[UDK] Japanese Yokocho

wrangler249

Okay, putting my all into this one since I have a passion for Japan. Yokocho means "alleyway to the side of the main street" and my god are they full of life. Everywhere you look there's something to catch your eye, and I think it will translate into a really eye-catching 3d environment. I just hope I can do it some justice!

Taking this as a starting point:


I've started a block-out in 3ds Max:





I know for a fact that I'm going to have a lot of questions for you all on specific modelling techniques, and I really appreciate everyone's c&c so please give your tips, opinions, and suggestions!

Also as an aside, I'm uploading all of my photos from a recent trip to Japan and will share the albums in this thread so others can benefit should they need photo references for their work.

Samfisher84

therirs allot of stuff going on there, love japan aswell. cant wait to see how it goes.

BenHenry

Agreed!
Cant wait to see where this goes too.

aobond

nice reference choice, looking forward how it goes

chazzur

what a fantastic idea and like everyone said cant wait to see this as you progress!

wrangler249

Little update:








Also as promised, here's a couple of the albums I said I'd upload and share:

Matsumoto (misc. urban, shrines, Matsumoto Castle)

Takayama (shrines,urban)

I hope these come in handy for anybody needing references for Japanese scenes.

wrangler249

Floatin' jomtree for an ac unit and the beginnings of some texture work.

aajohnny

Is that a high poly of the ac unit? I don't feel that the fan detail is very necessary. It could be textured/baked on.

wrangler249

Yeah it's the unfinished high poly, I'm gonna bake out the floating geometry on it (fan part, other indents that haven't been added yet).

wrangler249

Can anybody tell me how to get rid of these horrible jaggies on the fan housing normalmap?

Rhoutermans

looks like the normal is inverted too?

try baking a higher resolution then resizing it, doesn't look all that bad tho for a background prop

wrangler249

Ahhh so that's why it looks so odd, thanks!

I'm reworking that part at the minute, I'll try baking at a higher res like you've said.

wrangler249

Thanks Rhoutermans, I rendered out at 4096x4096 and then downsized, I'm pretty pleased with how these came out:

wrangler249

Started texturing the ac unit:

ambershee

Reminds me a lot of most of South East Asia - here's a quickpic I took whilst in Vietnam for comparison;

wrangler249

It seems to be a running theme in Asian countries to have really busy alleyways, which makes it a real treat to translate into 3d since there's so many different assets that make up the scene.

wrangler249

Working on a paper lantern; can anybody help me with figuring out a way to achieve this sort of glow effect on the model:



This is how the model looks like using a boosted emissive value with bloom:

AlexCatMasterSupreme

why are those roof bits turbosmoothed?

Strkl

Can't wait to see the final thing, I just LOVE japan !
And thanks so much for those pictures

wrangler249

@AlexCatMasterSupreme: I was messing around with something, trying to make tiles. It isn't like that any more.

@Strkl: Thanks, you're very welcome

SirCalalot

Fantastic idea and reference.
I can't wait to see more!

(I'd help with your lantern, but for some reason the image is blocked on this computer )

*Subscribed*

wrangler249

Whirlwind few weeks lately, so much IRL guff to deal with!

Working on the ramen bar's tiled wall material:




And found the perfect spot for ol' Greentooth:



EDIT:
Forgot this brick texture I made too:

wrangler249

Okay, I've been scratching my head over this and I hope somebody can give me some pointers.



I made the prop on the right using a next-gen workflow and it took me quite a while. I was pleased with how it came out, but it kept niggling in the back of my mind that it took an ungodly amount of time to make. The one to the left was made using a suggestion from a friend to use tiled textures and vertex paint the damage onto it. The kicker is, it looks like a metric ton of dicks compared to the unique prop.

Am I overdoing things? It just seems like such a crap quality tradeoff.

EDIT:
Updated the vertex painted mesh to show how it looks with a mask (better, but not great)

Pangahas

Well maybe you could do a combination of both.Make a couple of uniquely sculpted pieces but just sculpt in major cracks and crevaces to save time and just rotate em when placing.You could then just vertex paint the minor details to make them look differently from each other further and add those little micro details.Just my 2 cents

wrangler249

Thanks Pangahas, I gave your suggestion a go on the mesh that I passed through decimation master, and overlayed a quick AO pass from ndo2 on top of the tiling textures to retain a bit of edge definition.

I'm quite pleased with how it looks now (left is unique version, right is vertex painted version):

Hang10

wrangler249 wrote: »

I'm not sure what kind of style you're going for but I find the right one has a lot more character, where as I personally feel the left one to be generic.

wrangler249

Okay so, I've been scratching my head over this for a while and I've finally decided on an art style for this scene. I can't pull off photorealism to a high enough quality, so I'm going for something slightly different which I've illustrated using the texture for this AC unit.

Pangahas

I think Adding some chipped off paint on edges would go well with the dirty and grimy look and also some more specularity on the metal material.

SirCalalot

I like the direction you're heading in

Perhaps accentuating the 'sketched' look in the texture a bit further would sell it better?

wrangler249

I've been busy lately but I'm making steady progress on this scene now. Most of what I've been doing is developing this style I'm using. I need some opinions on this brick wall texture:

Blaisoid

some bricks seem unnaturally bulky but overall it looks really nice.

SirCalalot

I think it will be easier to critique the texture style that your are going for if we can see them together in the scene.

Tetsuo

I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.