Dilapidated church/warzone hospital

Benjam

Hey guys,

I am working on a new project for my portfolio have been getting to grips with how to set stuff up in UDK and how to lightmap, create modular assets, how to texture them so they tile correctly etc. etc.

The project is a dilapidated church (Trinity Church Manhattan)/warzone medical centre. The concept art has kindly been donated by a Mr Dennis Chan who worked on it for Crysis 2.



Here is my progress so far, I have put together the very basic shell, not all the elements are lightmapped and my progress is slow at the mo because ive been backtracking a lot dure to trial and error. I have changed some of the textures around a little bit and some of the pillars are a bit different.







The lighting is just a couple of point lights at the minute which reminds me, if anyone knows of any good UDK lighting tutorials im fairly new to how to light stuff decently in UDK so any pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated

There are a couple of issues i am aware of and will fix asap but what do you think.

Crits please!!

Cheers

SuperFranky

i think ceiling is much higher in the art, but its probably because you have nothing on the floor

Benjam

SuperFranky wrote: »

i think ceiling is much higher in the art, but its probably because you have nothing on the floor

I forgot to show you my little scale marker guys in the images



The ceiling does need to come a little bit higher i think though

SuperFranky

anyway, i will watch your progress, seems interesting

Benjam

Thanks for the feedback i will raise the ceiling and post up the new shots asap

SuperFranky

i suggest you to measure your ceiling height in meters with a distance tool in whatever soft you use for modeling, just look up the height somewhere, i think its something like 10 meters high

Benjam

Quick update: Haven't managed to do loads today because of work but i did raise the ceiling a little bit and lightmap the roof ribs properly and added a little exta bit to them

Benjam

Hey guys,

I have not had much of a chance to work on this over the last week or so because i have been stuck on some crazy long shifts at work but i managed to get a couple of assets done (untextured & lightmapped etc.) just to throw into the scene to give it a better sense of progress and population.

Still a hellll of a lot more work to be done but heres what i got so far, what do you think?









(Also the seams you can see on the wall disappear when you get close to them. I tried to fix this by setting the resolution to like 1024 but it did not work, the lightmap aligns with the grid and is of a good size, any ideas how to fix this?)

Crits please

jordan.kocon

In your texture did you paint just inside the UV shells? It sounds like a mipping issue. You need to have 'padding' in your texture. Meaning you need to paint a bit outside the UV's (about 8 pixels is what I normally do) so when the texture gets scaled down as you get further back, it doesn't display the black edges around your UV. Hopefully this makes sense.

Benjam

I did just paint the inside the of the UV shells, i will give the texture some padding and hopefully should fix it. Ill post up an update as soon as possible. Thanks for the help i had no clue what was wrong with it. :thumbup:

Dazz3r

interesting...one to watch

Benjam

UPDATE: I have had a little bit more time to work on it this evening and have made/added a couple of extra things to make it look more like a cramped warzone hospital. Still a long way to go but getting there slowly.

Also i tried Jordan.kocon's advice and padded the UV layout some more and during this i realised i had overlapped some faces on the lightmap channel. Once i corrected all of this the dark lines still remain, im not sure if it might be something to do with my texture but ive left it for the time being. I will post up some screens of the light map channel, UV channel and the texture itself asap to see if anyone has any ideas how to fix it because im stumped

Anyway here is my progress so far, (still untextured)







Crits/advice please

Michael1

look good

walkonsky

hey there,
great concept. and i like the visual style of your scene! the colors match those parts of the concept very well that are in full sunlight that is coming through the window. the shadows are much greener and more grimy, though.
the main issue i see here, however, is scale and proportion. the height of the nave seems much better now after your changes. but the aisles seem much to wide to me. you could check out this link:
http://ericaclaustro.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/trinity-church-lower-manhattan/
it has a floor plan and a side section that seems quite accurate and might be handy to check your proportions.
if i were you, i would go back and try to measure proportions between different elements from reference images and adjust your meshes accordingly. lots of the images are going to have weird angles and viewpoints due to the architecture of churches but especially for vertical structures its not going to be huge problem. this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thestevenation/2038401343/ might be very helpful to get the ratio of width and length of the nave right. just measure the central cross of beams in the ceiling...
compared to your concept, all props seemed to be too small at first. but after a second look it might also be a difference between the viewing angles and FOVs of the concept and your shots.
anyway, i am looking forward for your progess. subscribed!

Benjam

@walonsky, thanks for the feedback, the scaling issue for the nave is mainly due to the fact i could not find a floor plan anywhere so thanks for digging one out!!
The nave needs to be made much wider (which is going to be a ballache but it will pay off in the end) The reason the meshes seem small is because when i put them in to populate the scene the nave seemed to narrow so instead of tweaking the roof arch i just scaled the beds and drips etc. down to make it seem wider. I will resize them back to their original and make the nave much wider.]

The lighting in the scene is only pointlights at the minute. Do you know of any decent lighting tutorials for UDK especially for god rays??

Thanks for the help! Ill post up images as soon as i get some serious time to work on this some more

Benjam

Had a few hours to work on this today so i widened the nave, and added some wires, florescent lights, rescaled the meshes so that they are at the right scale. Still alot to do but its getting there









What do you guys think? Crits please

Benjam

I am having a little bit of trouble with my floor, i thought it would be quite cool to give it a bit of gloss and found a tutorial that used cubemaps to create a chrome material. After a little bit of tweaking i managed to make it so the shader used the cubemap reflection on top of the diffuse map, It works ok for a very subtle gloss reflection.

Has anyone got any advice or tips on how to improve my shader network to make a better reflection or make it sharper possibly, or do you think that its ok because i really need a second opinion on this.

Here is the shader network and images of the results

Benjam

Here is a bigger version of the shader network no idea why its so tiny

re.wind

the first thing i thought of was "how the hell did they put those planks up there" followed by " did they drill holes in the walls to nail/screw those planks into place?" followed by " i'd fire whoever did such a lazy job". Poof goes my suspension of disbelief.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself regarding the wooden boards over the stained windows:
Are they trying to keep something in, or out? are they trying to stop light from getting in or out of the building?

that concept art shows scaffolding which could explain how they reached the upper windows, and from what i can tell, a large bit of cloth covering a window in addition to the wooden planks.

the rest of the scene looks promising, good luck

Benjam

@re.wind Thanks for the feedback in the process of making and putting some ladders & scaffolding into the scene. I really need some feedback on the gloss floor what are your crits on it? Do you think i should keep it as it is like really subtle or get rid of it completely?

SimonT

i really like the warm lighting

Benjam

@SimonT thanks man but unfortunately the lighting consists of only 2 points lights as placeholders at the minute just to see how the lightmaps are etc.

I am going to keep the warmish look when i finally get down to lighting it properly but i am going to make it extra awesome like in the concept art
I also think the warm lighting of the scene comes from the wall colour which i personally am a fan of :P

Benjam

Hey guys long time no post,

I have had some time to work on my project although due to work progress was stinted to say the least. I have added a few new additions, textured a few things, lightmapped a couple etc.

Anyway what do you think?

Oh and sorry about the watermark its there because i had to put them on my portfolio as WIP shots

nathanbarrett

Is that the lit version?...

Sharvo

Hmmm, i know its work in progress, but the lighting is really letting this down atm, the main light source in the concept is from outside, the light shafts dont make too much sense coming from all directions in the concept, but they do add to the atmosphere of the piece and i do like them.

All of your planks on the windows are exactly the same, i would have cretaed a few seperate planks and then imported them into udk so i could rotate, flip and move them.

Textures look fairly clean as well, just a touch of dirt and grunge would help out, it would also be nice to see some highlights on the brick wall texture, it looks very flat at the moment.
The stainglass could do with some emissive to them, to look like light is coming through but i think working on the lighting would also help improve this.

I think once those canvas are textured (maybe green) you will start to get some nice contrast in there.

But keep going, look forward to the next update.

Benjam

@NathanBarat: No i havent touched upon lighting yet, i wanted to get everything in and textured before i did the lighting it is just point lit at the minute to test lightmaps, textures etc.

@Sharvo: thanks for the feedback i am going to experiment with decals and overlay them on top of the texture to give a bit of grunge i think. I was thinking that about the planks aswell, i will delete them from the original model and put them in manually in UDK i will then be able to break up the tiling effect

Ill post an update as soon as i can

Benjam

Just a quick question, does anybody have any good links to lighting tutorials especially translucent shadows, and god rays??

Benjam

I am having some issues with some of my normal maps,I have generated one in crazy bump and applied it in the UDK material editor, multiplied it by 1, 1, 0 is a constant 3 vecotr but it is darkening my texture. I have reserahced into multiplying Nmaps and i have found that you shouldnt multiply the blue value because you make it look flatter.





Could anyone help me or give advice on how to do/not to do this?? Have i done it wrong, or should i use a constant 1 vector?? Hellllp :poly119:

Cheers, guys!!

Benjam

Ive been tearing my hair out trying to fix this problem, a few sites/other forums with similar issue point me in the direction to use 0.5 0.5 1 for the multiply value, this fixes the darkening issue but makes the normal map basically non existent. Anyone got any advice on where i am going wrong?

Benjam

Hello fellow Polycounters,

Just a quick update to let you guys know that the piece is now finished and on my portfolio XD

Im so proud of it

Its job hunting time!

Let me know what you guys think

neverwander

Looking good! But for the love of you textures, tone back the God Rays! Let them see the nice window you made without feeling like someone is trying to stab them in the eye. Also, the light shafts coming in from the side don't really make much sense. 1) in that they are there, 2) their angles vary. If the light for them is supposed to be coming from the sun, they would all be on the same angle.

Other than that it looks great! Good luck!

OtrickP

Lots of potential!

Keep at er'

JoshWilkinson

Ya those god rays are way too strong. To pass on some wisdom a professor shared with me: light rays are a trick. They literally take no time to do though they create a nice effect. Lighting and texturing on the other hand require real skill. My advice is to tone down those god rays in a huge way so you can showcase your library of skills. Especially in a portfolio presentation.

Benjam

Right hello guys,

Just a quick update to say i tweaked the god rays and toned them down, unfortunately i could not get the god rays to be parallel because the only way i could get the god rays was to use spotlights. The directional light would not cast rays through the windows.

Here are the updated screens and my portfolio work.

Any crits would be appreciated so i can tweak asap:

proximity

the bright light shining and blinding from the window doesnt cast on the floor? aslo your water mark is awful automatically puts a downer on your work. this is a nice scene need to push lighting and presentation

neverwander

Looking much better! Still a few suggestions that I think would really add to the scene.

1) Get rid of the god rays from the sides. They don't really make sense and are just distracting.

2) Consider putting some particle emitters by the side windows to emulate tiny golden dust motes floating down. Have the move at the same angle the god rays currently are at. It would add some life to the scene and give the pictures some depth.

3) Keep the god rays coming down through the main window bu make them much steeper. Move the spotlight to the upper edge of the window. You may also want to think about doing a mesh with a translucent material instead to give you better control over the color, shape, and angle of the rays. There should be a number of meshes like this that come with the maps included in the UDK should you need reference.

Keep at it! Almost there and this will be a fantastic piece for your portfolio!

Perfect_Rolemodel

Wow, very impressive piece you got here. Omg how are you doing those god rays. Is it from a mesh? please explain the process. I'd like to know how they were made

Seaseme

Perfect_Rolemodel wrote: »

Wow, very impressive piece you got here. Omg how are you doing those god rays. Is it from a mesh? please explain the process. I'd like to know how they were made

It looks like he just turned them up in his directional light settings.

The scene is looking great, have you tried just turning up the overall saturation for post processing? I think you'll find that you'd be matching the concept very quickly.



And then with just a quick contrast adjustment:



I think it will look a lot better with those changes and more closely represent your concepts mood.

Um, have you tried baking with production lighting? That might help give you some more bounce light and translucent colored light from your stained glass.

Perfect_Rolemodel

If that's the case how many directional lights or spotlights did you add to this scene to make those different light shafts? and did it take very long to render because of the directional lights?

Benjam

i used one directional light for the main light coming through the right hand side windows so i could get the shadows from the wooden beams. To get the god rays i used spot lights on all the windows and clicked on render light shafts, played around with the settings a little bit till i got what i wanted

The colour bleed was totally unexpected but the light is shining through the back face of the windows (which is one plane) which is where the colour in them comes from.

Thanks for the crits, ill change the watermark....ive never liked it either, and quickly adjust the rays asap. Cheers for the crits ill post up updates asap. Its so so so nearly done!

Perfect_Rolemodel

Thanks Benjam very sweet work.

Benjam

Hey fellow polycounters,

Thanks for all the crits and tips, i took all of them on board and am proud to say its finally finished!!

I couldnt get the dust in UDK to look remotely good so i added some fog instead to give it a sense of dust/depth etc.

I couldn't get rid of the side window light rays completely because it took a lot of awesomeness away from the scene so i toned them down massively. I also made the angle of main window rays a lot steeper which makes it look a hell of a lot better.

I also changed the watermark to something much more subtle and more modern looking

Thanks for the help i couldn't have done it without ya!! Below are the final shots and the link to my portfolio in case you want to check out the texture maps, wireframes etc. is www.benhearndesigns.webs.com

nathanbarrett

Oh wow, that window is awesome!

Benjam

cheers dude!