Blacksmith Lodge: hand painted 3D scene

Crowdsmurf

Hi Everyone,

I'm working on a small 3D scene that I plan on presenting in UDK. Here is what I have so far.








So far I got the main blockout (althoug I'm still searching for a more interesting ground surface) and I'm hoping to be able to do some color studies now.

Any feedback, thougts, remarks would be greatly appreciated. I'm planning on updating this with progress as much as I can .

Thanks in advance if you took the time to read this,

Cheers

ivanzu

This looks interesting so I I'll be following it.

Crowdsmurf

thanks, all the more reason for me to update

lotet

the mesh looks great! looking 4ward for the textures.

Jessica Dinh

Mesh looks nice :] Maybe more trees in other areas besides right behind the house? You're probably doing it for visibility from all angles, but it's just funny that they're ALL clumped there.

Fragged

The rustic, green atmosphere is really nice in your moodboard.
I'm wondering about the waterwheel's function, does it move a grindstone or something else?
Anyway, looking forward to your progress.

Crowdsmurf

Thanks for the replies everyone; getting all this feedback is great motivation.

@Lotet: Textures are my weak point, so I'm planning on doing some colour studies first, I'll make sure to post them .

@Jessica: A very valid point. It needs more transition. The idea is that a forest starts behind the house, but I'm still figuring out how to make that clear. Seeing your work was one of my main inspirations to start doing this btw; big fan here!

@Fragged: Good point; I have to admit I haven't really thought about that. I figured it just controlled some grindstone in the house, but since it's not visible, I didn't really pay more attention to it. It could be interesting to give it more of a visible function though, thanks for the tip!

ivanzu

Put some mushrooms and moss behind the house at the treeline in most of the cases this two are first signs of forests.Maybe even a small rabbit or a deer.

Notice the type of plants near the wooded areas"forests".

Cibo

I think the watermill steals the show.
The "blacksmith" theme is not dominant enough and my eyes wander to the watermill and river.

ivanzu

He could simply put some sort of a hammer like sign near the doors which would give the impression that its blacksmiths lodge after all he is going to have multiple views of the scene not just the front one so I don't think that its a big problem.

spectre1130

This looks like an awesome start. Subscribed.

hamzaaa

Man you stole my next setting! Looking forward to more. Subscribed!

Crowdsmurf

Ok, All these responses are starting to raise the pressure into making this awesome pretty high . Did not anticipate that! Nonetheless, Thanks again everyone for the feedback and replies, I really appreciate it.

Ivanzu: thank you for the reference and the tips, The vegetation transition is definitly something to keep in mind.

Cibo: The watermill was added because I thought that part of the scene wasn't visually interesting enough. It's cool to hear it actually draws attention now. I got some ideas to play out the blacksmith theme more, but in a later stage.

Spectre & hamzaa: thanks for subscribing, I'll do my best not to dissapoint. Hamzaa, sorry for stealing your setting; not my intention .

I've been working mainly on optimizing the meshes and the unwraps now, so I don't really have any visually interesting updates. I'm hoping to post some new things tommorow evening though.

Crowdsmurf

Quick update: Started tyring out some color schemes, started finishing up the meshes and adding some vegetation.

tottot

Very nice progression, I'll be keeping an eye on this thread! Can I ask where the top middle reference is from in the first image?

Crowdsmurf

@tottot: thanks, not sure where that picture is from originally. I found it googling medieval houses. Can't seem to find the exact keywords again. If I stumble upon it, I'll post it.

ivanzu

Really good cant wait to see it finished.
C&D color schemes look the best!

willy-wilson

Here ya go, i had saved the link a couple weeks ago after finding it.

http://www.tabletop-world.com/

Twotents

Heh I love tabletop worlds stuff! I often use their buildings as references I have been working on the well from tabletop world

Great work so far by the way! Love the color tests.

C catches my eye the best out of em all. Keep up the amazing work!

Crowdsmurf

Thanks willy-wilson, that whole site is great reference.

Glad to see c & d are favourites, definitly gonna work starting from those .

PhoenixWolf

will be following this thread

Eliteabix

Cant wait to see some textures! watching this.

Crowdsmurf

Hey Everyone,

It's been a while since I updated. I had some other projects that I had to work on, so I had to put this one hold for now. Anyway, the deadline for this project is at the end of the month, so I should be making a lot of progress.

In the meantime, I had to learn how to work in Maya for my upcoming internship, so I took the opportunity to make the blacksmith character that should go with this scene. It's still a bit WIP since the textures need some refining, but I'm gonna leave it like this untill I have more of the scene.



Hope you guys like it. Feedback is still, and always will be, very much appreciated.

cheers

carlobarley

subscribed!

Zonvolt

Sweet 'stache haha

hamzaaa

Great stuff! I think for a blacksmith and hard worker he still looks a little too clean. I think overall (especially the gloves) could look a little more dirty and like he is crafting sh** all day

Crowdsmurf

Good point about the too clean part. I usually add dirt as the last stage and I ran out of time . I'm definitly going to add dirt on the gloves though, they need a lot more defining anyway. Thanks for the tip!

Clark Coots

nice! love the color studies thats brilliant!

JamieRIOT

Sweet. The blockout has come along real nice, I like concept C the best. Subscribed!

Jessica Dinh

Nice character! Careful with the cloth folds in some areas though, like on the apron. Some of the folds are kinda warbly, so keep in mind tension points and stuff. Also would be nice to see a bit more color for the skin tones to separate it from the other materials - pinks for blood in the cheeks and nose, etc. But the texture execution itself is nice, and I like the model ^_^

Crowdsmurf

@coots & JamieRIOT: thanks, glad you like the colour studies and the blocking. C is my favourit one as well.

@Jessica: great feedback, really appreciate it. I've finished him for now and and tried to incorporate as much of your pointers as I can.



As for the scene, I've been swamped with exams, but I finally found some time to continue working on it. I put a very basic texture on everything and started messing around in UDK. These are some Max viewportGrabs with flat shading







All of it is still very WIP and needs a lot of cleaning up and detailing, but feedback is always appreciated . I'll be posting some screens from the UDK setup in the near future.

pixelb

Ah, very cool. Only thing I would suggest is bringing out one color as an accent, like the yellow on his gloves/patch. Otherwise the color scheme is rather monotonous.

Gheromo

I personally think you should stay away from idea where this environment is made on a round turntable or whatever. It makes it look like its a miniature size decoration for your table rather than an existing place in the world.

Party Priest

I disagree with that idea. It looks pretty sweet this way.

Yeah, the texture could use some living up. Otherwise excellent progress. I'm subscribing and looking forward to more. Great work mate!

Crowdsmurf

Thx for the feedback everyone! Good point about the colour in textures. I've tried to keep everything in the same pallet up untill now, but it can definitly use accents; gonna work on that. Colours are my weak spot and I'm trying to tackle this problem with a lot of studies and research, so every constructive form of criticism is very welcome.

I also get the part about the round turntable. I don't really mind that it would look like a miniature size decoration, but I was thinking about making it a bit more interesting, like on the tof off a cliff or something.

Thanks again and I'll update when I have some new stuff .

steppan

very nice concept. Mesh looks nice and clean and I love the colour studies you've done. I'll be keeping an eye on this one. Subscribed!

Jessica Dinh

Textures are pretty good so far! Have you thought about using a darker grass though? Right now like everything is so bright it's kinda glaring to look at. If you squint your eyes, the thing that stands out the most in your scene is the roof, because it's the only dark thing, which is sorta weird. You probably want the whole house to stand out so I would try playing with some values in your scene to fix that, but I personally think it might be the grass.

Also, you don't necessarily have to make all of it darker, maybe try making a darker variant and painting patches of that in or something when you go into UDK to do your terrain painting. Can't wait to see more.

Crowdsmurf

Hi everyone

I can't believe it took me so long to update this thread. I've been super busy with work and felt like I never had something worthy to upload, but I finally managed to found some time for this project, so here goes .

First off, way too late, but thanks Steppan for the kind words. No idea if you're still following this thread, but if you do happen to read this, really appreciate it.
@Jessica: thanks for the feedback and the tips, your advice prompted me to make some paintovers to play around with the values.


I also wanted to try out what it would look like if I expanded it a bit as a floating piece of rock.



So I finally managed to start putting everything in UDK and this is what I got so far. I'm using the afternoon template and am still learning a lot from UDK as I go (realizing I needed another UV set for lightmaps took me quite some time ).



In a next step I'm hoping to find a way to make a water and waterfall look decent, replace the bridge placeholders, figure out somehow how to get some cool looking clouds in there and give some of the textures a well deserving update.

As always, feedback is very much appreciated and it might take me some time, but I'll get to it eventually .

Cheers

Crowdsmurf

Hey Everyone,

Final update on this project. It was interesting to see what I wanted to change after not working on it for a few months, but I feel I need to stop here and start on something new .

I had a lot of fun with it and many thanks to everyone who gave feedback an commented!

Cheers!

darkmag07

Things look pretty good, but it'd be much more interesting if you had the blacksmith actually working in his forge and not just standing there!

I would also probably adjust the UVs on the roof over the forge so that the top part doesn't have that extra little bit of shingling.

Ehsan Gamer

Congrats . Love the mood

dvisionvoid

AMAZING!

Minos

Very nice, but I like the previous iteration waaaaay better. The shadows are too dark now, which completely clashes with the stylized look you are going for. I'd recommend using brighter shadows so the contrast between light and shadow isn't so strong. The skybox also looks "photoreal" and clashes with the rest of the scene too... Maybe a deep blue sky would fit the scene better.

Great work with the assets nevertheless, the scene just need a better presentation to make your work really shine

Crowdsmurf

Thanks for kind words and feedback everyone! I really appreciate it . This is the first environment I made and I'm a complete noob when it comes to lighting and environment presentation, so this is all very helpful. I'll take a look at the shadow settings and the skybox when it comes to updating my portfolio and try to get the blacksmith to be a bit more active .

Jakob Gavelli

Looks cool!

I'm a bit worried about the scale though. The blacksmith is way too large for the door/house/forge and the trees look kind of small?

Very nice for a first environment. Right now the scale feels a bit like an RTS, if that was what you were going for, great job!

Mr Smo

i agree with the others guys, the lighting could use a bit of work, shadows are very heavy. still, looks really fun!

Arkana

The smith's hand appears to be clipping through his hammer. And yeah, I'm pretty sure right now he's way too big to fit into that house.

Other than that, this scene is coming together pretty well.

oxblood

love the style of this , looking really good

Gannon

I like where this is going but your lighting isn't doing you any favors. The shadows are very dark for an outdoor scene during the day time. I think your normal maps are casting some odd shadows also.

Boost your environment color under the world properties to lighten up those shadows and give yourself some color in them.

Nuriko91

Hey nice work! I do agree with what people are saying about the shadows also. It completely covers your water too. Besides that, it looks really good.

lotet

Looks awesome.