New Portfolio Piece - Torowyn's Rocket Tower
polycounter lvl 7
Hai guys n' gals,
It's time for a new portfolio piece, so after brainstorming I came up with the following concept- Basically, an old castle turret with a modern missile launcher platform built into it. It will be fully modelled and textured, as well as placed within a nice UDK scene. I chose this idea since it makes use of several different texture types, has two distinct flavours of theme, and is kinda silly and whimsical.
Sketch:
Silhouettes:
Reference:
Description:
Torowyn the Engineer-Seer built his towers from an ancient ruin, with funds (and some material) earned through working for the local kingdom's municipal department. Nobody's quite sure why he built it, but as far as the kingdom is concerned, as long as he keeps it all away from the townsfolk they will put up with his eccentricities... including the strange explosions in the sky. The scene will comprise of two towers; one which is more built-up, and another which is slightly off-kilter with a rocket platform on top, connected by a flimsy scrap wooden bridge. Both towers have bits of machinery attached (ie; support strut, air ducts). If I have some extra time, I'd like to rig the platform, so you could actually sit in the seat and swing around the tower
Technical Stuff:
So far I'm aiming to have this done by the end of January/beginning of Feb; I only have about an hour a day during the week to do it, so I'm going to be spacing it out.
Stylewise, I'd like to exaggerate the models slightly (ie; round edges, slightly skewed proportions, etc), and use more detailed/photo-realistic textures. I might change that to be more stylized, but I'd like there to be a lot of definition and 'feel' to the textures themselves.
I'm not sure about texture and poly budgets, what do you guys think? I'd like to have some constraints to work within. I plan on making use of tiling textures quite a bit. I'm thinking of giving myself two 2K maps to divide up into smaller maps as needed.
What do you guys think? I'm still sketching, but I think I have an idea of what I want.
It's time for a new portfolio piece, so after brainstorming I came up with the following concept- Basically, an old castle turret with a modern missile launcher platform built into it. It will be fully modelled and textured, as well as placed within a nice UDK scene. I chose this idea since it makes use of several different texture types, has two distinct flavours of theme, and is kinda silly and whimsical.
Sketch:
Silhouettes:
Reference:
Description:
Torowyn the Engineer-Seer built his towers from an ancient ruin, with funds (and some material) earned through working for the local kingdom's municipal department. Nobody's quite sure why he built it, but as far as the kingdom is concerned, as long as he keeps it all away from the townsfolk they will put up with his eccentricities... including the strange explosions in the sky. The scene will comprise of two towers; one which is more built-up, and another which is slightly off-kilter with a rocket platform on top, connected by a flimsy scrap wooden bridge. Both towers have bits of machinery attached (ie; support strut, air ducts). If I have some extra time, I'd like to rig the platform, so you could actually sit in the seat and swing around the tower
Technical Stuff:
So far I'm aiming to have this done by the end of January/beginning of Feb; I only have about an hour a day during the week to do it, so I'm going to be spacing it out.
Stylewise, I'd like to exaggerate the models slightly (ie; round edges, slightly skewed proportions, etc), and use more detailed/photo-realistic textures. I might change that to be more stylized, but I'd like there to be a lot of definition and 'feel' to the textures themselves.
I'm not sure about texture and poly budgets, what do you guys think? I'd like to have some constraints to work within. I plan on making use of tiling textures quite a bit. I'm thinking of giving myself two 2K maps to divide up into smaller maps as needed.
What do you guys think? I'm still sketching, but I think I have an idea of what I want.
Replies
This is still super-rough; I haven't begun to add any edge bevels yet, n' junk.
EDIT: Finished door! With lowpoly- I might have to tweak the lowpoly later, to make up for all the fancy stuff the hipoly has. Lowpoly is sitting at 206 tri's so far.
Sorry for the lack of updates, I just went through a lot of crunch at work the last week. Today I bulked up some highpoly on the rocket launcher. I'm starting to think I'll only have time for the one tower for my deadline!
Lowpoly:
Highpoly:
The brickwork was interesting, it was my first time producing something half-decent in zBrush. Go me!
More updates soon! Hopefully with have this ma' textured up by next week. The flag (not that you can tell from these screens) also is a cloth mesh that moves in wind! Weeeeeeeeeeee
How're you looking to do the environment after this part is done?
I'd really try to sell the connection point between the second tower (the one without the rockets) and the ground. You could maybe add another little tier or layer a the bottom, or just turn the surrounding ground into stone work.
Barring those ideas, some fallen stone chunks and/or natural rocks with tufts of grass near and intersecting the bottom to hide the flat geo seam would really help pull the piece together and make it feel less "game arty"
The same goes for the connection point between the rockets and the top of the first tower. Right now it looks like the stone curves inwards and then becomes what I assume is going to be a metal panel. I'd say it's well worth the extra Geometry to really emphasize how they're attached. Realistically they'd probably just put it inside the boundaries of the battlements (like you have on the other tower) However, if those battlements were destroyed, or they chose to remove them there'd still be evidence, fallen rubble, jagged edges to the stone. And it's unlkely they'd bolt a large metal plate to this ruin castle, but smooth and round the edges of the stones around it so uniformly.
Also those large windows on the second tower should probably be reinforced like the smaller one above it, I have a feeling windows that big on their own would be a big structural flaw in a castle. and it wouldn't hurt to make them a bit more square and lined up with the stone work so people can understand how they may have actually been built into there to start with.
All in all, I like it, but I think it can be pushed much further
I do agree with Xelan's input,a connection point would work quite nicely.
Sketch no.5 made me smile :P
keep it going!
Thanks everyone else
Sorry for the small amount of UI stuff- UDK kept crashing when I tried to Play On PC so I could grab nice high-rez screenshots. I think my PC is dying
TODO: Rocket, window, rocks, grass and flag textures, as well as finishing up the brick spec and the rocket launcher's support base texture. I'm going to sculpt a second layer of damage for the bricks, so that I can use a simple entropy shader to make the brickwork look more interesting. The grass will also have a vertex shader (just diffuse, though). I think the Rocket tower should have a window above the door, too. Something's just... missing. I also need to add some clutter, methinks. Then comes post-process and everything else!
Quick edit: For some reason these screenshots look dimmer than how they appear in UDK... I'll have to get on that. Aaand I'll post wires soon, Juiceli (nice name btw
I'm calling it a night! So far, I've got a few texture fixes left (the flag needs some love, and the ducts look icky- plus the brick Spec I've been putting off for some reason), some brick sculpting (for the 'damaged' normals for vertex painting - yay Entropy shader!), and then I can look forward to lighting and post-processing! Not to mention adding some speedtrees... AND getting the Landscape up to snuff! I think I might add some simple grass and small rocks to the scene as well. Perhaps a tower off in the distance?
I've gotta do something about the lighting for the next round of screenshots - the Dominant Directional light I've got in the scene is pretty much nullifying my normals and speculars!
Edit: Also, what do you guys think of my colour palette so far? I'm kind of worried the chair/metal supports are blending too much and are just reading as brown instead of rust and leather. Thoughts?
Anyone have any advice for the terrain? It's got a normal and spec map, and I've toned down the colour quite a bit in the Material... but it's still this gross, oversaturated and bright green mess. I'm using Landscape, as well.
You might also want to look at the actual texture your using itself. If you haven't done so already, take it in photoshop and try tiling it multiple times to fill the canvas any tiling and colour/saturation etc will become much easier to observe.
@g0th: THANK YOU so much for the suggestion!! My normals look ubersex now. I didn't realize that the height (that is the green channel, right? >_>) was actually inverted on the normals.
@nufftalon: Thanks dude!
I've still got a way to go- I think the biggest problem with this project is that I really bit off more than I could chew. I underestimated how many assets I would need for a whole outdoor environment, and I find myself frequently tacking on bits that I didn't plan for. The biggest takeaway (besides the skills I picked up) is that there is no substitute for pre-production. Looking at my original sketches, it was just the tower, nothing else. My next project will definitely be more simple
TODO: Finish placing trees (speedtree isn't cheating, right?), lighting + post-process. Finish line in sight.
Also What I think might help this piece a ton is the environment. The ground does not have a very pleasing texture on it, it is very obvious the tiling and it is taking away from your models. I would try and figure out a way to constrain the environment because it is taking up a ton of pixels in the image. Floating islands might work more for this. I think this is the biggest problem with your images.
I think this is a okay example of what I think could work better as a setting. You are wasting pixels on stuff that does not look that good (Grass, dirt etc.) Make a GOOD composition and save that camera (CTRL + any number if you are using UDK)
Focus on the big picture
Keep at it homes.
In your original sketches there was this windmill kind of concept that I thought was pretty cool. Maybe you can consider adding it to the towers? Also, you mentioned that you'd like to stylize the models slightly. So maybe you can also add a slight bent or "crookedness" to the silhouettes of the towers to emphasize it more.
Ahh, that's all I got. Sorry I can't give you any technical 3D advice. Good luck!
@LongJh: Yus... I had forgotten about the windmill. I might try that, if it'll lend itself to the composition. The crookedness thing I've actually received some feedback about already, so I'll give it a shot. The tower meshes are pretty simple, so it should be easy to add some of that to it. Thanks!
In this current round of work, I'm doing some preliminary lighting... and cannot figure out why I'm getting this terrible lighting on my towers and rocks. I think the awful shadow cutoff around seams is an issue with the texture and/or the lightmap of the models (the rocket tower model was mostly exported as one .fbx file; can you apply lightmaps from the models if import like that?), but I have no idea what's causing the blotchy shadows on the rest of the models. Error lighting turned on for emphasis:
I really appreciate all the feedback I've been getting, you guys rock! I'm happy to see that people enjoy the direction this is going in
Possibly one of the biggest lessons I've learned is not to take scale and composition for granted when designing environments like this.
What do you guys think of the broken rock texture on the ground? I'm not sure if I should make that the 'top' of the precipices, or the sides, to make them look more canyon-like. I'm still going to swap out the grass texture, but I think it's less crappy looking with the other textures in the scene now. Thoughts? Once again, thank you for all the crits!
Rock wouldn't crack like that on slopey surfaces like that so it just looks kinda slapped on. That kind of texture would best be utilized by using it suitably to show off patchy areas rather than one big area.
Your probs waiting till later to proeprly look at it but your lighting could do with some proper fill & rim lights to make everything pop out, at the moment it looks very flat i'm guessing there's only a key and ambient light in the scene? This scene would look proper boss with good lighting!
Keep up the good work!
Working on lighting for now and feel kind of lost. I'm trying to add some highlights to areas, and help soften some shadows... what do you think? I've got a directional light turned down really low, and several spotlights throughout the scene.
After all this is done, I'm adding some particle effects for when I put it in my new reel... I'm going to have the turret turn and fire a missile. There'll be smoke billowing out, and some neat heat distortion, all that good stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX4nADQs84c&feature=youtu.be
Next project: a modular urinal set. Cause, why not?