Not to be stupid but is this a simple case of just hand painting your textures on one giant unique sheet or are you painting it in Mari and simply baking it down to a general unwrap?
thats pretty awesome actually. i wonder if this would be more performance heavy. i mean it probably would since textures are a huge performance hit
If you were using some technique to determine what was in shadow/light then that is the biggest cost (ie, doing the cascade shadow mapping or stencil shadows or whatever technique you use)
From that point it's just doing two passes and blending based on the mask.
Two textures is worse than one but afaik you'd do two passes for any given pixel any way because of the masking, so it's just the extra texture memory space I *think*
Doom3 and others cut up their megatextures using clever systems... I can't see why it couldn't be made to run fast for your needs.
A great technique though, it looks amazing. I really like these styles of artwork for games, they have a lot of warmth and character!
Probably a good idea to sketch it out in more detail first so you get enough polygons where they are needed though.
Ie, that little stone wall on the outside of the bend looks great from one angle but is clearly flat and looks like it's half fallen over from the other.
Hey Guys, I haven't abandoned this project, on the contrary, I made the decision to make a little point and click/adventure like game with this as a portfolio project. I joined up with a character artist, designer and programmer and we are working hard on getting an idea of the ground.
In the meantime I have put the village on the backburner and focussed myself on interiors to see how those would work and dug up an old unity test I did once which you can look at here(click on the image):
(move the cube with the arrow keys)
Next to that I've been doing some sketchwork for the game project:
and a paintover on top of that sketch (not 3d yet but it won't look much different)
Man, this looks absolutely awesome. I actually tried your technique and I'm simply to bad at painting ( or maybe I was expecting some kind of magic? ). I was expecting it to be but an image with some tacked on collision, but oh oy was I surpriced! This looks awesome and when I tried collision with the chair and the cube went behind the chair. It felt really good and I couldn't help but smile. ^^ Looking forward to more on this!
The environment is a bit meh, but you aced the character!
But seriously, this looks awesome, really like your painting style too which helps a lot to make this work.
This was probably just a rough test, but when I force the cube to go in between the chair and the couch the couch has a bit of the carpet on its model. only a small issue, but it does break the illusion a bit.
Looking forward to see what you'll do with this, looking great so far!
Thanks everyone=)! Makes me even more excited for this project.
Fwap, Ha! feels like a long time ago, and I guess it kinda is. Cool to see other people from there, brings back memories.
Hayden Zammit, No actually it will look good from any direction, ofcourse some directions have a little better composition but in the end most of the angles will have the same kind of painterly feel. It's just that that little room test wasn't to prove it would work from multiple angles but just to get a general impression of how it would look to move through a painted environment. You can see me rotating around another environment on the previous page.
Jeff Parrott, Not sure if it will be in unity yet:P
MeintevdS, Yes I noticed as well recently, and yes it was a rough test but it shows that we'll have to avoid those kinds of accidents in order to sustain the illusion.
Shiv, Actually my brushes are just the default hard brush and soft brushes that come with photoshop and that have a little flattened shape instead of the default circle you see in your brush palette (you can squash the circle)
urgaffel, So would I:P it's just that it takes quite a bit of time and I only really have time over the weekends and with the recent idea for the game some other things like design got a bit more attention but I hope to update more often=)
this looks really beautiful. I do have one piece of critique, though you may already be thinking about this. The environment is to static. It would be really nice to see the fire light flickering and the clock in the corner moving back and forth (or dust particles in the window light shafts).
Have you thought about painting out the fire light and adding it in as an overlay which you can then create a shader to make it flicker in strength? similarly with the clock in the background. Remove the shadow on the wall and replace it with an alpha'd plane which you can than create a small animation for to get the back and forth swing of the pendulum.
I really think these things would help bring it to life. keep up the awesome work, I look forward to seeing more. =D
Waw, this was already amazing but seeing it move in the vid just blew my mind!
awesome work and really inspiring!
defenetly gonna try this out myself sometime in the near future!
This is awesome! How do you like hand painting in mudbox? So far during my attempts have felt odd as the painting seems very hard for low res geometry as oppose to higher. It feels very surface based instead of texture based when hand painting. Projection system works great though!
Last time I told you that we were going to make this into a little game project, by now we got out design and story fleshed out and the programmer started working on some code as well.
In the meantime I've been doing a lot of sketches and also started fiddling around with a blockout for the main area in the game. We are hoping to have a couple of uniquely styles areas (cave/interiors/exteriors) that all connect to this. I won't spoil anything more in terms of design though:P.
When I get this blockout cleaned and mapped I'll start the painting process that I will also record so you guys can look at my workflow.
Enough talk, the images:
What you're seeing are screengrabs from maya with a baked 2k lightmap as placeholder for now.
*the room on the previous page is actually located in the little tower you see in this blockout but there will be something telescopy soon although we won't go for the huge telescope in the painting.
We will also be sharing some character art in the near future
This is so lovely! I hope this game goes far! Do you plan on having much camera movement? The demo you posted earlier was limited in this effect and I don't think it shows off the full possibilities of this sweet workflow you have going.
edit: ignore that I didn't read the thread proper! cool!
I'm really looking forward to seeing your workflow in action as I've tried it myself but simply lacked the painting skills to see it through. Keep up the good work, the scene is looking super nice!
Beautiful blockout. I'd love to see some breakdowns on how this is put together, it looks so simple but for a modeling noob like me I wouldn't know where to start...
Beautiful blockout. I'd love to see some breakdowns on how this is put together, it looks so simple but for a modeling noob like me I wouldn't know where to start...
Breakdowns.. well you see them right there, not sure what more I can give you.
When I start something like this I'll usually ponder around in my head if I'm getting images of what I want it to be with the information I have (something like "Inn in the forest") These images usually show themselves when I'm about to sleep only to forget what I had the next morning xD.
So it usually comes down to some brainstorming on paper because then you can analyze the stuff you've drawn and observe if you think it's going the right or wrong direction.
For this piece I actually did one little sketch of the main building from a side view and I kinda liked it so I started with a cube and made the little house in 3D. After that it was just expanding from the building and constantly moving around in 3D space, having sessions with the other team-members to get feedback and constantly pushing verts until you are satisfied with it from every corner. Doing it in 3d takes a little longer that sketching but you won't have to deal with getting the perspective right and you won't be able to "cheat" because sometimes things in 2D don't work that well in 3D.
Anyway that stage is probably 70% of the time flying around you scene and finding interesting angles, looking up reference pictures to see how things could work, throwing away whole chunks that just didn't go anywhere and about 10% actual modeling. (If I would have known it would look like from the beginning this I would have been able to make it in a couple of hours, because as you said yourself, the geometry looks very simple).
In the process the scene was actually twice (if not more) as big and halfway we decided to throw away one half, not only because it just didn't feel right but also because we wanted to keep the scale small, when you are on your own it may be hard to look at a piece after 10 hours and then decide to undo all that work, so that's where getting feedback is really important.
I probably wouldn't help you with a technical breakdown of "oh look the water is made out of one plane" and: "I made a huge ass Ngon here", in the end the modelling is as dirty as it can get but the shapes and their location is what matters and getting there is something I'm not sure how to explain, everyone has their own opinion of pretty and you'll just have to chace your own in order to make something cool.
Looking at the level of your models I'm super sure you could model something like this. In the end it's just extrude, move and merge
Replies
Can't wait to see this work finished
Hehe I hope you don't spend more time here replying to comments than making good art
If you were using some technique to determine what was in shadow/light then that is the biggest cost (ie, doing the cascade shadow mapping or stencil shadows or whatever technique you use)
From that point it's just doing two passes and blending based on the mask.
Two textures is worse than one but afaik you'd do two passes for any given pixel any way because of the masking, so it's just the extra texture memory space I *think*
Doom3 and others cut up their megatextures using clever systems... I can't see why it couldn't be made to run fast for your needs.
A great technique though, it looks amazing. I really like these styles of artwork for games, they have a lot of warmth and character!
Probably a good idea to sketch it out in more detail first so you get enough polygons where they are needed though.
Ie, that little stone wall on the outside of the bend looks great from one angle but is clearly flat and looks like it's half fallen over from the other.
In the meantime I have put the village on the backburner and focussed myself on interiors to see how those would work and dug up an old unity test I did once which you can look at here(click on the image):
(move the cube with the arrow keys)
Next to that I've been doing some sketchwork for the game project:
and a paintover on top of that sketch (not 3d yet but it won't look much different)
Will keep you all updated on the project
But seriously, this looks awesome, really like your painting style too which helps a lot to make this work.
This was probably just a rough test, but when I force the cube to go in between the chair and the couch the couch has a bit of the carpet on its model. only a small issue, but it does break the illusion a bit.
Looking forward to see what you'll do with this, looking great so far!
Really really nice stuff dude
May i ask what kind of brushes/painting techniques you use, i love the square shapes and rough edges your paintings have in them.
Fwap, Ha! feels like a long time ago, and I guess it kinda is. Cool to see other people from there, brings back memories.
Hayden Zammit, No actually it will look good from any direction, ofcourse some directions have a little better composition but in the end most of the angles will have the same kind of painterly feel. It's just that that little room test wasn't to prove it would work from multiple angles but just to get a general impression of how it would look to move through a painted environment. You can see me rotating around another environment on the previous page.
Jeff Parrott, Not sure if it will be in unity yet:P
MeintevdS, Yes I noticed as well recently, and yes it was a rough test but it shows that we'll have to avoid those kinds of accidents in order to sustain the illusion.
Shiv, Actually my brushes are just the default hard brush and soft brushes that come with photoshop and that have a little flattened shape instead of the default circle you see in your brush palette (you can squash the circle)
urgaffel, So would I:P it's just that it takes quite a bit of time and I only really have time over the weekends and with the recent idea for the game some other things like design got a bit more attention but I hope to update more often=)
Have you thought about painting out the fire light and adding it in as an overlay which you can then create a shader to make it flicker in strength? similarly with the clock in the background. Remove the shadow on the wall and replace it with an alpha'd plane which you can than create a small animation for to get the back and forth swing of the pendulum.
I really think these things would help bring it to life. keep up the awesome work, I look forward to seeing more. =D
awesome work and really inspiring!
defenetly gonna try this out myself sometime in the near future!
Thanks for showing the work!
I really can't wait to see more!
Lovely stuff as usual, your work makes me swoon with hand painted delight.
Last time I told you that we were going to make this into a little game project, by now we got out design and story fleshed out and the programmer started working on some code as well.
In the meantime I've been doing a lot of sketches and also started fiddling around with a blockout for the main area in the game. We are hoping to have a couple of uniquely styles areas (cave/interiors/exteriors) that all connect to this. I won't spoil anything more in terms of design though:P.
When I get this blockout cleaned and mapped I'll start the painting process that I will also record so you guys can look at my workflow.
Enough talk, the images:
What you're seeing are screengrabs from maya with a baked 2k lightmap as placeholder for now.
*the room on the previous page is actually located in the little tower you see in this blockout but there will be something telescopy soon although we won't go for the huge telescope in the painting.
We will also be sharing some character art in the near future
edit: ignore that I didn't read the thread proper! cool!
I'm really looking forward to seeing your workflow in action as I've tried it myself but simply lacked the painting skills to see it through. Keep up the good work, the scene is looking super nice!
Already thanks for taking the time to record the painting process, I am looking forward to it ^^
subscribed!
Breakdowns.. well you see them right there, not sure what more I can give you.
When I start something like this I'll usually ponder around in my head if I'm getting images of what I want it to be with the information I have (something like "Inn in the forest") These images usually show themselves when I'm about to sleep only to forget what I had the next morning xD.
So it usually comes down to some brainstorming on paper because then you can analyze the stuff you've drawn and observe if you think it's going the right or wrong direction.
For this piece I actually did one little sketch of the main building from a side view and I kinda liked it so I started with a cube and made the little house in 3D. After that it was just expanding from the building and constantly moving around in 3D space, having sessions with the other team-members to get feedback and constantly pushing verts until you are satisfied with it from every corner. Doing it in 3d takes a little longer that sketching but you won't have to deal with getting the perspective right and you won't be able to "cheat" because sometimes things in 2D don't work that well in 3D.
Anyway that stage is probably 70% of the time flying around you scene and finding interesting angles, looking up reference pictures to see how things could work, throwing away whole chunks that just didn't go anywhere and about 10% actual modeling. (If I would have known it would look like from the beginning this I would have been able to make it in a couple of hours, because as you said yourself, the geometry looks very simple).
In the process the scene was actually twice (if not more) as big and halfway we decided to throw away one half, not only because it just didn't feel right but also because we wanted to keep the scale small, when you are on your own it may be hard to look at a piece after 10 hours and then decide to undo all that work, so that's where getting feedback is really important.
I probably wouldn't help you with a technical breakdown of "oh look the water is made out of one plane" and: "I made a huge ass Ngon here", in the end the modelling is as dirty as it can get but the shapes and their location is what matters and getting there is something I'm not sure how to explain, everyone has their own opinion of pretty and you'll just have to chace your own in order to make something cool.
Looking at the level of your models I'm super sure you could model something like this. In the end it's just extrude, move and merge