Tomb Wall: How would you create this?
polycounter lvl 11
Hey All,
I wanted to do an outdoor environment, for my portfolio in UDK.
This concept caught my eye:
I box modeled it all in but didn't realize a big issue early on.
The big rock wall that defines the entrance, it has a lot of character to it:
I tried to just make some simple square blocks in max and then just build "a wall" rather then following the specifics of the concept.
However, this didn't capture the richness of or the character, which because of its size and prominence is nothing short of a center piece for the entire concept.
Another idea I had was to break down the anatomy of the design. Make some blocks with curved sides, some that tapered, others that aligned flush, but the degree of variety in that wall is huge and any attempt to simplify it just seams to go against the message its sending: Variety.
I also tried copying the design verbatim: proportion angles, all of it.
Then sculpt it all up in Zbrush. The problem I ran into sculpting it like this was maintaining consistency between all the different types of blocks. It was also very time consuming.
Environment artists will often simplify and break down designs like this, but if I'm going to do this particular concept it seams like its critical I get that wall right. I'm just wondering how you think I should break it down, and how worthwhile it is that I get it looking "just like that".
I wanted to do an outdoor environment, for my portfolio in UDK.
This concept caught my eye:
I box modeled it all in but didn't realize a big issue early on.
The big rock wall that defines the entrance, it has a lot of character to it:
I tried to just make some simple square blocks in max and then just build "a wall" rather then following the specifics of the concept.
However, this didn't capture the richness of or the character, which because of its size and prominence is nothing short of a center piece for the entire concept.
Another idea I had was to break down the anatomy of the design. Make some blocks with curved sides, some that tapered, others that aligned flush, but the degree of variety in that wall is huge and any attempt to simplify it just seams to go against the message its sending: Variety.
I also tried copying the design verbatim: proportion angles, all of it.
Then sculpt it all up in Zbrush. The problem I ran into sculpting it like this was maintaining consistency between all the different types of blocks. It was also very time consuming.
Environment artists will often simplify and break down designs like this, but if I'm going to do this particular concept it seams like its critical I get that wall right. I'm just wondering how you think I should break it down, and how worthwhile it is that I get it looking "just like that".
Replies
In that case, just go modular. sure there are different sizes and shapes and even a couple entrances.
There's 2 different ways to approach this, depending on how you much memory you want to save (which shouldn't be the case since it will be for your portfolio) but modeling for games and optimizing is always good practice. But if you want to make it easier on yourself, just model a bunch of stones...with variety of course.
take 3 shapes of the general big square stones in the scene that give the walls structure and just bust em up in zbrush.
For the main walls on the left and right side, i would just do that with one large modular wall piece, but not for the back wall (focal point) i would build that up with the 3 modular square stones.
For the stairs I would make 2 or 3 flat slab stones once again for variety..you could use them for the walls too if you want.
The cool thing about having modular sets (especially with just generic stones) you can use them pretty much however you want. Be creative with your world building!
On an old project I was on, our world builder used these long skinny rocks the size of a player and made huge mountains with them and it looked awesome.
A great example would be how this guy approached this desert environment, its pretty much the same way i explained you should (its not so great on memory optimization, but hey...its for your portfolio...your NOT going to make a whole game from just this one environment...so dont worry about it!)
http://www.davidhenchey.com/site_gfx/gallery/pentheselia/pentheselia.html
I already did this to some degree. The fact that each stone is different tells a story, and the fact that I modeled this concept and didn't capture stood out to me. A lot. Going modular sort of went against the idea of the concept.
I agree, its gonna be a LOT more work to model out an interconnected system of stones that were cut and jammed together to form that wall.
I just keep hating the modular results and its getting really frustrating.
I suppose I'm wondering if this issue is with me caring too much about this. The goal is to make a "cool looking game environment" for my portfolio.
The reason I was attracted to this concept in the first place is pretty much the variety in the stone work.
However, I don't want to waste my time on this if no one else is going to care. I'm just having a really hard to gauging if they will or not, or if this is just me catering to an oddball love of complex stonework
If anyone can offer their opinion/perspective on that I would really appreciate it.
As to the 'how' of it, I'd worry about getting the up close parts right, even if you had to scrap the modularity to do it. Then I'd start reusing those parts to modularly build the more distant bits - sort of like a 'hero piece' with the supporting pieces being modular, based off the main piece.
You might post some screens of what you have so far, with some of the workflows you've tried. It'd give a better perspective as to how you're approaching it and what else you might try.
I think you are worrying too much about the modularity in the stonework. It will look weird if the wall is built up on the exact same axis with every rock. Rotate, scale and offset the rocks as you build up. That will fix everything. It WILL look weird right now with the block out because its all basic shapes.
You can still keep the attraction of the concept, the variety of the stone work can be done with only just 3 stones. 1 stone can act as 6 different stones depending on how you sculpt and place them in your environment.
I'm really looking forward to what you make man! show your progress
If it were me, I'd try something like this:
Go down the route of trying to build the wall verbatim. Model out every block, every angle, every shape. Find the details and pay attention to them, even embellish and build upon them where you can.
When your modeling is all done, consider this route. Rather than try and custom-texture each rock, think about what kind of details your rocks need. Do you want to try and control where the cracks are? Do you want to get moss in the cracks? Do you want some smoother surfaces?
Then, plan out a shader. You could make a custom vertex-color driven blend shader that lets you quickly and easily paint these details into your big custom mesh. You will only end up making 2 or 3 tileable materials depending on what you are trying to achieve, so consistency becomes much easier. Perhaps you only need a heavily-cracked rock and a relatively smooth rock with good height-map blending. Perhaps you can use a channel of vertex-color to blend in green coloring for moss.
Without the ability to depend on your normals for defining larger shapes (since you can really only depend on it for surface detail in this example), consider trying to define your larger shapes in your modeling. Breaking this piece up into many small objects that can LOD independently will help out with performance. Having smaller pieces means you can embellish a little more, modeling cracks and beveled edges rather than depending on a normal map to convey them.
Hope this helps.
I tried the modular approach again this morning to just check. I tried to make the block as efficient as I possibly could, but each stone is so unique and the angles so many that it just doesn't work unless I completely warp the blocks so they fit together tightly. I can't have big gaps because most of the wall fits together well, using a variety of shapes. If its too regular on the other hand and frankly it just doesn't work.
I was convinced that modularity was the way to go since I have seen so many other tutorials featuring it. However, now that I look at all the tuts here closer. I see that all the stones have a Regularity to their angles and shapes. There is a variety in the way they are position, but all of them are regular to some extent.
If it WERE a requirement I could make it work, and make a design that looked good, unified and solid, but it wouldn't look like this concept, and I think the charm of the concept lies in how each one of those rocks has a story.
Part of the reason sculpting is taking me so long is because I just haven't done it much before. So this would be good practice, and if I use a shader like cman2k suggested I should be able to get the entire wall down to one 1024x1024 sheet. I can make it a master material and re-use it for all the other stones in the scene so that it unifies the design. One prop wont look better or worse up close.
I would do enough modular work on the side walls to show you can work that way.
To spice up the modular walls you can do a few brick clusters, that can cover up parts of the module and help sell the depth difference. If you build them carefully the seams in the rock could match up.
It would probably be too costly to build the whole thing out of a handful of individual bricks? Each brick has 6 unique sides and only a few different sized bricks could build the whole scene, a long flat brick becomes a tall skinny brick or a giant flat brick depending on how it's rotated.
The only downside is that there are hidden faces and it will look inefficient, but it would allow you to really push and pull the bricks out selling the depth discrepancies as well as cobble them together.
Yeah, I'm in the process of zbrushing this now. I'll keep you guys posted. If anyone else wants to offer their opinion I would love to hear it.
This type of perspective really helps me.
The PC community is pretty much the demographic I am making this for so I take what any of you think to heart.