The moody inn (environment)

Dani

olla,

With a lack of imagination for the title this scene will be called moody inn temporarely:).

This is a(n) attempt at creating a moody bar for real time rendering (UDK), so far I have made quite a few assets for the scene and all of them are textured.

Things on the to-do list:

- Model "bar" geometry and texture it.
- Model some "detail" props to liven up the place.
- Get all the stuff into UDK.

Note: All of the screens are screengrabs so far (no fancy pre-rendering).

To be honest the whole scene feels like its meant for a(n) isometric top-down view while that wasn't what I was aiming for (more first person). Anyone have any idea what this could be? Lack of scale? Lack of detail? Something witht the textures?

Also how do you feel about the colour of the wood used for the tables is it fine like this or should it be changed to look like its made out of the same wood as the support beams?

Thanks for looking/reading and enjoy:) will probably update this thread on a day to day basis.



Edit:

Decided to do a quik mash-up inside UDK to see how the assets felt in-engine, I think the style I have atm fits well.
(note: this is not the final environment setup).

cholden

You speak of putting this in UDK, but it the presentation appears to be a very low spec scene. If you're wanting to go the UDK way, bring your camera in to player level, and start thinking about the amount of detail required to carry such a scene.

That fireplace appears ridiculously tesselated, even for such a low poly shape. Here's an image to show what I mean:

The red dashes represent the only edges that are doing anything.



A solution would be modeling in the brick shape to the silhouette edges. But also, you need to bring in more forms and shapes to your mudbox(?) sculpted piece before you're ready to low poly.

The support wood would likely be older than the tables and chairs, so the wood being lighter is believable.

Dani

Cholden: Thanks for the tip, indeed I was wondering what would be the best way to do the fireplace, basically there were two ways I could think off. Model each brick seperately or model a basic shape representing the outline and use that to sculpt the rocks on.

You are suggesting I model each brick seperately, is it possible to model them then assemble them into the shape and bake that onto the basic chimney shape? Would the cavity's in between the brick's result in errors on my normal map?

Thanks:)

cholden

well if you asked me specifically, I would tell you to do this. I find it's very speedy for pumping out bricks with grout. BUT, this tutorial example low poly is VERY low. I would model shaped of bricks that stick out for enhance silhouette.
http://chrisholden.net/tutor/arch01.htm

I have used the technique of sculpting it all out. Both work, but what's important is finding what gives you the best results.

I can also direct you to another polycounter's site that's got some great tutorials on rocks, bricks and such
http://saschahenrichs.blogspot.com/

Snader

What do you mean with triangulated polygons? Triangles?


[quote=Dani

Dani

Thanks for the kind tips/help everybody, have been working all day so not much time to model. Have made some quik tests for the chimney and probably will have something more solid tomorrow:).

Dani

ey,

I've not been able to put a whole lot of work into this project lately due to a combination of driving lessons, and the end of this school year (which unfortunately includes exams,exams and more exams) but if all goes well I should have a nice 6 weeks of summer freedomn after that.

If anyone is wondering I am not following a game/artist course but currently studying international bussiness/marketing/management at the university of aplied sciences in Maastricht.

Well onto the more interesting (or not:poly124:) part.

I've been having alot of headaches over this fireplace and how to best make it with the least amount of impact on the computer. I've tried solely using a normal/spec/diffuse for the bricks but I thought it didn't quite look the way I wanted so I decided to add some bricks at the corners to make the silhouet a bit more interesting.

So now that I've done that I've stumbled into a few problems I can't seem to get my head around. I've included screenshots detailing the problems.

Problem 1: In max the diffuse shows up fine but in UDk some of the bricks show the "default" UDK texture.


Problem 2: I can't seem to get a decent normal bake, I've tried it in two ways, via Xnormal and via projection inside 3ds max. When I do it via projection I get a(n) empty map (yes I've set it up correctly because the diffuse bakes just fine) which is totally blue. When I do it via Xnormal I get a distorted/half empty baked map.



Problem 3: Since the setting is supposed to be a pirate pub I tought it might be cool to add a octopus on top of the fireplace (nailed to the wood or something similar). So I started blocking out the form in zbrush with zspheres but found out the skinning is acting all funny.


I know its alot of questions and I really apreciate you reading all this, so thanks in advance:poly121:


Ps: here is a(n) overview of my workflow for this asset, it is verry similar to the suggested tutorials by above reply's.