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[UDK] Medieval City

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BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
Current:
5M7FqEH.jpg

Hey guys, with all the talk on here lately of students needing to post and get feedback, I thought it'd be good to start posting here more. I'm doing an environment based on a concept by James Paick.

Concept: http://cghub.com/images/view/681349/

His website: http://www.scribblepadstudios.com/home.htm

tNcKjpN.jpg

Reference board for details:
T5UKz5q.jpg

Here are some textures I'm working on the for the scene, bottom two still need lots o' work I think :)
OBZOzjs.jpg

Replies

  • Rokugan
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    Rokugan polycounter lvl 7
    Awesome start! Really curious to see where this will go. Subbed
  • Mr Significant
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    Mr Significant polycounter lvl 11
    Subbed. Interesting project!
  • seir
    Holy molly! Nice progress so far. Just make sure to make textures "on the same page" - right now the brightness difference is too big I guess. We'll see how it will work on renders. Keep up a good work!
  • Boyo
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    Boyo polycounter lvl 8
    Hi!

    The volumes are really nice!!

    Textures are not at the same level right now, brick are very dark and dull, and plaster is quite noisy. and as Seir said, too much brightness difference.
  • DougClayton4231
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    DougClayton4231 polycounter lvl 3
  • Mik2121
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    Mik2121 polycounter lvl 9
    Looking great, though it seems some of your windows are not the same shape as the concept art. Same for the support beams above the arches. Any reason why?

    Also if it were me, I would make the towers on the background as just a couple pieces. They usually barely change in width, and right now each tower seems to have quite a lot of pieces. I would probably just make the top area as one piece, and the middle as another that you could just repeat (and make one side with window, another without, etc.. to get variation).

    But anyway, right now the whole scene has quite a lot of detail and it's looking very nice.
  • IchII3D
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    IchII3D polycounter lvl 12
    One crit I noticed from your breakdown is you nailed a texel density fairly consistently across the scene. But the numbers you listed are pretty small, on a current gen console I would aim for around 512 pixels for 2-3 meters for a first person shooter. Currently if you compare your main columns to the size of a human. Your at around 256 per 2-3 meters, so as a heads up. It might be a little low.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Great start, can't wait to see more.
  • serriffe
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    serriffe polycounter lvl 9
    great block out and excellent texture breakdown- I'll keep an eye on this one :]
  • TheRealFroman
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    TheRealFroman polycounter lvl 11
    Woooo! Keep it up Ryan ;D Lets see this with some textures applied soon
  • BasicallyNormal
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    BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks everybody for checking it out! :)

    seir and Boyo: Great point about the textures, I'll change them and keep that in mind in the future.

    Mik2121: The reason I changed the windows was to give it a more interesting Venetian feel, but that's just IMO.

    And good idea about the towers, what advantages are there to making the towers out of a few larger pieces vs. using the smaller pre-existing pieces?

    IchII3D: Sorry about not mentioning that, the breakdown there is for the unit size of the assets. Right now I'm going off of 1024 pixels per 256 units because of the immense size of the structures, so everything in the blockout x4. Too high?

    TheRealFroman: :poly124:
  • BasicallyNormal
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    BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
    Hey guys, sorry for the long break, here's an update where I'm at so far.

    nWxpIvp.jpg

    My professor did a paintover a little while ago on an older image, and I'm going to make props to break up dem straight lines :)

    oQmHWF2.jpg
  • rambooze
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    rambooze polycounter lvl 7
    Looking nice so far. Don't you think that a cheap and weak wooden construction looks illogically underneath a heavy brick wall and on fancy baroque pillars?
  • locater16
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    locater16 polycounter lvl 8
    Very solid looking, the baroque and ostentatious columns look extremely out of place though. And really there's a bizarre mismatch of styles all around. Whereas the concept has a clear aesthetic of this solid engineering and red brick structures with minimal flare, meanwhile it looks like these cheap wood skyways were added by someone else, a later people more hastily throwing it together.

    I.E. the wooden skyways seem to be a different constrution from that of the original builders, who only used wood for support rather than walls or anything else.
  • BasicallyNormal
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    BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
    rambooze: That would make way more sense, I changed it so the brick was actually under the wooden structures on the left. But I'll have to make another piece so it doesn't feel so flat near the edges.

    locator16: Yeah I tried to go for a lot of venetian influence with the medieval like in the windows and arches, but you are totally right the baroque-esque columns don't fit. I don't know what to change the marble column to, but I think the other column may still work with a little tweaking (tell me if I'm crazy). And the only reason I thought the original builders used wood in their structures as well was because I interpreted the piece at the top right of the concept to be a wooden wall.

    Here's another update, tweaked the lighting and did some lightmaps and props.
    qfS6Mtu.jpg
  • aaronmwolford
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    aaronmwolford polycounter lvl 8
    It's looking great so far. I agree with @locator's comments. I definitely like the marble columns being different to break it up, but they do seem a bit out of place. I'm with ya. Not sure what they should be either.

    How about a wire frame shot?!
  • Endfinity Jon
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    Endfinity Jon polycounter lvl 8
    This is a cool piece and a really solid blockout! I love the broad shapes, feels very sturdy.

    I'm not sure what kind of wiggle room you have when it comes to matching your concept, so with that said, there's some things you could do with lighting to get it closer.

    I think the two main points are color and light directionality.

    To address the color, there's a lack of warmth in your scene that's very apparent in the concept. I think there's some texture tweaks that can be made to help this out, you'll notice that in the concept, there's a lot of earthy hues texturally that help to hold onto sunlight that your textures are missing. Also, as others have said, you're a little dark in the diffuse which is making the light have consistency problems - soaking into the lighter textures and getting sucked away by the darker ones. Try to balance your textures in relation to one another so that light disperses through your scene with more precision.

    Depending on your diffuse map changes, I think you could afford a bit more warmth in your directional light.

    A final note on color, the soft blue fog/atmosphere you have is continuing to distance your piece from the concept so trying something with more subtlety and density will help.

    Finally, I think the directionality of your light is a bit off. In took the concept and exxagerated the shadows and highlights to hopefully give you a better sense of not only the directionality but how the light should bounce around the scene. You'll notice you're also missing the overhang from the suspended building that connects the suspended walkway. It's casting a shadow in the concept that you're missing.

    IA1Xc7w.jpg

    This piece has great contrast and wonderful framing so I'd hope to see you get a bit closer to that. Might be good to work your directional light more. Maybe reduce the number of bounces but increase the intensity of the light and it's indirect scale? That might give you the higher contrast the concept has.

    The facade from the center to the left is receiving more light than it should be. I think you'll need to also get creative here with some shadow casters off screen because when you look at the concept it's very clear that the furthest left portion is picking up shadow from something. You might need to introduce a blocker off screen to get a similar shadow footprint.

    I'll keep my eye on this, it's looking really cool! Hopefully some of my critique was helpful and made sense. Hit me up if you have any questions.

    Love,
    -Jon
  • BasicallyNormal
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    BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
    Dude Jon you are the man! Thank you for the huge amazing crit, I've tried to take into consideration everything you mentioned. Played with the lighting and shadows a lot more, changed the fog around, switched the light direction, and added that overhang. I've set it to bounce twice but I think to get the effect you showed in the picture I'll have to manually add some lights in there. I'm not sure if the scene is too discolored right and it's taking away from it, but I still need to fix up the textures like you said and add some props to give the scene a more "lived in" feel.

    Been working on a statue too add in too, right now the one in UDK is just a proxy with the marble texture slapped on. :)

    6wEBJUA.jpg
    LDt3ZII.jpg
  • killazzz
    Looking good so far, I do notice the plaster is still far to noisy whereas in the concept theres really not visual noise to it. Also the pillar to the left looks a bit short and exscuse my language... but "Chode-like" When in the concept its quite thin and taller. could be a simple scaling of the pillar mesh, Id haveto agree with the others about the baroque style pillars, particularly the left most one looks very out of place.
    id start adding some of the Vine work(Plant-nes) on the pillars, it would be a nice splash of color.
    Otherwise keep at it!
  • locater16
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    locater16 polycounter lvl 8
    Yeah the pillar to the left still looks quite out of place along with the other one more to the back just like it. Like there was a few pillars from hundreds of miles away dragged to this city in perfect condition and somehow the builders just decided to use them alongside their own completely different style which is 98% of the rest of the buildings.

    As John Howe (famous concept artist, LOTR movies and etc.) put it, art tells a story. I.E. "How did this get here, who made it any why?" etc. But other than that, fantastic work so far! Thought the lighting could be brighter EG:

    ax1qQ9E.jpg

    Brightened up the mid to highs, threw in a slight bloom (guassian blur equivelant) and a basic hot/cool lighting for bright and dark areas, along with upping the saturation.
  • circle of friends
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    circle of friends polycounter lvl 10
    Its looking great so far but I think your bricks are throwing it off for me. They look too large and are making the scene look smaller than it is. The concept has very clear Roman bricks which are a lot shorter than modern day bricks. I would think perhaps about changing the tiling on yours or redoing the texture.
  • BasicallyNormal
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    BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks to everyone for the comments! Finally got to pick this back up and change the column, lighting, and brick size. Plus I got a chance to add some foliage and little props. Took out the statue for now too, got some feedback from classmates that it didn't really seem to fit.

    KYlbHNO.jpg
  • Joost
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    Joost polycount sponsor
    Looks great!

    Some critique:
    The textures look too blurry, try sharpening before exporting them.
    The grass looks really jagged,here's a good tutorial for grass: http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=315&t=100319
    the circular window on the far left is too bright, it's drawing attention to the wrong area, and the bright bricks(?) around it as well.
  • walklikethis
    saw this on WAYWO thread, fantastic lighting man.

    My advice would be to do a load of small props to litter the floor. Obviously you arn't going to do the people, which in the concept art, ad a lot of character and colour to the image. to reclaim that, would be nice to have a couple props, maybe some more colour, deep reds could look nice. although not included in the most recent image, i would say the texture work on the statue needs a lot of work, but judging by the rest, i would assume you knew that.

    good luck!!
  • KazeoHin
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    KazeoHin polycounter lvl 8
    I don't know if this is just me, but I'm not getting the sense of scale that the concept source has. It seems like a much smaller scene than what the concept depicts. even the castle in the left background looks massive and impressive in the concept, but the scene it seems like its maybe 3 floors? a small fort maybe?
  • warby
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    warby polycounter lvl 18
    loving it keeping an eye on this one
  • circle of friends
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    circle of friends polycounter lvl 10
    Excellent changes, but I'd still go smaller with the bricks! :P check the concept
  • urgaffel
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    urgaffel polycounter lvl 17
    The new lighting and grading look really good! I think the reason it doesn't look as big as the concept is because the perspective in the 3d version is less steep, something a change in fov could help fix. However, it's only the building in the centre that needs to be steeper, not necessarily the edges of the image. It does look a bit like the concept has taken some liberties with perspective to push the towering feel and that can be really hard to do in 3d...

    There are also details like the white piece on the arches that is a lot thicker in the 3d version compared to the concept which makes it feel closer to the viewer, there are other details that are large in the 3d version. If you look at the tower in the background, above the wooden bridge, in the concept it looks like the wall is almost a flat colour because you can't see individual bricks whereas in the 3d version you can still pick out the bricks. Adding people could help though since they provide a good sense of scale. Regardless of the difference in scale, it's a really nice scene in my opinion, lovely mood and lighting.
  • SaboR1996
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    SaboR1996 polycounter lvl 8
    why imgur! damn internet not letting me use imgur
  • The Lone Penguin
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    The Lone Penguin polycounter lvl 9
    Personally I think the saturation on the bricks and the foliage is a little much. I think a little less saturation on the foliage and little more yellow/green variation would be really nice. New lighting direction is much better.
  • SaboR1996
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    SaboR1996 polycounter lvl 8
    Finally fixed me imgur problem, and it was worth it for this thread, those textures look tasty, tell em your secret!
  • heboltz3
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    heboltz3 polycounter lvl 9
    Killer stuff. If you were trying to nail the concept look in your final render pass, I would suggest giving the overall scene a much yellower/orange overlay to try to get that.

    Ill second penguin and say that the foliage is the sore thumb at the moment, but I really think its needed so give that a bit of love. Good work my dude.
  • BasicallyNormal
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    BasicallyNormal polycounter lvl 7
    Whoo doggy thank you everyone for the help, did a big ole "concept is king" overhaul, think I'm finally ready to call it done.

    5M7FqEH.jpg

    @komaokc: great tut and advice man; changed up that window closer to what it is in the concept

    @walklikethis: thanks for checking it out :) I added some more props around

    @KazeoHin: changed around the sizing of everything, hopefully it gives it a more epic scale...plus BIRDS

    @warby: thanks dude :D

    @circle of friends: tried making the bricks even smaller than this, but they seem to lose almost all detail past the first column

    @urgaffel: you're too nice :poly136: but yeah that perspective is crazy in the concept, so I changed the camera angle to push the 3-point perspective and re-did some of those details like the arches too

    @PenGuin1362: desaturated that foliage and added in the new lighting :D

    @SaboR1996: imgur be a gangsta, but there's no real secret to the textures, they're all mostly a mix of photos and hand painted details with crazy brushes, using Ndo2 for the normals (I personally love it)

    @heboltz3: tweaked that lighting and the foliage, still choppy but sticks out less now I think, p.s. congrats on the new job bud!
  • locater16
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    locater16 polycounter lvl 8
    Bravo! Very solid work. Now that it's out I'd love to see it in UE4, but so it goes. Very nice all round.
  • urgaffel
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    urgaffel polycounter lvl 17
    Much better! Now add some people ;)
  • chrisundrum
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    chrisundrum polycounter lvl 9
    Hey basic. Great job on this scene. Has really come through.

    I do have some crit.
    I think you lighting is better in the latest post, and it definitely seems much more unified. Though I almost like post #23's more! I think you lost alot of your color which I preferred much more over the primarily brown scene in the latest update. I think if you found an in between that might be the best solution?

    Same goes with the arches in the middle of the screen were better in the older post, but I think you can use your latest capitals.

    just my 2 cents though. looks great regardless
  • Gannon
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    Gannon interpolator
    oooooooo, great work! This really evolved and the final turned out fantastic. What was some of your texturing process? just an image and height map kit bash?
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