Hey Polycount,
This is my current school project. During GDC last year I got some advice from an artist at Raven Software to practice modeling real world props, to take my camera, walk around my streets and take pictures of common pieces like a fire hydrant, dumpster etc. So I did that and wanted to take the props that I had made and put them into a scene. This is the scene I have done.
I learned a lot during this project, sped up my pipeline and modeling process and broke away from doing sci-fi all the time.
I still need to work some on this. I want to add in some of the smaller details to make it look less clean, more lived in: trash in the gutters, cracks in the road etc. I also want to model a vehicle to put on the street, I'm debating between a car or motorcycle.
Comments and critiques are appreciated.
Replies
The street lines are too thick. Take a look at your photo reference again. I don't believe street lines cross at intersections like that. Break them up in the appropriate places.
Why is the stop light facing the other direction? Check your reference again.
The 1428 Elm sign needs to have glow on it similar to your building windows. It looked odd because it's bright, but there's no glow.
Speaking of the building windows, they ALL have their lights on. Turn some of them off for a more interesting shot.
I like the rain, but the rain seems like its stronger on the left and right then in the center it just stops. Throws me off. And I think the strength of the DOF/Blur is making it more noticeable.
The street lights are fine, but might be more interesting if they were more light street lamps, smaller in size with more of an orange-ish hue. Unless you're buildings this exactly to your reference.
Finally, the stores front door. WAY too large. Shrink that thing down. Bring in a reference to help you scale it to a more realistic proportion.
It's a good start so keep going.
The lighting on the building itself looks great as well but I don't quite understand the pull down shade in the doorway, is there even a door there? I picture this place with some older double wooden doors.
The parking meter and news paper dispensers need to be casting much darker shadows, they kind of look to be not grounded at the moment.
Also...is that a light on the side of the curb or is the drain glowing red, because I'm completely down if they are mutating some turtle's down there!
There's still some work to be done on this but overall it's looking great man keep it up.
@Polytech - Thanks for the comments. I didn't even notice till you pointed it out that the newsstand looked so dark. Ill play with the lighting so that it is easier seen. I might also do a daytime version without the rain, ill see how it goes.
The overall proportions looks off the window look tiny and door frame looks massive it goes up to the where the light on the stop light starts. If you look at the reference i found the light is much higher/smaller as is the door frame. Drop a character in the scene for reference