ArenaNet Environment Art Test - Practise

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Hey!
I'm Shyralon and currently learning Maya/Mudbox/Zbrush/UDK/whatever is interesting for me.

Since I really like Guild Wars 2, I decided to give the environment art test a try (just as practise!). Because it's a personal project I give myself about 5000 tris for the final model, but I'll try to stay under 3000.
Here's what I've got so far:

Still more or less highpoly, don't know if I really need a highpoly like that, but I want to practise retopo as well. Currently working on the lowpoly.

I'd love to hear comments and, most important, critique from you!

AlexCatMasterSupreme · Oct 2012

Don't need to do this since it would only make since if you were going to unwrap a 1-1 UV and normal map it, but you'd just want to use tiling textures.

Selaznog · Oct 2012

I agree with Alex the cat; most of the textures in this concept can be tiled. The only things I can see needing their own textures would be the door and windows and chimney.

Not to be rude, but I don't think you needed to hard surface all those beams. Just make one beam and duplicate it

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Well, thanks

next time I'll not hardsurface every beam^^
What's the thing with these tiling texture? I don't have that much experience about texturing yet, so my plan was to unwrap the lowpoly when it's finished and create the textures in photoshop.. Is there a better way with tiling textures? If yes, how?

Selaznog · Oct 2012

Oh my. You'll be happy to know that tiling textures are indeed awesome, especially when combiend with alpha cards and vertex painting.

Tiling textures are basically textures you can tile in either x or y or both, without getting seams. If you wanted, you could have a mile long road using one 512x512, tiled along x.

Here's an example of one:

That one only tiles on x (if you stack it on y, you will see a seam)

Try googling some tiled or seamless textures and play around with them in maya. Most 3D apps will autotile the texture you import, so it's just a matter of scaling the uvs to your liking.

Here's some more info : http://wiki.polycount.com/EnvironmentSculpting?highlight=%28\bCategoryEnvironment\b%29

Here's an example of a tiling texture I did. Notice the brick with the hole in it at the bottom; there's 3 there so the texture has tiled 3 times along x and twice along y in that screenshot
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/280/7/0/sacsaca_by_julionicoletti-d5h3tqk.png

Hope that helps!

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Thanks for the link, very helpfull! But I think I made my question a bit unclear, I do know what tiling textures are, but I didn't know they are used in props as well, what i really meant was, if the workflow is the same with tiling textures as with normal textures?

Selaznog · Oct 2012

Yeah, I would say it is the same. Just apply the tiling textures to whatever areas can use them basically. If you're worried about things looking too repeated you can always use vertex painting or alpha cards

futurepoly · Oct 2012

Shyralon wrote: »

Thanks for the link, very helpfull! But I think I made my question a bit unclear, I do know what tiling textures are, but I didn't know they are used in props as well, what i really meant was, if the workflow is the same with tiling textures as with normal textures?

Hey Shyralon,

I recently posted a bunch of my process shots from GuildWars 2 that might be of help to you. Here is the link and the first post would be most applicable to what your working on.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105551

Good luck!

Jason Stokes

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Wow, tips directly from the source, awesome!
Very cool thread, I think i get an idea what you mean with the texturing, thanks a lot!

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Allright, finished the lowpoly

About 2300 tris.
And here a few marmoset pictures:

Anything I should change on that before making the uvs?
I hate doing UVs, so if anyone knows a good tutorial about making them...

iniside · Oct 2012

My advice. You shouldn't start with high poly in first place. And you by any means should not use unique unwrap for it.

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Yeah, I noticed too that the highpoly was unnecessary in this case.
What do you mean with unique unwrap? Like unwrapping every part (like roof, doors and so on) itself?

iniside · Oct 2012

Unique unwrap - each UV island have unique space in texture sheet and there is no overlapping.

What you should do is start from making handfull tileable textures, and unwrap over them.
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/tips/thirding.jpg

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Had no internet last week so here's what i've got by now:
Finished UV mapping, started working on the textures.

Wood, Stone and grass are WIP for now.
And here's the roof texture I made:

And here's a screen with my crappy normals applied:

Macattackk · Oct 2012

pictures are kind of hard to see cause they are small and we're so zoomed out from the building. how exactly did you create your normals? converting the texture to a normal map via Ndo or Nvidia filter? if so, from what i can tell, its a little janky looking cause you arent act actually popping out the details in the best fashion. its just lowering dark areas and raising light areas which gives you noisiness instead of actual good normal detail which can be used to raise the bricks/shingles out. normally with hand painted style you wouldnt even do normal maps but if you want to, id consider a better method like sculpting out the bricks to be actual solid shapes that have substance, not noise. but this is all speculation as its really hard to see the images.

Shyralon · Oct 2012

Sorry about the small pictures, but you are completly right. Just the normal map filter so far... actually sculpting the textures sounds good, maybe I'll try it after I finished the color texture.

AlexCatMasterSupreme · Oct 2012

It's too clean.

ArenaNet Environment Art Test - Practise

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