I tried to something similar in Maya a while back but never got any good AO or normal out of it. This method is brilliant! Thanks for sharing
Btw, how well does the tile pain option work in Mudbox?
It actually works great, you'll need to have mudbox 2012 sap version.
Texturing wise its fast if you take advantage of stencils. You could for example model a high poly brick and do some screengrabs from different angles which could be used later on as a paint brush or stencil. I call this method modular texturing.
On the other hand for modelling, its like a dream come true for any texture artist out there, it works exactly the same way as for the tiled texturing plane.
But... you need a good computer to avoid the slight delay when working at high resolutions. A good hard disk is needed for working at over 2 million polygons for example.
There isn't anything more frustrating then having the art director of guerilla games (killzone) asking to see your portfolio and you dont have one. Sigh...
There isn't anything more frustrating then having the art director of guerilla games (killzone) asking to see your portfolio and you dont have one. Sigh...
Just pick a few of your favourite pictures from this thread, put them into a portfolio and simply tell them that you didn't have a portfolio ready.
Like the poster above me said, you could easily use this thread (but it wouldn't be very professional)
Wut? you have those video tutorials and this thread! I think its nice to see breakdowns of how you tackled that one pretty image than just a bunch of pretty images.
you got tons of great portfolio pieces you can use. And then you can also show your technical side on how you create the shaders stuff like that. Showing modular system is always a plus!
wow that grass is just stunning... it legitimately looks like a golf green or something.. the grass really pops out and doesnt look like just a flat texture.
Thanks guys, I'm putting it together right now even tho my original plan for the portfolio was to make a fully playable level with a fly through a break down of every aspect of its dev
Some update regarding the project :
- Redesigned the terrain
- testing background texture planes (mountains)
The background plane where made through Mudbox screengrabs, they react to light accordingly to the sun direction and have normal mapping applied to them.
I'm planning to make model versions of some terrain parts to add a bit more of depth to the level.
The ground will start to get more detailed when I start adding vegetation variation and different ground textures such as soil etc... Breaking up the grass field will help with optimization (less draw calls) and add more realism.
New terrain :
The normal map on the background planes helps alot for proper lighting :
Also I beg to differ, your grass is lost at the moment through a sea of green, the normal map doesnt pick any detail up, it looks all diffuse. Could be explained easily if you used the vegetation shader with "Grass" checked. Make sure you have spec going on there.
Nice background plane, you tricked me in thinking it was terrain.
I've been following this thread for quite some time now and I must say this is very impressive. Especially your shaders and, of course, the terrain modeling is really awesome!
Is that grass on your last shots really made of poly meshes or are you using a fancy shader technique?
Also I beg to differ, your grass is lost at the moment through a sea of green, the normal map doesnt pick any detail up, it looks all diffuse. Could be explained easily if you used the vegetation shader with "Grass" checked. Make sure you have spec going on there.
Nice background plane, you tricked me in thinking it was terrain.
I agree, plus the SSAO is not do your grass any favors. Tweak dat shit.
Hawt. You are kicking ass dude. Great composition, lighting and placement going on in your terrain. This is really not my area but it stands out as fantastic stuff to me. Not surprised you have caught the eyes of a studio already.
megalmn2000 : the sky isn't mine, I'm using one from crytek as a placeholder since I put together the whole scene today only.
You can find some tips regarding sky texture painting of few pages earlier on this thread
Needs more riders of Rohan.
Looks great man. Id intensify the contrast *slight*. Its boardering dull atm.
whats_trueThanks for the heads up man, I forgot to tweak the contrast value indeed (it was left at 1.0)
I changed it to 1.2, looks perfect post-process wise.
yeah, some more contrast.
Also I beg to differ, your grass is lost at the moment through a sea of green, the normal map doesnt pick any detail up, it looks all diffuse. Could be explained easily if you used the vegetation shader with "Grass" checked. Make sure you have spec going on there.
Nice background plane, you tricked me in thinking it was terrain.
Thanks for the crit, I didn't use any normal mapping or specularity on the grass blades, it was a choice that I made after spending an hour of tweaking the grass layer.
Adding normal mapping to the grass models wont work because the shading would be incorrect and it will look unnatural. Same goes for the spec. I'll save the normal maps and spec for unique/detailed assets, It will save some memory and texture lookups.
Main reason why I didn't want to use the normal/spec is because of how the grass is actually modeled :
If the blades where actually curved, it would've made more sense of using Normal/specular.
I wanted the grass model to be as low poly as possible since the level I'm working on has very long view distance. @moeptier : just a simple grass model (18 tris) I'm even considering of using a single triangle for each grass blade to lower it down even more.
Anyways here is a small video to show a bit of motion.
The grass wind needs to be tweaked but there aren't many options to play around with. I'm trying to achieve a more uniform wave for the wind animation.
wow sick! you must have a beast computer! dont' know how your computer can handle all that
Thanks, my computer specs are 3 year old
i7 860
6gigs of ram
nvidia 285gtx
It really isn't a high end computer, my poly budget for the level is to not go over 1 million polys and 3000 draw calls. It should run at 60fps minimum.
Oh nice addition of the rocky rubble in the grass. Will you be adding flowers? PINK ONES!?
I was playing ff13-2 and how they broke up their grass with these flowers gave it a nice touch.
Ya I'm planning to do that
I started adding some detail to the ground and sompe paths to guide the player.
It seems like hand painting some shading on the terrain color map really helps adding some volume to grass.
getting better and better. I love it! How's the performance impact of the grass? I mean it's really a LOT.
Also I'm interested in why you're switching constantly between CE3 and UDK. Is it just to know both engines?
Cheers
Performance wise, grass does eat alot of your draw calls/poly budget. To have good looking grass fields, you'll need to use a tilable grass texture and grass blade texture that pretty much have the same color and brightness.
This would help avoiding the player noticing the transition between the grass model and the terrain, which enables you to reduce the draw distance of the grass.
On the other hand your grass model needs to be optimized (very low poly count). You'll need to reduce the invisible areas (reduce the overdraw coverage) so that the engine takes less time figuring out which areas are visible and which ones are not on your grass model (at the cost of adding extra polygons). The best way to know that, is to use some performance monitoring tools such as Nvidia perfhud or the built-in tools in CE3 sdk.
Those tools will tell you how long (in milliseconds) it takes for the gpu/cpu to render each asset or passes (example zbuffer or zpass for transparency).
Also I'm interested in why you're switching constantly between CE3 and UDK. Is it just to know both engines?
Switching from UDK to CE3 was a hard decision, I love both engines and both have their cons and pros.
I'm working on a very large level and I needed a good solution for rendering objects in the distance.
Large levels calls for realtime lighting :
I can't afford spending hours of rendering time when using lightmass. I did try out cascade shadows (dynamic shadows) but performance wise it really wasn't what I needed.
I'll be doing a medium sized level in UDK which will be stylized and a bit more colourful.
Replies
Btw, how well does the tile pain option work in Mudbox?
It actually works great, you'll need to have mudbox 2012 sap version.
Texturing wise its fast if you take advantage of stencils. You could for example model a high poly brick and do some screengrabs from different angles which could be used later on as a paint brush or stencil. I call this method modular texturing.
On the other hand for modelling, its like a dream come true for any texture artist out there, it works exactly the same way as for the tiled texturing plane.
But... you need a good computer to avoid the slight delay when working at high resolutions. A good hard disk is needed for working at over 2 million polygons for example.
Just pick a few of your favourite pictures from this thread, put them into a portfolio and simply tell them that you didn't have a portfolio ready.
Like the poster above me said, you could easily use this thread (but it wouldn't be very professional)
You have some great stuff going on here
Some update regarding the project :
- Redesigned the terrain
- testing background texture planes (mountains)
The background plane where made through Mudbox screengrabs, they react to light accordingly to the sun direction and have normal mapping applied to them.
I'm planning to make model versions of some terrain parts to add a bit more of depth to the level.
The ground will start to get more detailed when I start adding vegetation variation and different ground textures such as soil etc... Breaking up the grass field will help with optimization (less draw calls) and add more realism.
New terrain :
The normal map on the background planes helps alot for proper lighting :
Looks great man. Id intensify the contrast *slight*. Its boardering dull atm.
"Wazzup, dis Choco guy is da bomb. :thumbup: "
But it'll cost ya.
Also I beg to differ, your grass is lost at the moment through a sea of green, the normal map doesnt pick any detail up, it looks all diffuse. Could be explained easily if you used the vegetation shader with "Grass" checked. Make sure you have spec going on there.
Nice background plane, you tricked me in thinking it was terrain.
Is that grass on your last shots really made of poly meshes or are you using a fancy shader technique?
I agree, plus the SSAO is not do your grass any favors. Tweak dat shit.
Thanks
megalmn2000 : the sky isn't mine, I'm using one from crytek as a placeholder since I put together the whole scene today only.
You can find some tips regarding sky texture painting of few pages earlier on this thread
whats_true Thanks for the heads up man, I forgot to tweak the contrast value indeed (it was left at 1.0)
I changed it to 1.2, looks perfect post-process wise.
Thanks for the crit, I didn't use any normal mapping or specularity on the grass blades, it was a choice that I made after spending an hour of tweaking the grass layer.
Adding normal mapping to the grass models wont work because the shading would be incorrect and it will look unnatural. Same goes for the spec. I'll save the normal maps and spec for unique/detailed assets, It will save some memory and texture lookups.
Main reason why I didn't want to use the normal/spec is because of how the grass is actually modeled :
If the blades where actually curved, it would've made more sense of using Normal/specular.
I wanted the grass model to be as low poly as possible since the level I'm working on has very long view distance.
@moeptier : just a simple grass model (18 tris) I'm even considering of using a single triangle for each grass blade to lower it down even more.
Anyways here is a small video to show a bit of motion.
The grass wind needs to be tweaked but there aren't many options to play around with. I'm trying to achieve a more uniform wave for the wind animation.
[ame="
i7 860
6gigs of ram
nvidia 285gtx
It really isn't a high end computer, my poly budget for the level is to not go over 1 million polys and 3000 draw calls. It should run at 60fps minimum.
I was playing ff13-2 and how they broke up their grass with these flowers gave it a nice touch.
what a massive use of alpha to coverage, working pretty nice! how does it behave in motion?
Actually quite well! Its ripples in patches from the wind and really looks nice. Up close its a bit 'bladey' but its still very nice!
Ya I'm planning to do that
I started adding some detail to the ground and sompe paths to guide the player.
It seems like hand painting some shading on the terrain color map really helps adding some volume to grass.
Also I'm interested in why you're switching constantly between CE3 and UDK. Is it just to know both engines?
Cheers
Performance wise, grass does eat alot of your draw calls/poly budget. To have good looking grass fields, you'll need to use a tilable grass texture and grass blade texture that pretty much have the same color and brightness.
This would help avoiding the player noticing the transition between the grass model and the terrain, which enables you to reduce the draw distance of the grass.
On the other hand your grass model needs to be optimized (very low poly count). You'll need to reduce the invisible areas (reduce the overdraw coverage) so that the engine takes less time figuring out which areas are visible and which ones are not on your grass model (at the cost of adding extra polygons). The best way to know that, is to use some performance monitoring tools such as Nvidia perfhud or the built-in tools in CE3 sdk.
Those tools will tell you how long (in milliseconds) it takes for the gpu/cpu to render each asset or passes (example zbuffer or zpass for transparency).
Switching from UDK to CE3 was a hard decision, I love both engines and both have their cons and pros.
I'm working on a very large level and I needed a good solution for rendering objects in the distance.
Large levels calls for realtime lighting :
I can't afford spending hours of rendering time when using lightmass. I did try out cascade shadows (dynamic shadows) but performance wise it really wasn't what I needed.
I'll be doing a medium sized level in UDK which will be stylized and a bit more colourful.
My work and Paroxum's got featured on Forbes :
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/01/what-skyrim-would-look-like-in-cryengine-3/