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Sci-Fi Junkyard scene WIP

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Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
Hey ppl,

Starting a new thread of one of my current WIPs.
I started to work on the scene quite long ago, but i was busy with other stuff and only recently I thought I've got something to start showing :P

I did few explanatory vids to save me some time on typing ;)

Here is a rough composition and brainstorming for the setting:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1DSBSyWdEk[/ame]

I started by figuring out main shaders for most of metal debris surfaces first as it will be used on most of the assets in the scene and will determine how i will model and texture the rest of the assets.
I definitely want to go with re-usable tiled sets of textures to be able to do most of things with them instead of doing large meshes with huge unique textures for them.
So i picked up the Vertex Color blend approach as it fits the large scale scene where various assets will need to have some visual variation while re-using same set of textures.
In the vid below I show few foreground rubble modules which I did and how my shaders work on them. That is my starting point to keep working on other meshes of various scale and detail to populate the scene in the future:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb6SzE_06lo[/ame]

And here are few screenshots which may show some details more clear since they don't suffer from video compression :P

junkyard05.jpg

junkyard04.jpg

junkyard03.jpg

And here i started the mesh for the "beginning" area. I wanted to establish the shape and location of the mesh surrounding "player start" area first as it will be the departing point to start placing other assets around it in the future:

Note: i haven't applied the vertex colors to it yet.
junkyard02.jpg

junkyard01.jpg

NOTE: the terrain is quite a rough shape for now just to get the feel. Same goes for the sky, fog and lighting. Water is a temp one taken from UDK and terrain is using a plain CgTextures image without any tweaks. It is a placeholder as well since i wanted to avoid checkerboard default textures in the scene :P

Replies

  • keres
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    keres polycounter lvl 12
    This is looking really great. Recently I've been really digging Red Faction: Guerrilla and the rubble you have going really competes with it. Keep it up :)
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    Hey, Vlad, this is really effin impressive. I greatly appreciate the amount of preproduction, the artistic approach in the first video and the technical approach in the second one. I also learned a thing or two.) Those random paint shapes were educational. It was your urban environment btw that taught me, that it's okay to use more then 2 uv sets on your models, so it's nice to see you keeping up the tradition.

    Anyway glad to see you pump some work. On the art side, so far so good. Love the painted stuff. Keep it up and hoping to see some sort of a UDK blockout soon:)

    Cheers!


    p.s. those videos combined were around 10 mins. which is quite a lot and I doubt many people linger on a single topic so much. So by saving your typing time you might actually scare away some who would get a better idea through a couple of informative pics and few sharp and to the point lines of text.
  • xvampire
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    xvampire polycounter lvl 14
    hi Vlad, thats crazy panel masking you have there :O
    very cool stuff!
  • JobyeK
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    JobyeK polycounter lvl 13
    Wow, awesome work so far Vlad, really loving the way you're using the masks and all. Definitely need to check out those tutorials you talked about! Looking forward to seeing this progress.

    (It's Jobye btw hehe)
  • DDuckworth
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    DDuckworth polycounter lvl 6
    d1ver wrote: »
    Hey, Vlad, this is really effin impressive. I greatly appreciate the amount of preproduction, the artistic approach in the first video and the technical approach in the second one. I also learned a thing or two.) Those random paint shapes were educational. It was your urban environment btw that taught me, that it's okay to use more then 2 uv sets on your models, so it's nice to see you keeping up the tradition.

    Anyway glad to see you pump some work. On the art side, so far so good. Love the painted stuff. Keep it up and hoping to see some sort of a UDK blockout soon:)

    Cheers!


    p.s. those videos combined were around 10 mins. which is quite a lot and I doubt many people linger on a single topic so much. So by saving your typing time you might actually scare away some who would get a better idea through a couple of informative pics and few sharp and to the point lines of text.


    First of all Vlad, wow you have just taken my working knowledge of udk and trashed it...got some learning to do.

    About this though d1ver, all i can say is if someone cares enough to learn then they should be willing to stick around for the videos, if they don't want to learn then screw'em, its our job as artits to be enthusiastic about our craft and ready to learn new things on a constant basis to stay updated with the times!
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    I'll take a look at this lunch-time, it looks quite interesting :D
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    That was exactly my point, Derrick.) Vlad might miss out on helpful criticism and ideas. Sharing is good, but not as rewarding as being shared with.
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Wow that was really impressive, it's pretty much the same idea I have for my approach with my scene I'm working on. Cool to see a working example, though you'd probably execute it way better than me :) Great work, I'll be following this to see all the progress!
  • Snefer
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    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
    Nice job, off to a really good start, like the way you work those masks and blending! ^^
  • Zack Fowler
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    Zack Fowler polycounter lvl 11
    I'll just echo what Snefer said, this is a very solid start. Smart use of vertex painting, it's really breaking up those surfaces quite well. Looking forward to more!
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    Wow! Really nice start! Didn't really understand how the "base metal"-texture wroks. Is the object UV mapped to fit the texture with metal plates, or do they tile and you modeled around the texture?

    Moar! :D
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    Thanks guys, didn't expect to get that much encouraging feedback right away :)
    I appreciate that!

    d1ver - lol, u got me on that ;) I agree with your point that vids may take ppl more time that looking at images. Well, at least i can practice capturing/recording some stuff since I need some practice for a tut which i wanted to do in nearest (i hope...) future. So its my video capture test ground here then;)
    Dunno, I personally like watching vids more, even if they r longer than reading the text, but u've got a valid point tho.

    sltrOlsson - first i do a set of textures for panels, trims, grids etc keeping in mind the possible look of assets which they will be used for.
    Then, i just model what i want but remember what kind of texture layouts i have. I assign appropriate texture IDs and map them on each mesh. In any case, the overlays (rust, paint etc) use masks the set of which every texture has. Those masks are done based on the original diffuse map, so the mask matches the same mapping as the diffuse UVs.
    Does it answer your question?
    Here is example of diffuse which i used for the meshes shown above:

    Trims:
    metaltrims01d.jpg_metaltrims02d.jpg

    Panels:
    metalpannels01d.jpgmetalpannels03d.jpg
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    Matroskin wrote: »
    Thanks guys, didn't expect to get that much encouraging feedback right away :)
    I appreciate that!

    d1ver - lol, u got me on that ;) I agree with your point that vids may take ppl more time that looking at images. Well, at least i can practice capturing/recording some stuff since I need some practice for a tut which i wanted to do in nearest (i hope...) future. So its my video capture test ground here then;)
    Dunno, I personally like watching vids more, even if they r longer than reading the text, but u've got a valid point tho.

    sltrOlsson - first i do a set of textures for panels, trims, grids etc keeping in mind the possible look of assets which they will be used for.
    Then, i just model what i want but remember what kind of texture layouts i have. I assign appropriate texture IDs and map them on each mesh. In any case, the overlays (rust, paint etc) use masks the set of which every texture has. Those masks are done based on the original diffuse map, so the mask matches the same mapping as the diffuse UVs.
    Does it answer your question?
    Here is example of diffuse which i used for the meshes shown above:

    Trims:

    Yeah, great. It was just the base panel texture i was a bit unsure of. But you are using the original diffuse ask mask? Not a separate alpha?
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    sltrOlsson - I use additional masks for those. Mostly every Diffuse has 2 more RGB textures which contain a set of b&w images in them (one b&w image per color channel= up to 6 images in 2 textures). This way I also put Spec in them as one of the channels since Spec can be grayscale for these materials.

    P.S.: there might be a couple of weeks delay since I need to finish some stuff for Rising Storm MOD (as I promised to do that first). So i will resume the work on this scene in a week or two :P
  • timwiese
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    timwiese polycounter lvl 9
    really awesome work! I love that you put up your WIP as videos really gives me a good understanding of the approach you took to create the scene.
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    hey hey, it's been a while :P

    Got some time to resume working on this scene once again...
    Had it abandoned for about a year :(

    Here is most recent WIP update, as b4 I made a quick vid to describe it, plus few images.

    Overall I've got major layout with big/mid scale meshes done so far.
    Now next thing I plan will be bringing more variation to the rubble color by adding paint layers and maybe globally tweaking the metal texture (to determine).

    Terrain needs to be textured, smaller props and vegetation to be added afterwards as well. Still lots of work to do, but at least i am back on it :)

    ----VIDEO
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uAX32TG5ro"]Junkyard-WIP-03 - YouTube[/ame]


    junkyard06.jpg

    junkyard07.jpg

    junkyard08.jpg

    junkyard09.jpg

    junkyard10.jpg
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Bah why didn't we meet up? I was in Montreal Ubisoft Office last week, would've had a bunch of questions for you haha.

    Awesome that you've started working on this again, I remember it and have been looking for it for a while :D
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    Oh, I will be there next week :P
    Would have been be cool tho. Maybe at the next opportunity ;)
  • marq4porsche
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    marq4porsche polycounter lvl 9
    Looking pretty awesome I'm loving your texture work and can't wait to see what you do with your vegitation and other props. My main crit is that your textures are very flat and monochromatic. I think there should be areas where the metal is more bleached from the sun as well as areas where there is more color. You can also define each area so they stand out from one another. Maybe sand gets built up in some corner areas where the wind pushes it up. Just my 2 cents.
  • VictorSantos
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    VictorSantos polycounter lvl 12
    Awesome work so far, I love the mood of the scene. Definitely keeping and eye on this post.
  • Jungsik
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    Jungsik polycounter lvl 6
    This is Really kickass
  • Blaisoid
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    Blaisoid polycounter lvl 7
    in case it hasn't been said enough yet, that's some sweet blending. looking forward seeing all those new big structures painted.
  • zakhar2
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    zakhar2 polycounter lvl 6
    I noticed that your lightmap resolution for the "block in" meshes is 256. Isnt that a little high, especially for something thats usually hidden by a ton of other meshes? I understand that its a pretty complex mesh but that seems a bit extreme. But then again, i dont have too much experience with UDK so I may be way off base.
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    sry, a bit late reply from me, but thanks guys :)

    @marq4porsche - u r right, that was just a base layout of main masses using base metal texture which was quite the same everywhere. Still working on it;)

    @zakhar2 - good point. I assigned 256 thinking that it is still quite huge mesh, plus it is sometimes seen in the foreground too. But I'll definitely override/check lightmap res for the actors in the scene as a little optim polish. I already did so on some of them, even switched to vertex colors in some cases.

    Oh well, worked quite a bit on this one since my last post. Not that it was taking long to do, just was lazy again :P
    Still a WIP:
    - missing small detail meshes on the ground and somewhere around (especially still want to add some hanging cables)
    - missing some more old numbers/markings on the rubble
    - maybe lighting and post-process tweaks in the future

    etc - maybe u'll point out more ;)

    But I thought I could already show something:

    junkyard12.jpg

    junkyard13.jpg

    Just a closer shot of water where I tried to follow some good suggestion i've got to add some "spit oil" feel such as little rainbow patterns in shallow areas etc.

    junkyard11.jpg
  • gsokol
    Oh wow, this looks pretty pimp!

    I really dig the composition in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th shot, with the 4th being my favorite.

    Your transition from the ground to the water looks a little rough...maybe darken the ground near the edge where it gets wet or place some pebbles near the edge or something.

    Good work man
  • Minos
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    Minos polycounter lvl 16
    Hey that looks cool! I think what the scene is really lacking is a big landmark, something to make it more remarkable. Maybe a huge ass building in the background? A crashed vehicle? Right now the scene is an amalgamation of shapes but none of them are very remarkable/look functional.

    I also think you could push your light/shadow contrast and specular maps a bit further. Right now the shapes are a bit flat and some large gradients would come a long way in creating more interest.
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    I did a quick paint-over in photoshop. So here is a suggestion what might work for lighting and post-processing.


    junkyard_paintover.jpg


    It kinda depends on the direction you want to go, I feel like you could push the non-rust specular a lot more to make it pop. Right now the scene reads pretty much as yellow and matte. You want the red metal to read differently from the other scrapjunk and also different to the foliage. You also want to be able to make the distinction of the foreground and the background. You also need to amp up the brightness and then pump the contrast a little bit more to get more depth.

    In this shot you get a clear punch from the red coming from the right, clearly distinct from the rusty parts and the foliage, and then a trail leading off into the distance. But before everything kinda-had that yellowish tone to it. Think about it :)

    Great work so far! Really inspirational and I love it :)
  • Blaisoid
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    Blaisoid polycounter lvl 7
    i don't really get the foliage. it seems to be growing in big amounts near junk parts while areas between junk have a very dry ground and don't have any traces of plants.

    nice progress nonetheless.
  • Samfisher84
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    Samfisher84 polycounter lvl 9
    Remeber this one awell, cool youre working at it again. Always got cool environments, very inspiring
  • Darkleopard
    Damn this has come a long way from what i remember. To the inspiration folder you go!
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    This is looking really dope, dude! I totally dig the progress.

    Speakin' about progress I think I remember in those videos seeing you talk about some sort of progression of space inside the environment. Like you lead on the player from a confined space into an open one. On these screen I feel a bit lost in terms of where are all these shots in regards to the whole scene. As Thiago said, some landmark to tie it all together would work nicely. If i remember correctly you used to have some sort of an acid lake in that big space you had. Maybe you could still use it, like in the [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OS9zPvvHNA]"Oasis"[/ame] by Damian Lazarsky. Or maybe some huge background element would be sufficient.

    Since you've introduced vegetation taking over the whole place I think some color in vegetation would be a nice accent. Maybe some sort of bright red flowers in those bushes or something? Heh, it's funny how I always want you to add some red flowers:)

    Also even if we disregard the landmark thing I feel like those screens generally lack some more background. Maybe you could use all those awesome rubble assets to assemble some sort of a huge structure in the back? Or have some ships fly by or have a few suns or moons or something. Maybe this is a dumpster planet and there are these service ships bringing in and dumping new loads of trash?

    Also maybe some particles emitting some green gas at places?

    anyway, I'm to rambly and you keep it up!:)
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    Thanks a lot guys for your feedback/comments/suggestions :)
    Totally appreciate that.

    As most of u suggested, added more large background pieces, more light/shadow contrast, post-process tweaks of the colors/contrast too.
    Added/re-aranged some close ground pieces for extra depth/parallax feel.
    I did not really target for a "one-and-only special landmark" since it was supposed to be looked 360 deg around, but i think that some areas being enhanced now kinda come out more now to serve as "local" landmark I hope.

    Added more grass on the ground to help justify the bushes.
    Despite some suggestions, i don't want to make vegetation necessary pop, but rather feel more integrated with the rest, so I "dried" it bit more actually:P

    chrisradsby - thanks for an awesome paintover, man! I used some of your ideas about color balance and sharper lighting contrast, tho i didn't go that extreme to change color scheme to cold. I've got some blue paint as well, so i didn't want it to fade either. I still like the warmish feel to it :)

    d1ver - lol, u r definitely a flower-power guy:) I definitely should do those sometime, but with recent modifs I guess it have got more details overall, so i didn't want to add more color noise especially since I went with dryer vegetation feel. I added some animated falling leaf particles and wind, so hopefully i'll do a fly-by vid for it.

    Voila after some changes, thanks again guys for your input!

    junkyard14.jpg

    junkyard15.jpg

    junkyard16.jpg
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    wonderful work, thank you for sharing your thoughts and methods as you build this.
  • ikblue
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    ikblue polycounter lvl 8
    Nice environment, all those lines in your meshes make your compisition very dynamic. Nice style :)
  • Lephenix
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    Lephenix polycounter lvl 6
    Really nice, remind me of Taris destroyed and Raxus Prime.
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    This is some boner-inducing sh*t!
    I don't know if you know, man, but this has a great enslaved vibe, which is nothing but a good thing. I enjoyed that one immensely.
  • Hydrogen
    O_O This is nothing but amazing !!! (Loved Raxus Prime on SWTFU, and I can feel that vibe here as well)
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Awesome stuff man, love that you kept the warm tone. I do tend to always go cold xD! Looks great!
  • Shanthosa
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    Shanthosa polycounter lvl 11
    Blown away. Totally inspirational. Your approach to modularity is great. I love everything about it.
  • Callesw
    I agree with Chrisradsby :) Really awesome stuff, I also like that you kept the warm feeling!
    Really inspirational
  • urgaffel
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    urgaffel polycounter lvl 17
    This is looking really great, how have I not seen this yet?
  • Eoq
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    Eoq polycounter lvl 8
    I'm feeling the enslave-feeling in this one :D Great job so far m8!
  • whw
    Looking great in those last shots. That contrast between warm (outside) and cold (inside) works brilliantly.
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    Thanks a lot guys. Glad those changes made some difference.

    Just realized that back in 1996 this could have looked like this :)

    http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/1/1d/SWSotE_%28Ord_Mantell_Junkyard%29.jpg
  • urgaffel
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    urgaffel polycounter lvl 17
    I'm glad we're not in 1996 anymore ;)
  • AlanSMitchell
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    AlanSMitchell polycounter lvl 14
    mind = blown fantastic work.
  • Ghostman511
    This is looking really amazing. Loving the lighting! very dynamic looking level
  • Zack Fowler
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    Zack Fowler polycounter lvl 11
    Lovely work! And just imagine what we'll be able to achieve for runtime environments in another 16 years :poly115:
  • G3L
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    G3L polycounter lvl 9
    Whoa, I remember seeing the old enviro but my goodness has it changed dramatically! It looks great. Nice job!
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