Norwegian style winter castle environment
Hi everybody! I'm doing a school assignment right now where we have to prepare pieces of a modular environment for use in UDK (the course doesn't actually teach UDK as it's a general 3D/animation/VFX course), but since I'm very focused on game development, I'll be taking my environment one step further and actually building it in UDK as well.
I've got some experience building environments, though I am no expert on modularity. I have a lot of experience with Unity, but almost none with UDK, so this is both an opportunity for me to practice making a modular environment, but also to learn UDK! The assets for the scene are due by christmas break, though I will probably still work on it further for my portfolio after that due date.
Also, since I'm new to Polycount, my site is www.graemeborland.com if you want to know a bit more about me!
Anyway, on to what I have for this environment so far!
The idea is to do a wintery castle on a giant rock in the middle of a permanently frozen lake. The castle acts as a waypoint on a major trade route rather than a military establishment. At the bottom part of the entry ramp is a platform that acts as a kind of dock for dogsleds and caravans that are coming across the ice, and most of the buildings are either lodges for travelers to stay in or shops. These first three images are the concepts I drew to get a feel for the structure and explore some colours, they don't have all the details fleshed out.
And here's my map, just to show the layout of the walls and such, and what each building is. You can compare it quite easily to the second concept above. I did a few more zoomed in maps of each area with indications of where detail objects would go, but I won't post those since this is already going to be a pretty image-heavy post
These are some studies I did to get ideas flowing for what some of the detail objects could look like, as well as a concept for the castle walls.
And finally, here are some of the reference sheets I put together for this environment, first of all some photos of the type of norwegian architecture I am trying to represent:
...and also some images from existing game environments that represent the colours/mood/feel I am going for:
So, that's the direction I'm headed in right now. Next I'll be working on studying the buildings and structures in my reference to determine how I could break up the architecture into modular pieces. I'm also in the process of searching around for good beginner UDK tutorials as I beef up my knowledge on how the engine works.
Would love to hear your feedback/crits as I go along, this project is as much about learning new things for me as it is about making a cool environment.
I've got some experience building environments, though I am no expert on modularity. I have a lot of experience with Unity, but almost none with UDK, so this is both an opportunity for me to practice making a modular environment, but also to learn UDK! The assets for the scene are due by christmas break, though I will probably still work on it further for my portfolio after that due date.
Also, since I'm new to Polycount, my site is www.graemeborland.com if you want to know a bit more about me!
Anyway, on to what I have for this environment so far!
The idea is to do a wintery castle on a giant rock in the middle of a permanently frozen lake. The castle acts as a waypoint on a major trade route rather than a military establishment. At the bottom part of the entry ramp is a platform that acts as a kind of dock for dogsleds and caravans that are coming across the ice, and most of the buildings are either lodges for travelers to stay in or shops. These first three images are the concepts I drew to get a feel for the structure and explore some colours, they don't have all the details fleshed out.
And here's my map, just to show the layout of the walls and such, and what each building is. You can compare it quite easily to the second concept above. I did a few more zoomed in maps of each area with indications of where detail objects would go, but I won't post those since this is already going to be a pretty image-heavy post
These are some studies I did to get ideas flowing for what some of the detail objects could look like, as well as a concept for the castle walls.
And finally, here are some of the reference sheets I put together for this environment, first of all some photos of the type of norwegian architecture I am trying to represent:
...and also some images from existing game environments that represent the colours/mood/feel I am going for:
So, that's the direction I'm headed in right now. Next I'll be working on studying the buildings and structures in my reference to determine how I could break up the architecture into modular pieces. I'm also in the process of searching around for good beginner UDK tutorials as I beef up my knowledge on how the engine works.
Would love to hear your feedback/crits as I go along, this project is as much about learning new things for me as it is about making a cool environment.
Replies
'following !
> direct to my inspiration folder
Only thing that looks kinda odd in there is that bench with those sides.I think only chairs had those,benches we're plain and simple.Just a thought
I spent the day working out some modular building blocks to create the houses/lodges with, as well as getting myself familiar with how to do things in UDK. There are still plenty of errors to fix and gaps to fill in this set, but I am pretty happy with this as a starting point.
Here's my breakdown of roughly how I plan to split up the main structures:
And here's a quick block-in I did in UDK to test how those pieces would work in practice. As you can see, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but I'm proud of it as a first attempt in UDK!
Tomorrow I'll be fixing up this set to fit together better in UDK and finishing up blocking out the pieces I'm still missing. My roof pieces are a bit heavy, so I'll be revisiting those sometime soon as well.
Nice.
Still a lot of tweaks I need to make (mostly the walls, which are still super messy), but it's nice to see the general shape of the concept come to life in 3D like this
It's still in pretty early stages, but let me know what you think! Here's a couple closeups of individual buildings and totem poles I assembled using modular pieces. Again, just blockout geometry.
Next step is refining this scene and working on lo-res models!
And as 4evra mentioned, my concept art for the benches looked a little weird, so here's how the shape ended up looking.
I'm gonna sub to the thread,its worth it
Keep it up
@amile duan - Here's a breakdown of my time spent so far:
November 5th - 9th: Concept art, mockups, planning. Probably a total of around 10 hours or a little more.
November 12 - 16th: Blockout, learning UDK basics, and starting to model. Maybe spent about 45-50 hours that week, though a lot of that was checking out UDK tutorials and the like.
Yesterday and today combined I've put in maybe another 18-20 hours or so. My schedule for the last week and a bit is to be at school from 8am to 8/9pm, and the vast majority of my time there is spent on this project.
So, roughly 75-80 hours so far? A little longer than I'd like to get to this point, but I am still a UDK noob, I'm sure my next one will be faster
The wall segment runs 826 triangles and the tower/corner piece is 254. Each is using a 1024px texture.
For the textures, I used some stuff from CGtextures as a base, but painted over it quite a bit. I'm not going for a totally realistic style, I want things to be a little stylized, kind of in the vein of Guild Wars 2 (a huge inspiration to me). Had a lot of fun learning how to make zBrush, Xnormal and Photoshop all work together. More to come! Let me know what you think.
Here's a view of the central area without fog so you're actually able to see it. I'm not considering the wide open area within the outer walls to be walkable by the player, it's just going to serve as a vista to look at when you're on the entry ramp.
A view of the (walkable) lower platform, looking up.
This is currently what you see as you leave the main castle gate at the top of the hill.
And a closeup of the interior of the castle area.
My instructor has suggested that I spend some time working on the micro level now that I have all these large objects placed, and fill out more of the walkable area with human-scale props. That and texturing the few remaining untextured objects will be my next task. Let me know what you think!
Crits and comments welcome!
seconding this, let the normal maps work
Here is a example of what I'm talking about in your work
@Orangeknight - Thanks for the crit, though I'm honestly not really able to see the contrast between hand-painted and realistic that you're referring to. Here's a comparison of texture flats for the castle wall and the tiling stone floor you mentioned. Could you suggest anything specific that would help harmonize the two? Maybe with an example I'll be able to see it.
Would this map happen to be for chivalry MW ?????
Nope, just a college project
Just 2 things that catch my eye:
-The scale off the floor seems a bit large in the closeup.
-The wear on the side of the individual stones looks to "painted", like you took a small brush and just quickly made some fast strokes on the edges and I feel like it drags the texture down a bit in the closeup shots.
A couple suggestions, but take what you will as time is of the essence. Your ground texture leaves a little something to be desired. I'd mess with the spec map a little to see if you can get glints of pop because it's a little flat for my taste at the moment. Speaking of the ground, some vertex painting/texture blending would really help break up the monotony. I'd create a snowy cobble variant that you can mix in near the snow meshes to make the transitions smoother as well as maybe around bases of buildings and in other scattered areas. Your textures have similar hues and values, so in the future, I'd try to bring a bit more variation as well as experimenting with ways to push your specular materials to create some further separation. Also, I'd watch your edge work on your textures, it's a bit heavy.
Thirdly, only a suggestion, you could really dial up the storm and pull in some more lighting contrast. I'd pull the fog a bit closer and pull back the intensity of the directional light so the scene gets a touch darker and moodier, this will give you an opportunity to push the warm oranges in your windows/fires/practical light sources. That visual contrast will really sell the cold and draw people's eyes across your image more.
Either way, great work, really looking forward to seeing
@Endfinity Jon - I am using BSPs for those big flat floor areas. I agree with your idea about a snowy texture variant to blend, but I'm unsure how I should set that up, since I can't use vertex painting on a BSP. I could just layer it onto the material using a mask of some sort, but that of course would make it very difficult to line up the snowy mask with my snow drifts and buildings that were placed in UDK. Any ideas on how I can get around this?
I resolved my BSP problem by exporting my ground from UDK and bringing it into Maya, adding topology, then re-importing it into UDK as a static mesh. I then made a material to blend between cobblestones, snowy cobblestones, and pure snow based on vertex colours. The material also gives some specularity to the "snowy cobblestones" areas, to give a sort of glare ice effect. I'm really happy with the effect, especially in my top-down shot. This solution worked fine in my case, but I am still curious if there is a way to achieve a similar effect using BSPs...
And, rather than discarding it, I'll be adapting that rounded cobblestone texture for a path texture outside the city walls.
Tomorrow I'll be back to cranking out more props to fill in the areas lacking detail!
It looks really nice
I'll work more on the normal map for the snow later if I have time to make a better one, gotta finish off some more props for now!
Check out this page for a bunch more screenshots of how it turned out. Thanks so much for all your help, the feedback from this thread really helped me push this environment. I learned a ton and am looking forward to my next environment where I can apply all this knowledge and improve further!
Crits and comments are still very much welcome, on both the scene itself and its presentation on my site. I'm going to be moving on to other projects I have going, so I won't be going back to make more changes to this environment, but any crits will be appreciated and taken into consideration for my future projects!
Your AO is punched up way to much. Im noticing this a lot more with peoples work. Tone it down. Let the lighting and environment help you out. Dont let it be your fall back for grounding objects to the world. Leaves, dirt, snow pileing up, triming, those are the things that will not only ground your objects to the world, but give the world a greater sense of believability. Its more noticable with white snow.
The castle wall textures The crevises are way to big and dark. Even in a stylized setting, they become noticable and just add noise to the scene. Some areas they look fine, others they dont. They look good in the dark but stand out in the lighted areas.
If your going for that top down view, man, fix the tops of those catle towers. Having those next to the highly details wood towers, they just look bad with their low resolution and all.
You need to push the story on your mini scenes. The camp fire, armory, tent markets. You got some detail in them and then you just stop. Bring it to life. Add foot prints to the ground, meat and plates were people are eating.
The setting for the Wall in Game of thrones is a great reference for those little storys that happen in a living world.
Finally, your snow. It just kinda nicely fizzels out uniformaly. In a place were people live and work, your gona have a lot of mud, deep goudges, and harsh shadows created in this place. Your camp fire scene. Someone lit that right. So people must be living their right? The snow is so transparent and bland. Man, up it with a stronger normal map, or a few different snow textures to create different snow breaks.
Their are like, 3 different textures in this photo you could use if you were to model it out. The smooth, the choppy and the beaten over choppy snow.
Anywho, its good stuff man. Id keep pushing it further. Dont let what little knowledge you know stop you from what you could do.