It appears to be asymmetrical in the image, but when I put my camera in front of the building it just didn't look right to me. I decided to make it symmetrical. Still trying to match the stone to where the little half-wall starts, and place the steps in other specific spots...Drove me nuts! Decided to go for a modular design and make it symmetrical in the end. Here's what I'm working with for modularity so far...
Ohhhh nice! Thanks for that.
Textile or fabric flexible ducts though, otherwise apparently you will get the more common aluminum and insulated ones.
Nice job on the bed! I'm looking back at the concept and I'm thinking maybe there should be a little bit less wrinkle between the cushions? The concept looks more "hard" rather than a softer cushion.
1) Break down image into components in photoshop.
2) Begin building a low-poly mesh in 3DSMAX for each component - save it.
3) Build the high poly mesh - save it.
4) Unwrap the low poly & high poly meshes?
5) Go into substance designer and bake your normal/height/ao/etc maps from your high poly to your low poly.
6) build material in SD.
7) Import low poly mesh into Unreal and apply your maps.
8) Set up you scene in Unreal?
9) Take a screenshot.
Also:
1a) Block out a rough model of the entire scene in unreal to check if your dimensions and lighting are working.
Any advice would be very much appreciated, thank you.
Starting off with a simple hi poly in Max.
Hey! I'm glad to offer some advice for you.
You have the general idea of what it's going to take to complete any of the challenges. I don't know about you, but I love seeing how other people work and I try to implement their workflows into my own, so I'll share with you what I do. It's by no means the only way or the best way, but it's the way I prefer to do things.
1) Once I get my piece of concept I'll break the scene down. What can I make modular? How far do I want to stray, or how close do I want to stay, to the original piece? What are some general distances between objects? Figuring out your proportions at the very start can save you many hours. Search the web for reference images of other people's work that is similar to this. Find real life photos of architecture and other elements in your scene. Pre-Production can save you massive amounts of time if you study up and prepare well.
2) I'll go into my modeling package (I use Maya, but 3DS, Blender, etc. are fine too) and do a mega simple blockout of the scene. You can go through this forum page actually and see a few of us are currently doing that. I think I can confidently speak for the others, but what we're trying to do is get our proportions down solid. It's one of the most important parts of your project, if not THE most important part of the project. Work with blocks and basic cylinders to get your basic shapes, distances, and proportions as perfect as you can with simple shapes. You can also use this phase to test out your modular pieces. If you look at one of my pictures, I highlighted the pieces I decided to make modular. A useful technique to make sure your proportions/scale are correct is to import a character model (you can get the third person character model from the unreal engine) and use him as a reference of scale. If you want, you can bring this blockout stage into Unreal and test its proportions with the first person character or third person character. Also, check out this link for scale/proportions.
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/ue4/ue4-guide-to-scale-dimensions.php
3) I'm still in my modeling package. Some people like to work low poly to high poly and some like to work high poly to low poly. I prefer working low to high. Now that I have my whole scene blocked out I'll keep that so I can use it as reference. I'll start to build my low poly based very closely to my blockout. This is when I start adding more edge loops and actually getting my mesh to look more like the object, but with as few polys as I know I can get away with. Be sure that everything follows the proportions that you laid out earlier. For me, as I finish a low poly model and I know it's done, I like to UV my mesh as I go rather than putting it off and UVing everything at once. Once my low poly stuff is complete I'll bring it into my rendering software (Marmoset, Unreal, Unity, Arnold, etc.) and set everything up. I'll take the time to setup the basic lighting of the scene.
4) Now I'm making my high poly. Generally, I duplicate all of my low poly stuff and create a new high poly group, and I start from there. It's the utmost importance that your high poly is on top of your low poly (won't bake properly if it's not). Once I have a nice high poly in my modeling package I'll either determine it's complete or I'll bring it into zBrush for detail sculpting.
5) Baking/texturing! I see you're a person of Substance (haha, ah..ha) so I'll stick with that. I also use Substance. You can actually bake inside Designer or Painter, but I prefer Painter's baker. I'll usually make my materials inside Designer if it's a complex material, if not I can use the default materials inside Painter to create Smart Materials. Depending on your workflow and for the sake of optimization, you should look into packing your textures: specifically your roughness, metallic, AO, and height maps. They can all fit into the same one texture map
6) Textures are done, scene is together. Really focus on your lighting, particle effects (if you have them), post processing effects, etc. etc. Take your screenshots and amaze the community!
This is pretty much how I generally work on projects. I have my intricacies here and there, but those are the highlights. What you offered in your post is pretty much the same general idea. Feel free to ask any of us if you have more questions!
Nice start! Do you plan on building any mesh to go behind the lens? It could be a really cool effect if your lens has some opacity to it and you can see more mechanical parts inside
Thank you for the great feedback. I probably need a little more experience using Unreal and Painter before I jump into challenges, but I'm not far off.
This is the perfect opportunity to jump in!
Right now I'm using the Maya LT trial period. Normally I use Blender. I also have ZBrushcore, Substance Designer/Painter, and Marmoset Toolbag.
Things I've already noticed and changed on this model:
- Feet need to be resized, they're big and a lot thicker as is. I've already scaled them down twice now
- I'll need to remodel the right and rear leg. To start off I just modeled one leg and duplicated it over for the others as placeholders
- The head dome was to short and positioned way too low. I made it taller and positioned it slightly higher. Then I moved the legs closer inward under the dome to match the reference image better.
I'd appreciate any tips or help! Thank you all!Initial:
Updated:
Good start, however I think you have your scales inversed. For your model, the head is small and lower body is big, but in the concept it's the opposite! I think you should make your leg parts smaller than the head. Look at the concept again to see what I'm talking about. Good job imagining what the underside looks like. It's kind of tough since the concept is ambiguous to that area of the body. Keep at it
Still blocking the scene out, trying to figure out spacing and proportion. Probably need to make the lion statue placeholders a bit taller...Cut back on the concrete sidewalk on the left side. Trying my best to keep the scene as modular as possible and keep the pieces snapped on the grid. Keep on building!
Great work thus far.
When blocking out the shape be sure to get your proportions right.
It might be hard to eyeball it, try to Import the Ref Image as an image plane into ur Scene to assist with that.
Also dont worry about remodelling the other legs.
The correct workflow in this case since they are identical, would be to model one leg and duplicated em anyway.
Thank you!