"Dofus" environment project - WIP
polycounter lvl 11
Hey PCers!
I'm starting a new project and I want to document my process (and progress) here on polycount and hopefully get some help along the way if I get stuck!
I was greatly inspired to come out of the shadows and post on PC thanks largely to two posts: cycloverid's Squaresoft Town and adam's "building an environment" thread. I've stole a page from adam's planning book as you can see below (I hope he doesn't mind
).
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Why am I doing this?
To gain a better understanding of current-gen techniques and work flows and to improve upon the following:
A scene in the style of the Bonta race of characters, referenced from Ankama "Dofus 2.0" artbook. See concept below.
Inspiration, purpose
Assets (rough overview)
I'm still in the planning and exploration stages so I'll be updating the above with more information as I do more research and learn more techniques.
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For those interested in a little back story, while studying animation at school a few years ago we were right on the cusp of "next gen" but still working with UT2 Editor. I have had a basic understanding of the next gen process, but I never really and truly dove into it on my own. To be honest, I was daunted by the idea of teaching myself this new process and was a little nervous/afraid to fail so I stuck with lower poly art, which was more familiar.
However, for nearly 2 years now I've been working on an MMO as an Environment Artist surrounded by really awesomely talented people and have been super inspired to finally take the plunge! Having just made it out of a stretch of crunch I figured now is the time to finally bite the bullet!
I hope to mirror some of what adam did in his thread and I'll be posting links to tutorials that I find along the way! I'll start with this one, which I hope to work through this week/weekend:
Chris Albeluhn's Normal Map Tutorial
This past weekend I read through Philip Klevestav's material tutorials, which helped me to begin my normal mapping journey!
That's it for now! I hope to update at least once a week, so stay tuned!
Crits and comments welcome!
Cheers!
Here's the concept I'm working from, although I'm altering the layout in the final scene, and might not have 3 buildings:
And here's where I'm currently at, still blocking everything out:
Testing my first proper normal map texture in Unity3:
I'm starting a new project and I want to document my process (and progress) here on polycount and hopefully get some help along the way if I get stuck!
I was greatly inspired to come out of the shadows and post on PC thanks largely to two posts: cycloverid's Squaresoft Town and adam's "building an environment" thread. I've stole a page from adam's planning book as you can see below (I hope he doesn't mind
).--
Why am I doing this?
To gain a better understanding of current-gen techniques and work flows and to improve upon the following:
- Hand painted textures (creating various materials – wood, metal, concrete, foliage, etc.)
- Creating maps - normal, spec, light, etc.
- The high-to-low poly modeling process
- Creating a modular environment
- Using Unity 3 and UDK
A scene in the style of the Bonta race of characters, referenced from Ankama "Dofus 2.0" artbook. See concept below.
Inspiration, purpose
- Learn current-gen techniques
- Explore/expose my game art workflow in order to find faults
- Attempt to emulate an art style that I admire and enjoy
- Inspirational games: Torchlight, WOW, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and games with "exaggerated realism" like Team Fortress 2 (I'll think up more examples of this)
- Lighting a real-time scene
- Have fun!
- Utilize tiling textures and modular meshes
- Delve deeper into vertex painting for texture blends, and other techniques
- Explore use of decals
- Final scene playable in web browser or executable
- Explore texture baking in depth
Assets (rough overview)
- House
- Wall (with alpha plants)
- Ground (2 types of stone work)
- Curb
- Crates
- Barrel
- Well
- Arch
I'm still in the planning and exploration stages so I'll be updating the above with more information as I do more research and learn more techniques.
--
For those interested in a little back story, while studying animation at school a few years ago we were right on the cusp of "next gen" but still working with UT2 Editor. I have had a basic understanding of the next gen process, but I never really and truly dove into it on my own. To be honest, I was daunted by the idea of teaching myself this new process and was a little nervous/afraid to fail so I stuck with lower poly art, which was more familiar.
However, for nearly 2 years now I've been working on an MMO as an Environment Artist surrounded by really awesomely talented people and have been super inspired to finally take the plunge! Having just made it out of a stretch of crunch I figured now is the time to finally bite the bullet!
I hope to mirror some of what adam did in his thread and I'll be posting links to tutorials that I find along the way! I'll start with this one, which I hope to work through this week/weekend:
Chris Albeluhn's Normal Map Tutorial
This past weekend I read through Philip Klevestav's material tutorials, which helped me to begin my normal mapping journey!
That's it for now! I hope to update at least once a week, so stay tuned!
Crits and comments welcome!
Cheers!
Here's the concept I'm working from, although I'm altering the layout in the final scene, and might not have 3 buildings:
And here's where I'm currently at, still blocking everything out:
Testing my first proper normal map texture in Unity3:
Replies
Instead, you get to see inside my brains/thought process! I was a bit stuck/apprehensive about what to do next so I scribbled questions all over the concept. Most of the time I can do this stuff in my noggin', but a lot of this is untested waters for me (meaning current/next gen workflows).
I find that talking out loud when no one is around or discussing it with someone is the most effective method for clearing roadblocks like these. I'm having a chat with a mate at work tomorrow to help do just that
Anyway, prepare to suffer through my illegible table writing! Muhahaha!
2. I'm considering doing what adam did for his rock wall and cut geometry into a flat plane with my texture on it, and maybe toss some texture generated normals on that.
3. This one I'm still up in the air on. If I could model one beam and somehow use that to create the rest of the woodwork that would be awesome. Otherwise bringing all of those beams into Zbrush/Mudbox and sculpt it all seems like too much of a hassle. Ideas?
4. We've been doing texture pages that combine multiple asset's textures at work for a while now and it works pretty well. However, I don't technically need to be a stickler for technical limitations on this project since it's a small scene, and this is supposed to be a current/next gen learning experience. Also, I could use the assets in other projects in the future if they were separated. Thoughts?
5. I've decided to do this for sure (probably not the one in the concept though)
6. Given that this is supposed to be more cartoony than realistic (exaggerated realism) I figure I should have the spec maps be a medium intensity to keep it away from being too realistic.
7. The only reason to do this would be to play around with creating shaders in UDK for them. If I have time I might add them in.
8. Planes with tiling textures would be easier to do (could toss in some pot holes and the like as well) but building a modular ground set would be useful if I wanted to expand the scene in the future into a town scene. Still debating this one...thoughts?
9. There will be way more wall in the final scene than is present in the concept so I should probably give them their own textures so that I can play around with positioning them and not have to worry about the wall texture.
10. Since the chimney(s) are on the roof, I'm not sure if I should really take them overboard with heavy damage through sculpting. I could probably achieve a nice look by adding some loops and pushing a few verts around. Good idea/bad idea?
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If you read through that wall of text, awesome! Thanks! I really like the idea of transparency on this project, even though it is TERRIFYING :poly134:. Having to condense my thoughts for ease-of-reading will help me keep it simple in the future instead of over-thinking as I usually do!
I'll probably do a bit of work on some of the issues above, but I welcome all suggestions and comments!
Cheers!
Excellent planning you have there! Great work so far. I should follow your example and plan the way you did. That's just great!
One crit I have is about the texture on your house. The stone tiles (or what seems like it) seem a little huge. The scale doesn't seem right at all. Compare that to the size of a human being.
It's a little early to start giving you more crits, but keep up the great work!
You're certainly right about having to be careful with the scale on that texture! It's something that I plan to research before I start painting textures.
In the book where I found the concept, a lot of the buildings seem to be made like little castles; using big, roughly-hewn stones and huge beams of wood. I'm also considering that the scale of the characters in the game ranges greatly compared to your average Human scale, so it could be a tricky one to get right!
Very interesting Project ^^
So for texture if you want make Dofus Style
I have some others references for You
Sorry this Forum is in French
Assets exemples
http://forum.wakfu.com/fr/69-caracteristiques/84127-hommes-dieux?page=1#entry1251249
An exemple of 3D game with Dofus Style
[ame]
voil
As for the texture you have right now, I wouldn't use the pattern you have, I would use just a simple dusty brick, nothing really to distract your focus from the path.
Ocarian:
Slage is looking pretty sweet! Also, thanks for the link to the prop sheets! They'll be helpful when I get around to texturing my props! I have a link to a texture artist from Naughty Dog who has some awesome textures on his site. I'm going to be using them as reference, but the link to his site is on my old rig. I'll try and get it for you next time I post
Exist:
Thanks for the tip! We use the same process at work to ensure that we're all getting the same results in the engine!
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Being "new" to next-gen practices I've been finding it difficult to picture the end result with normal and spec maps all over the place. So lately I've been playing Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and it's helping me visualize the end result that I hope to achieve. In order to get that high-poly/realistic look in a cartoony game, it seems to come mostly through the use of large, basic shapes both in the textures and modeling. Sure, that contraption over there may look like it's made out of copper and steel and glass, but when you look at it overall, it's exaggerated shapes all over the place!
I just wish I could do screen captures from my tele while I play...
Anyway, I spent some time tonight trying to flesh everything out as a whole rather than just hitting up a piece at a time, so I've been jumping around cleaning up my meshes and adding mesh complexity where needed.
I still have a bit more modeling to do, mainly the archway and fountain, and I'm gonna toss some of those jewels/minerals onto the house as well. Should make for some fun shader experimenting in UDK
Here's a shot with all of the parts that will make up the final scene, less foliage:
Doesn't look like much has changed mostly due to optimizing the house, which I had left in a bit of a state!
There are two fence pieces and a corner stone piece that I will be instancing around the perimeter of the property, as well as the box/crate and half-log bench. I might add an asset or two once I've got everything together again, and I plan on doing some foliage too.
That's it for now!
Cheers!
Anyway, until I get my shit together again I'm not going to be able to post updates for the project. I WILL be back once I get this stuff sorted out though!
Cheers!
I managed to get a few assets to a presentable level of "finish" during some time off of work. However, I have to revisit them before I call them "done".
The Dofus art style is used as a base to get a general "look and feel" and then I've tossed in a layer of "realism" with the normal maps. I'll be going in and touching up the normal maps by hand when I revisit these to get them to pop more exactly where I want them to. At the moment the normal maps were created with nDo based straight off of the diffuse maps.
Otherwise, everything is hand painted
Crits and comments welcome!
Cheers!
P.S. I almost forgot! I've decided that I'll probably render out the whole scene with Marmoset Toolbag and then toss it into an engine at a later date. Marmoset Toolbag blew my freakin' mind!!
Your diffuse maps could also use more color variation and detail (signs of wear and usage). Right now it's just flat local colors and you could do a lot more in the shading to sell the forms more.
This seems like a cool project though. Just wanted to give my two cents on your approach so far.
I've inadvertently lost all of the files for this project and will not be able to complete it.
This thread will no longer be updated as I will be moving on to other projects.