Demo Reel WIP Thread - Fantasy Beach Town
polycounter lvl 8
Hey everybody, I'm a little more than halfway through my 3rd term at Vanarts and I'm really enjoying the course. I've finally decided on 2 pieces; one that's fantasy and one that's a gritty realistic shooter map.
Just having this thread here to blog my progress and hopefully get some tips from all the awesome artists here.
I'm doing a lot of planning for this, so it's basically just a paint by number when I start doing things for it :P
I was hugely inspired by Jessica's hand painted environment (Awesome thread) as well as Skyward Sword and Wind Waker. I'll be hand painting my textures and keeping a fun style to it, but also have weathering and some grunge.
Here is my style guide:
Here's a sketch of the map layout:
And a close up shot of the lighthouse:
And a sketch of the front of a house. This scene will be modular so a lot of these pieces will be re-used. The curvy things are roots from the native tree population, holding glowy gem things:
And a list of everything I'm gonna need:
So yeah, I'll continue to post more concept art as I work on it as well as the models/textures. Thanks for looking
PS: in my notes it says tropical. It's actually going to be deciduous, with some tropical themes to it.
Just having this thread here to blog my progress and hopefully get some tips from all the awesome artists here.
I'm doing a lot of planning for this, so it's basically just a paint by number when I start doing things for it :P
I was hugely inspired by Jessica's hand painted environment (Awesome thread) as well as Skyward Sword and Wind Waker. I'll be hand painting my textures and keeping a fun style to it, but also have weathering and some grunge.
Here is my style guide:
Here's a sketch of the map layout:
And a close up shot of the lighthouse:
And a sketch of the front of a house. This scene will be modular so a lot of these pieces will be re-used. The curvy things are roots from the native tree population, holding glowy gem things:
And a list of everything I'm gonna need:
So yeah, I'll continue to post more concept art as I work on it as well as the models/textures. Thanks for looking
PS: in my notes it says tropical. It's actually going to be deciduous, with some tropical themes to it.
Replies
And here's the concept I finished today totally not during our awesomely captivating coding class:
I used the map I sketched as a guide in Maya. Here they are side by side:
And here's the language I made. It seems silly to do this, but I'm going to have lots of signs so it will be easier if I can just type in the symbols and make them normal maps. They are choppy hard edged symbols because they will be carved into wood.
I did a drawing in my sketchbook of what I would like my lighthouse to be. I'm going to go with this design, and just make it a little more random in Maya by using lattices.
This morning my goal was to have my flowers designed. I did some thumbnails, chose my favorite shapes, and then colour picked from photos on Google:
I did up some shrub thumbnails. What one do you guys like most, keeping in mind my theme? The shrubs will be scattered throughout the scene as fillers.
Sorry, this ended up being a massive post. Any comments and crits are welcome.
*edit*
I think 2 works best, and 3 would fit well although it looks a bit like a smaller version of the tree concept. 1 looks a bit like a potted plant (maybe use it as a prop for the houses?) and 4 makes me think of a duck head, brown body and two green cheerleader puffs
Not super keen on the colours of the tree but it could work depending on what you have in mind for the surrounding areas so feel free ignore me
@urgaffel - I'm glad another person likes 2 and 3, this makes decision making much easier :P I see what you mean with 4. Stay tuned for a cheerleading duck concept. My girlfriend has a good eye for colour and she thinks it could use more values, so I'm glad you mentioned the tree colours. I'm going to try a few colour variations, but I'm gonna stay withing the blue-green and orange-brown theme (:
Thanks for subscribing guys!
Today I worked on some prop concepts. Some barrels & crates and things. Cause you can never have enough barrels and crates. The hanging basket will have some flowers in it
Yeah, the colour scheme will probably work, it's just as your girlfriend says thoug; lack of values. If you look at it without focusing (so it looks blurry), it looks a bit flat, both the trunk and the leaves. This will of course change once you make it 3d since there will be lighting to help define the shape. I guess it's more about whether you want to improve concepts or not. The shadow/detail colour is almost the same hue as the main body, maybe use a cooler (or complimentary) colour for the shadow?
Btw, love your pencil sketches and the flower concepts.
First up is the shrub, which I named tree 02, to keep things simple and organized. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
I made the branches nice and small. Somewhat of an unrelated question at this stage, but should I add collision to this shrubtreething?
And then I did my foliage concepts. These are going to fill the scene in combination with the above. The first patch of grass is going to be for the beach, and will only be planted in sand near cliff faces, and the second patch is going to be regular grass.
The third plant holds seed pods. Basically it's evolved to be shaped like a dragon head (ones that are local to the area) to scare off larger animals. The pod has a hard outer shell and squishy innards. The seeds are similar in texture to pomegranates, except they have a soft glow around them, to imitate the glowing embers of a dragons mouth. Ima make a little market and have these hanging inside
Now that I look at it, the outside of the seed pod doesn't look very tough. I might go back and retouch it so it has a scale pattern or something
@urgaffel:
*edit: just read your post. Yeah, I think I'll leave the concept as it is and when it comes to modeling and texturing I'll make some changes so it's a bit more realistic. I also forgot to paint dirt, grass and some patchy areas on it so hopefully those things will bring it out a bit more
I'm going to have two main tiling textures for the cliffs; one for the large surrounding cliffs, and one for the stepped hills.
Now, let me know if this is a good idea. What if I create a separate uv set for the cliffs, and apply a gradient from the dark purply blue tones in pics 2 and 3, to brown/green Earthy tones? I would apply it via a layered shader, and set the mode to multiply or something, and put it on a very low opacity. The texture itself would be a teeny size, because it would just be for colour info so it can be blurry. My thoughts behind doing this is it would blend the rocks nicely from ocean to forest. This would be a very gradual and "quiet"
What if I did the same to the grass to add some variety?
For now though I need some tips on the colour of the cliff I painted before I work on the final concepts of it. It's small and can be climbed on by a player. The kind of thing I will have scattered throughout. Tips, or do you think it should be fine as is?
sorry i dont have any critiscism, but keep up the sweet work
Well, Photobucket is making my pictures super blurry and small so I'm gonna start using DevArt to upload my concepts..
This one took forever, however I'm very happy I did these because now I won't get stuck when I'm modeling. I was thinking about the polygons while I drew these. Should only need to do one or 2 more concept sheets.
Feel free to critique and or comment! I cant wait to start modeling :P
EDIT: Forgot to add a porch to my pieces! Oh well, that'll go on the next (and final) prop sheet.
Next set of Props:
-small fruit stand - 2 or 3 variations
-steps, that can be scattered around the scene
-small bridge
-out door chair and table
--cups and cutlery for said table
-work bench
--tools for said work bench (hammer, nails, saw, rope, some fabric
-well
-sign/lamp post combo
-hanging sign for shops
And makes sure those work in your scene, these are the things that will actually build up your environment. Small stuff like crates and buckets are just micro-detail that you place in the scene and in the end the micro-things are the props that you can churn out quickly and quickly change if needed.
Give it a think, even though things might look good in 2d they might not always come out as well in 3d. So it's important to make sure that the direction you're going in works for you.
Other than that, great work so far! really nice planning-skills as well as concept-skills
I finished some small props. This is my last concept sheet!
A lot of those I really didn't need to draw out. For me, this is more of a visual checklist.
And *finally* I started modeling today.
I put in very rough wood textures just to see what the colour would look like together.
And here is me trying hand painted textures for the first time (it's a step or something)
One glaring issue I see now is that the wood grain isn't consistent. Even though I'm going for stylized, I should probably still make sure the grain has some sort of flow to it.
What do you guys think of the wood colours I've chosen? Also, is the topology okay so far? ANy advice or glaring issues?
Thanks for looking!
Some of their UV's are laid out, but most are still messy. I basically wanted to see if my colour scheme would work.
Do you think those colours work together? Bottom right of that image is the wood I'm working on. Not happy with it right now. I think it might be too messy and broken. I might try for a clean look.
I also worked on a tiling texture for my cliffs:
The reference I'm using to paint it is mainly the one at the top right there. I'm trying to keep the colours more flat than the reference though; I don't want the cliffs to stand out really or else my scene will become too crazay.
And critiques, ideas or input would be great
edit: all of my textures so far are just block ins to see if they work
Wouldn't hurt to make a timeline and plan out what you want to have done each week until the deadline, really helps to nail down a pace and recognize if you bit off more than you could chew.
The cliffs are looking strange to me. I think the vertical details in them are too strong. In the reference the horizontal crevices are inset deeper and more shadowed, and the vertical craggy details are less defined (less so in the bottom left but you said you're going off the top right so that's what I'm going off of). In your texture it's looking a bit "checkerboardy" and repetitious.
I'm SUPER excited to see how this turns out though, your painting skills are pretty amazing. :thumbup:
Also, how are you going to decorate the house when the walls are kind of wobbly without getting gaps?
Thanks for the advice on the cliffs, just the sort of help I need. Someone in my class told me it would be good to offset the vertical cracks like bricks almost so it looks less checkerboardy.
That thin bright layer at the top is going to be horizontal in my geo, and form the rim of the cliff. The large chunky bits will actually be extruded out.
@urgaffel: Flatcapping the cylinders...that would leave me n-gons, would it not? I'll be merging the center vertex of all my cylinders to one of the cylinders verts along the rim, so that'll kill off two tris per model right there. Thanks for the tip on the distribution of segments, I shall take note of this!
Decorating the house shouldn't be too hard, I'm just going to crash the geometry in. On the wavy bits, I'll add a slight horizontal warp to the pieces so they fit better. To hide where I crash geometry, I'll add some ambient occlusion.
And thanks jsargent, I haven't heard of Aragorn's Quest before but just looked up some screenshots. You worked on that? It's awesome! It's pretty much the exact style I'm going for. Did you guys use normal maps on anything? That's basically my biggest predicament right now...everyone is telling me I should have slight normal maps, but I'm really hesitant about this and would rather spend my file size on more geometry and higher res diffuse textures. Besides, adding normal maps adds weeks to the plan I originally had in mind..
Today I started blocking in the brick texture. I colour picked from my cliffs so I could get a consistent feel to the scene, but made sure the bricks were slightly cooler. In this image I tiled it 4 times, which is probably the most it will be tiled on-screen (for the lighthouse)
This texture will be on the lighthouse, the chimneys and the well.
(as per usual, this is not set in stone [haha get it? stone? these are bricks? aha....ha...ahhhh sorry for that.], and I'll work on rendering it later. just a block in :P)
Something about the colours right now seem a little boring and it also seems kinda flat. Once again, any advice or recommendations you guys have are fantastic
The tiling bricks has a really obvious line that you could get rid of (3rd brick from the left, 3rd brick from the top). As for the colour, it is a little monochrome at the moment. Maybe play with the shadow colour a bit, maybe add a coloured highlight? If you're not going to add normalmaps, thenn you could try and add some subtle/simple lighting information into the texture... Although it might look weird if you're going to do a night time scene
I've spent the last hour and a bit eating fast food and trying to figure out how the hell to paint metal on my doorhinge
It looks like freaking horse shit so far, so tips would be fantastic
Help me polycount community, you're my only hope
Thanks kelli, I'll give it another shot today. I think you ~nailed~ the problem.
Jsargent, thanks for the inspiration, I'll be sure to check that out
Started modeling and texturing the lighthouse. Thoughts?
Also, decided on a wood style I like. I'll do the same style of woodgrain everywhere
And here's something I did in our environment modeling class while our teacher was showing us how to model a sidewalk. It's not for my fantasy town project, but it's hand painted so I'll throw it here anyways. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially since it only took an hour and a half :P
Cracks could be darker
Anywho, that's it for today. Tomorrow I'm going to Anomoly 2012 with my girlfriend
How does the wood look? It's my final crate texture, so feel free to critique it.
And here are my grasses:
Beach grass:
For the greener grass, I'll organize patches of it and place it around houses and trees. The beach grass will grow in patches along the sand, those little ones poking out between cliff and sand and around rocks.
Does the poly count seem to high?
I'm going to have grass everywhere, similar to this:
All my grass pieces will have animations on them so they look like they're blowing in an ocean breeze.
hugh & cholden : Thanks for the compliments
Saiainoshi: Hmm...I don't really know what you mean by top to bottom lighting. The crates aren't going to be static (they'll have physics attached so the player can kick them around), so if I paint in lighting like that, and the crate is tumbling around, won't that look wierd? On the meshes that won't move (house, trees, etc) I'll be baking in Ambient occlusion using a layered shader set to multiply.
I forgot to post this earlier, a tiny fix on my brick texture that had the tiling crack:
My brother was saying there could be a saturation boost on it, so I think I will do that next so it's not too boring looking.
A clover patch I was working on:
I'm thinking I'll place a lot of these patches around the scene. Only 63 tris each and they add a lot of depth.
Another shot:
And I blocked in the texture of my bean plant thingy:
Hope people don't mind that this thread is texture heavy...I apologize to all those with slow internet connections :P
I added some random dents in it for some nice texture variation.
My environment modeling teacher was telling me I should make the edges dark on the crates, rather than light. That doesn't really make sense to me; if anyone can shed some light on what he means that would be cool :P
Here's an update:
I added an edge loop to give the crate a bit more character, and darkened a part of the crate to add some variation.
I started to highlight more, and realized I was hitting 100% white, so I darkened the whole thing and gave another highlight pass.
And I think I might add some more geometry to this lowly crate by extruding in on the darkened area, and making the top piece pop out a bit more.
The wood texture is nice but it has a lot of detail in it compared to your other textures (so far), maybe tone it down a bit? Can't say I'm a big fan of the AO pass on them either, they feel a bit dark and dull but that will hopefully work out better when you have proper lighting.
@urgaffel: I changed the crate variation a bit more. I actually ended up remodeling them; they are now 70 tris each, but are much more interesting to look at. As I'm not having normal maps, and my plant geo is pretty simple, I'm spending some extra polys on things to make them look better.
The wood on my crates is more detailed than anything else because other than some of the foliage, it's the only texture that I've finished. It's basically a test run to see if the textures on the house are going to work.
And yeah, you're both right about the wood grain. After a good sleep and coming back to it, I realize its a bit intense. Luckily, most of the grain is on it's own layer, so what I'll probably end up doing is set the layer to a lower opacity.
Here are the new crates :
And this is a render of the crates in a pile with plants around them. What do people think of the clovers? Each patch is 63 tris and in this render I have 3 patches
Sooo many textures heeeere, I lav it x]
also agree with Jessica, add a little more geometry for added interest maybe chamfer an edge/corner or two, also the side wood panels let down this asset a bit, it doesn't match the rest of the texture. looking forward to more stuff =D
@Jessica, yeah, that plant needs a lot of lovin'. So far the textures on it have only been blocked in, and I'm still trying to figure out a good pattern for the stem (maybe scales? ) Speckling on the bulbous part is a good idea. Maybe like a walnut texture or something could do :P
@Azzamat : I adjusted the levels a bit to darken the shadows and pop the highlights. Also added some more AO for maximum prettiness. The TA in our class said it would be good to sharpen the texture so I did that and that really popped it as well. Let me know what you think of the update:
(old texture and new texture below it)
Screenshot in mayas viewport:
Sorry for having pretty much an entire page dedicated to a lowly crate, I just wanna get this asset to completion so I can base my other textures around it
edit: haven't changed the geo yet. I shall put that on my to do list
So stoked on this project. Proud to say you're my boyfriend