Everything's looking pretty sweet. I'm excited to see an update!
One thought on your wood texture. You have pretty damaged boards. The Edges of a lot of them have some pretty big damage (dents/cuts) But one thing I think would help make it look better is to have the damage carryover to the next board here and there. The way it looks now is like each board was already that damaged before the wall was put together, so each board is randomly damaged. But more likely would be that the boards were in decent if not a little crudely cut condition when the wall was built. And have sustained damage over time, but that would mean some cuts dents and damage would carry across multiple edges and from one board to the next here and there.
Brygelsmack, I didn't know about Sean Marino's tutorial. Thanks for the tip! I'll look into his tutorials. I'll try to make an image tutorial on how I did my own tiling soon.
Romy, thanks! I didn't notice that green/red plank in my wood texture before you pointed it out, I'll have to fix that color variation. Regarding the gaps in the stonework, I'm thinking that I'll have to either make the gaps smaller and close the distance between the bricks, or create a new background behind the bricks. Because now I'm hiding the bad pebble-work in the background with a lot of AO, and you are right... it looks strange!
I looked at your textures a lot while learning Zbrush, so It's really nice getting your opinion regarding my work. Thanks again!
oh, I would love copper or silver instead of gold, but thats your choice, looks a bit noisy to me compared to your rock textures. Still, really cool update.
i'd definitely go with silver instead of gold for the main armor, but the embossed designs would work as gold still though. The full gold armor just looks a bit flat when used all over. With the silver you coul give it some weathered effects and really add some dynamic colour changes for a much more appealing look imo.
Something similar to the ironman mark 2 silver, but obviously damage, and more baked unless you want to use a reflection shader.
Aw man, you're right, it looks like gold... My initial idea was a bronze armor, so here's an update. I would really want to be able to use a cubemap reflection pass in Marmoset, but I guess I'll have to try that later in UDK.
The only thing I'm not to fond of is the bronze metal, I really love the
look and definition of the steel sword, but I think the armor looks a tad bit to busy texture wise.
At the end of the day I guess it's much rather a decision concerning art direction rather than a technical complaint, It still is some high quality work!
awesome shit dude!
and man, king of the chair! xD
some nice waves in those coins on page 1,
the dead knight is awesome too, only the sword is looking a bit flat,
i'm guessing its due to the bright edges, you should put more of a gradient in there,
btw, I'm fine with the busy curves going on on the armor,
if anything its maybe taking the eye a bit away from the skull, but thats very minimal
I worked more on the bronze armor and it feels better now, but now there's very little contrast between the throne and the armor... Anyhow, here's an update. Better resolution on the throne, and more spitshine on the skeleton armor and sword. I've started import stuff into UDK and fixing reflection maps, but for now, here's a Marmoset render.
Really solid work. Below are a few suggestions mainly directed at the coins:
- The addition of some geometry coins placed above the sea of coins in areas of main interest such as around and against the throne would help reduce the flat look that's happening at the moment.
- The normal map for the coins is not very apparent in these recent images.
- The last crit would be regarding the scale of the coins, they seem about 25% too large in relation to the skeletons. More variety in the coin sizes would have been good too at the moment they all appear to be a very similar size.
Yeah maybe increase the tiling of the coin-texture a little bit. You can also afford to put more polys into that coinstack, mainly so you don't get those really harsh lines. You can also use smaller props to make sure you get some more interesting detail in there. Maybe some weapons lying around, a shield, spear, or other smaller treasures like chests, gem-stones, silver decoration stuff.
Great progress on this! The various props are coming together - can't wait for the flags and chests.
I agree with the others regarding the coins. I think creating a suitable specular map will help to add that extra sparkle to individual coins, drawing the eye around the image.
Care to explain how you did the elaborate lattice on the throne?
nathdevlin, chrisradsby, nice feedback, thanks! I'll try to beef up the geometry close to the throne, and soften those hills and valleys. I have plans on adding different types of treasures in the pile of gold, like chests with gems, golden statuettes and the like.
whw, by lattice, do you mean the celtic patterns/knots? I mostly sculpted them directly in Zbrush using reference images I found with google. Some was made them into alpha images so I could use them repeatedly. Each piece of wood had it's own piece of basemesh so I had room to work with it.
Is this a undead or a dead king ? At the moment the armor looks like being hold by the skeleton, but it would be the other way around. All muscles and sinews are gone and the skeleton is partly hold in place by the armor, which is hold in place by the throne. I would hint the collaps of the underlying skeleton more.
Brygelsmack, I didn't know about Sean Marino's tutorial. Thanks for the tip! I'll look into his tutorials. I'll try to make an image tutorial on how I did my own tiling soon.
I have since then figured out a workflow I like, but would still like to see yours if you're still up for it at some point. Always good to see how other artists work, you know.
Ashaman73, I wanted the skeleton to have mass, without muscles and only bone... Skeleton warriors tend to look so fragile otherwise. I guess wristbones-to-gloves-and-cloth make it weird. I guess it's a choice in concept.
Brygelsmack, great! I made a quick tutorial on my workflow, just for you!
Here's the current look from Marmoset of the dungeon.
This is what I'm working on now, the treasure chest and various golden and gem loot that will reside in the hoard.
Here's the new color variation of the skeleton.
And finally, here's the workflow I used when creating tileable textures.
I'm finally back from a week off this project, here's a small update of some new loot.
The finished treasure chest model.
A golden urn, rendered in marmoset.
I've started polypainting the base values and colors in Zbrush on the models, it's a really nice feature! Here's a highpoly of a silver drinking horn polypainted in Zbrush.
And here's the finished model in marmoset.
I just finished polypainting this silver goblet, and that's all for this update.
Great work, and thanks for the mini-tut. It's pretty much how I do it, except I don't have a render camera like that and a plane the size of the grid. Instead I just use a 2x2 meter plane and then render out the maps in Xnormal. Oh well, thanks for taking the time!
I've piled some treasure with the golden coins and added colorful gems. I've also tried importing all the assets into UDK, but It somehow turns out blurry. I'm not using any mipmaps for the diffuse textures, and have "-maxqualitymode" set on the shortcut to the UDK editor, but it still doesn't feel right.
Here's a comparison of the marmoset and the UDK scene.
I see what you mean about UDK. Honestly I find the lighting and rendering system a bit inferior, as it has a tendency to wash the scene out when baked. It can take alot of trial and error to get things looking proper.
With that said here are some solutions for you..
- make sure your normals are aligned right. If going from marmoset to UDK, you will need to invert the green channel of the normal map. It looks like that is causing problems in your scene right now.
-try to push the normals even more within UDK by creating a constant 3 vector multiplied with your normal. Put the values of that constant at 1.2, 1.2, .7. That should help them pop more.
- make sure your gold material stuff has a brownish diffuse with a brighter yellow spec. Gold is actually more 'orange' in nature and only pops a yellow shine when light hits.
- your lighting is going to need more work. The lights from the fire look way to expanded. Try decreasing there radius, increasing falloff , and increasing brightness.
- environment color under world properties plays a important role in creating proper contrast. It's dark by default but play with it if possible. Also have global illumination and AO turned on.
- and just incase you don't, everything needs a light map.
- you also could have benefited from getting height map bakes for bump offset or tesselation features.
Replies
One thought on your wood texture. You have pretty damaged boards. The Edges of a lot of them have some pretty big damage (dents/cuts) But one thing I think would help make it look better is to have the damage carryover to the next board here and there. The way it looks now is like each board was already that damaged before the wall was put together, so each board is randomly damaged. But more likely would be that the boards were in decent if not a little crudely cut condition when the wall was built. And have sustained damage over time, but that would mean some cuts dents and damage would carry across multiple edges and from one board to the next here and there.
Just a thought. Looks good tho!
Keep it up.
Romy, thanks! I didn't notice that green/red plank in my wood texture before you pointed it out, I'll have to fix that color variation. Regarding the gaps in the stonework, I'm thinking that I'll have to either make the gaps smaller and close the distance between the bricks, or create a new background behind the bricks. Because now I'm hiding the bad pebble-work in the background with a lot of AO, and you are right... it looks strange!
I looked at your textures a lot while learning Zbrush, so It's really nice getting your opinion regarding my work. Thanks again!
Owl, good point! I'll try to remember that
And here is the finished model and textures.
Something similar to the ironman mark 2 silver, but obviously damage, and more baked unless you want to use a reflection shader.
The only thing I'm not to fond of is the bronze metal, I really love the
look and definition of the steel sword, but I think the armor looks a tad bit to busy texture wise.
At the end of the day I guess it's much rather a decision concerning art direction rather than a technical complaint, It still is some high quality work!
Can't wait to see more!
and man, king of the chair! xD
some nice waves in those coins on page 1,
the dead knight is awesome too, only the sword is looking a bit flat,
i'm guessing its due to the bright edges, you should put more of a gradient in there,
btw, I'm fine with the busy curves going on on the armor,
if anything its maybe taking the eye a bit away from the skull, but thats very minimal
I worked more on the bronze armor and it feels better now, but now there's very little contrast between the throne and the armor... Anyhow, here's an update. Better resolution on the throne, and more spitshine on the skeleton armor and sword. I've started import stuff into UDK and fixing reflection maps, but for now, here's a Marmoset render.
- The addition of some geometry coins placed above the sea of coins in areas of main interest such as around and against the throne would help reduce the flat look that's happening at the moment.
- The normal map for the coins is not very apparent in these recent images.
- The last crit would be regarding the scale of the coins, they seem about 25% too large in relation to the skeletons. More variety in the coin sizes would have been good too at the moment they all appear to be a very similar size.
But yeah
I agree with the others regarding the coins. I think creating a suitable specular map will help to add that extra sparkle to individual coins, drawing the eye around the image.
Care to explain how you did the elaborate lattice on the throne?
whw, by lattice, do you mean the celtic patterns/knots? I mostly sculpted them directly in Zbrush using reference images I found with google. Some was made them into alpha images so I could use them repeatedly. Each piece of wood had it's own piece of basemesh so I had room to work with it.
Is this a undead or a dead king ? At the moment the armor looks like being hold by the skeleton, but it would be the other way around. All muscles and sinews are gone and the skeleton is partly hold in place by the armor, which is hold in place by the throne. I would hint the collaps of the underlying skeleton more.
Some really nice stuff in here, btw!
Brygelsmack, great! I made a quick tutorial on my workflow, just for you!
Here's the current look from Marmoset of the dungeon.
This is what I'm working on now, the treasure chest and various golden and gem loot that will reside in the hoard.
Here's the new color variation of the skeleton.
And finally, here's the workflow I used when creating tileable textures.
The finished treasure chest model.
A golden urn, rendered in marmoset.
I've started polypainting the base values and colors in Zbrush on the models, it's a really nice feature! Here's a highpoly of a silver drinking horn polypainted in Zbrush.
And here's the finished model in marmoset.
I just finished polypainting this silver goblet, and that's all for this update.
I've piled some treasure with the golden coins and added colorful gems. I've also tried importing all the assets into UDK, but It somehow turns out blurry. I'm not using any mipmaps for the diffuse textures, and have "-maxqualitymode" set on the shortcut to the UDK editor, but it still doesn't feel right.
Here's a comparison of the marmoset and the UDK scene.
With that said here are some solutions for you..
- make sure your normals are aligned right. If going from marmoset to UDK, you will need to invert the green channel of the normal map. It looks like that is causing problems in your scene right now.
-try to push the normals even more within UDK by creating a constant 3 vector multiplied with your normal. Put the values of that constant at 1.2, 1.2, .7. That should help them pop more.
- make sure your gold material stuff has a brownish diffuse with a brighter yellow spec. Gold is actually more 'orange' in nature and only pops a yellow shine when light hits.
- your lighting is going to need more work. The lights from the fire look way to expanded. Try decreasing there radius, increasing falloff , and increasing brightness.
- environment color under world properties plays a important role in creating proper contrast. It's dark by default but play with it if possible. Also have global illumination and AO turned on.
- and just incase you don't, everything needs a light map.
- you also could have benefited from getting height map bakes for bump offset or tesselation features.
Cheers!
The back wall is a bit lacking, some banners, some pillars, a window, something... seems to be in order to really tie the scene together.
Mark Dygert, I'm glad you find the mini-tutorials interesting! As for the background, I have some stuff planned. (stone alcove, some tapestry etc.)