Japanese Bridge WIP (Critique time)

tristamus

Hey guys,

I'm about at the point where I could use critique. I'm close to finishing this but have been looking at it way too long, and am at the stage where changes are very easy still.

This piece is part of a scene with equally realistically styled assets, amongst Pagoda's, rocks, trees, grass, japanese tile walls, etc., but I'd like it to be looked at separately from that just for now.

Any words will be taken into consideration, grazie

*Updated image*

Ulwaen

Nice work!
Have you got some "wire" render, and other angle to show, then some preview of the textures you used for.
However the plateforme and the stair look like a little to a mattress, but maybe it's because of your specular map which is not giving the marble effect we are expecting for ^^
keep it up!

tristamus

Ulwaen wrote: »

Nice work!
Have you got some "wire" render, and other angle to show, then some preview of the textures you used for.
However the plateforme and the stair look like a little to a mattress, but maybe it's because of your specular map which is not giving the marble effect we are expecting for ^^
keep it up!

Ah yes, wasn't thinking about posting wires and what not. The stairs and small circular element there still are not painted at all, that's what I'm finishing up today. The small circular element is going to be some type of shiny metal to work in conjunction with the gold trimming I have there, and the stairs I'm hoping will read like a type of stone, or perhaps marble. Not sure yet! The pink hue on the AO renders are just the temp lighting in Marmoset btw. Here ya go...




Modeling the bricks in was a conscious choice, being that it only added 1k verts to the mesh, and I liked the shadow depth it produced in comparison to just using a normal map. I also considered using a height map for tessellation in real-time in UDK, but I wanted the effect to be able to be rendered in DirectX 9 as well It's about 8,500 verts atm.

Ulwaen

Damned dude you enjoyed with the polycount for that rocky wall !!! Don't you think the normal map will do the trick by iself (plan and normal map).
What are you planning to do with this, video game, cinematic, animation, etc?

shotgun

This is very nice, overall. My main critique would be that the asset is very clean in some ways while being very weathered in others. U've done well to add the moss and dirt at the bottom of the bridge, where it connects to the ground, but similar gradient should appear at the base of the columns / "fence", where it connects to the arch. All sorts of leaves and stuff should accumulate there. The bricks should have similar treatment, and other crevices should be darker. Right now it looks like someone cleaned the whole thing with a big hose and left only the most stubborn stains.

From an unrelated angle, try making the thick border of the fence ornaments more yellow / golden, think that would work well with ur palette

tristamus

shotgun wrote: »

This is very nice, overall. My main critique would be that the asset is very clean in some ways while being very weathered in others. U've done well to add the moss and dirt at the bottom of the bridge, where it connects to the ground, but similar gradient should appear at the base of the columns / "fence", where it connects to the arch. All sorts of leaves and stuff should accumulate there. The bricks should have similar treatment, and other crevices should be darker. Right now it looks like someone cleaned the whole thing with a big hose and left only the most stubborn stains.

From an unrelated angle, try making the thick border of the fence ornaments more yellow / golden, think that would work well with ur palette (grey>green>yellow)

@Shotgun - Aw man, you're totally right. I'm gonna do that as a final pass once I get all these pieces painted. I figure I paint all the meshes separately at first in mudbox, checking for consistency every once in a while, then paint the mesh with every piece active and visible for a final pass to make it all cohesive. Thanks a lot for the advice man, appreciate it!

@Ulwaen - Haha yeah man, I had just a normal map before, without any modified geometry in that area, and it looked so flat that it hurt. So I took the liberty to add some more geo and make it more 3d lol. This is hypothetically for a video-game, but it's mainly just for my portfolio. I'm making it with a "video-game industry" workflow mindset.

Jessica Dinh

Oh dang, I really like this, especially the bricks I like how colorful they are Will be good to see the steps textured too.

tristamus

Jessica Dinh wrote: »

Oh dang, I really like this, especially the bricks I like how colorful they are Will be good to see the steps textured too.

A Compliment from Jessica Dinh. Just made my day for realz.

Yeah, gonna really try and finish this baby today. Need to move on! And, good luck with your new Magna Fortress scene Jess, will be awesome as usual, I assume.

tristamus

Been working on this bastard literally ALL DAY.

Final step is putting some moss and lichen down in appropriate areas to make it cohesive. That's Friday! Done for today...

old pics removed*

Ulwaen

Nice man the stairs looks better. Maybe you could still add somme moss on every step, right on the intern edge, because it's there the humidity is ^^

urgaffel

Looking good but it seems a bit excessive to model all the bricks... Not sure if just making the surface a bit uneven with some bricks would be good enough though so maybe it's necessary

Presentation wise it's a bit frustrating to have 75% of the bridge out of focus and on a black background. It makes it harder to see details (and the dof is a bit ugly because it's only inside the mesh, not a proper blur).

hawken

It's nice, but would say thats a chinese bridge. Japanese ones are usually made out of wood with stone supports. What's your reference?

tristamus

@Hawken - You might be right. When searching for Japanese bridges, I found many that are as you say mostly wood and stone, however I guess I just really wanted to add more visual candy to it and put in some metal & reflective surfaces somewhere. I might have to rename is Asian Bridge LOL >D

@Urgaffel - Yes I completely agree, gonna really be different once it's in UDK! Going to put it in a scene properly and take a few pics from there later.

Joopson

The grey (cement?) parts are a bit too noisy for my taste, and with a bit too much contrast. Those black spots kind of put me off. Of course, that's a very minor thing. I think it looks awesome otherwise.

You should think about throwing it into Skyrim, or something. I feel like it would fit right in.

tristamus

Changes...

1) Reduced overall noisiness of textures
2) Added moss and lichen to appropriate areas
3) Better specularity, better lighting

Next step is getting it to work well inside UDK, but working on the model is FINITO.

nedwork

This is looking great. I want to see this bridge in the scene now :P.

tristamus

nedwork wrote: »

This is looking great. I want to see this bridge in the scene now :P.

Yup! That's the next stage! Thank you man

masterpaintingnow

I would like to see this in a game.