First UDK project

Kaelin Hinnant

Hey everybody, my name is Kaelin and I am a student at the Art Institute of Tampa, Florida, i'm studying Game Art and Design and will graduate in about a year and a half. I've never really been on a forum before so i guess polycount would be breaking my cherry, but anywho i did a project in UDK for my first time last quarter and afriend of mine told me i should post it here to get some feedback and critiques. I wish I could have rendered a flythrough of my entire scene but still trying to figure that out. but here ya go, check it out, i created mostly everything in here, but did use some already given props from UDK to enhance my scene

Kaelin Hinnant

these are some props, i modeled everything in 3ds max and textured/sculpted in mudbox

praetus

Your models have little in the way of form as they are flooded with poor micro details and soft doughy edges. It looks to me like you've fallen into the trap of "If I sculpt in details in Mudbox/ZBrush it will make my models look great." Don't take that personally. When I first used a sculpting program I though that exact thing and it only made my mediocre art look worse because I didn't know proper workflow.

I can look at some of your props and see where you were trying to go but it looks like you stumbled on the way there. If you're going to use a sculpting program you need to learn the proper workflow and tool implementation. Right now it looks like you used the standard brush for most all of your details. Start small. Learn how to make a mesh that will export well as a base to sculpt from. Learn what the different brushes and tools can use so you're not using one for everything. Keep at it.

Kaelin Hinnant

sweet thank you for the heads up, i've looked up some tutorials on sculpting in mudbox but havent found one on exporting/importing your objects properly. how can i make sure that my object in max is ready to go to mudbox, (does polycount matter before i export it from max into mudbox to get better sculpt detail, and should i mostly model everything that i want to be sculpted instead of trying to sculpt it? thanks for the feedback i appreciate it

praetus

Bobo's DS2 weapon sculpting tutorial is great. Even though it is using ZBrush, it shows a good setup of topology for exporting from max. The goal is to have all the hard edges and shapes available when you bring the prop into your sculpting program. At that point you're just detailing. Also, take a look at my Stonecore thread in my signature. I wrote up a bit of my workflow there. Amusingly, most of my ideas were discovered using Bobo's tutorial as a starting point.

Kaelin Hinnant

Alright awesome! Im definitely going to check that out, currently im working on a jungle scene for my texturing 2 class and i wanted to bring everything into mudbox so that tutorial sounds like exactly what i've been looking for, thank you! also i got my flythrough of this atlantis scene (helped by my former teacher to render the flythrough) but check it out and get a better feel for the place instead of looking at pictures
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtNS9zqG7FY"]Atlantis_Kaelin_Fall_2012_w_Reflect_Water - YouTube[/ame]