Yet another sci-fi corridor
Hello everyone, I'm a freelance 2d artist that decided to do 3d again, having worked with it a few years ago - and what better way to start again than with a corridor? I used cryengine for the scene and overall is pretty darn stoked about the result!
I didn't really have time to concept before doing this so it was pure chaos as far as assets and stuff is concerned, but holy crap did I learn a lot and had a great deal of fun doing it!
HUGE thanks to Spitfire and Rens for pushing me to take this to a whole other level!
I didn't really have time to concept before doing this so it was pure chaos as far as assets and stuff is concerned, but holy crap did I learn a lot and had a great deal of fun doing it!
HUGE thanks to Spitfire and Rens for pushing me to take this to a whole other level!
Replies
Simple, clean, while still giving a sense of ambiance to the space.
Getting that dramatic light going in conjunction with nice spec/gloss really pushes it. The glowing box is just a glow material placed on a solid to save time. I have a godray-plane somewhere but I can't for the life of me find it.
The only problem is that there seems to be an error with the latest cryengine build (3.4.3). It claims my levels are corrupted when I try to load them though I doubt that they actually are. Even very early savefiles of levels seem to get the same error. I had to redo the whole scene and not close the new version for 3 days straight while working on this (just in case of getting such errors on shutdown). Now that I have rebooted I get that same error but the earlier iteration (separate version) of the level that was previously said to be corrupted can now be loaded. I'll try to edit the size of the warning label as soon as I get the level to work again though. :thumbup:
Apart from what I assume to be these isolated errors, cryengine is a blast to work in though!
What you can definitely do is, work on Layers and set them to External in the Layer properties. That will save your scene information in human readable XML files and you can easier debug them then the cryptic CRY files.
Since I got continuous feedback from a few friends I've actually got some progress screenies saved:
Maya
Cryengine
Simple diffuse and playing with gloss
More tiles put into the scene
Added cables and tried out glowmaps - also started using nDo (far too late in hindsight) Also got the tip to use fog volumes as stand-in godrays.
The ceiling was incredibly dull, finally decided to give it some love. Also the glow on the moebious reactors (the bottom part of them have a yellow glow to them and I added a "railmesh" with a gradient (red->yellow) set to glow like crazy. The 'fence' around it is essentially just geometry with a gray material and lots of gloss (to save time)
Cables across the floor and also a fat cable to the right to break the boring right part up. More ceiling love and my first attempt at using decals
End result with a holoscreen and more small lights to make areas read. also color corrections and a bit of vignetting in photoshop - also where the lens flares were added. Mostly because of time constraints since I'm pretty sure those are easily achievable in cryengine
Hopefully this can be of some assistance
One question, what program are you using to bake your normal maps?
I'm not sure where I initially heard it from. It's an easy way to get soft edges akin to those gotten with normal maps by adding geometry close to where you want your smooth bevel and making the new 2 faces be part of it's own smoothing group (3dsmax)/ setting the edge's line to smooth edges (maya). That way it's easy to have normal maps flow between sides without it looking bad. Essentially it's a technique where you're saving time by adding geometry.
edit: The really nice thing is that it doesn't force you to rethink your UVs or change your model apart from a few edge loops that are easily removed. It can also be done in a flash after UV-mapping/further down the road.
The reason I asked about the normals is you have your Y axis facing the wrong way for the Crydev engine. (Cryengine uses -Y)
Try taking your normal map into photoshop, go to the Channels pallette, Highlight the green channel and hit Ctrl+I. Save it out to the engine. Do a before and after pic for comparasion. Get in close to those circular details, you'll see what I mean.
I haven't used NDO1 but in NDO2 in the preferences, you can flip the Y axis for your normal maps.
The Cryengine uses -Y NOT +Y, which is the default for most graphic programs.
It's looking great BTW.
Adding that bevel took me all of 2 seconds, which isn't necessarily that much of a timesaver when the mesh is this simplistic, but when you've got more advanced meshes this method (I believe) could be way faster since you're not messing with anything other than extra non-geometry.
@Zepic: Gonna try this as soon as I can find the time, thanks :thumbup:
For example: You've got a pillar that's just using simple geometry and a tileable brick texture that's used elsewhere in the scene. If the player can walk up close to it you save both time and textures by simply adding edges to the corners of the pillar. You've got a nice, non-destructive bevel whose roundness is controllable with the distance between the edge and the two supporting edges)
pictured is the same technique twice but with different spacing between edges.
Spitfire touches on it in this thread:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101306
Never heard of this before.
I do wonder; why are they called Korean bevels? What's so Korean about them?
Have you never heard of that famous saying?
Confucius says: "He that would perfect his work, must first sharpen his Bevel."