[UDK] Swamp Tree Village... with crystals and stuff?!

sybrix

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ORIGINAL POST

Hi folks.

I have about 2 weeks left to complete my graduation project. I've completely redesigned it based a lot on feedback I received here a long time ago on the first rendition of the concept. I'd like to get any feedback you're willing to share to really polish it up before the deadline.

So, the basic story is there is a crystal power source (Zaigus) that the inhabitants of the environment harness. They can integrate it crudely into objects and it powers them all mysterious-like. Like elevator platforms!

I'm going for stylized hand painted fantasy feel with just diffuse and spec maps.

Here's what I've got so far.








Thanks for having a look!

Selaznog

Looks awesome! I'm doing the same sort of thing for my demo reel; a hand painted fantasy town that uses crystals as lights, except it's on a beach. Your scene looks nice, but a little *too* green, I'd say. Seeing as you probably don't have much time to change things, I think some simple colour adjustments will go a long way. Maybe the fog is just too dense. It would also be nice to see a natural lightsource, like very subtle sun rays pouring through the leaves above, scattering light around here and there.

I typed in "swamp painting" in google and found this. Perfectly simulates what I'm getting at:


See how the light pours through and highlights certain spots? I think you could do this and keep the same atmosphere you have. Right now it seems too dark to be able to see your awesome hand painted textures :P

sipher3325

This is awesome. I love swampy, foresty, villages. I agree with Selaznog on the lighting. Getting some light shafts to peek through the canopy would help make this pop and bring some contrast into the environment. The complimentary orange and blue was a nice touch.

Justin Meisse

The leaves seem very large, how big are they if you had a person standing next to one? The trees seem a little too low poly, there are some pretty sharp corners on the branches, you should also weld the large branches into the trunk, the intersection is causing some harsh seams.

It's a good start, just pour some more awesome into it!

njc6425

cool style there, looking good. Reminds me a lot of kingdoms of amalur
Not sure what the trees are going into, is it water? if so maybe you should try placing a reflection map on it to make it appear more like water? if its mist then it looks cool, at the moment thats what i get from it

good job so far

Darkleopard

Yeah im having a hard time trying to figure out if its just mist or water in the scene, maybe a little more definition.

I also agree with Selaznog, more colour variety, even just different greens would greatly improve the scene and give more depth.

Looking nice though

sybrix

@Selaznog That concept is amazing! I used it as reference when I revisited the lighting. I'm a novice at it but I tried to get as close to the reference as possible. I also added some light shaft meshes but I think they're *too* subtle judging from the screenshots, I'll try to make them more prominent. You were also right about the fog, I made it a little less dense which I think helped.

@sipher3325 Thanks.

@Justin_Meisse The leaves are very big, they're actually half the size they were when I started haha. I wanted to have boats that they built sails with the leaves but ran out of time. I'm going for a stylized chunky low poly look but I definitely don't want it too low poly! I wanted a gnarled jaggedly quality to the branches. Is it too much still? I see those monster seams you're talking about, if I get some time I will definitely connect them to the main trunk mesh. Thanks for pointing that out.

@njc6425 I haven't heard of that game but I looked it up and really dig the art style. It's definitely close to the sort of look I wanted to achieve. And yes, sadly that is water. I made a water plane using Hourence's tutorial and adjusted it to look more swampy, then added a fog volume underneath it because I wanted it to fade to opaque under the water. It's too misty looking I agree. I will read up on how to do water reflections and give that a try.

@Darkleopard Thanks, I tried to add more color variety like you suggested.

Here's where I'm at now:

sybrix

I completely scrapped the previous water shader and attempted a more complicated reflective water shader. I followed this tutorial: http://udkc.info/index.php?title=Tutorials:Water_reflection_UT3

I'm finding it very hard to adjust it to the look and feel I want, I think I bit off more than I could chew with it. The reflection always gets completely drowned out by the scene's Exponential Height Fog. To show you what I mean I posted a shot of the shader with fog disabled and then with just the height fog enabled. I don't know how to approach making the fog not effect the shader so dramatically, and to make it a rich swampy green without touching the fog colors.

praetor187

Man this scene is looking great. I really like the new water shader you did. And the color changes did a lot to enhance the scene as Selaznog said. I can see your dilemma as swamp water tends to be a little murky but it really is choking the water shader I remember there being a fog volume in UDK where the fog only effects the geometry its inside. You could do that for the water and put it below the surface and raise the height fog to try to get that bit of separation. Hope that helps, cant wait to see more progress.

Fartuess

Maybe some desaturation of planks? Compare yours and those on image posted by selaznog. They play way better with rest of the scene. The same thing with moss it is breaking out from rest too much. But actually i'm not sure if materials or textures need to be modified. Probably PP effcts would do the trick. If not classic correction then lookup tables will become very handy anyways. Additionally i would add some DOF effect to make fog look more dense.

I'm not sure if i'm helping because i'm not fan of cartoony and highly saturated hand painted stuff therefore i'm not familiar with philosophy of designing them.

sybrix

Thanks praetor. I've been playing around with fog volumes without much luck. I'm wondering if there's a type of volume that disables fog within its boundaries. For instance if you had a foggy scene with buildings, and didn't want the fog enabled in the interiors, so used this imaginary anti-fog volume to disable it in certain areas. Would be awesome if there was something like that.

I'm also looking into other types of fogs. I tried the plain Height Fog (not exponential) which works better with the water shader but looks kind of meh. Also playing with the idea of a post processing effect that simulates fog by graying out things based on scene depth.

Any other thoughts around this?

@Fartuess Thanks. I do have some desaturation going on with with the post processing effect. I did want to keep more saturated color in the foreground though to fit with the feel I had in mind. I'm a big fan of saturated hand painted stuff though. :P

praetor187

you can try something like this maybe, found this on the UDN might prove useful for you. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/FogVolumes.html

Saiainoshi

Cool concept. Your tree textures are too busy and have no definition... it's looking like a texture slapped on some geometry. Put some effort into the mapping and use of texture space for them and it will pay off

sybrix

Made a little progress. Tried a few different types of fog volumes after reading up on the types in the UDN manual without much luck. None of them seem to be able to act similar to the Exp Height Fog's start distance attribute, where it's virtually non-existant near the camera and thick towards the edge of the environment to blot out the abyss back there. I ended up just lowering the density as much as I could get away with and painting in some low mountains to cover up the obvious line where the water plane ends in the distance.

I tried two LinearHalfspace fog volumes, one below the water (green) and one inverted above the water (blue). Got pretty decent results but the fog start distance was impossible to control. Maybe something like that has to be done within the fog material. Even if I did get it to work, it bugs the crap out of my water shader and translucent materials.

Also tried the FogEnvironment mesh that has two fog hemispheres that can be manipulated independently of one another. Seemed like a perfect solution, but ran into the same problems as the LinearHalfspace fogs with buggyness and start distance control parameter not working correctly.

Those are the main two I spent the most time on, the other fog volumes in UDK's bag of tricks I may get around to messing with more but I'm hesitant to waste more days on it, I have so start putting a fly through and presentation materials together soon.

sybrix

Hey guys. Sorry for the lack of updates. I passed my final review, thought I'd post the fly through video for any final crits. I'm so ready for a new project but any comments I will definitely take into consideration and apply towards my next work.

My project partner Jen Gomez did the characters and their props. She also painted the boat texture at the docks, made the fishing pole and the bag at the item shop.

Thanks for the help you guys gave me, you guys rock!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xTp-NPRmIs"]Zaigus: Sundered World Environment Flythrough - YouTube[/ame]

Link to Jen's character turnarounds: http://youtu.be/cS1zECqpZPc

sybrix

Hey everyone. I passed my final review and I'm at the point where I'm finalizing everything to display this thing on my portfolio. One thing I noticed after taking a break from this environment is the lighting/ambience is still lacking. It has this dull and flat yellow/green quality to everything. I wanted to add more pops of color so I finally tried out the color lookup table tut Oniram posted a while back.

I'm having trouble decided which LUT to use. Before I redo the video and screenshots I was hoping I could get some feedback on which looks the best.

scurtis

Looks great! Could you share how you did the crystal shader because I'm working on making some crystals right now and I love the way yours turned out!