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My Work (Characters, Props, Environment stuff)

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Hi, I am not entirely new to the 3D scene, well I guess I am in a way; since I only recently really got interested in modeling. Before when I tried, I just couldn't grasp it and it seemed boring. Then I revisited modeling again, and I was able to grasp it easily this time around... odd. I've modded for Cryengine 2 for the last couple of years... here is some of my work in Sandbox 2. </br> </br> http://rexmcnish.carbonmade.com </br> </br> Now, onto my latest 3D ventures.:) I just got Mudbox 2010... and I am loving it. First off, I sculpted a tree trunk based off Mudbox's default mesh. I could've modeled my own base mesh for it, but it was mostly for practice anyways.</br> </br> The diffuse is of a trunk texture I took. I love Mudbox's painting features. I just got Mudbox around two days ago or so. Complete newbie to sculpting. Trunk done from start to finish in about 20 minutes. treetest1.pngtreetest2.png My very first attempt at making a detailed face, using Mudbox's base mesh for a head. Hopefully you can forgive me since I am a beginner. xD face1i.jpgface3z.jpgface2f.jpg </br> </br> I've invested about 45 minutes in the face so far. Stuck using a mouse for the time being, but I will be getting a tablet soon; for sure. All comments and critique welcome, and thank you for checking my stuff out.

Replies

  • RexM
    Here is some of my latest work in Sandbox 2: interior4u.jpg All of the props inside the house are placeholders. I'm planning to make an extremely detailed, believable home interior. Then I'll move onto the entire neighborhood, but only one house will be enter-able as it is for a cinematic/portfolio piece. There will be much more custom vegetation made for the scene as well. Here is my custom vegetation work as it is right now: latestfirs26.jpg I'm going to make a tileable tree trunk texture in Mudbox and use that for the trees though, now that I have Mudbox. latestfirs25.jpglatestfirs24.jpglatestfirs23.jpglatestfirs22.jpg Tri counts for my Fir trees, which were created from scratch in XSI and Photoshop. firtreestricounts.jpg This is mainly to show off my work and get a little more known around here at polycount, as I delve into the world of modeling even more. :) Pine branch texture for the trees is 1024x1024, dead branches are 512x512, and the trunk texture is currently 1024x2048, but I'm going to re-do it as I said above. Thanks for looking.
  • Ro-Sham-Bo
    Wow, I'm loving your forest environment. Looking very cool. I've wanted to do a forest environment for the longest time and seeing your post just made me want to make one that much more. Keep up the job work, i wouldn't mind seeing some small creeks and rocks. Good job over all though.
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    Those trees rock. I like the lighting you have on these.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    that forest is 100% awesome.
  • Spatz
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    Spatz polycounter lvl 13
    LOVELY FORREST :) ...very realistic ...please post more...
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    Forest is indeed awesome.
  • mathes
    The forest is very well done, good job.

    The trunk in the first post seems a little too beveled where the cut was made. The bark on it is great.
  • Soft_Hands
    You have a knack for the outdoors. Hope your living room will have the same effect on us when it's near complete.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    The none forest stuff does nothing for me, but HOT DAMN that is one hell of a well done forest! What kind of lighting are using? Most engines(dynamic lighting) would have that scene look like total shit but yours looks like sex!
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    at first glance i thought that those forest shots were cool photos.
    damn man, trees are extremely well done!
  • RexM
    Thanks guys. :) Here are some more shots. I re-did the bark texture (diffuse and normal; normal was sculpted) , and messed with the lighting a little more. latestfirs27.jpglatestfirs28.jpglatestfirs29.jpg
  • DrunkShaman
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    DrunkShaman polycounter lvl 14
    Sweet work!!!!
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Hey now! This looks great :D! What are you showing these in, which engine? Lovely forest.. now it just needs a focus!
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    That forest is a huge source of inspiration! It's like you grabbed what I had in mind for my own environment and made me a concept! Amazing. Thank you for posting this! /impressed.
    Only thing I have to say is that your forest seems to be a conifer forest. But there seem to be maple trees growing on the ground. The soil would not be suitable for broadleaves.
  • ngs616
    that stuff looks awesome
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Can you show 1 of the larger tree's mesh work, no textures? I'd like to see a breakdown of how you built them.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    fffffuuuuuuuu......


    Those shots are amazing.

    Any hope on a breakdown/wire post for the forest plants?

    Edit: lol Adam, I load up this post, microwave some food, post a reply, and see yours.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    really nice lighting, vegetation should be in a category of its own, ive seen a few gun nutty props guys try to make a tree...well lets just say they needed more huggin
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    adam wrote: »
    Hey now! This looks great :D! What are you showing these in, which engine? Lovely forest.. now it just needs a focus!
    Adam, I think he said that it was done in Sandbox 2. Unless he was referring to the indoor scene only.

    After looking closely at those tree polycounts. It seems odd that they average out at around 500 tri's. Did you use 4-5 long planes for those long branch twigs along the length of the trunk? If so, that calls for a TON of overdraw. It would probably be lighter if those twigs were individually modelled. It's not the tri count that would kill things here, it's the weight of the overdraw. In crysis, their leaf planes were modeled to fit the shape of the leaf as close as possible to avoid as much overdraw possible.

    But then again, maybe you used an entirely different method and I'm just ranting for nothing.
  • RexM
    It's all Sandbox 2, yep. Sure, I'll post some wireframes.... soon as I find out why XSI mod tool feels like crashing before the program even opens. It said 'failed to save scene before system failure' on the splash screen, another window pops up telling me Softimage has stopped working... and well, here I am. xD I guess I'll try reinstalling it first off, but I hope that doesn't mean I have to reinstall the Crysis modding plugins....
    Prophecies wrote: »
    That forest is a huge source of inspiration! It's like you grabbed what I had in mind for my own environment and made me a concept! Amazing. Thank you for posting this! /impressed.<br />
    Only thing I have to say is that your forest seems to be a conifer forest. But there seem to be maple trees growing on the ground. The soil would not be suitable for broadleaves.

    They're fir trees, and here in the pacific northwest, maple trees grow wildly all around, along with the fir trees. All of the vegetation I made is based off real vegetation in the forest behind my house. Took tons of reference pictures, and even used the put-a-leaf-on-a-white-piece-of-paper approach for my textures and to extract the alpha maps.

    Since there are no really established methods or tutorials regarding vegetation creation, it was a huge learning curve. Regardless, each time I was able to improve on a model, I was hooked - determined to bring these to a level of quality that would allow them to look normal next to Crysis assets.

    Also, each couple of dead branches are on a single plane, and each green branch is a 4 tri plane.
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    Did you really make those from scratch? Or did you use the T-Gen 2 tree and plant generator that is available specifically for XSI? ( http://www.strongmocha.com/2009/07/22/t-gen-version-2-0-released/ ) You have sooo many different tree variations... if you did make them one by one then I applaud your dedication!
  • RexM
    All made from scratch.

    All those tree generator programs just seemed too complicated... when doing it all yourself, you're getting exactly what you want - complete control over how everything looks.

    The tree variants actually didn't take that long to make, once I had the basic layout for how the planes were to be arranged for one of the trees. I'd say that finding out the best arrangement for the planes took far longer than making the variants.

    Looking at them now however, I want to increase the resolution of the dead branch textures, and increase the geometric detail on the tree trunks; making them more round-ish, and adding roots perhaps.
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    Nice! I don't think they need roots. I live in a Mixed forest with a ton of fir. There aren't that many of them that have roots stiking out. The only time their roots are visible is when they are on or near rocks, because the roots dont have anywhere to go but up. They are all pretty much just like the ones you have. Personally, I would focus on breaking the seam between the trees and the ground by adding either dead leaves, grass, plants, whatever. Just break that hard line.

    Really looking forward to seeing those wires! I think I know how you got those dead trees there without actually modelling them! But it's like I said above, wouldn't that lead to alot of alpha overdraw?
  • RexM
    I don't know what alpha overdraw is... all I know is that performance is over 38 FPS in the Sandbox 2 editor with a 9800GTX; and performance is worse in the editor than it is in-game. On Very High settings, it stays steadily at 1.2 million tris and 25-30 FPS (still talking about in-editor). It definitely performs better than any Crysis level, I made sure of that.
  • PogoP
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    PogoP polycounter lvl 10
    That forest environment is spectacular. I'm working on one myself and this thread is really inspiring.

    How did you go about making those leaf textures? They're so sharp and smooth!
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    Basically, overdraw is where your alpha is making your diffuse texture invisible. When you are using alpha to cut out the shape of leaves and pine needles, you want to make it so your plane fits the shape of the leaf/needle/whatever as best it can so that it does not waste resources. If I remember correctly, the reason is because making the plane diffuse invisible takes up alot of power. Here's an example:
    tree04c.jpg

    Notice how my leaf diffuse texture isn't taking up the entire surface of the plane? I want to waste the least surface space possible.
  • RexM
    Ah, alright. Yeah, I definitely made sure there was as little overdraw as possible... but I don't think it requires as much juice as you made it sound.. I mean look how many alpha maps are in my scenes at one time and they run at an average of 30 FPS.
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    It depends on the tri count. Your trees barely have any tris at all. But when the polycount starts climbing up to the 5000-10'000 line, that's when things become an issue.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Would it be better/cheaper/more efficient to use planes that are say half a meter wide, with 10 or so branches and a lot of transparent space, or to map each branch separately, using much more tris but way less transparency/overdraw?
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    I've yet to experiment with it alot, but here's my take on that. If it's only for a small scene with barely any other alpha'd planes, I say go for it, save some tri's. But if it's for a few trees, with literally thousands of leaves, like the picture I posted above, I'd say try to prevent as much overdraw as possible and increase the tri count.
  • Hendrik
    I have to agree to all posters before..amazing work and the scene setup in sandbox rocks!
    About your tree modeling in XSI..did you place the leaves with some kind of scatter method on the branches or is it 'handmade'?
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Let me apologize ahead of time for the slight derailment here RexM.

    Prophecies - please don't tell me you have each leave on their own quad?
  • ricolas71
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    ricolas71 polycounter lvl 12
    Congratulation for the forest. Is it rendered into an engine or within xsi?
  • Kewop Decam
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    Kewop Decam polycounter lvl 9
    your ability to do trees is amazing. I don't know anything about tree optimization so I can't crit on if it's too heavy or not, but it definitely looks awesome.
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    adam wrote: »
    Let me apologize ahead of time for the slight derailment here RexM.

    Prophecies - please don't tell me you have each leave on their own quad?

    I *did* have each leaf on it's own quad. That was before I did any kind of optimizing whatsoever. Now, I do not have each leaf on it's own quad.
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    What did you do, then? Put a buncha leaves on the same texture? I'm totally new to this so I really have no idea.
  • Will Faucher
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    Will Faucher polycounter lvl 12
    That's the idea. Basically have one large plane with a bunch of leaves and branches on it. Saves a ton of polies. The tree I am working on at the moment is sort of a higher end tree. What I mean is, I'm going a bit on the higher poly side of trees for game art, but the result is rather interesting. Basically I use large leaf planes, and use individual leaves on their own plane to break up the plane-leaf look. Gives the impression that I used one plane for every leaf, but I'm really not.

    Sorry for totally hijacking your thread Rex, I am done. :)
  • RexM
    I've finally gotten everything fixed, so I can show wireframes now. Finally got Windows 7 64 bit. Seems faster. Now I can make stuff again. I think I am going to put that house on the first page on the back burner, while I focus on more vegetation creation.

    Anyways...

    firwiresexample1.jpg
    firwiresexample2.jpg
  • jmchristopher
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    jmchristopher polycounter lvl 11
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Really nice work man, I'm really digging the lush trees!
  • onionhead_o
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    onionhead_o polycounter lvl 16
    ur trees r kickass. nice work.
  • BTolputt
    Seriously impressed with the trees mate. Haven't seen better low-poly trees for some time, so well-done.
  • RexM
    Thanks guys.

    Anyways, my next endeavor is to re-do most of the ground plants in my scenes. Thankfully, with what I've learned doing all this, I'll be able to reach higher levels of quality while using less resources as I've learned what to look for when going out to take texture reference pictures.

    Here is the first revision - compare it to the leafy green plants in my previous shots and you'll see it's much more detailed looking, while having the same or less triangles; but substantially less vertex points this time around.

    All the plants I will be redoing will be much closer to their real-life counter parts. I'm lucky that I have a forest right behind my house with unlimited reference material - I like to utilize photo sourcing for textures. Not only for the detail that is achieved, but the time that is saved as well. It does depend on the model I am making though, since I hand-painted most of the fir tree branch texture based on references.

    Low-poly vegetation is all about creating the illusion of three dimensions. The most important thing with the geometry is that it must look good from any angle, and this goes with any vegetation model. Variation in the texture sheet is what will help you achieve this. I'll show you how I constructed the texture sheet for the model below.

    Textures are WIP. There might be too much light affecting the leaves, so I may go out today and re-take some texture reference images... although, the texture still looks fine in the 3D view port of XSI. I guess getting this model in-game will be the real test.

    bushesleavestexture.jpg

    newbushesleaves.jpg
  • dlx
    Those leaf and branch planes have a lot of transparent pixels. For a portfolio piece that's probably not a big deal. In a real game scenario the frame rate could drop way below 30. If you add complex shaders for characters and level assets, particles for explosions and guns, then any additional delays on CPU (physics, AI, streaming) and you could be at 10 fps or worse.

    Overdraw can be a nightmare. Basically, the GPU has to look at every pixel that a poly occupies and decide what to draw there. In your case it will frequently decide to draw nothing because it is transparent in that spot. Then it will get to the next poly and start over again. When there are too many overlapping transparent planes, the GPU will burn a lot of time looking at the same screen pixel over and over again. This would also be true if there were overlapping semi-transparent planes or particles. Some engines handle this better than others but it is still something to avoid if possible.

    Most games deal with this by having an LOD set up that dramatically reduces the number of polygons for distant foliage. The original Far Cry would render out giant impostors to a single plane to represent large groups of distant trees. Maybe Crysis uses the same technique. I would be curious to see if it works for user created meshes, or if it only works for the foliage that shipped with the game.

    Having said all that :) nice work on the tree models! I look forward to seeing more updates.
  • RexM
    Cryengine2 is a very dynamic engine in how it deals with alpha-mapped textures. Overdraw really hasn't become a concern at all in any of my scenes... even when there is tons and tons and tons of it. I guess CE2 must deal with it differently than other engines. Would explain why Cryengine2 is so capable with rendering so many objects that use alpha maps.

    Crytek's models have just as much empty space on polygons as my models do; so they must've dealt with overdraw somehow.

    The biggest issue for good performance in CE2 is draw calls. Even with tons of overdraw, my scenes run at an average of 40 FPS or more. I've setup small gameplay scenarios and things are still smooth even then.

    In-game: (Models are not final, still got some experimenting to do on this Salal bush... <-- real life name)

    salalnew.jpg
  • SimonT
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    SimonT interpolator
    The Forrest is awesome! Can you explain how your light setup was done?
  • RexM
    Not sure what you mean? These pictures were taken in Sandbox2, which uses the Cryengine2 engine.

    salalnew1.jpg
    salalnew2.jpg
    salalnew3.jpg
  • RexM
    Updated the texture and normal for better detail. Also adjusted the material. Going to add more detail to the normal, and then I'll move onto my next plant. :)

    salalnew4.jpg
  • curtj5
    the forest looks sweet
  • MustBeDestiny
    Looking good. Loving the trees!
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