Desert Environment
polycounter lvl 13
I've been working on this scene for a while. Obviously, this is nowhere near the final version. I have a ton of props waiting to be textured, but I'm hoping to get that done in the next few days. There isn't too much to critique right now, but any feedback would be appreciated.
I modeled the style after an art test I did a while back. The concept was confidential, but the style they gave me to work with was stylized textures with realistic normals. I thought it gave the scene an interesting look so I decided to do another piece in a similar way, especially since it makes texturing incredibly fast and easy.
These are some of the plants I've made for the scene. I still need to randomize the cactus spines some more and I have a few more plants to make.
I modeled the style after an art test I did a while back. The concept was confidential, but the style they gave me to work with was stylized textures with realistic normals. I thought it gave the scene an interesting look so I decided to do another piece in a similar way, especially since it makes texturing incredibly fast and easy.
These are some of the plants I've made for the scene. I still need to randomize the cactus spines some more and I have a few more plants to make.
Replies
Also the style is kind of weird, i can see what you want to archieve, but the skybox and sand arent really matching yet. I'd defently recommend putting this in an Engine. It will probably give you better options over fog and such (or is this already in-engine?)
Either way, id put a softer coloured skybox on this, right now the contrast between sky and desert is really hard, where as there's barely any contrast between the desert and the house. If i were you i'd just tweak the colours, make the house lighter (most of these desert houses are plastered white, i think) and the cloth a darker, deeper red. That should make the house stand out more, right now the horizon draws too much attention.
Other than that i'd add some sand dunes. and make the rocks in the background a bit rockier. Theyr very nice on the base but way too smooth on top, imo. Also, tone back the red in the rocky layer right behind the house, i'd make it darker and less saturated.
P.S. What are your ambient occlusion settings on this? It seems like you have a lot of AO spread out over a very small distance, which gives it an almost cell-shaded look. It'll probably be nice if you don't want realism, but you might want to tone it down a little little bit.
The skybox is temporary since I need to make a more stylized one to fit the look I'm going for. I kind of liked the high contrast between the sky and desert, but I can see how it might detract from the rest of the scene. I will probably wait until I see how it looks when I put the other props in before I decide if I want a more toned down sky.
I will work on the shape of the buttes some more.
The red rock near the hut is the result of overlapping UVs in my lightmap, which I forgot to fix. It's badly distorting the color.
I haven't touched the post process settings yet, so the AO is just the default from UDK.
I did just a quick paintover for you to see what I mean.
Having strong silhouettes is the easiest way to make simple game-res models seem detailed. Your rocks are nice, but could use some more shape. Try filling them with some negative space and let the sky shine through.
Keep us updated!
Also recommend you put this in engine. It will certainly make it look nicer and improve your iteration time.
Also:
I thought this was just a lighting problem, except it doesn't show up in the editor, but it is there when I am in-game. I haven't worked with terrain in quite a while, so I'm not really sure what's going on right there.
If anyone has suggestions on way to improve this, props i should add, etc, I would love to hear them.
All I can say is go through some of the properties for the terrain and that cliff/canyon mesh. Try fiddling with the lightmap resolution and other properties. If all else fails, chuck a decal over it and see if that works.
How did you get your shadows so defined by the way because i have been importing a few bits into UDK just testing out how they look and the shadows are terrible instead of showing a defined shadow line like in yours they are massive illuminated to the point where they are not there its really annoying
*edit* DOH! He is using UDK. My bad, nothing to see here!
Lol, yea don't do this. Completely defeats the purpose of it. Use UDK, Cryengine, or some kind of game engine.
Pretty sure he is working in UDK :thumbup:
*edit* also you can see the default UDK material on some of the objects.
It's in UDK
Have you tried baking your lighting? Also try changing the lighting resolutions on your objects.
Has anyone come across this issue before?
http://www.ichii3d.com/random/desert_moodboard_01.jpg
These shots were taken with preview lighting and they are from the editor not in-game, so I will have higher quality screenshots later. I haven't forgotten about the wireframes, but I'm too tired to get them right now, so I'll post them before I finish.
Please let me know how I can improve this. Thanks.
A few ideas would be to look at the haze/fogging effect in the middle pictures of the moodboard I posted. You currently have fog but its only really on one object in the distance, this doesn't give you a sense of progressive distance. I recommend adding in more layers of background along with a final horizon layer. Each one separated in distance to give a great sense of depth and progression into the distance.
Also making reference to the moodboard again your scene might be complimented by a better sky, currently its lining the horizon which isn't bad it just doesn't give as much of a feeling of clouds as it possibly could.
Considering your scene is in the desert a lot of your objects feel very dark, even though they might be low in saturation there darkness moves away from the sun bleached look you would get in such a location.
Your ground looks a little like generic mud, its understandable your location would be a blend between sand and mud but it doesn't feel dry or cracked. This also comes back to the feeling that everything lacks sun bleach and dryness.
EDIT: Also I would possibly ditch the light inside the house, it conflicts with the hot desert outside. With the fire and warm colours it emits it makes you feel like its warmer outside than in... I would have thought the shack would give you more of a sense of shade and hiding from the torment of the heat outside.
I think that is having the opposite effect that SSAO is supposed to have, grounding your objects.
I would maybe play with adding some more grass or other foliage around the edge of the building, also on the inside.
I think i higher quality lighting bake would make a huge difference.
i think part of the problem is that the stone of the shack is nice and detailed but the ground and mountain behind seem plain in comparison, almost like a different style. adding shrubs and pale stones could help add detail.
im thinking that you want the shack to be the object of focus in the enviro in which case you probably want a complimentary colour to make it stand out from all the red, you could possibly colour the tarp green or add a hero object with the cart.
my 2 cents anyway, i hope that helps : ]
SuperFranky: The house and damaged wall were made in zbrush and then retopologized.
paintforge: I'm working on the ground material. The lack of variation in the wood textures and the rust metal textures is because they all use the same tiling texture. I can add some variation with vertex colors, but I was trying to keep the number of textures I used to a minimum. The oversized details in some of my textures is because when I started this project, I intended to use that as part of the stylization, but as i have gotten feedback it has shifted farther and farther from that and now I need to go back and fix those issues. That is why the rocks in the background, which I made first, might look like a different style than the props, which I made last. I will go back and update my older textures.
My textures for the plants are actually much darker than they appear in these shots, but there is a lighting problem that I haven't worked out yet. Right now they are using non-directional lighting just because it looks less terrible than phong or my custom lighting. Eventually I'll fix that.
This is the best result I have been able to get and in order to get that I had to have a friend build the level on his computer:
Does anyone have a good workaround for this because I would hate to think I put in all of that work to have it wasted because I can't build the lighting. Ideally, I would like to get the plants to cast dynamic shadows on the terrain, so I could lower the lightmap resolution, but I can't figure out how to do that. I would really appreciate some help. Thanks.
Should have dynamic shadows on objects for the scene if you didn't change the lighting channels around.
Dont get me wrong; it looks awesome but I prefer the other style. In terms of improvements I would possibly throw in something that contrasts the scene quite a bit. Its all very orangey, brown, red etc. A cool clapped out rusted blue pickup truck could look pretty cool. Just something that isnt directly in the same colour range as the surroundings.
As I said, it looks awesome but lacks something to grab you. In my opinion of course :P
I also liked it better before I pulled out some of the color. It may not be realistic for the sun-bleached look of a desert, but it feels more like the style I started with now. Thanks for the help everyone.
Benjam: The light rays are UDK's light shafts. I boosted the bloom a little bit but that's about it. Part of it comes from the light scattering in the exponential height fog and the effect on the interior shot is from making the cloth translucent rather than masked so that some of the light passes through it.
I don't know if this was already brought up - but i don't think your sky matches the style of the rest of the scene. While the lighting is great I think the actual imagery is fighting with the colors and brushwork of the rest of it. I can't tell if that's a UDK sky though and maybe you just haven't done it yet.