Thank you both! I am working on both birds and building signs/billboards now
I added a lot more foliage to add more diversity, and I changed the color of the fog a bit and making it a bit more dense. I intensified the light a bit more, hopefully its not too bright, and probably this biggest thing is the flag. I like it more now, but that's me
I really like the more saturated look ...the plants in the foreground still dont blend in nicely into the rest they just look different imo... the way you placed them on the street is still kinda funny there are no cracks where they could have grown out they are just there ... you need to hide the fact that they just stick in the ground ...
also i noticed that the normal map of the USA flag is affecting the stars... I think the stars and stripes should be plain ... except of that nice work keep it up man
Thanks Sensorium, for the ground I plan on making the street actual broken chunks and cracked, ect. When you said the foreground doesn't blend into the environment is that because the way they are placed without cracks? or the meshes/textures themselves? The road is stiff a placeholder till I get to making a real road haha. I agree on the Normals on the flag as well I must look into that.
Im specifically talkin bout the plants not the entire foreground... most of the plants have the same saturation and color thats why they all work together so nicely ... but the plants on the street have a drastically different saturation and color ... theres nothing wrong in varying the colors of the plants but they must blend with the rest of the scene
Oh gotcha , I think its the shading because in the specific area there isnt much sunlight and those faces arent facing the light its really dark . I have to find a way to ignore lighting on those meshes
Try changing the normals of the grass planes to point directly up - the same direction as the floor they are sitting on.
That way, they should be lit with the same intensity as the ground
It's looking great dude, and I love the saturation.
I am working on a float right there, and I plan on making signs/billboards soon. A lot of work to do and a lot of work done since the last update hopefully its better!
looking good, but one thing that's seriously bugging me : in the decades it must have taken for the trees to invade and take over the big buildings, weather and general environmental upheaval has only managed to upset one bin. The rest of the street furniture is doing just fine. The newspaper machines and bin below the flag seemed to have survived the collapse of the floors at the rooftop, or someone replaced them after sweeping all the rubble away ... and pruning the hedge. And doing a fair bit of weeding over there on the left. And clearing away the huge mounds of collected crap resulting from wind whistling around the buildings for years. Actually, you get less tidy streets in real populated cities today ...
also, roots = cracks in concrete. Size of those trees, i'd expect it to be looking more like an earthquake zone
tons of atmosphere already, lots of potential, but right now all the various elements of the scene don't seem to be fitting together that convincingly
Thanks for the crit Danr. I agree with you, I tried ti incorporate what you are talking about, I still have more debris, ect to add in there but here is another post.
I wrote my bachleor thesis of arts on overgrown and destoryed environements And I can say, this sure loooks solid!
I read alot about how an environment transforms when man abandons it, one thing I remember was the fact that dirt, arth and stuff, then spores and later grass always finds its way into 90 degrees areas, so to speak, the wind and so on moves it to those architechtical dead-ends. The Pavement closes to the camera in the bottom left has got one of those ridges, and it's almost completely clean, my only critique and feedback on this is that you could probably add som grass/earth, dirt och trash there, imagine a soda can rolling across the pavement fueled by the wind and ending up there
It's so close to the camera too that I think the image as a whole will gain a more destuction and abandonment with this detail
Reccomended reading about the natural order of these things; The World Without us, by Alan Weisman, but maybe that's taking it too far
@SirCalalot: Thanks ! and it's addicting to add what can I say! you'll probably be seeing more.
@Lando_Mange: Glad to hear I have beat up the road a lot more since this image and added more foliage, but I don't think I did in that spot, i'll surely do that thanks for the very useful feedback, and the book recommendation, i'll have to check it out. I'm a slow reader so I'd have to implement as I go
Nice, no prob man, actually I recall his website having some useful stuff on it too, I mean it's kinda basic stuff/way to much information, but I found it intresting at the time.
There's a movie at the bottom called "your house without you" where they break down a wooden house and stuff, true to research and shit. ass said, probably way over the bar of information, but still intresting stuff when working with projects like these I'd say
Wow, this is coming together really, really awesome. In 3 pages this has changed so much for the better. I wasn't keen on that tree to the right, but these newest images top the other ones, imo. Is that decaying elevated tracks in the background to the left? That would be awesome as well! Looking great!
Question to SirCalalot, any info on doing this in Maya? I toyed around with facing normals up before and could never get it as right as an example/tutorial I watched on it. (Possibly from 3D motive?) Would this help for the lighting only? Or for helping grass planes appear seamless?
Looking awesome. I've always liked (I am Legend/Last of Us) type environments and I think you've done this really well.
Only thing I'd mention is that it seems a bit too contrasted.
Eg. shadows on trees and some shadows on windows seem a bit dark.
Two things caught my attention. First; the background buildings windows are all fine, nothing broken which looks a bit odd when you compare it to the main building. Second; the trees shadows and self shadowing is very dark. Maybe you could get some fake sss in there to make it look more organic?
Nice work man, this is looking awesome, a huge improvement from the first post! No doubt it is supposed to be apocalyptic and gloomy, but some cool colours in here would be nice imo. I like how the blue sky offset the composition before. Perhaps have the sky fade from the current colour to more of a blue as it reaches the top of the screen? Giving it more of a smog feeling. I would also try changing some of the shadows to be a little blue ish. Just my opinion, I think there is some awesome detail that is getting lost by the overall monotone colour. At the same time it sure looks desolate
I talked with aajohnny through PM but here's the jist of it. Just my opinions...
1) Add taller buildings beyond the midground buildings to make the city feel bigger
2) Add some foreground elements to help composition
3) Its basically 2 colors right now... one kind of green and a brown. I would take the different props in the scene and tweak their colors a bit. I changed the trashcans to a more teal green and I increased the saturation of the red chair as well as the blue on the flag and tweaked the color of the back billboard.
4) Add some puddles and reflection to help sillouette the grass in the midgound and add some more color.
5) Brighten the ivy on the main buildings to help them pop against the building itself
6) I know you tried the blue sky before but i think its just another chance to add some color to the scene.
I talked with aajohnny through PM but here's the jist of it. Just my opinions...
1) Add taller buildings beyond the midground buildings to make the city feel bigger
2) Add some foreground elements to help composition
3) Its basically 2 colors right now... one kind of green and a brown. I would take the different props in the scene and tweak their colors a bit. I changed the trashcans to a more teal green and I increased the saturation of the red chair as well as the blue on the flag and tweaked the color of the back billboard.
4) Add some puddles and reflection to help sillouette the grass in the midgound and add some more color.
5) Brighten the ivy on the main buildings to help them pop against the building itself
6) I know you tried the blue sky before but i think its just another chance to add some color to the scene.
Wow, that paintover is looking stunning! really enhanced the atmosphere and focuses the viewers eye more towards the focal point. Nice job man.
Thanks everyone and thank you for that paintover, I tried implementing some stuff in from that paintover and gave me a few ideas. I am wrapping this environment up and are open to any last minute crits before I call it finished. I have two atmospheres as well that I would like to post to see what people think.
I would just like to also thank everyone here for all of the help!
Wow... beautiful stuff here Johnny. You have found a balance between organic and architectural that is hard to peg. Congratulations and hope to see more environment assets like this from you.
Nice work here. Have to say I prefer the blue sky signifying the return to nature. The green sky has man made catastrophe implications.
A very minor crit is the top of the building to the right of Greentooth. I think given the space around it and the birds, the stark white horizontal lines are distracting and pull my attention to the top right of the image. Reducing it to a silhouette as in Bryan Cavett's paintover would work better.
I'd also increase the density of the tree on the right as it's looking a little bare considering the amount of overgrowth on the ground.
Really like the blue sky version! One small thing that could possibly maybe look good would be to change the colour of the fog to a pale blueish colour instead of the kind of beige it is now. Might be worth a quick test in engine?
Really like the blue sky version! One small thing that could possibly maybe look good would be to change the colour of the fog to a pale blueish colour instead of the kind of beige it is now. Might be worth a quick test in engine?
^
I was gonna pretty much repeat everything this guy said ^
yea the green sky version has a very 1st generation unreal engine 3 color grade to one color look haha. the blue sky silhouettes everything a lot stronger and adds some variation to the palette while still mostly remaining within 2-3 tones for the overall piece. I would also try to get a bit more blue in your ambient shadows to have some bounce from the sky. nice work man turned out great.
Looks awesome! I also agree with everyone else and prefer the blue sky version, but would like to see more blue in the shadows and fog. Maybe it's my laptop monitor, but there are a lot of pure blacks in the shadows.
Yup! Much better : )) I do feel like the leaves on the tree on the right are too big, it kinda messes up the scale and order of things, since the leaves are so big they look like that tree is closer than it is
It's looking quite nice but it looks like every building is made out of the same materials. It'd be nice if there was some variation in the buildings other than the way the windows are positioned. It looks like you have a couple of different variations in window and concrete textures but they're all the same tan color and from a distance they pretty much read the same.
I do apologise as I've not been on here for a while and didn't realise you were kind enough to post up a small tutorial/how-to. That's great and amazing how simple it actually is... Thank you for doing that, it helps a lot.
As for the scene, its looking so nice at the minute. It reminds me a lot of 'I am Legend' though I am guessing you may have taken some reference from that.
Thank you everyone! I appreciate all the help. I made the tree a bit more dense and made the leaves smaller. I added foreground elements. I will be getting more angles and screenshots soon but here it is:
Absolutely fantastic no crits here very well done scene looks so impressive and I really get the feeling and mood to this scene by looking at your latest ss. Looking forward to following your next scenes and watching what you come up with next! :thumbup:
Sweet stuff, its been great seeing you work on this and watching it evolve.
I really like how you took Bryan Cavett's critque to heart and used those ideas to frame some of the other shots also. I really want to get in and find a way up to the plane as well as just look around, any scene that fosters that excitement to explore is a winner in my book, plus it looks great.
This came out great aajohnny! Composition and scene has really been pushed and polished to something above the norm and Im glad you took all the critiques from everyone to heart.
Replies
It would be cool to see a bird decal up on the sky. Like, a flock of birds up above in the sky. It would bring some life and scale to things.
Congrats, and good work!
I added a lot more foliage to add more diversity, and I changed the color of the fog a bit and making it a bit more dense. I intensified the light a bit more, hopefully its not too bright, and probably this biggest thing is the flag. I like it more now, but that's me
also i noticed that the normal map of the USA flag is affecting the stars... I think the stars and stripes should be plain ... except of that nice work keep it up man
That way, they should be lit with the same intensity as the ground
It's looking great dude, and I love the saturation.
also, roots = cracks in concrete. Size of those trees, i'd expect it to be looking more like an earthquake zone
tons of atmosphere already, lots of potential, but right now all the various elements of the scene don't seem to be fitting together that convincingly
I love how the foliage and debris is building up slowly over this project
I read alot about how an environment transforms when man abandons it, one thing I remember was the fact that dirt, arth and stuff, then spores and later grass always finds its way into 90 degrees areas, so to speak, the wind and so on moves it to those architechtical dead-ends. The Pavement closes to the camera in the bottom left has got one of those ridges, and it's almost completely clean, my only critique and feedback on this is that you could probably add som grass/earth, dirt och trash there, imagine a soda can rolling across the pavement fueled by the wind and ending up there
It's so close to the camera too that I think the image as a whole will gain a more destuction and abandonment with this detail
Reccomended reading about the natural order of these things; The World Without us, by Alan Weisman, but maybe that's taking it too far
@Lando_Mange: Glad to hear
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/index2.html
There's a movie at the bottom called "your house without you" where they break down a wooden house and stuff, true to research and shit. ass said, probably way over the bar of information, but still intresting stuff when working with projects like these I'd say
Keep workin', looking forward to the result!
I think, looking at the last shot, something in the foreground would look great.
Question to SirCalalot, any info on doing this in Maya? I toyed around with facing normals up before and could never get it as right as an example/tutorial I watched on it. (Possibly from 3D motive?) Would this help for the lighting only? Or for helping grass planes appear seamless?
Only thing I'd mention is that it seems a bit too contrasted.
Eg. shadows on trees and some shadows on windows seem a bit dark.
danpaz3d: I am trying to fix that, I think I may have gotten somewhere with that.
urgraffel: Working on the buildings now in fact
dudealan:Yep right n
Screenshot soon, keep em coming!
1) Add taller buildings beyond the midground buildings to make the city feel bigger
2) Add some foreground elements to help composition
3) Its basically 2 colors right now... one kind of green and a brown. I would take the different props in the scene and tweak their colors a bit. I changed the trashcans to a more teal green and I increased the saturation of the red chair as well as the blue on the flag and tweaked the color of the back billboard.
4) Add some puddles and reflection to help sillouette the grass in the midgound and add some more color.
5) Brighten the ivy on the main buildings to help them pop against the building itself
6) I know you tried the blue sky before but i think its just another chance to add some color to the scene.
Wow, that paintover is looking stunning! really enhanced the atmosphere and focuses the viewers eye more towards the focal point. Nice job man.
Cheers
I would just like to also thank everyone here for all of the help!
A very minor crit is the top of the building to the right of Greentooth. I think given the space around it and the birds, the stark white horizontal lines are distracting and pull my attention to the top right of the image. Reducing it to a silhouette as in Bryan Cavett's paintover would work better.
I'd also increase the density of the tree on the right as it's looking a little bare considering the amount of overgrowth on the ground.
Great work on finishing up this one.
^
I was gonna pretty much repeat everything this guy said ^
Great work otherwise!
As for the scene, its looking so nice at the minute. It reminds me a lot of 'I am Legend' though I am guessing you may have taken some reference from that.
Amazing
More can be seen in my portfolio at http://www.johnvalentiart.com/projects/4314225
@ShootandRun : Thanks! I'm glad you like it and I'm glad it helps!
@Shoy333: Awesome thanks
I really like how you took Bryan Cavett's critque to heart and used those ideas to frame some of the other shots also. I really want to get in and find a way up to the plane as well as just look around, any scene that fosters that excitement to explore is a winner in my book, plus it looks great.