[WIP] Ruins of the Wolf King

Jackson31

I find that I have a lot more motivation to work on tedious environmental props such as brick chunks and rocks when I have a place on the internet to log it down and see the whole collection,

So here I'm posting my progress on my current project, a UDK environment which I'm calling the Ruins of the Wolf King,

The setting is a ruined shrine/temple built atop the mysterious rock pillars of the snowy highlands.

I'me starting with this blocked out scene and then taking each repeated piece I'm modelling them proper.

Jackson31

Here's my progress so far;



stair segment


big door handle thing for epic wooden door entrance


the base piece for the larger indoor columns

Jackson31

more bricks, yeah!

aajohnny

Keep workin. I think that the bricks are too shiny and smooth

The screenshot for the knob is too hard to read because of the mat. I think the stair sculpt turned out good. Keep up the hard work.

AimBiZ

Bricks are nice but the shapes are a bit weak on the rest. I imagine you're trying to achieve northern style architecture which has a lot of sharp turns whereas your shapes are pretty rounded right now. Looks like you're getting too early on surface detail ( which I think is too small to show up well on the normal map ). Don't bother at all about that part. Get your shapes solid and after bake you can add any tiny detail easier through Photoshop.

Found this pic that might serve as inspiration.. maybe. Keep it up!

Jackson31

a support arch,


these are just screen-shots from the xNormal previewer, by the way, there's no diffuse texture on them yet, just looking at how the normals baked down

Jackson31

aajohnny wrote: »

Keep workin. I think that the bricks are too shiny and smooth

The screenshot for the knob is too hard to read because of the mat. I think the stair sculpt turned out good. Keep up the hard work.

Thanks, yeah that metal material is pretty obnoxious but it was the closest zbrush had to the kind of metal look I'll be going for.

AimBiZ wrote:

Bricks are nice but the shapes are a bit weak on the rest. I imagine you're trying to achieve northern style architecture which has a lot of sharp turns whereas your shapes are pretty rounded right now. Looks like you're getting too early on surface detail ( which I think is too small to show up well on the normal map ). Don't bother at all about that part. Get your shapes solid and after bake you can add any tiny detail easier through Photoshop.

OK, I guess I've been rounding things off a big in the sculpts in anticipation of the low-poly models making them sharper, and I've been working on mobile games recently where everything is very polygonal and sharp, so I guess I was trying to push the more rounded next-gen look here,
I think you're right though, some sharper definition of shapes could go well, I guess I'll try fix the existing meshes up in the texturing phase.

Jackson31

Jackson31

Jackson31

now that I have a few of the basic building blocks in I'm getting them all into the one scene and scaling them to fit the original block-plan i made at the beggining,



once this is done I'll export each piece out as it's own model to UDK and get building the scene in there

Jackson31

ok, I imported most of these pieces into UDK,

again, these meshes materials only have normal maps, I'l easily be able to drop in the diffuse textures once I've made them.

Having this set up allows me to see what other environmental models I still need to make.

Jackson31

working on the wolf-king statue that goes at the base of the stairs

Jackson31

chriszuko

I think you may need to take a look at some more wolf reference stuff. Because right now that one is very motionless and boring as far as shape and silhouette are concerned. Also, don't be afraid to push the polycount a bit farther. Maybe closer to 2500+ for your hero statue piece. This should be the centerpiece of your environment. Spend some major time on it!

Just google wolf statue and see what you get.
Theres lots of reference out there for ya!


Best of luck!

Ghostman511

I agree with chriszuko. The sillouette you've chosen is quite boring. Its the Wolf King he should be mighty and epic .It also looks like you tried building a low poly mesh around a sculpt that you did. Its not really working. Have you heard of a program called Topogun? Its sole purpose is to create low polys for high poly sculpts. I would suggest checking it out. It might make your life a lot easier

Jackson31

chriszuko wrote: »

I think you may need to take a look at some more wolf reference stuff. Because right now that one is very motionless and boring as far as shape and silhouette are concerned. Also, don't be afraid to push the polycount a bit farther. Maybe closer to 2500+ for your hero statue piece. This should be the centerpiece of your environment. Spend some major time on it!

Just google wolf statue and see what you get.
Theres lots of reference out there for ya!


Best of luck!

Yeah, I should have mentioned, I've made the wolf in a reference pose, I'm planning on rigging it so I can then experiment with a bunch of dynamic poses,
Also I'm still going to model some items to add onto it, such as a crown and robes, so those things will be what makes the silhouette a bit more interesting.

I've finally had some time to work a bit more on this project, so here's a new screenshot from UDK;



I'm working on closing in the assets made so far within walls and a roof, it's been a real struggle making things make architectual sense (box rooms are much easier )

Jackson31

sipher3325

wow man this is going to turn out pretty good. keep at it.

Jackson31

some progress, remodelled the front wall, made the main front arch (it has a wolf head in it), uv mapped the upper roof segment, remodelled the round stairs (now has handrails)

Jackson31

progress update for today, made a back wall with windows, made the outside wall segment and UV mapped it, UV mapped the roof arches and I rescaled the level to suit game pawn

criticalchap

While the normals baked pretty damn well, you still need to look at the photo references of the stone blocks, and most importantly, block walls. At the moment they look like they are sculpted out of soft clay in the detailed shots. The in-engine shots look off-scale and you need to adjust the UVs of that canopy too. This sort of thing is really hard to pull off, with each individual block standing out. It may be a good idea to make the walls far more subtle.

AimBiZ

It's looking very gothic at the moment. You need to get more nordic culture into the architecture. I assume that's what you're going for.

darktype

Hey Jackson! First thing I notice right away is the bottom right of the image, where the door meets the arch and the arch meets the wall.

The bricks are varying in size way too much, especially since they all look to be the same texture. Small on the door, tiny on the arch and windows, and huge on the walls.

I know you'd like to reuse the same texture as much as you can, but you really need some variation (and color would be nice!).

locater16

Are you sure this isn't Minas Tirith?



Definitely has a neat gothic cathedral feel at the moment. Well, it would be gothic if it wasn't so damned bright, but that's not a criticism of it at all! Bright and cheery is actually something that seems to get more response from fantasy type stuff. Get it too gothic and dark and heavy and people seem to get down on it.

Jackson31

darktype wrote: »

Hey Jackson! First thing I notice right away is the bottom right of the image, where the door meets the arch and the arch meets the wall.

The bricks are varying in size way too much, especially since they all look to be the same texture. Small on the door, tiny on the arch and windows, and huge on the walls.

I know you'd like to reuse the same texture as much as you can, but you really need some variation (and color would be nice!).

Everwhere you see that brick texture is just a placeholder, those models havent been uv mapped and properly textured yet, so i just threw that tiling brick texture over them all

Jackson31

update; UV mapped and normal mapped the roof segment and side wall segment

Jackson31

just uv mapped, textured and normal mapped the front wall/dome

Jackson31

Oh boy has it been a while, I finally have some time to give this environment some more love,
I've re-posed the wolf statue, uv'd and textured the front stairs, built a terrain for outside and modeled the entire back section of the building (yet unseen)


This is a new model I didn't originally plan on making, but i think it's necessary, a mini wolf statue to go around the place, holding the theme consistent throughout.

Jackson31

Here's the re-posed wolf statue, the statue base still needs an occlusion map etc. You can also see in this shot the newly textured front window arches and those mini wolf statues in action

Jackson31

I made a pugh,


And worked on tweaking the AO and post processing


I also made a cloth simulated flag which I proceeded to slap everywhere

Endfinity Jon

I really dig the style of this scene!

I'm curious if you're using a pre-made UDK skybox or if you modified it/made your own?

Speaking of your atmospherics and lighting, I think you're relying a bit too much on flash and pizzazz before considering ways to push your scene traditionally. Like a great painting, lighting, atmospherics, and scene finishing should be done in a regimented and controlled way. Hit the big broad strokes first, before adding in those sweet layers of detail and bling.

I'd start with re-evaluating your directional light and what it's doing to your scene. This would be considered part of those broad, first strokes. Check out some reference of sunsets and their effect on architecture and directionality. In your scene your haze/shafts/fogging is pretty thick and your scene is getting washed out with a ton of mid tones. A sunset brings out intensity on both ends of the spectrum - hot, saturated bright points, and deep darks.

An example of ranging values:



You might also want to try to introduce some color contrast in your ambient/shadowed areas to really bring out visual interest. Right now everything is awash with warm earthy tones. In this image the direct areas are warm, while the indirect areas fade off into the cools:



Right now the scene appears to have too much bounced/flat lighting and less of the focused drama a sunset would create. The windows where the sun comes in from shouldn't be as illuminated as they are because the bounce would really die off before that wall gets splashed with a ton of light. Check out some reference of sunlight coming through windows - the area around the window is usually dark unless there are some walls or floors close by for the light to scatter back toward the window.



My point here is to nail the foundational elements and then start piling on the pretty. It's hard to get a good feel for the scene and it's lighting when it's layered with thick amounts of atmosphere and post effects. Find some way to get that high contrast sunset look and your scene will thank you for it, more values create more depth and definition and an overall stronger scene.

Good luck, I'm really looking forward to watching this scene develop!
-Jon

Jackson31

Thanks for the awesome feedback Jon, I wouldn't have noticed how off the tonal values are without this. About the color contrast, most of the meshes in this scene are still yet to be given a diffuse texture, which kinda of excuses why the scene is all white/washed out looking, but you've shown me that there is definitely some work I can do in the lighting and color grading to get the kind of strong contrast of deep blues and oranges that is in those photos.
Hopefully I'll get some time to keep working away on this scene soon

SirCalalot

Nice post, Jon.

And @Jackson? Keep up the hard work!
I love the style and concept of this scene and I can't wait to see it really start coming together into a complete package.

pjl

damn very nice work keep on working hard!

Jackson31

Please don't think I'm copping out of doing better lighting, I will get to that, but first all the meshes need proper diffuse textures, at the moment most of the meshes in the scene just have their AO map as their diffuse texture, so they are almost completely white, making lighting the scene in this state very deceptive.
But, I thought I'd show a comparison shot of this simple material effect I made which I think brings out the color and contrast of the scene better, removing some of that washed out effect that was mentioned,

But yes, as I said, I will eventually get around to trying to achieve this kind of thing through better lighting instead of more cheap post effects.

Lately I've been working on annoying but necessary things such as tiling grass and dirt textures, more rocks, sky-box assets (low poly trees etc.)
I should hopefully have some more substantial updates to post soon.

Jackson31

Blaugh! As soon as I posted the above shot I started loathing it and was compelled to open UDK back up and fix the colors,

Also I thought it was dumb of me to talk about my work on the skybox and not post a pic, so here's one

SirCalalot

Some nice colours in the skybox there

I notice that the reflection of the water isn't picking up the world fog though, as that's making the surface look a bit odd. Presumably you're using a SceneCapture2D actor, so it's just a simple case of ticking the 'enable fog' box in the properties.

I'd also suggest setting your framerate for the actor at '0' which will only capture the scene once upon level start (if you haven't already done this).

Keep the good work up!

SergeiMirminski

Repose the wolf again, maybe with one paw up.

Jackson31

Thanks SirCalalot, it is a SceneCaptureActor yes, I've never done water with reflections in UDK before so thanks for pointing out that fog option, I was wondering why it didn't look right :P

Jackson31

Last couple of days I've made a diffuse texture for almost all the meshes in the scene, made some more rocks, made an ornamental shield, smashed up the arches in the middle of the hall and made a set of floor tile meshes to give the ground a more 3d look,
I've also been working on the lighting now that the scene's meshes are no longer white.

I think it's an improvement since I'm achieving this look without about half-as much post effects as before,

Rockley Bonner

I realy like how this is coming along! could you explain how textured the terrain outside? how many tris does it have? texture size? are you going to use vertex painting?

Jackson31

The outside terrain is a single 45,000 triangle mesh, It just has one big-massive 4096x4096 texture on it, I drew the texture on the high poly mesh by hand inside zbrush (pictured above) Then later overlaid some finer details using tiling textures inside the UDK Material.


I wouldn't claim this as a good way to do terrain, I just wanted to try it out as an experiment, now that I know how to use the UDK terrain editor I think it would have been a much better choice :S

SirCalalot

That last shot of your scene especially looks nice!
Personally, I think that current lighting set-up has just the right amount of light and dark values.

What I'd suggest working on next is getting some variation in materials.
At the moment, it looks like the entire scene is made from the exact same stone - so perhaps a load more ruined tapestries or foliage would work well?

Edit: Or maybe get some water in there somewhere?

Jackson31

You have just suggested what I'm already working on So that makes me feel like I'm on the right track
Tomorrow I'm aiming to make a lot of grass meshes, bushes, hanging vines, moss decals and other kinds of foliage to have overgrow the scene, I'm also going to be making more smashed variants of the existing meshes and draping some kingdom banners over repetitive parts of the scene geometry. I think after all these things it will be just about complete

Jackson31

Dat grass

Endfinity Jon

Great work on your lighting updates! Really happy with your wide range of values, colors and overall scene contrast. Solid work!

I think you can push some fake rim/accent lighting into the scene now. In shot 1, check out the golden warmth splashing the right wall but notice the lack of pop on the front windows. I'd take a small point, spot, or line light (can't remember if default UDK has those) and activate the geometry with some cleverly placed rim lights. This approach is kinda Hollywood, kinda exaggerated but it will really make things shine. You're essentially going in and painting in some additional highlights as an artist would while finishing a traditional piece. Try this technique around the windows and maybe subtly on some of your pillars and that should dial up the drama!

Finally, as already stated, some material separation and foliage work will take this thing all the way. Looking really good!

-Jon

Jackson31

Thanks for the advice again Jon, I can definitely see now how popping out the windows and arches from the sky with rim lights would go a long way, I'll attempt that once i'm done with all these new foliage assets I'm working on.

Jackson31

Jackson31

Just logging today's progress;
Completed yesterdays foliage assets,
made grass and leaves sway in the wind,
made smashed variants of the side arches and the main pillar segment,
started adding foliage assets into scene,
worked out spawn point locations and added new maths through the map and
added in smashed-variant assets to the scene.

Jackson31

Today I put a terrain ground/floor under and around the ruins and placed many grass and rock meshes on top of it, I also made a new leafy tree branch asset, pictured here;

Jackson31

made some new foliage assets, leafy plants,