Canary Facility (Sci-Fi Env.)
polycounter lvl 5
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ORIGINAL POST:
Hey all!
I've been working on a scene for my FYP during my final year at University. My dissertation focuses on the use of modularity within a Sci-Fi environment and the practical aim was to use the techniques I learnt through research in creating a small environment.
I picked a Sci-Fi scene as it's something I have an extremely small amount of experience in, not just in terms of personal 3d work but in terms of my knowledge in the area of any Sci-Fi games, movies, literature etc. I thought it would be a good exercise for myself to try and expand my knowledge some-what into what is a very large area of the games industry!
Canary is a company that focuses primarily in arms-manufacturing and the facility is used for the creation and assembly of the mechs as well as planning for new models and following any on-going wars.
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To do list -
Texture: Hanging monitors (central room and above table), Door, Assembly Tunnel Wall/Floor/Ceiling pieces, Mech.
Add Assets: Industrial 'type' Halogen Lights (in the room with the standing mech, pointing at it to add some contrast in the lighting.)
Fix: The lighting, this is something I have very little experience in and I feel like I'm trying to hard to get light everywhere and need to create a more interesting / atmospheric set-up.
Any help with this scene would be hugely appreciated! Polycount has always been fantastic with my previous work and allowed it to progress very quickly, cheers!
ORIGINAL POST:
Hey all!
I've been working on a scene for my FYP during my final year at University. My dissertation focuses on the use of modularity within a Sci-Fi environment and the practical aim was to use the techniques I learnt through research in creating a small environment.
I picked a Sci-Fi scene as it's something I have an extremely small amount of experience in, not just in terms of personal 3d work but in terms of my knowledge in the area of any Sci-Fi games, movies, literature etc. I thought it would be a good exercise for myself to try and expand my knowledge some-what into what is a very large area of the games industry!
Canary is a company that focuses primarily in arms-manufacturing and the facility is used for the creation and assembly of the mechs as well as planning for new models and following any on-going wars.
Camera_A:
Camera_B:
Camera_C:
Camera_D:
Camera_E:
Camera_F:
To do list -
Texture: Hanging monitors (central room and above table), Door, Assembly Tunnel Wall/Floor/Ceiling pieces, Mech.
Add Assets: Industrial 'type' Halogen Lights (in the room with the standing mech, pointing at it to add some contrast in the lighting.)
Fix: The lighting, this is something I have very little experience in and I feel like I'm trying to hard to get light everywhere and need to create a more interesting / atmospheric set-up.
Any help with this scene would be hugely appreciated! Polycount has always been fantastic with my previous work and allowed it to progress very quickly, cheers!
Replies
i feel the amount of low hanging cables and floor openings is a little too much in the first picture especially when the cables in the other pictures are all so neat and orderly
Although I have also considered this type of light
The other option would be to have the larger standing lights in the corners of the room projecting light inwards.. But I think I'll first try the smaller floor lights placed around the mech to try and get some variation..
If I had to crit anything (and that's kind of hard) I would probably say something about the mechs being kind of tiny, especially in the shot looking out over the assembly line.
Right now, I think it's really bright. You have a lot of light sources and a really strong ambient light. Darken the overall light a little bit, so your blue and orange light sources really stand out. If you're going to add more light sources, I would definitely darken the scene.
You said this was a focus on modularity, but it seems like it's too modular. It's really obvious that you're re-using the same assets and textures. Since this is in UDK, try out some materials for variation, like Vertex Painting or materials that are modified based on their world position. There are a lot of tutorials on those two techniques and they'll let you get a little more mileage out of the same assets/textures.
Keep it up :thumbup:
@Mark Dygert: Cheers! I hadn't actually noticed that before, but now you point it out I really do think you're right. The original Mech is actually a larger model and I scaled it down so that the one inside the facility could actually fit through the door. I think I may scale them up around 25% and see if that works better!
@The_Pixel: Thanks! Yeah I feel there are a couple of obvious models that are a lot cleaner than some of the other assets, such as the railings and the stairs, I think I need to do an over-all grunge pass on the scene once everything is textured. I'm having a real problem with making paint chipping/wear&tear look believable atm though..
@leleuxart: Cheers!
You make a good point with the lighting, I think it is something that will really bring this piece to life, as I said I have fallen into the trap a bit of trying to light everywhere rather than creating some atmospheric lighting.. I think once the monitors are textured I can kill the main lights a bit and bring out some contrasts between the oranges and blues.
I was going to use decals at the end to try break up some of the more obvious modularity but I'll look at trying vert painting as well, it's been very handy in some of my other scenes and I'll look into the materials changing based on their world position, that sounds like it could be extremely helpful! Thanks for the ideas!
Things I've done based on feedback here:
- Changed one of the floor meshes in the hall to make it less chaotic & removed some hanging wires.
- Increased the size of the Mechs by ~25%
- Added a bit more dirt across textures (not sure if I have it to the right level yet)
- Darkened lighting and tried to create something more interesting
Things left to do:
- Make a trim for the doors in the Mech and WarTable room
- Create Matinee Sequences for the Mechs in the tunnel
- Go over the specular / reflections of each material
- Go over Lighting/LUT/PP settings again
- Possibly add in detail normals on the metal for paint chips / scratches (unsure?)
- Look at texture variation / mesh painting as leleuxart mentioned.
.. Onto the pictures ..
I think I the lighting really does help the issue that the scene had with modularity before, but I will still look to try out your idea in the hallway / central room where it is perhaps a bit more noticeable!
Are those monitors on the 5th screenshot tv channels? Have they been created by you or just images from the web?
@ARCallejas: Hehe thanks mate! Think the rework on it made it much better, just need to tone down the brightness a lil now! Loved the Goblin lamp post, great job!
@Ged: Cheers!
Great work!
@Kanalratte: Cheers! Yeah I tried to boost the spot lights a lil to get the shadowing on the wall but would like it to be more obvious.. the only problem is that the Mech becomes to blown out and hard to read, I'll try play with the lighting some more to fix that
@Peaches&Cream: Here's some screenshots of a couple of the pieces I made (mainly the news channel screens) along with some of the blueprints in the Mech room.. also designed the screens in the central room along with making company paper work that's scattered about the place
Just an update to the thread to let you know what I'm doing with the scene, I'm currently working on fixing/adding a few things as well as bringing it to life for the fly through.. any hints, tips or ideas on what I've got planned would be fantastic!
To do list:
- Add some extra geometry to the barrels
- Add some dirt/grime to the barrels and crates
- Add pen/pencil/ruler assets to the scene to make the paper documents/blueprints more believable
- Slight dust particles in areas of big light (such as in the mech room)
- Add a touch of colour to the Mech (hazard strips on the roll bars?)
- Animate the holographic globe (slight up/down movement, rotate central globe, other planets orbit it, texts stays with corresponding planet.)
- Animate the screens in the central rooms (text scrolling, bar charts moving etc .. via flipbooks or .gifs?)
- Animate the mechs in the tunnel, creating an actual assembly line...
Hoping to get all of this done in the next 2 weeks, any small changes or additions anyone thinks could be added would be great to hear! Thanks in advance
I've worked on a couple of things since then, but had of a bit of a break as well.. I've mainly been working on setting up a portfolio website: www.nickelliott3d.com and made a simple fly-through of my Canary Facility scene!
I didn't manage to get everything done that I wanted in my list due to final year presentations etc but I'm happy with where it is now.. I rendered it out using tiledshot to get 1080p so I lost some of the PP (Bloom/DoF) but I think that sacrifice is worth the better quality!
Thanks again Polycount for all your contructive feedback, I wouldn't have gotten this piece to where it was without your help, hope you enjoy the vid:
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