Triton Weapons Facility XR1 - Workshop Demo
polycounter lvl 15
I am going to be teaching a art work shop at my old college, AI SD about the wonderful world of creating environments utilizing modular assets and the trim textures they are created from. Trying to dispell the illusion that most games are created of uniquely unwrapped static meshes and show the power of trim textures. It will be in UDK.
Going to be keeping it simple as I need to focus on what I can teach in the time allotted as well as actually making the scene. So instead of wasting time concepting something myself I am going to use this sweet Halo concept (cant recall who did it) and will be making just the hallway part using 2 textures. For a normal envio I would of course use more, but for the sake of time and not confusing people I will limit things.
Figured I would make a thread here so that after the workshop people can go here and checkout a more indepth look at it.
Not much to show here at the start, but any good environment starts in the blockout phase so go blockout! The concept has a forced perspective that I am not sure how to achieve in UDK, so idk if I will be able to get that exact look it has. Then again, a concept is just an idea for your environment.
And also the textures I will be using. There just AO/Normals for now in case I need to change things when building the environment and keep myself from wasting time by fully texturing them now.
Crits welcome!
Concept -
Textures -
Blockout -
Going to be keeping it simple as I need to focus on what I can teach in the time allotted as well as actually making the scene. So instead of wasting time concepting something myself I am going to use this sweet Halo concept (cant recall who did it) and will be making just the hallway part using 2 textures. For a normal envio I would of course use more, but for the sake of time and not confusing people I will limit things.
Figured I would make a thread here so that after the workshop people can go here and checkout a more indepth look at it.
Not much to show here at the start, but any good environment starts in the blockout phase so go blockout! The concept has a forced perspective that I am not sure how to achieve in UDK, so idk if I will be able to get that exact look it has. Then again, a concept is just an idea for your environment.
And also the textures I will be using. There just AO/Normals for now in case I need to change things when building the environment and keep myself from wasting time by fully texturing them now.
Crits welcome!
Concept -
Textures -
Blockout -
Replies
Had a little time to work on this today. Detailing out the blockout a little further and refining some of the proportions on things. Important to get those nailed down early so it dosnt bite you in the ass later on. Now its time to really get cracking on this guy!
@Jesse - Its going to be on Aug 25.
@Notes - It was an old teacher who asked me to do a workshop so thats pretty much why its there.
Doorway
Roof
Crappy viewport grab from Max, not how lighting will look or anything.
Not sure why the emissive lights on the right are not actually lighting anything in the scene up as they are flagged to cast light. Still just normals/AO for now, once I dial in the lighting I will move onto texturing/shaders.
Looking good so far, but there are a few issues with smoothing and normals, getting some minor banding. Also watch out for those tack on bolts laid over, they're casting minor seams around your maps.
@kaburan - thanks Will, yeah the bolts are just an error from the bake I havent cleaned up. Still have to clean up some of the banding from smoothing though.
@coots7 - here is a shot of the pixel density. It dose get a little bad on some of the trims, but its honestly not as bad as the red makes it seem ha. That is an issue you will run into when UVing like this. You wont have perfect pixel density. It is of course best to strive for taht and not have things too dense or too little, but in the end, its always how the final product looks that matters, not if everything is perfect pixel density.
really want to play around with making an environment like this but udk's material editor makes me want to punch babies at times!
Digging the blue/gray color scheme (Personal Fav) but I feel the lighting is holding it back a bit. You should try experimenting with some orange light sources to contrast against your blue panels and as always, it's just too damn clean for my liking
Have you tried using channel textures to cram some masks into your materials to allow you to have multiple variations of some of your more basic trim, lights, and panels? Granted I know you want to keep it simple for the workshop/learning/time reasons (and it could easily run off into a udk materials workshop, but I suppose another time) but it could bring that added flair you're looking for.
Also right now I dont feel I am hurting for any other variation with the two textures I am using. But this is also a small space so if it was expanded I would use some masks, or more likely another texture. Depends on what the situation would call for.
As for the lights I plan to keep them the more clean white look as the concept. This is because it is a clean sci fi interior and the white lights help give that message/mood off. I played around with some orange because of the blue but it felt out of place for this corridor. Why would they use orange lights as there main light sources? They wouldn't. Might play with it again a little, but wasnt sold on them at the time. Thanks for the feedback though
Update Time - Finished the back door, extended the hallway to go behind the door.
EDIT: Well beyond bounce lighting which I know how to do, but actual radiosity of the shaders? I have no idea how to do that, and I was under the impression that was a new Unreal 4 thing, not something in the current UDK. So getting the blue to bounce onto the surrounding area would be impossible in UDK as it stands now, unless there is a way to do so?
You can exaggerate the light bounce effect by raising DiffuseBoost. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html
As far as what Zac said, diffuseBoost is only half of the story. You also need to bump up your indirectLightingScale property on your dominant light and then you should notice that your bounce lights will begin to fill in the scene with colors they pick up from the boosted diffuse textures. It works perfectly well in UDK 3 July 2012 Beta. Play around with the values a bit and you should get the results you're looking for.
As for cutting all the blue, I do appreciate the feedback and get where your coming from, but I am going to have to disagree with those suggestions. The concept of course makes the door the focal point of the scene by limiting it to being the only color but that is exactly what I DONT want.
For the workshop I was trying to help students also think about there environments as a whole and not just one static focal point shot. I also wanted to go over tieing in elements throughout assets in terms of shapes as well as color to create a more cohesive world. The addition of the blue on the floors/walls and roof help tie them into the doorway, which dose not, and should not be the focal point of the environment, as it is not some massively important door.
It is just a junction in a hallway, that while being prodomently blue, helps it break off and stand out from the other assets that are prodomently grey. This helps separate the door from the rest of the environment enough to show that this is a doorway that you will go through, but not different enough that it needs to stand out or feel disconnected from the rest of the level.
The blue on the walls/roof and floor also helps guide the player through the environment as I kept most of the blue on these assets limited to a horizontal flow. I did nix it in a few areas on the right that clearly didn't fit, but for the purpose I was trying to achieve the rest worked as I wanted it too. Again its all about tieing all the elements of the environment together in a cohesive and artistically pleasing manner all the while helping lead the player through your game space.
Also, as for a focal point, you want that to be the character/story you give to your scene, not just some random, unimportant door. You want to draw the player in with the interesting story you create to make your environment feel lived in. For the demo I was showing off the basics so I didnt include really any story elements. But again, this demo was to showcase how to build and environment with tiling/trim textures, and not just show a super awesome scene that can be built and bog students down with too much information.
To really make this scene pop I let the students know this was only the first step, adding in that character and story is what will really help there environment stand out from the pack. But again, wanted to keep it simple for the demo for them to get the basics.
I love the final image, some color bouncing would be nice though, do you have any screen shots of the lighting errors?
Shame the radiosity wouldn't work the way you had hoped; post the errors or shoot me the files and I'll take a look and see if I can figure out the issue.
How'd the workshop go? Did everyone manage to take in all the info without their heads exploding :poly142: