Ok so my previous thread about the mech has been abandoned for the time being, I came to the realization that he's too much of a character rather than anything environment related. So he's gone back into the "fun to model once I have a job" folder for now
Anyways on to this
Gonna be working off a concept by Jason Courtney
http://www.perdador.com/deadspace.html Of the control room for the colony on Aegis 7
And I'll be closing the door on the side there and replacing it with this one
And using these corridor concepts to help inform my tileable sheet(s) for the walls and floors
Current progress is just the block-out, although some pieces are probably already close to their actual low poly meshes (chairs most of all) tried to stick pretty close to the camera angle, but there's always gonna be a bit of fudging translating things to 3D
Spent several hours on this, probably gonna dive into High Poly tomorrow unless anyone sees anything glaringly wrong or missing.
Replies
ToTheWorld: I spent a good chunk of my day on it, mostly because I really wanted to make sure I got things in the right place and having things closer to the final shapes helped me understand where they should go. If you can get that info with less detail by all means jump into the real modeling faster.
Leleuxart: I'll probably try to match the concept color, but most of that warmth will be from the sunlight coming in through the windows. So I'll probably go neutral with the textures and get a lot of that warmth in lighting, which would make turning things darker, like into a night scene with more glow, relatively easy.
Might jump on that door tomorrow since there's not as much to interpret, can just bang out the shapes real fast and give it it's own map...
Grimfiction: Like I mentioned in my reply to Leleuxart I'll probably stick to the concept but do most of the color/brightness through lighting, which should allow me to rather easily adjust the scene and display a night version as well, it'll just be some tweaks to the light intensity and color, and probably a color shift for the backdrop/matte painting I'll use for the view out the back window. Or possibly shutters like you suggested, good opportunity to do some more of that repeating zigzag try shape they're so fond of.
Anyways
Wall chunk from the back right
The chair (probably the furthest along, still needs refinement, gonna look at game footage and spend some time screenshotting Dead Space: Downfall for more ref)
Start of a trim sheet, trying to keep things very simple and broad, breaking down the larger panel patterns on the wall and floor, will probably have at least another half sheet by the end, but this is a decent start, once it's baked down I can start applying it in chunks to block out the paneling...
And the support pillar, little to no detail on this one, added a bit of cut lines, only really work will be making sure things look like they flow together, rather than just butt up against one another. But otherwise these pillars looks to be pretty flat in terms of potential normal info
EDIT just noticed I forgot that divider on the stair there, gonna fix that right away.
Just blocking things out with a trim sheet plus a sheet, half filled, by the door (I'll add 1-2 other props to it as I go)
Normals baked out in Max and then diffuse, spec, gloss etc generated with a quick pass through Ddo.
Obviously lots of tweaking, both in Ddo and in Photoshop is necessary, this was just to block in shapes with the texture.
Gonna pull things into Marmoset soon since other than the more prop-like assets (chair, moniter stands, and moniter bank) are close to done in terms of modeling. , although I make get in there and pull out some of the texture details with some Geo.
Other than that, keep up the good work!
No 5-gons here good sir Everything carries over into a quad or a tri, there's a bit of optimization left to do but that's not currently what I'm focused on.
Also the more I think of things, the more I think I might try to get the Xoliul shader up and running. That way I could continue building in Max and not have to redo lighting and camera angles etc. I've tried to use it before but ran into technical issues installing and started using Marm instead.
Lots of work on the trim sheet, still a bit more to do but it's close to done. Need to re-UV a few chunks to account for the new details. Then it's back to High Poly work to finish out the chairs and computer/monitor consoles.
Basic lighting is down, still tweaks to be done, and that possible dark variant to do as well.
The sheet with the door on it will have more props on it later, I do have plans for all that empty space. Trim sheet is 512x512, Prop sheet is currently 2048x2048 but I'll probably down-rez to 1024, I don't think it would suffer too much
Textured (so far) almost entirely with NDO2 and DDO
Just about done with this thing, lots of lighting tweaks to do, and lightmaps to make. The monitors all have the sort of "projector" material behind them like the monitors I've found in game. They also have some nice arm pieces with enough pivots that the people could adjust them any which way.
Also I added some objects to give it a lived in feel, and also pay a little tribute to some things I've seen in-game. Hence the soda cans and the sport illustrated (kinda hard to see at this angle, but there'll be a full on shot in the breakdowns)
Crits massively appreciated, I plan on finalizing this thing within the week (unless major changes are suggested) so I can get everything rendered and up on my port in time for GDC
Gonna be making a texture for the windows to mimic a view of the outside, and like I said a whole lot of lighting and lightmap work.
I'll be rearranging some of the texture, and getting the door done with more tiling stuff rather than uniques.
Gonna put some more time and effort into the chair, getting a cushion going on it and fixing the connection point on the floor.
After than gonna go off concept a bit and add some color in, and play with values, to break things up a bit more.
I also sized the door texture down to a 1024, and I plan on up-rezing the trim sheet to 1024 as well, since this is a port piece I might as well get things a bit higher rez. I'm gonna work in some of the new tiles into the rest of the environment, as well as maybe some value/color shifted variants to add some more interest to the scene.
Things to do:
1. Make the flat metal texture used on parts of the door and the pillars less simple and jarring looking, since it seems to really break from the rest of the textures in the scene.
2. Make a proper spec/gloss for things, I've not managed to get a decent one out of DDO yet so I'll go in manually. Definitely something to figure out at a later date when time isn't an issue.
3. Light the crap out of this scene, I've been tweaking and playing but I think I need to just sit down with the concept and the scene side by side and dedicate a soild portion of time to the light.
4. Intensify the normals on the floor to make the slats pop more, right now it's reading too noisy, also it needs those little lights to give purpose to the those small square holes.
5. Paint the fake outside for the windows.
Any and all critiques very much appreciated, I'm trying to get this thing port ready in time for GDC along with my other preparations (resumes, cards etc)
This is looking really nice so far. One thing that kind of bothers me is how muddy things look. And I don't mean just the colors, but nothing is really coming off as sharp metal, but that could just be the image compression maybe.
Another thing that I think might help is more contrast in the lighting, with strong spec maps. The soft shadows are so soft that they're almost coming across as just colors in the diffuse. The concept had a brighter light, but soft shadows(not as soft as they are in the current shot though), but I think a brighter light and hard shadows would help.
Only thing I really feel like still needs pushing is the rendering on the back window, since it kind of breaks from the rest of the scene too abruptly.