[UDK] Japanese Maple Scene

Zipfinator

Hello rascals. Recently started working on a scene based on this shot of a Japanese Maple alongside a river.



I'm planning to do a paintover of that image later to solidify some of what I have pictured for it. I'm not sure if I want to keep the bridge or not. Right now I'm thinking I'll ditch it and make the river a bit more rocky and faster flowing with some water splash particles coming off of the rocks.

This will be both my first project where I'll be creating all of the assets myself and my first time using UDK, so it should be a good learning experience.

Here's a WIP of the Japanese Maple that uses some of the tree techniques I've picked up at Futurepoly.





Sorry for the shitty renders from Max. I tried both Xoliul's Shader and 3PS Lite but with Xoliul's the alpha was all fucked up and I couldn't fix it and with 3PS Lite I could tweak the alpha but I couldn't get it to be two sided. I should be exporting it into UDK soon though.

Please post your comments and crits!

PHArt

I like the tree, but apart from that there isn't much to comment on yet, though there is some advice I'd like to give.

There is a paint option in the UDK engine which you can use to individually paint over all your models with, for example, moss. Really adds to your scene and it's fairly easy if you know how to make materials with the nodes in the material editor.

Zipfinator

PHArt wrote: »

I like the tree, but apart from that there isn't much to comment on yet, though there is some advice I'd like to give.

There is a paint option in the UDK engine which you can use to individually paint over all your models with, for example, moss. Really adds to your scene and it's fairly easy if you know how to make materials with the nodes in the material editor.

Yeah, not much to show yet but I figured I'd start my thread early as I always procrastinate on this stuff and start them too late usually.

Thanks for mentioning the painting option. I forgot about that. Might be useful for the moss as right now I'm just floating a transparent patch over the areas I want it.

I need to compile a list of all the new techniques I'll be able to use in UDK. Should be a lot of stuff to learn since I'm coming from using Source for 6 years.

PHArt

Zipfinator wrote: »

I need to compile a list of all the new techniques I'll be able to use in UDK. Should be a lot of stuff to learn since I'm coming from using Source for 6 years.

Haha, yeah, get ready. There is a washing list of stuff.

Habboi

Good luck Zippy. I found that the amount of techniques needed to learn was too much in my last two projects. I strongly suggest starting small.

fearian

Hey Zip! Tree looks very nice, good ref too.

Like habboi said, you will spend as much time, if not far more, learning the engine than building the scene, but it's so worth it!

Zipfinator

Thanks you two. It sort of feels like I'm 13 again opening Hammer for the first time. I have no idea what I'm doing when I open up UDK and I can barely navigate through the viewport. I have to learn it sometime though. I don't think this scene will be too complex. Just some terrain with a muddy/leafy texture, the Japanese Maple, a few variants of mossy bolders, some small waterside plants, bushes and perhaps another tree to use in the background. I'm also going to attempt to do some water effects in the river like flowing water and small particle splashes, but I'm not sure if that will be too much and I may end up just having the river dried out/flat water although I would not be nearly as happy with it like that.

LoboHotPants

Hey quick tip that'll help you out. Hold down the S key while you have a static mesh selected in the browser and left click in the world. It'll place your mesh on the ground and holding ALT+S will orient it to the face of whatever you click on.

Zipfinator

LoboHotPants wrote: »

Hey quick tip that'll help you out. Hold down the S key while you have a static mesh selected in the browser and left click in the world. It'll place your mesh on the ground and holding ALT+S will orient it to the face of whatever you click on.

Thanks. I'll try and remember this once I start placing the foliage in UDK. Should be very helpful.

Habboi

You learn something new everyday. Wish I'd known that a few minutes ago :P

You might be surprised how much work that simple scene can be. The terrain, are you going to use the new UDK terrain or make your own terrain mesh in Max? If you do, you'll need to make a painting shader for painting grass/mud etc otherwise you could just make a tilable texture. Personally I think the new UDK terrain might be good for you. The tools are powerful.

In my last scene I was all like "I'm gonna make my own water particles!" but the other stuff took so long I decided to use UDK's and tweak them so they looked different.

Flowing water is pretty easy. UDK has a great panner node for scrolling textures. You should really look at all the content that Epic supplies you with and basically break it down cause that's how I learnt all I know so far.

Good luck etc. Oh and as for lighting, you should check out World Properties and tweak stuff like diffuse boost and the ones above that. I usually go for a little over the defaults so 1.2 instead of 1.0.

Finally, you probably know this but be sure to raise the lightmapres for your custom models. Don't go nuts though cause that was my mistake. Too high numbers are not needed. You barely notice 512 over 256 on some models.

fearian

Ooh! When I started working in UDK I was constantly forgetting where all the basic things I needed to set up a level where - I checked these two pages ALOT:

set up nice looking work lights: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1180420&postcount=35

Set up a level to not look like ass: http://www.chrisholden.net/tutor/ot_docs_02_setup02.htm

Zipfinator

@Habboi, thanks for the tips. Glad to hear that there's a scrolling node for materials. That's probably what I'll end up using the for base scrolling water.

@Fearian, Thanks for the links. I've been collecting them the past few days to read over the weekend. Chris' quick level setup should help a lot when I start blocking in stuff in UDK.

LoboHotPants

If you're looking for tutorials or general knowledge then this should help.
http://www.icecreamyou.com/ut3

Zipfinator

Learned how to import into UDK and got some renders of the 3 assets I've started on.







I'm getting some lighting errors on the tree, mainly on the larger alpha branches. Does anyone know how I can fix that without having the canopy texture use a non-directional lighting setup?

Tomorrow or Sunday I'm planning on learning how to set up meshpaint on a model so I can paint moss onto the tree trunk instead of using those crappy floating alphas.

vahl

using normalthief or something along those lines if not using max, to transfer normals from a deformed sphere to your tree planes should do the trick, then export with explicit normals, there was a pretty awesome thread here about this not so long ago, your solution should lie there.

Zipfinator

vahl wrote: »

using normalthief or something along those lines if not using max, to transfer normals from a deformed sphere to your tree planes should do the trick, then export with explicit normals, there was a pretty awesome thread here about this not so long ago, your solution should lie there.

Thank you so much for giving me the tip about Normalthief. I just did a quick search and found the thread you were talking about. Going to experiment around with it tomorrow. Should improve my foliage immensely.

LMP

I'd be careful about the saturation of the red leaves, it could come across to red.

Zipfinator

LMP wrote: »

I'd be careful about the saturation of the red leaves, it could come across to red.

Yeah I haven't quite figured out all of the final saturations/colors for everything yet. Not going to be able to do that until I have this stuff in a scene together and can see how well the colors mix together with lighting and such. I'm definitely going to have the leaves on this main Japanese Maple red in some way though.

Zipfinator

Tree update! I increased the amount of triangles on the canopy by about 300 since it's going to be the main tree in the scene and it should have a bit more detail. It's still less than 1300 triangles so I still have a lot of room if I decide it needs more detail later.

Also I fixed the bad lighting on the large alpha branches using SlideNormalThief.

NoChance

If you look at the concept the branches of the tree are pretty irregular they have bends and sharp angles. Your large tree branches are just one long curve and it looks unnatural.

Zipfinator

The branches on the tree are fairly irregular. Here's a shot without the canopy.



They aren't nearly as irregular as the reference image though as you said. I'll add in a few loops along the longer branches and deform them a bit more. I was trying to be fairly optimized with it but since it's the main tree in the scene it should have a bit more detail.

Might as well post the latest render of the tree while I'm in here. Been messing around with the lighting in UDK a bit and I edited the canopy along with its vertex normals a bit more.



Tomorrow I'm going to paint some variation in the canopy's normal so the leaves look a bit more like they're facing different directions, mess around with the size of the leaves to see if it looks better with them a bit smaller and hopefully get around to learning how to set up mesh painting. I got a bit distracted messing around with NormalThief today.

NoChance

Now that you mention the leaves and depth, a neat trick you might try, is to make the planes for the leaves a 3x3 plane and then form the plane into more of a shallow cup shape. It adds a lot of depth to the planes and makes them fill out more space so you need less of them, and adds a lot of depth.

Zipfinator

NoChance wrote: »

Now that you mention the leaves and depth, a neat trick you might try, is to make the planes for the leaves a 3x3 plane and then form the plane into more of a shallow cup shape. It adds a lot of depth to the planes and makes them fill out more space so you need less of them, and adds a lot of depth.

They already are formed into sort of a cup shape. The way I started off all of the clusters of leaves was by taking a cube, tesselating it into a sphere, deleting all but the top 6-8 quads and then scaling those up after splitting them and deforming them. There are only about 8-10 clusters of leaves on the tree right now.

Zipfinator

I've been getting more comfortable with UDK and experimenting with terrain a lot over the past week. I also learned how to set up Mesh Paint so I could paint moss onto the trunk of the tree. Here are the latest pictures of the terrain and the tree.





I've also started to learn ZBrush. Today I messed around with rock formations a bit. I'll be using these rock formations in the scene along the edges of those raised up sections of terrain.





Right now they're looking a bit lumpy and smooth. Tomorrow I'm going to sculpt on them a bit more and get them into UDK to see how they look along the cliffs. I'm also planning to set up a moss mesh paint on them and place some smaller foliage along any semi-flat sections that poke out.

I also replicated this vertex shader so my foliage will sway based off of a WindDirectionalSource actor. You may be thinking "But that won't show up in screenshots!" Currently I'm planning to do a video flythrough of the scene when it's done.

Poribo

lol, at a first glance I thought those rocks was a ball sack sorry hehe. I think it's because it's too lumpy/soft.

The scene itself is a bit early to crit though, but your tree is looking pretty solid. The way it's on top of the hill, is it going to be the main focus?

I think this piece has potential, gogogo!!

Zipfinator

nightFlarer wrote: »

lol, at a first glance I thought those rocks was a ball sack sorry hehe. I think it's because it's too lumpy/soft.

The scene itself is a bit early to crit though, but your tree is looking pretty solid. The way it's on top of the hill, is it going to be the main focus?

I think this piece has potential, gogogo!!

I didn't think the rocks were THAT bad, ha. I'm definitely going to sculpt in some harder edges though and try to stay away from relying on alpha projections too much.

That red Japanese Maple will be the center of attention. For the rest of the trees in the forest I'm planning to do Green/Yellow maples like it's been Fall for a few weeks.

Mike Yevin

alpha projections are best for adding surface detail imo, i would use the polish and mallet fast brushes for good hard edges. if you start with the mallet fast to rough out some detail and form (remembering to work WITH the brush, not against it. sometimes you will find that it produces some nice forms on its own, so dont try and fight what happens). then go over it and refine some of the bigger forms with the polish brushes (i normally just stick with high, or heavy, or whatever zbrush calls it)

after all that, then i use a nice subtle rock alpha with drag rect and give it some nice surface texture. this can also be done with some noise, but i find the noise is harder to control than alphas. a good approach might be to start out with noise on a separate layer, turn the opacity for the layer down to a good level and then finalize with alphas.

keep it up, ill be watching this

Zipfinator

Mike Yevin wrote: »

alpha projections are best for adding surface detail imo, i would use the polish and mallet fast brushes for good hard edges. if you start with the mallet fast to rough out some detail and form (remembering to work WITH the brush, not against it. sometimes you will find that it produces some nice forms on its own, so dont try and fight what happens). then go over it and refine some of the bigger forms with the polish brushes (i normally just stick with high, or heavy, or whatever zbrush calls it)

after all that, then i use a nice subtle rock alpha with drag rect and give it some nice surface texture. this can also be done with some noise, but i find the noise is harder to control than alphas. a good approach might be to start out with noise on a separate layer, turn the opacity for the layer down to a good level and then finalize with alphas.

keep it up, ill be watching this

Thanks for the tips! I'm going to try out Polish and Mallet Fast brushes now. So far I've been using Clay, a bit of Clay Buildup and Standard with Drag Rectangle and a rock cliff alpha. The clay brush has been giving me some better forms for the most part but it's still a bit lumpy. Hopefully I'll be able to get better results with Mallet and Polish.

Zipfinator

I started messing around with Polish a bit on the rock and was getting some good results so I went over the entire rock with it and I think it's a big improvement. Thanks again for suggesting those brushes Mike.

gsokol

Rock looks better now.

If you want some more info on sculpting rocks..theres a good thread here.

Looking foward to seeing some in engine shots!

feanix

Try use the trim dynamic and polish brushes to give your rocks some more hard edges.

EDIT: Oops, missed the whole second page of this thread. Abort, abort!

Zipfinator

feanix wrote: »

Try use the trim dynamic and polish brushes to give your rocks some more hard edges.

EDIT: Oops, missed the whole second page of this thread. Abort, abort!

It's okay, I got a free bump out of it!

Here's an update on the rocks.





I've been trying for hours to get this into UDK but a problem with Decimation Master has been stopping me from even getting this into Max. Here's a thread with more info on the problem. Would be great if someone knows anything about it.

NAIMA

In my opinion for the rocks you should start lowpoly and only after bring in zbrush and create normals...

Zipfinator

Was able to decimate my rock formations on the FP computers and bake them on my own. There are a few artifacts here and there but they came out pretty well. Each is around 1000 triangles.







I started placing them around the scene too. I need to make a few smaller longer ones to place on the shorter cliff edges.

EMC3D

Yahhhh there we go those rocks are looking alot better! Now get your crazybump normal map over it and some diffuse work + vertex ambient occlusion ( if not done already ) so we can see this scene shape up!

StealthSilver

Reminds me of Halo Reach.

mdeforge

Try using some rock crack photos as alphas in zBrush. Set your brush to standard, set the other tool to rectangle drag or w/e and then change your alpha to the image and it works really well.

Shitty exmaple, but it's close: http://screencast.com/t/DpoSqzUSfZ

Here's some good ones: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24037398/rockFaceAlphas.zip

Zipfinator

@Bear, that's the plan! Not sure if I'm going to bake AO onto the rocks but I'll probably test it out.

@Stealth, Halo Reach? Not sure how it reminds you of that ha.

@Stradigos, I had tested out stretching some rock alphas over the rocks a bit but I didn't really like the results. It was a bit too bumpy and noisy and I'll get all of those smaller details through a crazybump normal anyway. It could have been because of the awful rock alpha I made though, so I'll test out those ones you linked sometime. Thanks.

mdeforge

Yeah, no problem. They worked really well. You can always adjust the intensity or smooth it out. The textures are part of the project files from here: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/products/tutorials/vmo01/.

Also, read this: http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/modular_rocks/modular_rocks.html

Zipfinator

Small update.



Boulders! I was able to get the normals for them baked onto the same sheets used for the two smaller rock formations.

This weekend I'm planning to start on the other trees for the scene and get started on the other ground textures. Perhaps I'll also get around to texturing the rocks and researching some more advanced mesh paint setups.

duxun

love the rocks !!

Cheers...

stimpack

neat! i like.

Zipfinator

Started on the other trees for the forest. Not too sure if I'm happy with the bark but I like the yellow. It may seem like a bit too much now but I think it will balance out nicely once I finalize the leaf texture with some slight green on the leaves and I make some smaller green plants for the forest floor.





Next on my list is to research some advanced mesh paint setups so I can get the moss to not look awful on the rocks and to start some of the small/medium plants.

Habboi

It's still early to critique but at least it's starting to take shape. Obviously you'll sort out the visuals a little later once you've got all the props laid out.

If done right the colours will really bring out the scene and make it eye catching for your portfolio. Keep going buddy.

feanix

Look awesome. Perhaps try add some fog/fogplanes to help the individual trees stand out more against each other. Their silhouettes are getting totally lost.

Zipfinator

Updates!







I'm aiming to finish the scene in about two weeks. Next on my list is to finish the yellow trees, do some advanced mesh paint with a new moss texture on the rocks and start some of the smaller foliage.

chrisradsby

Your trees look a bit flat man, sure you can't do something about that? Trees with leaves generally have shadows on them and it looks a bit weird having all the leaves uniform in color like that. I really like the setup with the river and stuff, you should def go for a low-angle shot

Xoliul

Your tree leaves look unlit? Are you using Masking or Translucency there ?

Zipfinator

@Chris, Yeah the leaf texture is very WIP at the moment. In that shot the leaf textures are at least leafy compared to the previous shots where they were just yellow with alpha but tomorrow I'm going to spend some more time on those yellow trees. My plan right now is to get a bit more variation in the leaf texture itself and then overlay a low resolution texture on a separate UV set that will tint the bottom leaves a bit more green and the top ones a bit more orange. I also want to mess around with the bark texture a bit more as I'm not too happy with it.

@Xoliul, the trees are definitely lit. It just doesn't show as much from the bottom as the light gets blocked by the higher up branches. I would definitely like to have a bit more light show up on the bottom branches but there's not really a way I can do that with the lighting angle alone. This is the best angle to give more light to those bottom branches. Do you have any suggestions on how to get them lighting better? Maybe I could try out having a the canopy on the tree be a bit less thick.

nordahl154

Great improvement on the rocks! I never understood what was so special about the polish brush though. I prefer TrimDynamic.
Are those rocks under the lone red tree one big mesh, several stacked?
Now it's time to put some vegetation on the ground! 8)

Zipfinator

All of the rocks in the scene are made from 3 different Zbrushed rock models that I mish mashed together in UDK. That means it renders the triangles behind the rocks too but they're fairly low poly and it's much easier to author than a bunch of unique models for every cliff face around the map.

Also I've started using TrimDynamic more when ZBrushing by I still love hPolish too!

Also thanks to Virtuosic for his kismet/matinee tutorial. Perhaps my next update will be a video flythrough. I'll at the very least do one when it's finished.