[WIP] Destroyed Chinatown enviro

alexk

Ahh, new year is here and time to update the ol' porfolio. Found a cool Chinatown concept by Alex Chu http://www.conceptsofalex.com and decided to go for it.

I wanted to start this thread early so I can see my progress, and hopefully others can benefit from watching as well.

I blocked out the scene in UDK using BSP, then added basic lighting and some DOF. When I was happy with it, I exported out and imported into Max. Now I am beginning to model on top of the greyblock in Max and then re-import the pieces into UDK.

My first snag already, I'm not sure if its been changed but I remember I could just right click the "move" button in UDK, set everything to zero, and it will place my mesh in the same spot as in Max. But, this time when I do it, I need to turn it 90 degrees.

Concept: http://www.conceptsofalex.com/picture/3china_town_cracked_street_8.jpg?pictureId=5719063



Modeled a first pass of one of the buildings and imported in as a test.

glottis8

I like the concept, i like your building, good blockout so far. wanna see more!

alexk

Fleshed out the road today

Treacharous

Good stuff, Ill keep an eye on this thread

alexk

Buildings

Builder_Anthony

For some reason i think a big rush of water is coming over that wall.Maybe to many utube videos of floods in weird contrys.Its like the wall is weak and leaning towards you.Downhill too.

alexk

Having a bit of the Monday's today.. more buildings and a street lamp I made over the weekend. Trying to get all the greyblock filled out with a first pass model, then onto first pass textures

alexk

Filled in all greyblocks, woot! Also added some hanging wires and banners, and a skydome. I'm still missing alot of small debris, signs, roof bits, chinese lanterns, a car. But I got the core of the scene down and gonna start assembling my textures.

ae.

look very nice man, i love how your going about doing the elevated earth and cracked concrete!

cant wait to see this when its farther along

jimmypopali

It's defiantly getting there, I'd bust a bit off the top off the taller tower in the back (the one with smoke coming from it)

Remember in lighting, highlight your focal point first, get that in lighting and keep going with it. Don't just make a piece for the sake of making it. Get the focal points down and where you want people to see in order.

*EDIT*
OK for some reason the concept didn't come up for me, so I got rid of that (i re-posted it) and another note, this guy has some pretty rockin' concepts.

alexk

Colour! Some of the textures are working better than others and I think my lighting needs adjustment

alexk

Striff

The asphalt texture is ok, but your brick texture is terrible. Stretching like crazy, too.

Daniel Doerksen

looks great, i love the size of the crack in the earth. keep up the good work

EMC3D

Pretty sure the stretching bricks are WIP... and I agree, would go for a more derelict approach.

I'd watch some of the saturations, a bit too red and green at the moment for my liking. Road texture is really nice but I think the rocks need some more resolution.

Good stuff, can't wait to see it progress.

alexk

Thanks for the feedback, I agree that things are too saturated right now. I haven't used UDK in a year, and it's kinda weird that my textures are coming out that way. Some of them are quite desaturated and also quite dark but they come out popping in-game. Anyways, I've given it a slight desaturate in the UDK post process for now, so we'll see how that works out in the next few days

alexk

Messed around with some textures, lighting, UDK post processing settings before going to bed

Cheese_Shinobi

I like where this is going!
One thing I think you should look at is the dirt texture, I guess it´s WIP right now since it looks so flat.

DDuckworth

I'm impressed, could use some help with how you get your lighting looking that good in UDK, that's my biggest problem!

Jeff Parrott

The texturing seems real flat to me. It could be the lighting though washing a lot of it out.

The rock texture on the larger cliff face chasm thing has too much depth in it. If you are going to have that much depth in it then model in the rocks a bit more.

Nice modeling though. Anxious to see this all textured up.

SinisterUrge

Its shaping up. If you give the bricks a blue tint rather than red it will give the scene more dept using contrasting colours.

ayoub44

Great joob man , i have a qestion about your workflow

when you just export building on UDK , They was with UV ? and when you want start texturing you make the UV or wath ?

marq4porsche

Just asking, but shouldn't the wires be torn wildly and dangling ripped from their locations, it looks a little neat now.

alexk

Sadly, not a huge update today. Been hitting lots of bumps in texturing, I don't think UDK likes plain textures very much. Also tweaked lighting again




Thanks for the past feedback.

I agree I need to push and pull more polys in the cliff/rock area.

For lighting, I've basically followed the lighting in Eat 3d's UDK dvd, but also copy the setup in the included UT maps in UDK and adjusted to fit my scene.

For UV'ing this scene, I've been making tiling textures first, then mapping them in Max, then exporting chunks of my scene into UDK.

tristamus

Hey man!

You know, a slew of people (Me, you, and another guy) have just started a bunch of Japanese / Asian related projects lol.

This is starting to look good man, the only thing I notice right away that's a bit off with it, is the paper lanterns. They are way too shiny! I'd take whatever spec you have on them atm OFF!

PatrickL

Care to elaborate on your texture woes?

alexk

I seem to need to darken and desaturate my diffuse alot or else it shows up in UDK like a cartoon solid color. Here's my sidewalk concrete texture. I haven't given this the same treatment as the other textures yet, so any insight would be great to help me improve.

popngear

hey nice start on the textures. A couple suggestions:

The cracks in the normal map look like they are too soft/rounded at the ends. You could improve the realism by having them sharper.

The specular looks like i'ts been blurred. I would sharpen it up so that it lines up better with the diffuse detail. Also, though I can't see what it looks like rendered, the white glow around all the dark areas seems like they are out of place.

Look forward to seeing some updates

popngear

btw, perhaps show a screenshot of the texture problem you are having in the UDK?

eyo

impressive work this is really coming along, I was thinking you could carry some more lampposts into the distance and then have one toppled over where the ground is split etc. Nice stuff

fearian

This is developing quite nicely! And at a pretty impressive rate as well! I'm gonna be watching it closely!

alexk

A few more buildings textured up. Also messed around with some fog settings

alexk

Slowly getting there

tristamus

I see you fixed that crazy spec on the lanterns like I suggested ;D

Looking good, keep it going.

alexk

Finished off with the rest of the textures. Some things definetly need to be revisited later on. Gonna move on to making a car, gasp!

chrisradsby

Rather than creating a car right now you could create another set of texture for debris, just stuff to fill up the ground making it more interesting, small tarmac chunks, pipes sticking out of the rift-bit.



Just so you get that dusty feeling, you could probably use vertex-painting and make a tilable grunge-debris texture. Good work so far man!

alexk

Took a long break on this and now coming back to it. I'm in the process of redoing all my textures, starting from the left side of the screenshot. Hopefully wrapping this up in the next few weeks

Zelenkov

this is comming along nicely!

fearian

Whoo! this thread is back! I really like the lighting and texturing changes you've made, much more realistic and all around pleasing to the eye!

Looking forward to your final shots!

alexk

Added/changed the skydome, I was initially thinking a bluer sky but a darker one seems to fit the mood better. Not a huge update as I'm starting to reach the background stuff. Will eventually come back around to the foreground. Still need to make some doors.

I can't take credit for the lighting. I got frustrated with my own lighting and instead, imported my scene into an unreal map that was included with UDK. I'm not sure what settings they use but its alot better than what I can do, that's for sure

alexk

I'll probably spend a day to tidy up and tweak a few minor things, other than that gonna call this done. Here's an updated screen.

3DVlad

Scene looks amazing Alex, I just think its a bit too clean still. I would imagine everything covered in dust if a city would undergo such mayhem.