UC 2009 'END GAME' | Knows No Remorse | 3D

cholden

<final post>
Time for me is over. I want to thank everyone for all the feedback, and if I missed any of it I apologize or you were wrong (hey I can't be me if I don't say it). I'm now in the process of moving and have submitted my final. If you're reading this there's a good chance my computer is in a box.

Originally, I had ambitions of this being a fully playable level traversing the floating islands and so on. Then, according to timestamps, I had to stop due to art tests and interviews for pretty much all of the first contest month. That worked out for my career it's now moving forward, but put a huge dent in my development schedule.

With all bitching and moaning aside, I decided no matter what I was going to finish (dammit)! I reduced the scope to a scene composition, and my aspirations to "it doesn't matter if I win as long as it gets done." I did that, I'm happy with my outcome and looking forward to learning more about UDK in the coming months.

Now the contest gets an extension, and I have to pack up all my thinks and get the hell out of Dodge (Fairfax in this story). So to all you dirty deadline whores I say use your extra week wisely! Squeeze every drop out of it you can, because when I touchdown and get my computer unpacked I don't plan to do anything. See that was an empty threat to get everyone excited, and be anticlimactic. That kind of stuff is funny to me.

See you's all again soons. Oh, and here's all my final images






http://chrisholden.net/Unknown_ChrisHolden_Concept.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/Unknown_ChrisHolden_Construction01.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/Unknown_ChrisHolden_Texture_Sheet01.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/Unknown_ChrisHolden_Texture_Sheet02.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/Unknown_ChrisHolden_Thumb.gif



<original post>
For this project, like my love life, I'll be going solo. Fueled by Amon Amarth, Mountain Dew, New Rock boots, three wolf tshirt, Diablo 2 and Swartzwelder books, this is sure to be a success or at least the first half of the word. My concept has a lot in common with my reality in that it's all in my head, but enough about me. I'm going to focus on myself for a while. When starting this, the first question was, "how do draw attention to my thread?" I knew a cool name wasn't going to cut it. So my first idea was to write up this humorous introduction, but then I remembered no one ever reads what people say. Especially a wall of text like this. They just look for pretty pictures, and ask questions already answered in the description. With that, I spend a few hours completely fabricating a fake scene. Then, spent about as much time touching up and faking the render to look as cool as possible to score with the no chicks that lurk this forum. Finally, post a really huge image of it with optional never return to thread.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown1.jpg

divi

i read it, but i do like pictues, soo...

crazyfingers

Ben Apuna

I think you're on to something with the three wolf t-shirts, might be the key to victory

Emil Mujanovic

HAHAHA, awesome write up, Chris.
I'll be keeping an eye on your entry as your environment work is always pimp.

bounchfx

I am thoroughly entertained.

cholden

A grand scene of dark worship, ground asunder by fire held fast by chains and woe of the cursed dwelling below in eternal affliction. What remains of the temple yet unrealized shall reside with unrest. Gods and devils alone know what rituals take place within. Only those with the greatest constitution may look upon it without embracing the swift slice of death's sickle.

Anyway, here's another image that has nothing to do with that, but I think it looks neat.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown2.jpg

rooster

needs to look hotter, try adding soem glow

L3XICON

I agree, certainly needs a bit more kick in the glow department :P lol, be nice to see some real crazyness with proportions, huge chains and spikes

cholden

Progress image shows progress

Early normal map and scale tests

http://chrisholden.net/unknown3.jpg

Here's how that looks pulled back in the viewport a bit.
http://chrisholden.net/unknown3b.jpg


I leave you with a passage from a book I'm reading
"I thought I'd paid for a plane flight, but the machine I boarded definately wasn't a plane. I wasn't sure what it was. It took us a long time to get there, and we sure cut a lot of grass on the way..."

divi

the pillars look nice, not sure about the pentagram though.

nice progress.

Pope Adam

looks cool man. Reminds me of the center of BlackRock Mountain in WoW, the huge chunk of stone suspended by chains.

Very Evil... very good.

cholden

Hai guise!
I've been breaking my ass lately on art tests and interviews trying to get my shit together, and by "shit" I mean "life". Anyway, I landed a job recently after being laid off forever. More on that later, but it's really put a damper on my lovely competition work (just like every other thread these days). Anyways, I'm working my arse off for you guys (that's what the brits says instead of "ass", pretty sweet, right?). What I mean by that is, I've been documenting a ton of information for my tutorial section. More on that down the road.

That said, I don't want to take a complete dump on this thread, at some point, I'd really like to finish this scene. BUT, at the same time, I gotta make money, am I right folks?! ahhhh!

Taylor Hood

cholden wrote: »

Hai guise!
I've been breaking my ass lately on art tests and interviews trying to get my shit together, and by "shit" I mean "life". Anyway, I landed a job recently after being laid off forever. More on that later, but it's really put a damper on my lovely competition work (just like every other thread these days). Anyways, I'm working my arse off for you guys (that's what the brits says instead of "ass", pretty sweet, right?). What I mean by that is, I've been documenting a ton of information for my tutorial section. More on that down the road.

That said, I don't want to take a complete dump on this thread, at some point, I'd really like to finish this scene. BUT, at the same time, I gotta make money, am I right folks?! ahhhh!

I don't say arse Good luck with your new job mr. Cholden!

cholden

with all that's going on I've managed to set aside some time for this again. While I won't be able to reach the quality I'd prefer, a completed scene may be in range. Anyhos, I just dumped all this crap in Unreal. It needs a ton of love, but it's in, partly.
http://chrisholden.net/unknown4.jpg

man_o_mule

looks ace so far. like the floating islands in teh background but htey are tough to see. could just be my crappy work monitor though.

cholden

Wrapped up the mid-ground wall structure

task list:
-Centerpiece mega-pillar
-chains everywhere!
-crazy flying crap in background (currently only stalag-islands)
-debris
-everything else I forgot

Latest print screen out of Unreal
http://chrisholden.net/unknown5.jpg

cholden

one more quick update, just tossed in centerpiece, needs a lot of work, but there it is.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown5b.jpg

cholden

Added a bunch of spiffy debris and chains, and did a ton of floor/light work. Still have a bunch of wacky plans for the top half of the composition.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown6.jpg

divi

!

cholden

here's another picture

http://chrisholden.net/unknown7g.jpg

Jack Daniels

Looks badass!

cholden

To continue in the process of uploading updates, I present the following image. Still working out some of that background stuff. Otherwise, it's all getting close. Growing ever happy with the use of colors, contrast and levels. Still haven't touched up that ground pentagram since initial unreal asset dump so it'll be getting some love.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown8.jpg

cholden

rebuild the base pent and the background
http://chrisholden.net/unknown9.jpg

cholden

Transferred my level from UT3 to the new Unreal 3 ( http://www.udk.com/ ) so I thought I'd up an image of that. The changes in rendering are small, but there is a slight improvement in the quality of the rendering all around. I plan to fiddle with some of it's features to see what I can make of it. I did tool around with lightmass, which is great, but doesn't benefit my scene as much since it's not a large outdoor world. Mostly, it made my scene a tad brighter.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown10b.jpg

Matroskin

chains dont seem to have a connection with the floor and stones.
Need some kind of ring or smething to attach chains to.

cholden

you are absolutely right, good sir, and here here's the appeasement of said feedback

I also facerolled the keyboard with the post processing window open.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown11c.jpg

Mark Dygert

I like the models, the textures, the effects and the idea is really cool, but I think your lighting is letting you down a bit or at least conflicting.

The beams of light are reflecting off a lot of atmosphere (dust fog ect...) but that atmosphere isn't present outside of the beams? Also the color emitting from the center column is red, but the surrounding scene seems to be using a white or yellow main light.

The glowing red bits on the points of the star base don't seem to be glowing much?

cholden

You're just what I need, a strapping, young go-getter to tell me when I'm wrong. You're hired!

Matroskin

joining Vig's lighting comments i'll add:

- fire is too bright compared to the main piece which is a column light. Increase emissive strength of internal red lights and light beams and tone down fire effect (it may be actually removed completely perhaps...)

cholden

Well here's what I did; I deleted every light. Turned out my scene was too dark. So I lightened up the background first, and the added lights based on the glows in the scene. From there I added necessary fill lights, and finally put in some contrast lights to make things pop. Still needs some tweaking, but totally rebuild, huzzah.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown12.jpg

Matroskin

still fire torches r toooo bright :P

Mark Dygert

Nice! It looks a lot better, the floating background bits really pop out now. And yea the fire, she needs to not scream so much.

I'm not sure what kind of post color correction effects you can do but the red is kind of coming off as a dusty orange not really a hell fire red. Can you bump up the saturation and contrast?

Don't forget you need to incorporate the team colors and logo somewhere. Maybe swap out a symbol on the ground and change up the background color to be purple/green? Or maybe green fire in the torches?

cholden

I don't even "get" that rule. The rules page says "You must include your team's colors AND/OR team logo in your entry. To find colors and logos, go here:" and then links to nothing. Does "team" mean polycount as a team or the people working on an each entry as "team". Again, makes no sense and will not be addressed.

Also, torches not touch yet, derp.

Mark Dygert

Yea its a lame rule like with Dom War. You're fighting for polycount so you use our logo and our colors, very restricting. some colors just go better with certain subjects which limits the type of entries we can do. In a "sky's the limit do what you want as long as its withing technical requirements it really seems like a douche bag thing to do by limiting the pallet that way.

"Oh I'm sorry you must always do death and decay, every single contest... What you want red lava NO WAY it has to be green!"

err what was I saying... oh ja...
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/extras/logo_polycount.png
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/extras/logo_polycount_sign.png

cholden

While it's not as noticeable within the 1100 restriction of my first angle, my second angle should showcase the polycount logo as it's all over the star.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown12pc.jpg

As for the colors, no thanks. Heavily changing at this point to a rule that wasn't even posted is not happening. BTW, you guys should post that in the rules page if you're serious about it, or be sure to post that in the many other entries that use neither the colors or the logo.

Mark Dygert

Awesome! hahah I love it! I agree stick to the colors you have it works and changing it up now would really screw with the entire color pallet in horrific ways. I hate that rule and it better not be used to bounce any entries.

But there is always some wierd quirky rule I hate in these contests. I always get told, "buck up, deal with it or don't compete, those are the rules soldier". Kind of puts me off to these contest...

You've got an awesome entry don't take my comments to mean its bad in any way the changes you made took it from great to awesome.

Justin Meisse

as for rules: punch them in the dick

my nitpick: the skulls on the pillar seem too flat, might need to pooch them out some or make a recess for them. You're right, drinking 6 beers before critique does work!

Vrav

That evil light is very pink. I half expect a unicorn to burst out and gore me through the chest.

vvv edit: Oooh, nice.

cholden

Thanks all, still totally rebooting the lighting from the UDK transfer. It's got more to go, but enough for tonight.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown13.jpg

adam

Are you not casting shadows or are they being lightened by Lightmass?

snakeeaterjns

Very nice, guy. I love the lighting, the rays from the center gives the impression that will explode. So I think I killed a little of shadows. maybe that is their inteded. congratulations.

cholden

Shadows were visible in this scene in early, darker iterations. Most have since faded into subtlety with all the bounce lighting. I reckon there's the conflict of things being nicely lite or being dark and having some shadows visible. Most of the shadow casting in this scene now is coming from the center piece and out the doors. Still, sometimes when I move lights around in the scene dynamic shadows start popping up only to disappear upon rendering. That's all part of why I want to wrap it up as soon as possible, so I have time to investigate the tech further into things like that.

Anyways, plenty more fixes here, and experimenting with this crazy glow. oo-la-la

http://chrisholden.net/unknown14.jpg

AlanSMitchell

wow I think you guys can call that done. I am impressed.
Actually if you want maybe a lens flare or two those almost always make things better right. That and cowbell lol.

snakeeaterjns

No doubt, is made for me too. Very impressive. Is one of my preferred entry.

killingpeople

nice man, it feels very 90's video game to me (which is AWESOME)
here are some quick notes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/192198/crit_17.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/192198/crit_18.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/192198/crit_19.jpg

cholden

Do you mind linking those images instead of posting them of you're going to draw genitals all over them?

Vrav

It's a nice set of critiques though. I think the cobwebs are the best idea, and could help it seem less maintained, a sealed away ruin that is now exploding back to life. Like if you just flip between your latest image and this version, it's easier to see a lot of the tiny adjustments and I sort of agree with the lot of them.

cholden

I've addressed a lot of KP's feedback, and will hit more time willing...



...But now I most move into second angle. Here's a few considerations I was looking into. Of course, once decided upon it'll get plenty of touch-ups

http://chrisholden.net/unknown_b01.jpg

turpedo

That orange looks much better for the center piece. Great job!

As far as the second angles go, I like 1 and 4.

cholden

welp, I've got this week to polish it, but this will be my 2nd angle image. Lots to do, and no time for love.

http://chrisholden.net/unknown_b02.jpg