Thanks for the explanation. I think I kinda get it. Floaters are just geo thats not intersecting, but just on top of the other geo?
Could u explain how you did this? Cause your wf isn't connected to the holes and its going inside, so super curious on how you achieved this. Used ur wireframe pic and circled some of these spots. Yea sorry, should've just used ur pic instead of describing it. Much simpler. XD
Iciban, there's nothing complicated here. You just model it as a separate geometry, position it slightly above the area you want this detail to be and then when you bake it to texture it will have the effect like this was modelled into geometry. http://eat3d.com/free/floating_geo
wester, great environment. Totally disagree about low quality statemnet. Looks very HQ to me. Keep up a good work. Can't wait to see the final result
Big thanks yury for that vid. From that wf perspective, it looks like its actually modeled in. Learning stuff everyday.
cool trick, totally applying this to my bakes now. save so much time
Took some time to hit on the environment itself this weekend. I extended the "loading zone" space back to look like more of a loading zone and not so claustrophobic. I'm going to be filling the loading zone with props like bigger crates, tool boxes, machine parts...etc to help tell the story alittle more.
I have those pillars just in blockout right now. The lighting is still WIP, but I played with it abit. I'm going to be adding a hanging crane on the ceiling as to help imply that this is a loading and unloading area.
Finished up those pillars that hold up the tracks for the loading arm. Also added alot more prop blockouts to help give some of the spaces context.
Going to make those middle spaces an engine repair bay and a weapons repair bay. I'll have pieces of the mech laying around and stuff to look like it's being worked on.
Below the left side will have some mech weapon/ammo stuff and the right side will have some engine parts.
This looks really great man!
I really dig the hot and cold lighting you got here!
Also love the high poly of the mech! Can't wait to see it in there!
However, maybe its just me, but for some reason everything looks a bit dull at the moment instead of having this "high tech/sci-fi-shinyness" you would expect in such an environment.
Could also be due to the stage of it.
AkiRa : Thanks for the feedback! Yeah the materials definitely need a pass. I'll probably go through and do alot of retexturing once I've finished all of the assets. Right now my main goal is to finish the environment assets, and props that fill the scene so I can give a good amount of focus on materials and lighting.
Finished the back delivery door and frames on the ground for the crates to be delivered to the maintenance bay. You can see the blockout for the robotic arm that grabs the crates and places them at the top of the image.
I also simplified the ground that leads to the delivery door since it was just a bunch of nonsensical designs before. This way it helps to both read as a pathway, and doesnt busy up the scene with too much design noise.
Next up I'm going to try to crunch through the mech this week and finish him up!
Mech came out great Wes! Really love the amount of wear he has and now not overly busy/damaged it is as well as the addition of colors.
Where is the top image rendered from? Is that in UDK? I know the bottom one is from the Static Mesh Editor and it feels quite flat there. Its losing a lot of material definition and separate that the top image has. Everything feels very flat and all more of one type of color.
Yeah that top image is a marmoset render. I'm definitely noticing that my udk scene is overall pretty flat, and the specularity on my pieces arent popping like they should be. I need to take this weekend and troubleshoot why my reflections/specular hot spots aren't as prominent.
Awesome Robeomega thank you for taking the time to do that! I'll definitely address some of those issues!
I did some material tweaking last night and found out that my reflections were getting really distorted (normal map import issue) which was making my scene look pretty flat and dull. Hopefully the next update will have some nicer material reads.
So much goodness in this piece!!! Really awesome work. Be careful with that balance of contrast. The paintover Robeomega did is great. Definitely use squint mode in unreal to help out on this. It's a godsend to determine what the first visual read is for an environment.
If I have any crits, it would have to be that you might be loosing scale in some areas. This is gonna seem pretty nit picky but if you slim down the caution cones a bit and get some angles from the viewers perspective near some panels. I think getting that viewer angle looking upward will really make this awesome piece have that grand scale. You probably just have the current angles to show the actual work and not to frame it just yet, but just thought I would throw that info nugget your way
Quick update. Starting to detail up some of the mech cove pieces. SHould have the mech cove completely done by the end of the week then onto the crane arm in the loading area, then PROPS (and lighting)!
Also excuse the low resolution lightmaps for now. A production build takes awhile and I try not to waste too much time building lights right now.
Mech looking pretty good. In general things look like they are coming together nicely. I really liked Robeomega's adjustments really helped the scene pop a lot more.
Trying to give all of my shaders more of an aggressive spec and IBR. Still have some tweaking to do.
Before I move on I'm running into this annoying normal map compression artifacting. Does anyone know any good normal map import settings that actually WORK? I've either never noticed this, or had this issue before but It's really obvious and it's why alot of my pieces arent catching specular highlights.
also the error goes away when i check "defer compression" but then once I save the package, it unchecks the box and pixelates like that again.
As for the normal maps, Have you tried saving the maps as .dds? I believe UDK uses .dds as its compression, so if you save it as that from Photoshop UDK might not compress them. Although it might just re-compress them and have no effect.
Have you tried when importing, instead of selecting 'normalmap' select 'uncompressed_normalmap' ? its named something similar to that.
Yeah try this, and I think it will reduce the resolution to half of your original normal map, so if you really want to keep the same resolution make sure you import at twice the resolution ( usually half resolution, uncompressed works good enough, but you never know )
Glad it worked, about the seems. I noticed that a lot of the times it's the lightmapper. So if you have one that you can't seem to fix try out a production bake for your lighting( you can bake a single asset if you want )
Finished the mech cove, robotic maintenance arm and maintenance platform. Going to be moving onto props, signs and just filling out those two little mechanic areas.
For this first shot, I'm going to put something like an airport monitor at the top right in that empty space, that shows a graphic topdown on the mechs and some digital readouts. Going to see how that works. It could be too busy. Then onto the signage.
Before I move on I'm running into this annoying normal map compression artifacting. Does anyone know any good normal map import settings that actually WORK? I've either never noticed this, or had this issue before but It's really obvious and it's why alot of my pieces arent catching specular highlights.
also the error goes away when i check "defer compression" but then once I save the package, it unchecks the box and pixelates like that again.
What you need to do to fix this is to use the TC_NormalmapUncompressed setting on your normalmaps when you import them. This will (automatically) lower the texture resolution but remove any kind of banding or DXT artifacts you might see. Uncompressed normalmaps are good for objects with lots smooth detail and low noise in the normalmap.
What you need to do to fix this is to use the TC_NormalmapUncompressed setting on your normalmaps when you import them. This will (automatically) lower the texture resolution but remove any kind of banding or DXT artifacts you might see. Uncompressed normalmaps are good for objects with lots smooth detail and low noise in the normalmap.
this is sick stuff man! I'd love to run around this area with ma oculus rift on.
If I had one crit it would be that area seems a little too dark and blue. in the lighting. Your color comp is that you are using this orange and then using blue lighting which as the complimentary color will make the orange read grey.
I'd switch it up and using closer to grey/white lighting, and then using hits of blue lights as emmissives or in certain areas to make things pop.
moof Ah man that is such a compliment haha. To have someone say they want to run around in a space I've made is pretty much the ultimate compliment So thank you!
Paul Pepera Thanks Paul! I'm a huge fan of your work and the cryo opening you did in halo 4 inspired this scene. So I really appreciate it
i was just thinking about this scene the other day and couldn't remember the name of the thread or who made it sorry wester, I won't forget next time. Glad I noticed bumped into it again! Looking awesome.
The home stretch! Just have a few props to do then spend some good time nailing down the lighting I'm going to call it done.
First off here is an engine part with a brace as if it were extracted from a mech and being worked on. You can also see the tool cart prop that I made as well as the new crate texture. The textures and materials on the crates were looking pretty bad.
Next up going to model out those big crates in the back with some cool mesh laid over them to give some organic contrast in the scene. Then the big mechanical arm for moving the crates around, some tools, the little chair, another table.....that's all I can think of right now ha.
Alllmost there. I finished all of the props and am now moving onto the signs which should be the last piece of asset creation. Some of the signs higher up in the rafters are temp and just put in there for composition purposes. After the signs I move onto focusing on the lighting!
TheodoricYeah everything in the scene has lightmaps. Some objects are pretty badly uv'd on the lightmap, so when I do my final production light bake I'll probably readdress them.
Honestly the best way to learn how to light, is to take a screenshot on a game you want your lighting to look like, and do what they did, and try to understand why they did what they did as to pick up on the technique.
i'm kinda a noob to UDK so i was wondering if there is anything you do to your textures while importing so UDK doesn't compress the living hell out of them? i know the defer compression but thats only for iterating on your textures, once the package is saved bam compressed. I haven't tried any textures of 1K but they seem to be lower quality than I'd like compared to Marmoset which look uncompressed.
Finally going to call this one finished. I could tweak and tweak since it's pretty big but I think this is a good stopping point. I'll be uploading bigger images on my site once I get back from vacation tomorrow, and possibly putting together a video of the space.
I set out to put together a sci fi space using halo as my inspiration and am very happy with how it turned out. I think this is a pretty good example of what I can do with a scifi hardsurface environment, and need to try to do something with more organics and textures next.
I posted this in the WAYWO thread but i'll copy it over here -
Hey Wesley, that is nuts buddy! Super awesome job... one thing I would REALLY focus on though is your material definition... more so the spec / roughness, your robots (and most of your metal) look incredibly "soft". That's my only cirt good sir
Replies
Could u explain how you did this? Cause your wf isn't connected to the holes and its going inside, so super curious on how you achieved this. Used ur wireframe pic and circled some of these spots. Yea sorry, should've just used ur pic instead of describing it. Much simpler. XD
http://eat3d.com/free/floating_geo
wester, great environment. Totally disagree about low quality statemnet. Looks very HQ to me. Keep up a good work. Can't wait to see the final result
cool trick, totally applying this to my bakes now. save so much time
I have those pillars just in blockout right now. The lighting is still WIP, but I played with it abit. I'm going to be adding a hanging crane on the ceiling as to help imply that this is a loading and unloading area.
Going to make those middle spaces an engine repair bay and a weapons repair bay. I'll have pieces of the mech laying around and stuff to look like it's being worked on.
Below the left side will have some mech weapon/ammo stuff and the right side will have some engine parts.
I really dig the hot and cold lighting you got here!
Also love the high poly of the mech! Can't wait to see it in there!
However, maybe its just me, but for some reason everything looks a bit dull at the moment instead of having this "high tech/sci-fi-shinyness" you would expect in such an environment.
Could also be due to the stage of it.
Just my two cents.
Looking forward to see this progressing!
Finished the back delivery door and frames on the ground for the crates to be delivered to the maintenance bay. You can see the blockout for the robotic arm that grabs the crates and places them at the top of the image.
I also simplified the ground that leads to the delivery door since it was just a bunch of nonsensical designs before. This way it helps to both read as a pathway, and doesnt busy up the scene with too much design noise.
Next up I'm going to try to crunch through the mech this week and finish him up!
Static Mesh Editor
Higher rez here:
http://cghub.com/images/view/619515/
Where is the top image rendered from? Is that in UDK? I know the bottom one is from the Static Mesh Editor and it feels quite flat there. Its losing a lot of material definition and separate that the top image has. Everything feels very flat and all more of one type of color.
Thanks guys
First image is what you have right now
Second is contrast boost
Third is saturation boost
I did some material tweaking last night and found out that my reflections were getting really distorted (normal map import issue) which was making my scene look pretty flat and dull. Hopefully the next update will have some nicer material reads.
If I have any crits, it would have to be that you might be loosing scale in some areas. This is gonna seem pretty nit picky but if you slim down the caution cones a bit and get some angles from the viewers perspective near some panels. I think getting that viewer angle looking upward will really make this awesome piece have that grand scale. You probably just have the current angles to show the actual work and not to frame it just yet, but just thought I would throw that info nugget your way
Solid work!
Also excuse the low resolution lightmaps for now. A production build takes awhile and I try not to waste too much time building lights right now.
Before I move on I'm running into this annoying normal map compression artifacting. Does anyone know any good normal map import settings that actually WORK? I've either never noticed this, or had this issue before but It's really obvious and it's why alot of my pieces arent catching specular highlights.
also the error goes away when i check "defer compression" but then once I save the package, it unchecks the box and pixelates like that again.
As for the normal maps, Have you tried saving the maps as .dds? I believe UDK uses .dds as its compression, so if you save it as that from Photoshop UDK might not compress them. Although it might just re-compress them and have no effect.
Have you tried when importing, instead of selecting 'normalmap' select 'uncompressed_normalmap' ? its named something similar to that.
Yeah try this, and I think it will reduce the resolution to half of your original normal map, so if you really want to keep the same resolution make sure you import at twice the resolution ( usually half resolution, uncompressed works good enough, but you never know )
Added some spec and IBR
Some seems are present now so I'm going to go through and fix them next. Then onto finishing this mech cove tonight!
For this first shot, I'm going to put something like an airport monitor at the top right in that empty space, that shows a graphic topdown on the mechs and some digital readouts. Going to see how that works. It could be too busy. Then onto the signage.
Higher resolution on my site.
What you need to do to fix this is to use the TC_NormalmapUncompressed setting on your normalmaps when you import them. This will (automatically) lower the texture resolution but remove any kind of banding or DXT artifacts you might see. Uncompressed normalmaps are good for objects with lots smooth detail and low noise in the normalmap.
here's more info:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/NormalMapFormats.html
Yup already did that thanks man!
If I had one crit it would be that area seems a little too dark and blue. in the lighting. Your color comp is that you are using this orange and then using blue lighting which as the complimentary color will make the orange read grey.
I'd switch it up and using closer to grey/white lighting, and then using hits of blue lights as emmissives or in certain areas to make things pop.
Paul Pepera Thanks Paul! I'm a huge fan of your work and the cryo opening you did in halo 4 inspired this scene. So I really appreciate it
First off here is an engine part with a brace as if it were extracted from a mech and being worked on. You can also see the tool cart prop that I made as well as the new crate texture. The textures and materials on the crates were looking pretty bad.
Next up going to model out those big crates in the back with some cool mesh laid over them to give some organic contrast in the scene. Then the big mechanical arm for moving the crates around, some tools, the little chair, another table.....that's all I can think of right now ha.
The lighting is great! Is everything static mesh in this scene with lightmap?
I want to learn make proper lightning in UDK, could you recommend a page/tutorial beside the UDK online docs about the technical details/tip'n'tricks?
Honestly the best way to learn how to light, is to take a screenshot on a game you want your lighting to look like, and do what they did, and try to understand why they did what they did as to pick up on the technique.
Theodoric Thanks!
Really keen to see how this turns out!
Keep it up!
oh scene is looking amazing of course
I set out to put together a sci fi space using halo as my inspiration and am very happy with how it turned out. I think this is a pretty good example of what I can do with a scifi hardsurface environment, and need to try to do something with more organics and textures next.
Hope you guys enjoy!
Hey Wesley, that is nuts buddy! Super awesome job... one thing I would REALLY focus on though is your material definition... more so the spec / roughness, your robots (and most of your metal) look incredibly "soft". That's my only cirt good sir