wood is looking good. The edges look a little soft to me but that could just be max
Thanks and as for the softness its probably due to the lighting conditions and the fact that I haven't made a spec map for the wood yet.
I've finished wrapping the wood frame around the mesh and stitched all the geometry together. Geometry will be deformed later on.
I'm currently struggling with the ploycount limit since I really wanna add some vegetation and decals to the house.
At the moment I'm at 2983 triangles. I'll see if I can optimize the mesh a little more.
I'm not sure how risky it would be to use an extra 200 tris over the budget.
I'm currently struggling with the ploycount limit since I really wanna add some vegetation and decals to the house.
At the moment I'm at 2983 triangles. I'll see if I can optimize the mesh a little more.
I'm not sure how risky it would be to use an extra 200 tris over the budget.
Poly count limits in a studio situation can have wiggle room but I wouldn't go over budget on an art test.
Show wires, and we'll help you optimize. Your stuff is looking promising. I can honestly see you becoming the intern who wins this. Just put more effort into it!
Some more slight variation in the beams perhaps. Color and scaling wise. Let one of the three support beams on the side stick out a little more, or a little less? I think the top right area still looks like it was made out of one part. But I really like your work overall, good luck
It's looking great Amir! In regards to the limit I would try not to break it. They give you a limit for a reason and that's to see how well you can produce art within set constraints. 200 tris doesn't seem a lot but when the model is instanced multiple times then those extra triangles really start adding up.
I've uploaded the mesh to p3d so that you can check out the model.
You can set to flat shading and wireframe. Normals look kinda weird in the browser but thats probably because they use a different tangent basis.
I'm gonna try to cut some edges and squeeze out some triangles to stay under the budget.
As for the texture used for the beams its not final, same goes for shapes.
(click on the image to view in 3d) Amir's house (View in 3D)
Something I really think you should try to get in is some uneven angels and shapes on your beams, and the rest of your house. You said something about deforming it afterwards, maybe that's what you meant?
Something I really think you should try to get in is some uneven angels and shapes on your beams, and the rest of your house. You said something about deforming it afterwards, maybe that's what you meant?
The chimney: instead of 6 strips holding the "lid" in place, use 3. Maybe one less segment on the chimney body.
Wooden details: have fewer than 6 small bars on the short side of the house.
Roof: you probably don't need to have the extra vertex at the center of the wooden beams poking up through the roof. You probably will never see the roof close enough for it to make much difference.
Base: the base has a lot of extra polys that you can probably start optimizing once you have a texture on there and added some variation here and there. If you can add chips and things in places that'd be good
General: everything being one mesh makes sense but it's incredibly costly since you're using a lot of polygons to make it happen. You could probably pick and choose where you want to make it one piece for vertex painting purposes but maybe not all over? The roof for example, the four wooden stakes doesn't necessarily need vertex painting around them.
And instead of using vertex paint, you could use small decals (which would also give you more artistic control). If you look at the Guild Wars 2 environment art dump, there are a lof of consturcion shots that show how they used planes with diffuse, normal and opacity maps to create intricate detail on the cheap.
Thanks alot urgaffel, I managed to get it down to 2755 triangles. Hopefully that should be enough for the vegetation and decals
I'm gonna try to rely a little more on textures, I still have a lot of space left.
I also did a quick test to see how the house would look like with some deformations.
Makes things more interesting silhouette wise.
Awesome work man! I always love seeing your work. I gotta ask though, you seem to use a lot of unique texture space (like on the wood) that could be better utilized with stacked UVs IMO. How are you going to fit all these textures into the 2048x1024 total texture space limit? I'm assuming that limit is including ALL the maps, not just 2048x1024 for the diffuse, then 2048x1024 for the specular, etc. Right now everything seems a little heavy on the resources side. But still, gorgeous work as always and thanks for sharing your process!
Awesome work man! I always love seeing your work. I gotta ask though, you seem to use a lot of unique texture space (like on the wood) that could be better utilized with stacked UVs IMO. How are you going to fit all these textures into the 2048x1024 total texture space limit? I'm assuming that limit is including ALL the maps, not just 2048x1024 for the diffuse, then 2048x1024 for the specular, etc. Right now everything seems a little heavy on the resources side. But still, gorgeous work as always and thanks for sharing your process!
Apparently its going to be 2048x1024 for each type of texture (diffuse, normals, spec) but it would be great to get an official statement to clear out the confusion
The structure should be less than 3000 polys and use the maximum equivalent of two 1024
I also thought storing maps in other channels would technically be over the max tech limits, but the more I think about it it's almost necessary and is more of an efficient way of going about it than breaking the rules... I'm probably thinking too hard about it.
I'm testing out the vertex colors pass which is multiplied by the diffuse texture.
Vertex color RGB is used to shade and add color variation to the textures while the alpha channel can be use to blend in another texture such as moss or dirt for example.
I'm going to be using the custom cgfx shader me and drew++ made to visualize the vertex alpha blended materials.
(http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105291)
I haven't applied any spec maps to the materials, since this is just for testing purpose.
Some textures need to be tweaked (contrast, hue and brightness).
Unlit (diffuse only) :
Couple of things; the bright tiles stand out quite a lot in the unlit/unlit + vc shots. It's not so bad in the lit version but it's still there.
The shadow on the door texture could be handled by vertex colours instead since you've got the geo for it. As it is now it's a bit of doubling up going on, making it a bit dark.
You have a curved roof with square tiles, if you can find the polys somewhere to break up the lines that could look good. Could be done with alpha planes maybe? Although you'd lose the thickness... Granted, that's what the concept looks like so I guess it's a question of how close you want to follow it. Anyway, the underside of the roof looks good.
Thanks for the feedback urgaffel, the shadowing definitely needs to be toned down for sure.
I'm planning to remake the roof and brick wall textures. Gonna spend more time on those and try to get closer to what I originally wanted them to look like.
The old brick wall texture didn't fit that well with the house. I think its more suited for a castle or a fortress.
Started putting together the new brickwall texture in maya.
That wall texture turned out really well, but at first glance I thought it appeared a bit too clean and uniform. Maybe push the contrast of the values between some of the rocks and add some subtle dirt around edges and cracks to show some age. Could just be personal preference though
That wall texture turned out really well, but at first glance I thought it appeared a bit too clean and uniform. Maybe push the contrast of the values between some of the rocks and add some subtle dirt around edges and cracks to show some age. Could just be personal preference though
Keep it up!
Thanks for pointing that out
I added a dirt pass and increased the contrast a bit :
Thanks man, well not having an art degree and no priory experience in the industry makes things slightly difficult to get a job
Maybe when I get a few scenes done in different artistic styles will increase my chances for getting hired somewhere in the future.
I'm gonna keep on working and improving my skills set in the areas where I'm not 100% confident. I don't want to find myself at work trying to figure out how to create a specific asset which I've never created before haha
@Orangeknight : I used the hardware renderer to extract the material color through an orthographic camera.
Using the hardware renderer is a fast method which usually takes only a few seconds to render such a texture.
Also did another one which was used to mask out the moss for making things easier when working in photoshop.
...not having an art degree and no prior experience in the industry makes things slightly difficult to get a job
Maybe when I get a few scenes done in different artistic styles will increase my chances for getting hired somewhere in the future.
I'm gonna keep on working and improving my skills set in the areas where I'm not 100% confident.
You are definitely ready to work in the industry. You might get hired as a junior to begin with but that's only because you don't have any actual industry experience (I'm assuming ), not because your skills aren't up to the task. You should be an experienced artist within a year at most at any decent company. Hell, you're in a better position than most people I know who got into the industry around the time I did (which is a while ago now lol ).
Sexy wall texture and it's good you're redoing the tiles, they don't fit with the style of the wall Still think you could break up the silhouette of the roof a bit but it's probably better to do that once you've settled on a look for the roof texture.
Also
I don't want to find myself at work trying to figure out how to create a specific asset which I've never created before haha.
You will never be in a position where you know how to create every single asset that you might be asked to make so don't wait too long. If you're stuck, that's what co-workers/Leads/Art Directors/the internet are for. Besides, that's how you learn :poly142:
But yeah, I know it's fucking hard to get your self visible to recruiters and whatnot cause of lacking experience. I guess it comes down to timing. I think the best chance to get a position is to manage to apply to a company that is just ramping up for a production. That's when they need "producing" artist more then senior/lead guys. Though a senior can be used to much more then what us juniors can.
A bit OT, but that's how we like it?
Just want to say that if you land a job at a studio were you know how to do all things, you'll get kinda bored. Or I would. I had no fucking idea how to tackle the things I'm working on right now. It's just a matter of speaking to the talents around you and do a lot of thinking. That's what I love the most with this job, having to do problem solving on this level..
I say apply for Crytek, if you would be willing to move. Talk to the guys here at PC.
great modeling and textures dude it looks great. hope you get the internship that would be great for experience and should get you a job a bit more easy with your skills
Just apply http://www.crytek.com/career/offers/overview/nottingham/art-animation/art-3denvironment You've done massive terrains in Cryengine that I haven't seen anyone else pull off. They look like something I'd expect to see in a tech demo for the Cryengine. I've seen artists get jobs with smaller portfolios than that, even if one of the Crytek studios can't hire you, I'm sure they'll pass your portfolio around.
Yeah dude, don't go for an internship, you deserve a full-time job somewhere. Great work so far, your textures are awesome I'm just sitting back watching the magic happen
Hi Choco, awesome stuff here. Great texure work, i hope you don't mind but i downloaded the file to see how it tiled and i noticed a little thing, i tiled it 2x:
There seems to be horizontal lines across your texture once tiled, which I highlighted in red. Don't know how easy/ hard work it would be to re do it, its not a major issue (texture looks incredible, I know that probably for this particular model you won't tile them too much) but its something to bear in mind.
Btw, I guess you'll use that brick texture on the base? Wouldn't it make more sense to use a 1:2 texture instead? You would be able to add more unique detail that way.
Its stated several times in the cryengine wiki, not sure what exactly is the problem but also, when my client (crytek) tells me not to use non square textures and uses 2 seperate maps instead because it runs better in their engine, i accept that and deliver as asked without caring too much about the limitations. I do know that the engine can load non square textures, i don't know what exactly the performance/memory hit is with them. So i'd take the advice of the developers of the engine and use square textures
@Sean, Fomori, Brygelsmack, Seaseme, ColossusAngel, Chrisadsby, Mental : Thanks for the support guys
@urgaffel :
Thanks man, your words gave me some confidence. Very appreciated !
I'm gonna take everyone's advice and aim for a full time job as a junior artist, but I'll still go all the way with this test and get it done once and for all. I think its going to be a good add to the portfolio. Im going to give myself some artistic freedom since in the end I'm not going to apply for the internship.
@Strolsson : thanks, I've actually been approached by some studios which asked me to provide portfolio and resume but it never concluded unfortunately.
Thing is, I don't have a portfolio yet. So I'm guessing that the problem might be solved once I get the portfolio sorted out (hopefully).
As for the texture, Its also going to be used on the lower wall of the house so I'll need to have a 1:1 texture for that
@Makkon : thanks man, its all for the love of sharing, I probably wouldn't be at this level if other people didn't share the techniques haha
@ZacD : maaan, working at Crytek would be a dream come true! I've never actually applied for a job there but I've been approached by some guys that work over at the studio willing to help out. Once I feel like my portfolio is ready to be shown to their HR or AD, I'm gonna send it to them right away
@Sugus : Thanks, and yea I fixed the dirt map which made it look like there were horizontal lines. It was an easy fix since I work in a none destructive fashion.Thanks again for pointing that out.
In regards to CE3 not doing well with none square textures :
Well the engine does support them but the Documentation says that its best to avoid them if possible due to optimization issues (I'm guessing that its related to mipmaps).
I've made a prototype for the roof texture today but it didn't came up as I wanted it to be.
I'm going to try a different material for the next iteration (maybe wood) since slat doesn't seem to do the trick.
quite honestly im not digging the new roof texture as much as the old one. I think the problem you've got is that the edge of the roof is straight, and by that i mean that some tiles just get cut off.
Im not sure what budget limitations you've been given, but I would say that maybe an alpha, or even modeling the edge bricks out would make it look far better.
In regards to CE3 not doing well with none square textures :
Well the engine does support them but the Documentation says that its best to avoid them if possible due to optimization issues (I'm guessing that its related to mipmaps).
Nothing to do with mipmaps...
During Cyrsis 2 development the streaming engine prefered square textures, not sure if that changed. Just working on characters for Crysis 3 and never tried to use a nonsquare texture.
Nice textures, not sure about the house itself. What are you budgets?
quite honestly im not digging the new roof texture as much as the old one. I think the problem you've got is that the edge of the roof is straight, and by that i mean that some tiles just get cut off.
Im not sure what budget limitations you've been given, but I would say that maybe an alpha, or even modeling the edge bricks out would make it look far better.
Absolutely, I'm not happy with the results. The budgets are 3000 triangles, 2048x1024 texture sheet.
I'll be reworking the whole mesh and adding more definition until I get it to look right
Replies
Yea it was for testing purpose
Thanks and as for the softness its probably due to the lighting conditions and the fact that I haven't made a spec map for the wood yet.
I've finished wrapping the wood frame around the mesh and stitched all the geometry together. Geometry will be deformed later on.
I'm currently struggling with the ploycount limit since I really wanna add some vegetation and decals to the house.
At the moment I'm at 2983 triangles. I'll see if I can optimize the mesh a little more.
I'm not sure how risky it would be to use an extra 200 tris over the budget.
Poly count limits in a studio situation can have wiggle room but I wouldn't go over budget on an art test.
Ha, YES YOU SHOULD YOU LAZY YOU
Great progress! I would say that if you break it with 50 tris, kinda ok. But you should really try to keep it as close as possible.
Art tests I've made in the past was just a concept and a "do something with this, OK?" kinda thing.
You should have areas where you can cut?
What about adding decals in engine? That doesn't break the geometry limit. It's not even a face technically
Keep up the good progress
You can set to flat shading and wireframe. Normals look kinda weird in the browser but thats probably because they use a different tangent basis.
I'm gonna try to cut some edges and squeeze out some triangles to stay under the budget.
As for the texture used for the beams its not final, same goes for shapes.
(click on the image to view in 3d)
Amir's house (View in 3D)
That's something I did for my Tavern way back. It have so many faults on it, but still. Those small little variations help so much. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1415501/Portfolio/TavernFinalRender.jpg
Ya man, Its in the plans, thats what I meant when I said I was going to deform them
The chimney: instead of 6 strips holding the "lid" in place, use 3. Maybe one less segment on the chimney body.
Wooden details: have fewer than 6 small bars on the short side of the house.
Roof: you probably don't need to have the extra vertex at the center of the wooden beams poking up through the roof. You probably will never see the roof close enough for it to make much difference.
Base: the base has a lot of extra polys that you can probably start optimizing once you have a texture on there and added some variation here and there. If you can add chips and things in places that'd be good
General: everything being one mesh makes sense but it's incredibly costly since you're using a lot of polygons to make it happen. You could probably pick and choose where you want to make it one piece for vertex painting purposes but maybe not all over? The roof for example, the four wooden stakes doesn't necessarily need vertex painting around them.
And instead of using vertex paint, you could use small decals (which would also give you more artistic control). If you look at the Guild Wars 2 environment art dump, there are a lof of consturcion shots that show how they used planes with diffuse, normal and opacity maps to create intricate detail on the cheap.
I'm gonna try to rely a little more on textures, I still have a lot of space left.
I also did a quick test to see how the house would look like with some deformations.
Makes things more interesting silhouette wise.
Apparently its going to be 2048x1024 for each type of texture (diffuse, normals, spec) but it would be great to get an official statement to clear out the confusion
I also thought storing maps in other channels would technically be over the max tech limits, but the more I think about it it's almost necessary and is more of an efficient way of going about it than breaking the rules... I'm probably thinking too hard about it.
Seriously, this looks AH-mazing so far.
I'm testing out the vertex colors pass which is multiplied by the diffuse texture.
Vertex color RGB is used to shade and add color variation to the textures while the alpha channel can be use to blend in another texture such as moss or dirt for example.
I'm going to be using the custom cgfx shader me and drew++ made to visualize the vertex alpha blended materials.
(http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105291)
I haven't applied any spec maps to the materials, since this is just for testing purpose.
Some textures need to be tweaked (contrast, hue and brightness).
Unlit (diffuse only) :
Unlit (diffuse * vertex colors)
Lit (diffuse * vertex colors * lighting)
The shadow on the door texture could be handled by vertex colours instead since you've got the geo for it. As it is now it's a bit of doubling up going on, making it a bit dark.
You have a curved roof with square tiles, if you can find the polys somewhere to break up the lines that could look good. Could be done with alpha planes maybe? Although you'd lose the thickness... Granted, that's what the concept looks like so I guess it's a question of how close you want to follow it. Anyway, the underside of the roof looks good.
Looking forward to seeing more.
I'm planning to remake the roof and brick wall textures. Gonna spend more time on those and try to get closer to what I originally wanted them to look like.
The old brick wall texture didn't fit that well with the house. I think its more suited for a castle or a fortress.
Started putting together the new brickwall texture in maya.
tiled 2x :
That wall texture turned out really well, but at first glance I thought it appeared a bit too clean and uniform. Maybe push the contrast of the values between some of the rocks and add some subtle dirt around edges and cracks to show some age. Could just be personal preference though
Keep it up!
And ummm... Internship dude? WTF?
I agree with everyone here. You should definitely be a full-timer at some AAA studio.
Thanks for pointing that out
I added a dirt pass and increased the contrast a bit :
@JacqueChoi :
Thanks man, well not having an art degree and no priory experience in the industry makes things slightly difficult to get a job
Maybe when I get a few scenes done in different artistic styles will increase my chances for getting hired somewhere in the future.
I'm gonna keep on working and improving my skills set in the areas where I'm not 100% confident. I don't want to find myself at work trying to figure out how to create a specific asset which I've never created before haha
@Orangeknight : I used the hardware renderer to extract the material color through an orthographic camera.
Using the hardware renderer is a fast method which usually takes only a few seconds to render such a texture.
Also did another one which was used to mask out the moss for making things easier when working in photoshop.
You are definitely ready to work in the industry. You might get hired as a junior to begin with but that's only because you don't have any actual industry experience (I'm assuming
Sexy wall texture and it's good you're redoing the tiles, they don't fit with the style of the wall
Also
You will never be in a position where you know how to create every single asset that you might be asked to make so don't wait too long. If you're stuck, that's what co-workers/Leads/Art Directors/the internet are for. Besides, that's how you learn :poly142:
But yeah, I know it's fucking hard to get your self visible to recruiters and whatnot cause of lacking experience. I guess it comes down to timing. I think the best chance to get a position is to manage to apply to a company that is just ramping up for a production. That's when they need "producing" artist more then senior/lead guys. Though a senior can be used to much more then what us juniors can.
A bit OT, but that's how we like it?
Just want to say that if you land a job at a studio were you know how to do all things, you'll get kinda bored. Or I would. I had no fucking idea how to tackle the things I'm working on right now. It's just a matter of speaking to the talents around you and do a lot of thinking. That's what I love the most with this job, having to do problem solving on this level..
I say apply for Crytek, if you would be willing to move. Talk to the guys here at PC.
Nice job on the texture, btw...
There seems to be horizontal lines across your texture once tiled, which I highlighted in red. Don't know how easy/ hard work it would be to re do it, its not a major issue (texture looks incredible, I know that probably for this particular model you won't tile them too much) but its something to bear in mind.
Hope this helps in some way
Can't wait to see this finished!
In what sense? I never had any problems with textures being 2:1 for example?
@urgaffel :
Thanks man, your words gave me some confidence. Very appreciated !
I'm gonna take everyone's advice and aim for a full time job as a junior artist, but I'll still go all the way with this test and get it done once and for all. I think its going to be a good add to the portfolio. Im going to give myself some artistic freedom since in the end I'm not going to apply for the internship.
@Strolsson : thanks, I've actually been approached by some studios which asked me to provide portfolio and resume but it never concluded unfortunately.
Thing is, I don't have a portfolio yet. So I'm guessing that the problem might be solved once I get the portfolio sorted out (hopefully).
As for the texture, Its also going to be used on the lower wall of the house so I'll need to have a 1:1 texture for that
@Makkon : thanks man, its all for the love of sharing, I probably wouldn't be at this level if other people didn't share the techniques haha
@ZacD : maaan, working at Crytek would be a dream come true! I've never actually applied for a job there but I've been approached by some guys that work over at the studio willing to help out. Once I feel like my portfolio is ready to be shown to their HR or AD, I'm gonna send it to them right away
@Sugus : Thanks, and yea I fixed the dirt map which made it look like there were horizontal lines. It was an easy fix since I work in a none destructive fashion.Thanks again for pointing that out.
In regards to CE3 not doing well with none square textures :
Well the engine does support them but the Documentation says that its best to avoid them if possible due to optimization issues (I'm guessing that its related to mipmaps).
I've made a prototype for the roof texture today but it didn't came up as I wanted it to be.
I'm going to try a different material for the next iteration (maybe wood) since slat doesn't seem to do the trick.
Unlit :
Lit :
Im not sure what budget limitations you've been given, but I would say that maybe an alpha, or even modeling the edge bricks out would make it look far better.
During Cyrsis 2 development the streaming engine prefered square textures, not sure if that changed. Just working on characters for Crysis 3 and never tried to use a nonsquare texture.
Nice textures, not sure about the house itself. What are you budgets?
Absolutely, I'm not happy with the results. The budgets are 3000 triangles, 2048x1024 texture sheet.
I'll be reworking the whole mesh and adding more definition until I get it to look right
@Manuel :
Thanks for the info, the mesh is definitely not final, I'm gonna do so major changes since I'm not applying for the internship anymore.