Rockguy, you just need to make more contrast, the scene as a whole is too bright for a basement imo (mine is too) even if it prolly fits the concept. Just play around till you find somehting you like. Another way is to take a screenshot and edit it in photoshop and try and replicate a result you like.
Sorry I have not done much, just finishing a long process but I'm getting an internship doing 3d that will turn into fulltime, I'm so excited! I plan to try and finish as much of this in the time period I can though, I will finish it no matter what.
Also in 9 days we start the thread for next month's challenge (for picking a concept) so find some nice ones!
AlexCatMasterSupreme : thanks for the feedback man, I forgot that I had a skylight at 0.65 intesity , I guess that whats making the scene brighter than it should.
AlexCatMasterSupreme : thanks for the feedback man, I forgot that I had a skylight at 0.65 intesity , I guess that whats making the scene brighter than it should.
No problem, if you want I can give you an in-depth crit. I was going to but I don't have a ton of time. If you want I can make the time.
I just try to avoid it as people sometimes just wont listen/makes things awkward and then takes my time as well.
Thanks much appreciated , I will like to make a more extense post with the props, wires , textures and the scene in general for a better critic , but first I want to tackle my issue with the lighting , as it turns out it wasnt the skylight only , my scene itself its bland.
Dont worry with the critcs I try to listen to everyone and fix what Im doing wrong ,
I havent been able to acutally comments on yours because Im not that familiar with crytec , and overall you scene is going good , the lighttings looks natural and I guess is still in progress and the highpolys looks great , the only thing I guess I can comment even if is minimal , is with the contrast that your scene have with the stairs , overall they have this very clean , polish feeling and the stairs they look old even one of the supports is broken I think , but again is a very minimal crit.
I havent been able to acutally comments on yours because Im not that familiar with crytec , and overall you scene is going good , the lighttings looks natural and I guess is still in progress and the highpolys looks great , the only thing I guess I can comment even if is minimal , is with the contrast that your scene have with the stairs , overall they have this very clean , polish feeling and the stairs they look old even one of the supports is broken I think , but again is a very minimal crit.
Thanks for the crit!
I will try and balance it out later when I polish:)
some of you guys are cheating!!!.... obviously not 'noobs'!!
I am not and I don't think they are either. I've only been doing 3d for 11 months, coming up on a year. I can't speak for the rest of everyone but we's all newbz. Paroxom (sp) entered the first month though, he is NOT a noob at ALL.
Even if we have more expirience , we still are "noobs" at different thigs , handpainting , lighting , udk , crytec etc.. thats why are taking the challenge to learn those skills we are lacking.
By the way is the challenge still ending on the 31 of the month?
Even if we have more expirience , we still are "noobs" at different thigs , handpainting , lighting , udk , crytec etc.. thats why are taking the challenge to learn those skills we are lacking.
By the way is the challenge still ending on the 31 of the month?
Last day of the month, and oh man hand painting. AHAHAHAHAHA.
If only I could... One of these challenges I will try that.
Edit: I thought you asked why it ended then, yes sir it still does.
in 7 days I'll make the thread to pick a new concept.
I've been working on this in the background for a while - mainly using this project to practice tessellation, vertex painting and dDo (boiler, fuse/junction boxes and lights are dDo - rest of the textures are standard photo based and photoshopped).
Lighting is mood based at the moment, it's too dark imo and the brick texture needs some work still. Crits always welcome
tkfxity : Nice, nice lighting good textures , watch out for some of the props looks a bit wierd scaled, like the box with bottles , for some reason it seems big as the door , also door seems stretch out.
ZeroBigSis : The red floor looks really good with the broken tiles and diferent height but your lighting is too dark right now , guess is in progress also the light emiting from the lamps could be stronger, good scene so far.
tkfxity : Nice, nice lighting good textures , watch out for some of the props looks a bit wierd scaled, like the box with bottles , for some reason it seems big as the door , also door seems stretch out.
The reason the door looks stretched out is because I changed the FOV so I can capture the whole room, and I guess the side effect was stretching the door. Heres another picture without the FOV. Also made the box with the bottles small, because they were too big in comparison to everything else. Added the characters there for size comparison.
Gosh !! Forgot to put the snap in the pendrive to upload the progress...
Anyways, I have finished all the props and everything finally exported to UDK yesterday night.. And I must say, I am loving UDK ,the way it renders and all... Also started learning UDK Lightings from some tutorial.
Today will start assembling all those modular pieces and show you guys tomm.
Question:How to you put a physics/collision thing for the stair, ATM its more like a bounding box. I need physics that matches with the model ?
AND @ZeroBigSis : Now that looks something with a "story"... Awesome scene
The reason the door looks stretched out is because I changed the FOV so I can capture the whole room, and I guess the side effect was stretching the door. Heres another picture without the FOV. Also made the box with the bottles small, because they were too big in comparison to everything else. Added the characters there for size comparison.
I am sorry, but your scale is way off.
Those doors are like 1-2 feet too tall as well as the stairs.
The bottles look as large as the forearm of that guy.
The sitars are massive.
Also you should try and clean the floor up and dirty it with decals so it doesnt seem so repetitive and have less pure black in your texture.
The rest is looking good but those stick out the most.
ZeroBigSis- My suggestion would be a simple one. You seem to have a light coming down from the top of the stairs hitting the floor in that nice rectangle at the bottom. If that light would hit the stairs a little stronger and, in particular, light up the wall beside the stairs it would really add a nice hot spot to your scene and give everything a focal point.
I am sorry, but your scale is way off.
Those doors are like 1-2 feet too tall as well as the stairs.
The bottles look as large as the forearm of that guy.
The sitars are massive.
This is a complete non-problem. Everything is perfectly to scale except the character, which is not part of the scene. Either scale up the dude, if you need him, or delte him. The environment stands fine on it's own.
Caveat: Someone will be ready to type, "yes but in production..." and true in production you would have to rework everything into the games scale, but luckily this is just an art exercise!
My additional crits: Take a tiledshot of the scene and resixe it down in photoshop for a sharper presentation image, and if I could pick one thing to rework, it would be the pipes, which are a but blobby and disconnected from the wall atm. I would then use the pipes to fill in some of the white space on the far wall.
Finally, the shot could do with relighting. everything is very evenly lit, but it's flat and a bit boring. You want to highlight the stairs and the door by the shelves, and have the furthest reaches of the room be in shadow. Not black shadow, but darker in relation to the rest of the room. Lighting to 'hide' parts of an environment is counterintuitive, but Jason Lavoie talks about it well in his "Deconstructing Demon Throne" videos: http://vimeo.com/album/227064
I'm moving pretty slow, but I'm trying to sit down and do at least something to it each day. So here's an update. I've decided to start on the stairs. They're unwrapped. The plan is to hand paint everything... Hopefully I can start sinking more time into this project soon...
This is a complete non-problem. Everything is perfectly to scale except the character, which is not part of the scene. Either scale up the dude, if you need him, or delte him. The environment stands fine on it's own.
All I'm saying is that if you put the character ref in there, at least make it fit right.
Assembled everything in UDK, did a test lighting. Nothing much done on lighting. I am checking out Lighting tutorials first. But I can see hard seem on the Brick and floor tiles ? I think, I did something wrong on the lighting.
Before playing with the lightings, Did a little paint over to see how I'd be doing the lighting.I like this one[with light at one area instead of having light in all place though there are bulbs ] but too dark at the sides ???
Open to serious criticism or suggestions... Want to make mooooorrreee better.
I get the mood you want to set by having the light focused on that one area. But it doesn't show off your work at all.. You can barely see any of the other props and all your texture work will have been a waste of time..
Assembled everything in UDK, did a test lighting. Nothing much done on lighting. I am checking out Lighting tutorials first. But I can see hard seem on the Brick and floor tiles ? I think, I did something wrong on the lighting.
Before playing with the lightings, Did a little paint over to see how I'd be doing the lighting.I like this one[with light at one area instead of having light in all place though there are bulbs ] but too dark at the sides ???
Open to serious criticism or suggestions... Want to make mooooorrreee better.
Overall the scene is too busy feeling, the areas door area is far too dark where the wood area is much too busy, weather it's details on the floor or the amount of detail in the wood on the stairs, it is hard to rest your eye. At least the wood on the stairs is too busy and dark, the ceiling is fine.
Like most people you make the floor area massive.
The color of the water heater is very red and reads as concrete.
The color of the floor and texture job doesn't read too well everything feels very flat. It looks kinda like sand.
I would be weary of using too many dark colors for dirt as it can read oddly and make things feel amateurish, but that really depends.
I don't really understand why you have barrels in there, it looks like a basement for a family.
I would add more geo to the pillars and put some more work into them and not just use hard edges like that. I would sculpt out the damage and you also have a UV seam right in the middle of the screen from it(at least it looks like it anyways).
Try and take a lot of the wear out of your diffuses and instead put decals everywhere. Also try and remove some of the blacker values in the wood, it's a little over the top at least in that lighting.
Also, light should be coming from the light near the stairs.
As for the lighting I'd go for something like this:
It's kinda hard to do a paintover with the lighting.
I'm not trying to be a dick you just asked for a crit so:)
Keep it up!
I'm still chewing my own arm in frustration with the lighting but it has improved a little , thanks for the critcs Alex, more crits are wolcome everyone.
I'm still chewing my own arm in frustration with the lighting but it has improved a little , thanks for the critcs Alex, more crits are wolcome everyone.
You should try turning down the contrast and saturation the most.
Keep it up!
Man thanks a lot , it ocurred to me to check my renders in another computer in mine looked good but in the other one BOOM! scene hyper saturated , so yeah my screen not calibrated , thanks for noticing man.
Man thanks a lot , it ocurred to me to check my renders in another computer in mine looked good but in the other one BOOM! scene hyper saturated , so yeah my screen not calibrated , thanks for noticing man.
So, some things to think about are you textures, they are more important than the model in most cases, lighting and materials sell a scene.
With that said I want to talk about your textures, they are actually not bad, the wall is probably the best texture, but it seems very dirty between the cracks, this isn't necessarily bad, but what it does do is really make the scene distracting, it takes the eye straight to the closest thing and that's the door, so actually that kinda works if you were to set up the composition well. I would still turn it down either way. Also, I think it looks great near the base of the electrical box, one of my favorite parts of the scene for some reason, it's very defined.
The door, the screen on the door I actually really love, and the door itself is my favorite prop, not really sure why. The only crit for that and really any prop is I would think about the wear, I can't tell if it's peeled paint or orange dust, if it's paint i would define it better, if it's dust I would pile it around creases. Thinking about how it might be worn down, how someone might use the foot to open the door instead of hands if they had full hands, or maybe someone hit the glass and broke it, so there could be chunks on the floor. While broken glass isn't in this scene.
As for lighting, remember, less can be more, when there are too many very saturated values it can be overwhelming to the eye, subtly is the key to lighting and ultimately what makes it most difficult. I think that no one can really be perfect at lighting, but remember, while this is hard to do, sometimes you have to tailor your materials to the lighting in your scene, it just how it is sometimes. I want to note I'm speaking about this as an observationalist, I don't really have much legit art background. Just try and look at great photos and study photography and CG, just trying to replicate what you see is a great way to learn. Try and copy the lighting in the concept!
I personally try to avoid really harsh contrasts, like for example your stair steps are crazy dark while I can see the rest of the scene, it doesn't make any sense and is just too dark in general. Having too much dark in the texture and in lighting can be bad, the ceiling is this way as well, but to a lesser extent.
The wood is good, the only real thing I could say is to add wear on the edges, it just helps define it, not really realistic.
The concrete isn't bad actually, and better than a lot I've seen here, the darkness between the tiles could be lightened a lot though, and you should really make some crack decals and overlay them, I don't know how it works in UDK. If not cracks then dirt, or some sort of wear, it will go a long way.
I personally really don't like how everyone is ignoring the scale of the scene as I have stated many times, but this isn't mine, and people can do what they want.
I would make the latter lean a bit to the wall or put it on the floor, make it look like people were living here and making a mess.
I love the green tooth on the electrical box, I wanted to put one there after seeing yours, but I don't wanna copy you;)
Something is really up with the material or the lighting on the stairs that just isn't right.
Composition is the most important part of the scene, well, that's a lie but it is super important and can make it go from meh to awesome, for example here is my poor attempt at a paintover:
I tried to get the colors but even my paint-over isn't right, but even though this isn't in the concept entirely, there are cables in the background you could do something like that to guild the eye into that part of the scene, since you look at the door first it will put you right at that light in the back, if you put a guy bent over a workbench or something that matters then you could really add a ton to your scene and make it more than just a scene but a moment (that sounded really cheesy but you get the point).
The props will tell the story ,just push the story element and remember sometimes less is more, less black values in textures.
To be honest the best way to really push yourself is to simply just set your standards as high as you can, to the point it makes you want to quit, then just one small notch under it, look at how pros do it, then what you do is just try and replicate it. As far as modeling you need to just get a TON of refs, even if you have to mix and match from refs, like my water heater i had about 20 refs and then mixed the concepts and mine.
Just work hard and set your standards high, that's what I see too much of is people just being like "OH IT"S MKKKZ GUNA POAST NOW."
Not saying you or most of the people in this thread have done that at all. Kinda just ranting. There was one that had the scale so off all I could think is, "are you even try?".
Anyway, I hope that's helpful, don't take what I say for 100% truth, just telling you how I see things:)
Man thanks a lot , it ocurred to me to check my renders in another computer in mine looked good but in the other one BOOM! scene hyper saturated , so yeah my screen not calibrated , thanks for noticing man.
Definitely looking better. I'd probably drop the values even further. The lighting still looks too inviting. Needs to look a little dingier.
Also, the pendant lights shouldn't have such a hard edge to them. Let the light bleed out more and see how it looks.
AlexCatMasterSupreme : Man thanks alot for taking some of your time to write the crit. I apreciated, I readed all of it and took notes of all of the problems you mentioned in my scene also thanks for your positive critcs Im very new at handpainting.
The wierd light in the wall next to the stairs was caused by lonely light point that represented a lamp not yet in the scene , my mistake it should'nt be there if theres no source.
The screen on the door is simply a pattern I made in photoshop glad you liked, also i will fix the door and will paint better txtures, paint better rust and rough edges, Im still new at painting textures so crits nedeed.
The yellow light on the walls is still a mistery for me but my guess is with the highlight values as they are at the moment red - 0.8 yellow - 0.7 and blue - 0.8
The ghostly ladder is because I havent fixed his position in 3dmax thanks for the remiender
with the cracks and dirt in the concrete , is something I wanted to save for later I going to use a tiled material that spread randomly across the texure
The wall will be fixed , it has to with the diffuse combiend with the normals complety darkens the texture , but you are right it should'nt be as dark , now that you mentoined they do look more medieval than modern.
the very dark wood in the celling is been a torment since the begining still dont know hor to fix it.
Thank for your redo image that you posted, helps me compare the contrast.
Hope I dont missing anything and thanks again.
Sorry for the bad english Im out of practice ,not my native language.
vikingfunk : thanks for the feedback sir , I have a bit of a crazy highlight midtone and shadow tone setting , I will to tone down all the values to try to get the best effect posible.
AlexCatMasterSupreme : Man thanks alot for taking some of your time to write the crit. I apreciated, I readed all of it and took notes of all of the problems you mentioned in my scene also thanks for your positive critcs Im very new at handpainting.
Sorry for the bad english Im out of practice ,not my native language.
It's no problem, I'm just glad you take the time to listen, I don't use UDK but I bet someone on here can help you with that wood.
Back with an update - thanks for the feedback guys, I've increased the light outputs and hotspot (as suggested by Rockguy and WarrenM)
Thanks for the comment cmtanko - made my day.
@Rockguy re the wood problem, I'm assuming that you wanted bounce light on the ceiling? If so you can place a light in UDK by holding the 'L' key and clicking the surface - this places a light with the intensity and colour based on the surface.
If it's not a lighting problem what does the geo look like? Could be flipped normals
Zero - Nice! That just grabs your eye and drags it to the staircase immediately. You might experiment with blowing that light out pretty bright and see what that looks like. You'll get some nice bloom happening and you might get enough bounce light to hit most of the rest of the basement, except for the back and the corners, which is what you want anyway.
@Moosebish: Thanks, I am seeing the problem. I'm working on it
@AlexCatMasterSupreme: Thanks a ton for taking the time to point all those thing. I did few changes on the stair and heater texture(not yet happy with those,but will do the 1st pass lighting first). Did some lighting experiments, not there yet... Will show something by tomm.
@ZeroBigSis: Seriously loved it... I wanted kinda same effect for my stairs, light coming from tom. Are those directional dominant light ? having lil problem with it.. when I use it,
Currently Having some problem:
when I used directionaldominant light to create effect something like that of ZeroBigSis,
#I am getting harsh lighting in the inside room too[how did it went inside, does that mean I have hole or something ?] #No light gives me shadows[it shows in preview but no after backing] ??? everything gets kinda diffused ? where are my shadows ?
It would have been easier to explain with snaps but dont have it now.
@cmtanko: Thanks
The light on the stairs is a directional light. Have you got a lightmass importance volume set up? This will improve any shadows baked in UDK and makes baking the lights quicker
Re your questions/probs #I am getting harsh lighting in the inside room too[how did it went inside, does that mean I have hole or something ?] - are you using double sided geo? - directional lights tend to ignore backfacing geo. Could be a hole between modular assets as well
[#No light gives me shadows[it shows in preview but no after backing] ??? everything gets kinda diffused ? where are my shadows ?
Could be solved using a lightmass importance volume. What are the settings for your lights? There is a checkbox on each light for shadows (although this is on by default) - could be something to do with the lighting settings, world properties or the static meshes lightmap UVs / lightmap resolution
Pics would be good to see what the problem is
(I don't pretend to be anywhere near an expert in UDK though :poly142:)
Hope this helps
Back with an update - thanks for the feedback guys, I've increased the light outputs and hotspot (as suggested by Rockguy and WarrenM)
Thanks for the comment cmtanko - made my day.
@Rockguy re the wood problem, I'm assuming that you wanted bounce light on the ceiling? If so you can place a light in UDK by holding the 'L' key and clicking the surface - this places a light with the intensity and colour based on the surface.
If it's not a lighting problem what does the geo look like? Could be flipped normals
Replies
I'll chunk some more stuff in and start working on some final models and maybe some tileables for the ground and walls...
still need to tweak some lights and shadows and to add few more objects.
comments/critiques are welcomed.
Rockguy, you just need to make more contrast, the scene as a whole is too bright for a basement imo (mine is too) even if it prolly fits the concept. Just play around till you find somehting you like. Another way is to take a screenshot and edit it in photoshop and try and replicate a result you like.
Sorry I have not done much, just finishing a long process but I'm getting an internship doing 3d that will turn into fulltime, I'm so excited! I plan to try and finish as much of this in the time period I can though, I will finish it no matter what.
Also in 9 days we start the thread for next month's challenge (for picking a concept) so find some nice ones!
and like always critiques/comments are welcomed :poly136: and if i get any constructive criticism i will use it in my future work/projects
Before you finish it tone down the white around the floors and tile edges a lot, then you should call it finished:)
No problem, if you want I can give you an in-depth crit. I was going to but I don't have a ton of time. If you want I can make the time.
I just try to avoid it as people sometimes just wont listen/makes things awkward and then takes my time as well.
Also I'd like crits too:)
Thanks much appreciated , I will like to make a more extense post with the props, wires , textures and the scene in general for a better critic , but first I want to tackle my issue with the lighting , as it turns out it wasnt the skylight only , my scene itself its bland.
Dont worry with the critcs I try to listen to everyone and fix what Im doing wrong ,
I havent been able to acutally comments on yours because Im not that familiar with crytec , and overall you scene is going good , the lighttings looks natural and I guess is still in progress and the highpolys looks great , the only thing I guess I can comment even if is minimal , is with the contrast that your scene have with the stairs , overall they have this very clean , polish feeling and the stairs they look old even one of the supports is broken I think , but again is a very minimal crit.
Thanks for the crit!
I will try and balance it out later when I polish:)
I am not and I don't think they are either. I've only been doing 3d for 11 months, coming up on a year. I can't speak for the rest of everyone but we's all newbz. Paroxom (sp) entered the first month though, he is NOT a noob at ALL.
By the way is the challenge still ending on the 31 of the month?
Last day of the month, and oh man hand painting. AHAHAHAHAHA.
If only I could... One of these challenges I will try that.
Edit: I thought you asked why it ended then, yes sir it still does.
in 7 days I'll make the thread to pick a new concept.
Lighting is mood based at the moment, it's too dark imo and the brick texture needs some work still. Crits always welcome
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
ZeroBigSis : The red floor looks really good with the broken tiles and diferent height but your lighting is too dark right now , guess is in progress also the light emiting from the lamps could be stronger, good scene so far.
The reason the door looks stretched out is because I changed the FOV so I can capture the whole room, and I guess the side effect was stretching the door. Heres another picture without the FOV. Also made the box with the bottles small, because they were too big in comparison to everything else. Added the characters there for size comparison.
Anyways, I have finished all the props and everything finally exported to UDK yesterday night.. And I must say, I am loving UDK ,the way it renders and all... Also started learning UDK Lightings from some tutorial.
Today will start assembling all those modular pieces and show you guys tomm.
Question: How to you put a physics/collision thing for the stair, ATM its more like a bounding box. I need physics that matches with the model ?
AND
@ZeroBigSis : Now that looks something with a "story"... Awesome scene
I am sorry, but your scale is way off.
Those doors are like 1-2 feet too tall as well as the stairs.
The bottles look as large as the forearm of that guy.
The sitars are massive.
Also you should try and clean the floor up and dirty it with decals so it doesnt seem so repetitive and have less pure black in your texture.
The rest is looking good but those stick out the most.
This is a complete non-problem. Everything is perfectly to scale except the character, which is not part of the scene. Either scale up the dude, if you need him, or delte him. The environment stands fine on it's own.
My additional crits: Take a tiledshot of the scene and resixe it down in photoshop for a sharper presentation image, and if I could pick one thing to rework, it would be the pipes, which are a but blobby and disconnected from the wall atm. I would then use the pipes to fill in some of the white space on the far wall.
Finally, the shot could do with relighting. everything is very evenly lit, but it's flat and a bit boring. You want to highlight the stairs and the door by the shelves, and have the furthest reaches of the room be in shadow. Not black shadow, but darker in relation to the rest of the room. Lighting to 'hide' parts of an environment is counterintuitive, but Jason Lavoie talks about it well in his "Deconstructing Demon Throne" videos: http://vimeo.com/album/227064
Before playing with the lightings, Did a little paint over to see how I'd be doing the lighting.I like this one[with light at one area instead of having light in all place though there are bulbs
Open to serious criticism or suggestions... Want to make mooooorrreee better.
I get the mood you want to set by having the light focused on that one area. But it doesn't show off your work at all.. You can barely see any of the other props and all your texture work will have been a waste of time..
Overall the scene is too busy feeling, the areas door area is far too dark where the wood area is much too busy, weather it's details on the floor or the amount of detail in the wood on the stairs, it is hard to rest your eye. At least the wood on the stairs is too busy and dark, the ceiling is fine.
Like most people you make the floor area massive.
The color of the water heater is very red and reads as concrete.
The color of the floor and texture job doesn't read too well everything feels very flat. It looks kinda like sand.
I would be weary of using too many dark colors for dirt as it can read oddly and make things feel amateurish, but that really depends.
I don't really understand why you have barrels in there, it looks like a basement for a family.
I would add more geo to the pillars and put some more work into them and not just use hard edges like that. I would sculpt out the damage and you also have a UV seam right in the middle of the screen from it(at least it looks like it anyways).
Try and take a lot of the wear out of your diffuses and instead put decals everywhere. Also try and remove some of the blacker values in the wood, it's a little over the top at least in that lighting.
Also, light should be coming from the light near the stairs.
As for the lighting I'd go for something like this:
It's kinda hard to do a paintover with the lighting.
I'm not trying to be a dick you just asked for a crit so:)
Keep it up!
You should try turning down the contrast and saturation the most.
Keep it up!
So, some things to think about are you textures, they are more important than the model in most cases, lighting and materials sell a scene.
With that said I want to talk about your textures, they are actually not bad, the wall is probably the best texture, but it seems very dirty between the cracks, this isn't necessarily bad, but what it does do is really make the scene distracting, it takes the eye straight to the closest thing and that's the door, so actually that kinda works if you were to set up the composition well. I would still turn it down either way. Also, I think it looks great near the base of the electrical box, one of my favorite parts of the scene for some reason, it's very defined.
The door, the screen on the door I actually really love, and the door itself is my favorite prop, not really sure why. The only crit for that and really any prop is I would think about the wear, I can't tell if it's peeled paint or orange dust, if it's paint i would define it better, if it's dust I would pile it around creases. Thinking about how it might be worn down, how someone might use the foot to open the door instead of hands if they had full hands, or maybe someone hit the glass and broke it, so there could be chunks on the floor. While broken glass isn't in this scene.
As for lighting, remember, less can be more, when there are too many very saturated values it can be overwhelming to the eye, subtly is the key to lighting and ultimately what makes it most difficult. I think that no one can really be perfect at lighting, but remember, while this is hard to do, sometimes you have to tailor your materials to the lighting in your scene, it just how it is sometimes. I want to note I'm speaking about this as an observationalist, I don't really have much legit art background. Just try and look at great photos and study photography and CG, just trying to replicate what you see is a great way to learn. Try and copy the lighting in the concept!
I personally try to avoid really harsh contrasts, like for example your stair steps are crazy dark while I can see the rest of the scene, it doesn't make any sense and is just too dark in general. Having too much dark in the texture and in lighting can be bad, the ceiling is this way as well, but to a lesser extent.
The wood is good, the only real thing I could say is to add wear on the edges, it just helps define it, not really realistic.
The concrete isn't bad actually, and better than a lot I've seen here, the darkness between the tiles could be lightened a lot though, and you should really make some crack decals and overlay them, I don't know how it works in UDK. If not cracks then dirt, or some sort of wear, it will go a long way.
I personally really don't like how everyone is ignoring the scale of the scene as I have stated many times, but this isn't mine, and people can do what they want.
I would make the latter lean a bit to the wall or put it on the floor, make it look like people were living here and making a mess.
I love the green tooth on the electrical box, I wanted to put one there after seeing yours, but I don't wanna copy you;)
Something is really up with the material or the lighting on the stairs that just isn't right.
Composition is the most important part of the scene, well, that's a lie but it is super important and can make it go from meh to awesome, for example here is my poor attempt at a paintover:
I tried to get the colors but even my paint-over isn't right, but even though this isn't in the concept entirely, there are cables in the background you could do something like that to guild the eye into that part of the scene, since you look at the door first it will put you right at that light in the back, if you put a guy bent over a workbench or something that matters then you could really add a ton to your scene and make it more than just a scene but a moment (that sounded really cheesy but you get the point).
The props will tell the story ,just push the story element and remember sometimes less is more, less black values in textures.
To be honest the best way to really push yourself is to simply just set your standards as high as you can, to the point it makes you want to quit, then just one small notch under it, look at how pros do it, then what you do is just try and replicate it. As far as modeling you need to just get a TON of refs, even if you have to mix and match from refs, like my water heater i had about 20 refs and then mixed the concepts and mine.
Just work hard and set your standards high, that's what I see too much of is people just being like "OH IT"S MKKKZ GUNA POAST NOW."
Not saying you or most of the people in this thread have done that at all. Kinda just ranting. There was one that had the scale so off all I could think is, "are you even try?".
Anyway, I hope that's helpful, don't take what I say for 100% truth, just telling you how I see things:)
Definitely looking better. I'd probably drop the values even further. The lighting still looks too inviting. Needs to look a little dingier.
Also, the pendant lights shouldn't have such a hard edge to them. Let the light bleed out more and see how it looks.
Great work though!
Sorry, replied to wrong post... Um, yeah crits above.
The wierd light in the wall next to the stairs was caused by lonely light point that represented a lamp not yet in the scene , my mistake it should'nt be there if theres no source.
The screen on the door is simply a pattern I made in photoshop glad you liked, also i will fix the door and will paint better txtures, paint better rust and rough edges, Im still new at painting textures so crits nedeed.
The yellow light on the walls is still a mistery for me but my guess is with the highlight values as they are at the moment red - 0.8 yellow - 0.7 and blue - 0.8
The ghostly ladder is because I havent fixed his position in 3dmax thanks for the remiender
with the cracks and dirt in the concrete , is something I wanted to save for later I going to use a tiled material that spread randomly across the texure
The wall will be fixed , it has to with the diffuse combiend with the normals complety darkens the texture , but you are right it should'nt be as dark , now that you mentoined they do look more medieval than modern.
the very dark wood in the celling is been a torment since the begining still dont know hor to fix it.
Thank for your redo image that you posted, helps me compare the contrast.
Hope I dont missing anything and thanks again.
Sorry for the bad english Im out of practice ,not my native language.
It's no problem, I'm just glad you take the time to listen, I don't use UDK but I bet someone on here can help you with that wood.
Thanks for the comment cmtanko - made my day.
@Rockguy re the wood problem, I'm assuming that you wanted bounce light on the ceiling? If so you can place a light in UDK by holding the 'L' key and clicking the surface - this places a light with the intensity and colour based on the surface.
If it's not a lighting problem what does the geo look like? Could be flipped normals
My update
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The floating light to the left is because the view is taken where a wall is placed.
@AlexCatMasterSupreme: Thanks a ton for taking the time to point all those thing. I did few changes on the stair and heater texture(not yet happy with those,but will do the 1st pass lighting first). Did some lighting experiments, not there yet... Will show something by tomm.
@ZeroBigSis: Seriously loved it... I wanted kinda same effect for my stairs, light coming from tom. Are those directional dominant light ? having lil problem with it.. when I use it,
Currently Having some problem:
when I used directionaldominant light to create effect something like that of ZeroBigSis,
#I am getting harsh lighting in the inside room too[how did it went inside, does that mean I have hole or something ?]
#No light gives me shadows[it shows in preview but no after backing] ??? everything gets kinda diffused ? where are my shadows ?
It would have been easier to explain with snaps but dont have it now.
The light on the stairs is a directional light. Have you got a lightmass importance volume set up? This will improve any shadows baked in UDK and makes baking the lights quicker
Re your questions/probs
#I am getting harsh lighting in the inside room too[how did it went inside, does that mean I have hole or something ?] - are you using double sided geo? - directional lights tend to ignore backfacing geo. Could be a hole between modular assets as well
[#No light gives me shadows[it shows in preview but no after backing] ??? everything gets kinda diffused ? where are my shadows ?
Could be solved using a lightmass importance volume. What are the settings for your lights? There is a checkbox on each light for shadows (although this is on by default) - could be something to do with the lighting settings, world properties or the static meshes lightmap UVs / lightmap resolution
Pics would be good to see what the problem is
(I don't pretend to be anywhere near an expert in UDK though :poly142:)
Hope this helps
Door Detail:
Now i don't know why i started with these.
It looks like you have some scale issues going on.
Also 3 days till we start picking concepts for the next challenge!
I'm slowly chipping away at this and want to finish.
Update: Someone please crit my texture.
thanks i'll fix it, plus, i will continue working on this for my own training.
looks awsome