Spark of Re-imagination
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Ok here's the concept i made ages ago in 3ds max + PS:
It started off as just something i was doing when i was bored but now i've really got into it. The style is sort of a cross between alien and the matrix or at least thats what it was at first, and of course taking certain elements from the spark of imagination in uldar from WoW.
However now it's heading towards a more alien meets tron theme. Still lacking alot of detail and pieces not to mention textures. I've been thinking about mixing in some ancient stone work in there as well to kind of get a mix between really old and really modern/alien sort of how gigers stuff works, which i've also been pulling influence from.
anyway here are some screens from it in it's current state. It does however look much better in motion though than in screenys but i'd rather not keep making videos of it as i progress.
[vv]46846857[/vv]
Ok here's the concept i made ages ago in 3ds max + PS:
It started off as just something i was doing when i was bored but now i've really got into it. The style is sort of a cross between alien and the matrix or at least thats what it was at first, and of course taking certain elements from the spark of imagination in uldar from WoW.
However now it's heading towards a more alien meets tron theme. Still lacking alot of detail and pieces not to mention textures. I've been thinking about mixing in some ancient stone work in there as well to kind of get a mix between really old and really modern/alien sort of how gigers stuff works, which i've also been pulling influence from.
anyway here are some screens from it in it's current state. It does however look much better in motion though than in screenys but i'd rather not keep making videos of it as i progress.
Replies
might have a look at adding in a vignette effect to close up the edges of the screen, might be a bit too much light coming in from the sides.
Concept wise Im having trouble figuring out what this room is. It's unclear where things are leading and why they are there. Like where do the pipes at the bottom go and what purpose do they serve? Right now it seems like they aimlessly come out of the lava and end some how, which does something unclear. The pipes on the walls are better because they go together in unison and come out of the lava and lead to the power source. You see steam or smoke coming out near the power source from this. It's much more clear what kind of energy exchange is going on which makes it more interesting and creates a story for the environment. The bottom pipes also are just making the scene have too many of them. They become a little redundant and lose their artistic impact when you have too many like that. Or when you have too many that dont resolve themselves well.
It is cool how the pipes seem to be crawling out of the lava. You could use this as artistic license to create a feeling in your environment but then I'd get rid of the top ones because the neatness of the top ones and scatteredness of the bottom ones dont go well together.
I guess what I'm saying is you should have a more clear concept before you start on a piece like this. Concepting in 3ds max is fine but I would do that after a 2d concept. It's important to know and plan out how what you are making is structured an what different parts mean. Make people who view your environment feel it by making things readable.
As for the lava, i feel the red is just about right currently, i did have it overly bright before with alot more red particle effects in various places and the contrast was just too much. So i've gone for more of a 7:3 ratio of blue to red while keeping a nice contrast between dark and light with the middle of the room vs the outer area.
Oh i also do have some sketches, they're pretty crap though, and on a5 lined paper. Completely full of wiring and pipes and what not, the dark industrial style is kind of what i was aiming for and so the "confusion" people may get with what pipe goes where and what they're for is sort of built into the idea. I have no idea what all the pipes in most factories do or where they come/go to but it helps add a sense of depth and detail to a place without actually adding much.
As for the inital concept and the purpose of the room in general, it's based off the spark of imagination in WoW, which also doesn't seem to fit it's purose either. I supose the next most plausible purpose for it could be a massive generator core used create the partile beam in the center which would be used in various different ways (i.e. tony stark's triangle shaped ark reactor core but on a much larger scale).
I've also added a vignette filter as well as a chromatic filter. This i feel helps to blur the edge of the mesh slightly (might need to tone it down, not sure though) and give it a more hazy appearance, it was far too crisp before.
I have some further ideas i want to put into it, let alone the walkway as it currently goes no where. I'm thinking of having several large statues very similar in appearance to the large human-like head from prometheus, but full figures holding up the cieling. these would take the place of a few furnesses, i'm likely not going to use more than 5 if i get round to doing a sculpt. (it'll likely be based off of atlas). I also need to sort out the entrance. Been thinking of adding in alien styled pillar and colums around a large archway leading into darkness.
Anyways here are 2 new screenys.
It's starting to get very slightly choppy now in UDK but so far it's the particles causing it and it's only affecting the editor which is ok. Light build is still farily fast, 2 or so minutes for medium, maybe 5 for production.
Lava looks good could be a bit brighter. Otherwise everything else is good so far. I like the pipes on the ground and wires hanging from the ceiling. Cant wait to see when it's done...
Removed some of the bridge braziers and also ditched the glowy rings as they produced too much bloom from their emissives.
I've also started on some poses (very early, only got one done so far) of the possible statue supports for the ceiling/walls. I'm not much of a drawer these days but it's some thing along the lines that i'm after. I want it to be very greek styled, but with no facial or head hair at all, and more like the prometheus head, with all of the "layers" and ridges along the figure.
I think you need to tell a story with the steam or make it more globalized.
At the moment it just looks like 2 big rings of steam to draw your attention to the center of the scene. Would some sort of vents help, kind of like the ones on that korriban scene you made, along the sides of the walkway? Perhaps a ring of then , think that would look sweet and help cap off some of the larger pipes,just a thought.
If/when i make a video of the scene it should show it off a bit better
Also i've been working on the statues to go around the outside supporting the roof:
the biceps and shoulders need work, they're a bit deformed atm. Also, the knees aren't completely there yet and the bottom jaw on the side is a bit think. Still need to get the feet done too.
Used alot of references from the engineers in prometheus for this guy as i think that's the most fitting physique for the scene.
I'm going to sort of cap off the furness tops slightly (still leave an edge for the red glow to seap through) but have large funnel pillars bending up the walls and roof similar to the struts on the wall architecture of prometheus.
Then, i'm going to possibly either ditch the laser completely or drastically change it so that the room is no longer some kind of experimental particle beam generator, but now an archive, or what i'll call it, an ARK for short.
With the capped off furness there won't be much of a red glow anymore, but it'll still be there for a slight contrast, coupled with the statues supporting the roof, the room will now be a viewing room. The central structure will serve as a holographic projector, unsure currently wether i should have the beam as the projector itself (I, Robot style) or wether it just be more like a source for the holographic objects to come from at the top (sort of like magnetos machine in the first X-men movie).
Would like a bit of feed back on this idea. Obviously i have no concepts or pictures to represent it, but it should be clear enough.
each subtool inherits the current foreground colour. So when you change it, so will the subtools. There's no real way of preventing this other than filling a subtool with a temporary polypaint colour.
It's still missing the hexagons+circles joined by lines, i'll look at adding those later (would likely require the rest to be toned down a bit light wise as with extra layers it's going to really brighten it up, a bit too much).
I used a tutorial/walkthrough posted up by Ceribral on Eat3D, really awesome hologram shader he made, which i've taken a few of the elements from.
I've also set up a matinee sequence to rotate the 3 central rings (the ones with light blips every so often along the rim) so that they both move round on the axis they already are (material panner) and also flip over and spin round (largfe one moves slower than the others).
Some things that need looking at still before i move onto the next part:
- fog material could do with DepthBiasedAlpha to get rid of any harsh lines when it intersects mesh.
- possibly look into making more particle effects for localised stars around the main hologram, possibly in a line or in some way to mimic a star cluster/galaxy (need to look into this).
The next part i think i'm gona do is actually get the walkway done. It uses 2 meshes, one with the two side torches and one without. Need to look at some floor references from prometheus i think and other sci-fi/aincent concepts.I've also got an idea in mind for the end of the walkway.
Since the room is now an Archive room, dubbed "The Ark", i'm going to create a platform at the end with a series of computer terminals and floating holographic displays. most likely gona need a chair too. Again as it's moving more and more towards the giger styling and concept ideas taken from alien and prometheus, alot of this platform idea is going to come from the bridge of the space jockey ship. (Not gona do the pilot's chair, will more likely be the dome/egg chair).
And then finally i need to think about the entrance of the walkway into the room, some archway style jobby should do the trick.
I'm thinking, some kind of curved ridge running down either side of the walkway similar to the air vents around the outside. Since it's made up of instances of only a few objects, they can be quite high poly, looking at maybe 3-4k tris as a maximum per mesh since it's one of the closest meshes to the camera on a walkthrough.
looking alot at this picture for reference:
Good work!
*Subscribed*
Don't worry, I'll actually have some constructive feedback in the future :P
I've found an awesome artist on deviant art for a possible walkway relief texture, who i've asked permission to use some of his work here.
I've already gone ahead and done some tests just running them through nDo and they're coming out pretty epic in photoshop. Really hoping to use these in the scene as they'll really bring the floor to life.
here's his gallery: http://gygrazok.deviantart.com/gallery/
Spent a little more time on this, not that much though.
Got something i like now working for the entrance area, it doesn't blend into the massive walls just yet as well as i'd hoped, but that's on my to-do list.
It also needs a bit more bits and bobs along the walls inside the tunnel too, not enough detail going on in there.
So the "planet" at the center and its rings; are they meshes with materials applied to them, or pure fx / shader? I'd love to know how you did all these cool effects; including the lava particles and all. really great work, been looking at the pics for the past few days and noticing many cool details :d
Cheers and congratz !
Agree that inside the tunnel looks a bit boring. Put some hanging wires and maybe 1 or 2 small lights.
And that globe thing in the middle is freaking awesome. Good work!
Moutrave
The planet is made up of a few spheres meshes. One sphere for the planet itself, another for a lightly larger ball of dots around it and another again, and then one massive sphere for the dots around the statues.
It's using a very cool holographic style shader i found on Eat3D by Ceribral, using multiple bump offset node to create a layered effect. The rings are also mesh (the bright ones both vertical and horizontal around the planet are panning textures on another sphere), while the larger ones are mesh rings that are animated in kismet to rotate like a gyro around the planet
danpaz3d
Yeah, still thinking what i can add to the tunnel, wires are a good idea, although because it's aimed more towards a geiger/prometheus themed environment now, hanging wires aren't really a big part in giger architecture, so i'll need to look at adding some more ridges or details here and there.
I've added a second simple "overlay" mesh to the large outer walls, this uses a parallax map for some hexagon lattice work combining small hexagons with large ones to get nice grid/grill effect.
Also finally started on the top/end of the walkway. This area will ultimately have a chair at the end of the mainwalkway set in a slightly lwered circle pattern thing. Got the green light from Gygrazok to use his wicked fractal art in the textures. The walkway now has one too.
The end platform will also have some kind of holographic control unit similar to the large globe in the middle of the room, but much smaller.
Anyways here are the pics:
Still need to add more details here and there, especially in the tunnel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Pxzu0TYyw
It's a bit dark, youtube for some reason has altered the gamma.
Also the sound cuts out right at the end, this video hasn't been edited in a video editor, just compressed in virtualdub + music. Hopefully i can get round to doing a proper edit of it and sort out these issues.
edit: video:
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Here are the screenshots:
Also, calling this done. There are a few things that still need clearing up, but i feel i've spent all my time on this, so i'd rather leave it here as is now rather than keep adding things to it. Otherwise i'd never stop lol.
how did you go about doing the planet fx?
@ae. The planet is a few spheres (i think there's a total of maybe 6 spheres in the scene) and it's using a hologram shader set to addative, everythings in the emissive input ofc. It uses around 6 i think parallax nodes (bump offset) coupled with some distortion through lerps using a detail normal map i've got else where in the scene. Also there are masks and things to give it the twinkle effect on the dots and the hexagons on some of the spheres.
The actual planet texture is 2048x1024 using the rgb channels for different layers, i.e. blue is the main map, red is some lines moving up/down/left/right through panners and the green is the map but just an outline. When i get round to it (likely monday next week) i'll see about posting up a pic of the material once it's all optimsied to read effectively :P atm it's a jumbled mess.
The shader is inspired and influenced by Ceribral from the eat3D forums and follows most of the effects he has going on in it, including the sin and time nodes to give it a nice flicker.
http://eat3d.com/forum/tips-tricks-and-free-videos/udk-hologram-material
Btw. on some old pictures you used some ropes. Are these Ropes just tatic meshes or physical assets?
The floor of the bridge out into the scene seems a bit repetitive and boring compared to the rest of the scene, still awesome work all around.