Hand-painted volcano castle

Jeff Parrott

Just the block in of the scene so far. It's at 3k, not going to really worry about polys though that much. Just keep it lower and increase where I need to for lighting.

Going for a hand-painted/WoW look on this scene. Using the Cataclysm dungeon Stonecore as reference for a lot of the rocks. Textures are placeholders just something instead of flat color.

http://www.wowjuju.com/topic/1534-the-stonecore-dungeon/

Thinking of having lava at the bottom of the pit. Castle textures will be a mix of stones, metal, and a little bit of woods probably.

The bridges I'm leaning towards stone because wooden bridges near lava seems dangerous (Of course so does building a castle, but it looks cool).

Thanks for any crits.

Snader

It might be interesting to zap through a couple of videos of Lara Croft - Guardian of Light, they have some nice lava environments.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB4YIcg2wRc[/ame]

Jeff Parrott

I haven't done a ton on this over the past few weeks. So I'm starting to get back into it this week. Just adjusted the camera angle and a few tweaks that some friends suggested.

Going to get the textures a bit further along now.

gsokol

Damn...I really dig the lighting you got going on there. Creates a nice mood. Looking forward to seeing your textures, and how this turns out.

Dan!

much better composition this time. how damaged and dangerous is that bridge gonna be?

Jeff Parrott

gsokol: It's not really the final lighting. Close to what I was thinking though.

Dan!: Extremely damaged and uber-dangerous!

glottis8

I like the comp so far man... maybe you can offset some of the towers to make a nice shape out of your fortress. As far as the lighting, i like it. But i think you'll be able to make a polish pass after you add more texture work on to it. Keep us posted man.

Jeff Parrott

Done a little more with this. Still reworking a ton of this as I go. The rock walls are taking shape now that the texture is 60% there. Just starting on defining the rocks in the model and texturing the castle as well.

Acumen

While I like the actual quality of the texture itself - to be honest I was quite shocked to find out this is the same person posting as on the first post - I think it just doesn't look like rock, but more like a floor texture, with the same levelled bevels. They all have the same depth and don't look naturally "grown"

Khalamea

The quality of the texture themselves are really nice For the rock walls though, at this point I think you should go into the model of the wall and push out some specific rock forms, which might also help break away from that floor texture look. As for the castle itself, for me it's reading more as a toy right now than a full on castle. The scale feels really small, I think largely due to the size of the door and bridge in relation to the castle. Could you put in a little block to approximate the size of a person in the scene?

Jeff Parrott

Acumen: Thanks I think. The first posts were just block outs. I usually sketch out fast texture ideas but don't go past 10% on them since they will probably get iterated on.

Khalamea: Thanks. I was actually starting to do what you're suggesting about cutting in the rocks in the mesh on the structure that is holding the castle up. I haven't gotten around to doing that on the rest of the rock walls yet. I agree about the castle feeling tiny. I would actually say it feels 'eh' so far. I'm going to redesign that whole area. I'm just not feeling the design at all. The bridge and fire pit deals are supposed to be the scale prop. But maybe I need something else in person size.

Thanks for the great crits. It gives me a ton of stuff to keep pushing with this.

Jeff Parrott

I tried to work in the crits. Cutting in and sculpting the walls more. Still need to do the second and third tier of rocks.

Still need to finish the textures on the bridge spikey supports, texture the fire pits deals.

I obviously removed the castle. I want to rework a new idea with that over the weekend and see if I can get something a little more interesting.

Jeff Parrott

Everything in the scene has a texture on it. Now to come up with a castle design over the weekend.

C & C always appreciated. Thanks!

Khalamea

I'm liking the changes so far, definitely interested in seeing what direction you take with the castle this time around. I like the big of wall you added to the left foreground compositionally, but I think it would help if you tweaked the lighting so that it appeared darker. It matches up on the top in value.

For the bridge also, I'd rethink either the lighting or the colors on the chains. I didn't even notice them on the first pass, they sort of just fade into the background.

Looking good though!

Jeff Parrott

Nicole: I made the left front wall darker and lighten up the chains on the bridge some. I'll get in more detailed with the lighting when I get closer to finishing the scene.

I added in a new castle structure. I tried to stay consistent with repeating elements (spikes & curved french fry looking things) with the castle.

The textures are just temporary just to get an idea of the surfaces. It's still missing windows as well.

Is the scene super dark for anyone? I'm not sure average brightness on monitors. It looks fine on the 3 monitors I have access to. I'm just not sure if it's too dark for other people.

Ryan Hawkins

Look up Black Rock Mountain for some hand painted lava castle stuff. Its a nice enviroment in wow that is very detailed.

Jeff Parrott

Reviving a dead thread here. Finally got some time to get back to finishing this scene. I wanted to rework the focus area (castle, cave, etc) then get back into this. Thinking of going with the middle image. Needs more details but the idea is there.

Jessica Dinh

Go Jeff! Finish it up!

FruitBomb

although I like the idea of having a building there instead of an entrance way, your paint overs are so generic . . .imo
they dont look like they fit there
looks like you took a castle and transported it into this cave

that skull cave entrance looked the best to me.
but like i said, would be cool if you could get a kickass structure there instead.

yea thats all i got. . .
good work tho, i like how you made the rocks at the bottom pop out
keep it up

TheKennny

Very nice! All three could easily work, but my favorite is the second one (the skull entrance)!

Dan!

you already know what direction I'd like to see

xvampire

hi jeffro,
i hope you don't mind if i do some little paint over ( if you want to keep other than skull entrance)

Gannon

Second Idea is sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet !

cholden

Go with Dan! or I will oppress you.

pinkbox

even if you go with a castle idea i feel the rocky skull fits best because its made from rocks within the cave.
The castles look like they dont fit right with the environment they're in at this stage

Jeff Parrott

I check this thread every 15 minutes for 12 hours after updating and no posts. Go to sleep for a few hours and this thread has a ton of posts.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@Jessica I'm with you on that. This will probably be the last large scene I tackle for a while. Think I'll move to medium sized props instead.

@FruitBomb thanks for the feedback on them all. I totally agree with you that the castles look out of place. They don't have the vertical feeling that the cave does. Maybe I can work in some sort of structure.

@TheKenny @Gannon @cholden Agreed! The 3 I's have it. Again I'm just doing the second one so Chris won't oppress me. It sounds scary. I think that's what they do to make orange juice.

@Dan! Have I told you lately that I love you. Don't ever leave.

@xvampire I might play around with lowering the camera angle on the cave entrance or adjusting like you suggest to make that even more dominant. Thanks for the paint over! Loving the 'just attacked' vibe.

@pinkbox Again going with the second idea. Buy yeah working that skull into the structure would help a lot. I think the cave entrance makes the most sense.

Thanks again for the paint overs and the input. I think this is pretty well sorted out for me to rework and finish the scene. I'll post an update sometime during the week with this stuff starting to get worked in.

re.wind

nitpick: Lava is never fully fluid, or full orange unless its fast flowing lava, which doesn't appear to be the case.

Lava Lake of the Nyiragongo Volcano in Virunga National Park in Eastern DRC. also note the large amounts of steam pillars. As i said, nitpick. otherwise i agree with the last two edits.

Jeff Parrott

@re.wind yeah that's a good call on the lava. The texture that's on there is super rough. I need to get that going a bit more.

Here's a paint over working in most of the ideas that Dan! posted and the lava changes.



Edit: The red lighting on the walls will probably be more speckled since the lava isn't 100% red now.

Jeff Parrott

Got most of this blocked out. Still working on cutting up the rock walls on the sides.

Gate and cages are completely untextured. Their value will be darker once they get a texture.

Jeff Parrott

Here's where the textures are at. They are rough. I just wanted to post my progress up. Prolly going to repaint some of them as I develop the scene more. All 256 textures. C & C always appreciated.

felipefrango

I like where this is going, glad to see you went with the skull entrance instead of the castle, it was the one I liked the most too. Makes more sense than an underground castle.

Jeff Parrott

Thanks felipefrango! I totally agree. Makes sense and it looks cooler.

Here's a version with some more textures.

Probably will change the texture on the gate to a metal instead of wood (not even sure it reads like anything from the camera distance though).

The screenshots are looking real jagged for some reason.

explodingseashells

I think the bridge is being lost in it all now. If it is supposed to function as a leading line to the entrance then perhaps some subtle lighting to make it pop a little?

linkov

jeffro, I'm really terrible with explaining stuff, so I made overpaint. Hope you don't mind I understand that some things maybe hard to implement, but this just bunch of ideas, maybe you'll find some of them useful.

Perfectblue

Jeffro- Originally I was going to take this to PM, but I figure others could benefit from this as well so I will post it here. I am beginning to learn environment creation and was wondering how do you apply texture sheets straight to a model without having to uniquely unwrap it? Is there a bunch of hidden UV geometry unwrapped within the corresponding texture sheet that we don't see? For instance the cliff model UV's will be somewhere within the stone texture.

Thanks, and good work!

Jeff Parrott

@explodingseashells totally agree. I tweaked the lighting on the bridge to make it read better.

@itismario I agree it's a bit dark. I'll play around with adding something to brighten it up some. Thanks!

@linkov THANK YOU! Of course I don't mind. Please paint over anything of mine you want. Super cool of you to do a paint over. I think most of those changes (steam, lighting tweaks) should be easy. The lower base modeling might need some more changes. But I'm in no hurry to finish this up. I just want it to be good. So I'll keep on that too.

@Perfectblue It's actually easier than what you're saying. I whipped this up real fast cause it seemed easier than typing a confusing explanation.



Thanks for the C + C. Anymore would be appreciated. I'll jump on these changes over the next couple days.

Jeff Parrott

Guess it's more of a lava gate/cave and not a castle like the thread title say. Calling this scene done for the most part. Moving on to some smaller pieces for a while. 17,839 polys total though I wasn't really focusing on polygon count for this one. Textures are all 256x256 or 256x128.



wires:

Gannon

Nice, it turned out great!