[WIP] Hand Painted WoW Tattoo Shop

Enhirement

Hi everyone!

Working on a Tattoo Shop from building concepts of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan by Charlène Le Scanff (AKA Catell-Ruz).

Please let me know what you think as I knock this out. Thanks!

Phase 1: Deciding what materials or colors to create for this. Overall I decided on tan / pinkish plaster to convey warmth of the scene. Unfortunantly the most recent MSoG artwork is at night, but with WoW lore it's location is in a desert.

Phase 2: Modeled and UV'd the entire scene. Some shapes are different, but I can do smaller adjustments in the polishing phase after I texture everything.

Phase 3: Currently here, and will most likely be spending most of my time in the painting phase. Will post updates

as I continue on!

Enhirement

Hey guys! Sorry for no update, had to redo UVs and replan, also got sick. Here's how things are shaping up:

The building is lacking AO at the moment, which will be baked later. I also plan on moving this from Maya to Unreal Engine 4 soon.

Enhirement

Update! Everything is into Unreal Engine! More painting has been done, and am now experimenting with vertex blending wooden planks under the plaster texture.

TO DO LIST (for now):

Finish painting
Bake AO maps + gradient for the building
Make tiled wood same color as wood assets
2nd Pass on textures

Enhirement

Thought I'd post a Sunday update since adding AO and a few color changes really changed a lot of what it looked like previously.

Now that I have the right set up, I can focus more on unifying the textures.

Enhirement

Monday Update -

Added an actual background, and did a 2nd pass over some of the textures.

The background is from Unreal Engine, I created the base sand and stone textures and set up terrain painting with them. Considering doing height maps to blend them better, or putting sand inbetween the stones.

Enhirement

Color changes, mailbox added, and barrels! Will continue texture passes as I go on.

AgelosAp

Nice progress, the shapes/silhouette are looking nice, the textures lack some color variation but are overall good.
One thing that throws me off is the sign logos. Both in color and design, they are confusing, I think simpler icons would work better and probably a different color as well(it's the same as the sky now) how about white?

Enhirement

Thank you for the crit AgelosAp! I've been working on the scene some more, and adjusted the paint to a better color. I believe the icons might make more sense now, what do you think? I also woredon a bit more texture definition for the red roofs, since it seemed unclear of what they were made from.

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Also for a general update to the thread, I have been reviewing screenshots from inside the World of Warcraft environment. While they do have their own custom engine, I have adjusted my scope to replicate this in Unreal Engine 4. So far, things have been going well.

Of course, this will be adjusted over time and is in no way going to take priority over hand painting. I have disabled all the PBR maps, and turned off tonemapping to really try and replicate the unlit, single directional light that Warcraft has.


 




And if those of you are interested in pure textures:

Enhirement

Hi everyone, little update as I continue on. Took a break from working with the house to tweak lighting, make cacti, fix fog, and work on the composition. I'm pretty happy with it, but am welcoming anyone's thoughts on this.

Now I'm going to return to the house and refine the textures even more, because it is the main subject of the scene.

The bottom of the house is sharp, so I might try a dithering effect in the material.


P.S.
Also simplified my "branding logo" a bit, I wanted it easier to read and less invasive when I applied to to my work.



Also, if anyone is interested in the node work I've been doing, here is one of the more complex ones for the building plaster.

Enhirement

Update! Sorry, it's been a while! removed a lot of stuff, added stuff, etc. Main thing completed was replacing the complex vertex shader with alpha cards. I needed more control and style that the vert painting just wasn't offering.

Added some storytelling elements, bullet holes, booze bottles, coins, etc.


 

Enhirement

Update! Sand and stone textures remade. House has more separation from the background now!

Enhirement

Smoke updated, bolts and stones now have some model depth. Small texture updates, and playing with DOF. Pretty pleased with how it's turning out.

AgelosAp

Nice progress on this!, I think the shop is at a pretty good place.
I 'd concentrate some more stuff towards the building to make it seem like it's not randomly placed in a desert, like a little more cacti, a "street lamp", a small fence or low wall(?) something like that.

Enhirement

AgelosAp said:

Nice progress on this!, I think the shop is at a pretty good place.
I 'd concentrate some more stuff towards the building to make it seem like it's not randomly placed in a desert, like a little more cacti, a "street lamp", a small fence or low wall(?) something like that.

Thanks for the idea! I created small fence pieces to go along the path and I really like how it looks. It seems more in place now. What do you think?

Dethling

Really nice work. Only thing which bothers me is that the desert and the building walls have a to similar color/saturation. 
Maybe you can push the building saturation a little more to differ it from the sand. 

Did a quick paintover  (overlay layer with ~ 30-50% grey over the complete building) to show what I mean. 

AgelosAp

Hey @Enhirement nice work, yeah I thinks it blends in better now, and I +1 on @Dethling 's suggestion, without double checking in-game art though I can't remember if they are using dust on inward corners(?)

Enhirement

Dethling said:

Really nice work. Only thing which bothers me is that the desert and the building walls have a to similar color/saturation. 
Maybe you can push the building saturation a little more to differ it from the sand. 

Hey @Dethling Thanks for the idea. I agree, so I actually just adjusted the texture a bit in Unreal Engine, then tested how it looked in black and white in Photoshop. I wanted to be careful about pushing it too much so I settled here. What do you think?

AgelosAp said:

Hey @Enhirement nice work, yeah I thinks it blends in better now, and I +1 on @Dethling 's suggestion, without double checking in-game art though I can't remember if they are using dust on inward corners(?)

@AgelosAp glad to hear it's working better. I added more props to help guide your eye around and establish a certain flow.

For the sand bits, warcraft usually has trim on their buildings on the bottoms, sides, etc. I tried that but it didn't seem to work well, so I added sand instead to hide the seams a little. Does it look strange? It's pretty much just alpha cards with the sand texture placed over it.

Thanks! 

Dethling

It looks much better (also with the additional environment props). 
But I think you could push the saturation/tone difference a little more. 
WoW is stylized, not only in the forms, but also in the textures. Saturated colors to highlight large areas etc. The house is the central point the important part of the scene, the texture should support this. 

I would say: push the saturation of the house texture to max and then work down from there until it looks good. In my experience pushing something over the limit and then tune it back a little works most times better then tuning it up little by little.

Enhirement

Dethling said:

It looks much better (also with the additional environment props). 
But I think you could push the saturation/tone difference a little more. 
WoW is stylized, not only in the forms, but also in the textures. Saturated colors to highlight large areas etc. The house is the central point the important part of the scene, the texture should support this. 

I would say: push the saturation of the house texture to max and then work down from there until it looks good. In my experience pushing something over the limit and then tune it back a little works most times better then tuning it up little by little.

Thank you, I actually have been working with the house texture today after posting that. I added a red-tone gradient and really like how it turned out. 

Dethling

Looks better and better with each iteration.

AgelosAp

Yep you've hit a nice balance! My nitpicks now:
-remove 2-3 of the far away fences to not draw the eye away from the shop
-maybe variate the paint color on the signs or have the right sign be sculpted inwards like the concept so it's less noticeable to fight less for your attention
-generally I think now you could emphasize a hero prop in some way. I like the small green thing with the knife running through it is that a body part? Since it's a tattoo shop you could have a bigger piece of flesh hanging with demo tattoos on it perhaps?
-you could add a small piece of wood before the doorstep and below shop window, like it's for the customers to step on

Enhirement

Hi @AgelosAp & @Dethling , thank you so much for the critiques. I really appreciated them!

For now, I will call this project done so I can begin working on something fresh!

ArtStation Post: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d1YyJ

Final Renders:

Dethling

Really nice work. The progress is amazing (just compare the first full picture with the last one).