Squish - 3rd Person Shooter
polycounter lvl 10
Hey all, first real post here on Polycount so bear with me. Been working over the past few months in spare time on a little game project that I hope to dedicate some real time to now. Seeing some win-spiring artwork in a similar vein by Minotaur0 and Adam & Virtuosic has reinvigorated my passion for the project. Fairly simple game design; it's a top-down arcade style shooter inspired by Crusader: No Remorse to SyaPed's Junkers. As an artist, I've primarily focused myself on working out a visual direction. I'm trying to come up with something distinct and interesting, and am hoping the community here can help me out with that.
Thus far I've been working with a coder friend in Unity, and we've been developing a custom shader to try to achieve a "watercolor" look, heavily influenced by Valkyria Chronicles. Here's an early test with some first assets.
Sorry about the aliasing. If anyone knows how to cut that down I'd be delighted to hear.
In the past few days I've been playing with the idea of changing the texturing style; up til now I've been trying out highpoly > modular ala Philip K (massive props and thanks by the way). While I like the results I'm getting, I was toying with going more of an Auto Modellista-inspired route, with simplified shading and emphasis on bold color. Eager to hear thoughts!
Thus far I've been working with a coder friend in Unity, and we've been developing a custom shader to try to achieve a "watercolor" look, heavily influenced by Valkyria Chronicles. Here's an early test with some first assets.
Sorry about the aliasing. If anyone knows how to cut that down I'd be delighted to hear.
In the past few days I've been playing with the idea of changing the texturing style; up til now I've been trying out highpoly > modular ala Philip K (massive props and thanks by the way). While I like the results I'm getting, I was toying with going more of an Auto Modellista-inspired route, with simplified shading and emphasis on bold color. Eager to hear thoughts!
Replies
Mmm thread necromancy. Due to time constraints and other similarly limiting issues, I am currently working on this strictly as an environment for my portfolio. Hopefully in the near future I can return to game development, but for the time being I think art needs to take precedence. I'd like to think I'm about to wrap it up, but I would really love to hear any critiques and/or suggestions for polish. Unity is an awesome platform for web deployment, so to that end, the environment can actually be interactively explored here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1103399/Nataraja_WebPlayer.html
You'll need to install the Unity Web Player, and the environment itself is about 10 megs so it may take a minute to load, but the process is relatively painless.
Keep it up
Hugh
Ninjas - Sorry for the delayed reply, thanks for taking a look way back when. You are right about focusing and finishing, and that's what I aim to do (at least in terms of art for now).
BradleyWascher - About the ceiling, do you mean on the second floor or just all around? The second floor is only 3 units high whereas the first is 4, but that's an easy fix since I have a 1 unit filler piece for the walls. If overall the height needs fixing, I may have to look into a broader change. I also sometimes feel like it might be the output resolution which makes it feel squished (pun fully intended); depending on which monitor I'm using sometimes it feels a little vertically challenged. I'll play with that more. And I agree about the leaves for the most part, that's an unfortunate byproduct of scaling them up too much for coverage. I think I should instead play with leaf placement to make sure it looks "full" from all angles without needing to scale. As for the spec push, again you're very right. Part of that I think comes from not knowing Beast lightmapping well enough, as it tends to wash a lot of things out, but I can still see spec working on certain objects so I may just need to go in and do some fine tuning on the spec/gloss multipliers and maps.
Sean_EG - Thanks! Mirror's Edge had a huge impact on me, I think because it represents a lot of what I naturally gravitate toward in terms of design and aesthetics. I reference that game for style all the time, in my 3D art down to how I decorate my apartment :P What I've seen of Brink looks amazing thus far, very excited to see where that goes as well.
HughieDM - Definitely agreed about the leaves being too flat as well. That's actually something a friend pointed out to me, but for whatever reason I completely forgot. Fixin' time. As for mip mapping, YES I completely agree. That's honestly been one of my least favorite things about the environment to date, and I have no idea how to fix it. I'm hoping it's something I can control in-engine, and I may need to ask around the Unity forums to see if anyone has any suggestions. Also agreed about the windows, I think it's bothered me subconsciously but I couldn't put words to it. Added to the to-do list.
gl
Hugh
You have a very nice environment, really dig the color scheme and overall clean nature of it. I havent had a chance to view it through the web player yet but will later. Whats the deal with the edges of the windows? Is the elevator sign suppose to be holographic, cant quite make out what its suppose to be, it appears to just be floating text?
Turned off mipmapping, thanks HughieDM, it definitely helped sharpen everything up. But like you said it might now be a bit too sharp everywhere. Would adding a subtle Depth of Field to the game camera help? I might see where that gets me.
ajr2764 - Thanks, glad you dig. About the edges of the windows, where do you mean? I have a couple window meshes, I'm just not clear where it is you're seeing issues? As for the elevator sign, yes it is supposed to be holographic. I know how I'd go about getting that look in UDK but it's been a challenge for me working in Unity with a slightly different setup. I'll try to get a better shader/material going for it though, as you're right it doesn't read too great.
edit: About the window edges, I'm guessing you mean the ceiling windows, and how they seem to have ridges in the screenshots? That's the refraction that people were saying was coming out weird, and that does need some fixing.
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But the leaves dont seem so fresh and clean as everything else, more old and withered, not sure if its been mentioned but have you considered increasing the saturation on them or even turning them green? I think that would go along better with the overall design
Adjusted height of second floor, as recommended by BradleyWascher, as well as re-modeled most of the plants to have more defined shape, suggested by HughieDM. Also added a new wall texture to keep it from getting too repetitive in parts, and I think it added a nice touch of color. Speaking of color, made a number of tonal changes globally, but most pronounced I think is increasing saturation of the leaves, big thanks to Drakon for that. I think that helped a lot, bringing it more in line with the rest of the scene and making them feel "alive", rather than withered. I tried green but I think I prefer the contrast of the pink more.
@vofff - That's really odd that you're getting a 404, I never changed the file so it should work. Anyway, here's the link once more, try it again mayhaps? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1103399/Nataraja_WebPlayer.html
Uploaded the latest version of the environ to the Dropbox at the link given above, give it a whirl if you've got a minute.
TO DO:
-Go through and really dial in on the specular for each material
-Find some good reference of window glass and nail that look
-Get the would-be holographic signage to look like holographic signage, rather than simply floating text
I am definitely going to be looking through that tutorial you posted from philipk.net.
I'll be awaiting your next post eagerly
Smaller update today, contract work's been keeping me busy. Managed to squeeze in a bit of time to start working on materials, beginning with the floor. I'm trying to add some "realistic" surface texture without over-doing it and ruining the cleaner aesthetic. I'll be relying on good critique from here to keep it balanced. I also spent some time considering a number of larger changes I'd like to make to hopefully progress this piece more, and will be working on that over the next few days.
For starters, I've decided that the signage needs a design rethink, and I like the idea of going with solid physical signs rather than holographics primarily. In particular, I'm hoping to go a more graphic route, along the lines of infographics, to add some personality to the environ. Stuff like so:
although obviously more appropriate for the tone of the environment.
visually everything is really nicely balanced. The only thing i feel is missing is a little bit of visual interest. Hard to explain but i think the signage might help.
keep it up. its really nice
Here is a link to someones Flickr that has screengrabs of a building complex in Halo Reach. I think it has the same type of feel you're going for. Maybe some good ref for you in there?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/commorancy/5011183164/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Hopefully this all helps in someway or another
I really like the floor that you're building, the grout in between the tiles looks really nice and I can't see any tiling at all.
edit: Also, uploading the latest version of the interactive walkthrough to my Dropbox now, so it should be playable in a short bit. There are some weird lighting issues in certain spots - made some tweaks and broke some things, so that's going to be fixed.