Floating Island Environment

industria

Hi folks! Long time Polycounter, very rare poster. I'm currently working on new assets for my portfolio, as a lot of the ones I have from my previous job are not flattering enough to get me a new one. Been working on this environment for a little while, and I'm starting to get to the point where I struggle, the polish phase.

I'm very new to UDK, so a big portion of getting this to look okay will be in terms of actually figuring out how to light a scene in UDK and figuring out the small things. One thing I'd really like to know is if you can use the mesh paint tool in max with a shader that will let you mix three textures. I've got it working to blend between two, but I can't figure out three. (I'd assume it'd just be the RGB channels.) I'm currently just using the default skybox, but I intend on painting my own before I'm finished. The tree is also probably one of the weakest elements of the scene.

I really am looking for critique here, as well as some tips and advice for getting UDK to play a bit nicer. Like I said, this part of working on things is definitely the hardest part for me, but I need to follow through.

Thanks for checking it out!

cholden

awesome, but I like things a lil' practical. Where do you sleep? Since the windmill internal mechanics would fill that room.

industria

Haha. There's a little hammock up above that the little ninja who lives there sleeps in.

Darkleopard

Looks nice but i feel that the grass is a little to aqua in colour, could use more green and less blue

Jessica Dinh

I really like your models ^_^ fun shapes and stuff and lots of detail. For textures, they are well painted but I think you could probably xpand your range of saturation? Everything looks a little bit washed out right now. You could introduce more saturation with stronger gradients. Also I agree the aqua grass is not quite fitting right now, could be a bit more more green. The composition could also be worked on, imo - lots of empty space. Are you planning to fill it up a bit more with trees/plants/whatnot? Otherwise, I like this

industria

Thanks for the responses, guys! Definitely taking the palette crits down and keeping them in mind moving forward from here.

@Jessica; Unfortunately due to the sort of shambled way I started building the environment, composition and layout were not hammered down from the start, which is definitely something I regret. I'll have to find some way to lay it all out in a nice composition and fit it all together. It's far too spread out and large now that you can't really focus on any of it.

pixelb

Is what you're looking for a simple UDK vertex blend material?



Regardless, you could also be using this setup along with the meshpaint tools in UDK to add color variation to your dirt and grass, it would help break up the repeated tiling of the ground textures.

industria

Minor progress tonight. UDK crashed three times on me. :< Messed around with the composition a bunch, basically redoing the islands. Lots of stuff to re-implement (grass planes, small floating rocks, etc), as well as started to mess with the lighting a bit, which seems to be setting somethings like the garden into a bit of shading disarray. Skybox is also a huge nightmare WIP. I took an old one I had and just fiddled with it to use as a placeholder. Still progress!

tristamus

wow man, that is some damn cute stuff. really liking it, good work man.

sybrix

I'm liking the composition a lot better, but that grass color is still really teal looking. I feel like the grass and dirt colors aren't mixing well.

chrisradsby

Thank god that skybox is a placeholder xD I gotta agree with the grass though maybe a slighly more greenish and deep. You tend to lose a bit of detail and contrast/depth when you have it that bright.

Other than that, very nice colors, maybe expand the range a little bit more. The carrots have a nice color to them but they take up a tiny portion of the whole thing.

Good work!

pixelb

Looks better! That little bucket hanging out the bottom of the well is so clever.

PixelSuit

Really nice work, especially since you split the large island up! Would be nice to see a small bridge of some sort leading to these small islands, maybe rope bridges? I do agree with Jessica though, it is looking a little bit washed out at the minute.

One thing that is getting to me, I know its a ninja who sleeps up there but there is no trap door to access the hammock. That's got to be one annoying climb to get to bed after a hard day of being a ninja!

industria

Working on colours and the skybox. Updated the grass and the saturation on most of the textures. Looking any better, guys? I'm still torn about whether I want the skybox to be a twilight/night style or midday. Looking at both Jessica's and Pixelb's environments from the last Blizzard art contest are great inspiration!

I got a paintover from a friend that shows, pretty much how I would like to have it lit, hopefully with some nice lanterns or warm light for contrast.

industria

Lighting in UDK is hard. :C

GrimFiction

Scene is coming a long nicely, great personality and charm! I think you had a object selected in your last screenshot cause I can see the +
I'd recommend a soft light with minimal shadow. Good stuff keep it up!

chrisradsby

I think you need to push the intensity of the moonlight a little bit, like a really bright moonlit night. And maybe use lanters or something to brighten up the areas where you have interesting detail, like the outhouse props.

Good work so far Keep going and do photoshop paintovers yourself, mess around with lighting and colors in it and it'll help you know which direction you can take it.

industria

I'm taking a step back from the floating island scene to move onto something else, hopefully I can come back to it with a bit fresher of eyes.

The next project I'm working on is going to be building modular assets for the first stage of an Auto-Runner (think Monster Dash, Canabalt) that I've been kicking around for a bit with a friend of mine. I have no idea if it'll actually see fruition or not, but I'm still going to build the art side.

The first stage is a castle under-siege, so I'll have lots of tiling stone, some destroyed stone and rubble, and the overall tone is going to be night/blues with some nice warm "lighting" highlights. Toss in some rubble and destroyed bits and voila. I've got a bit of planning done already, and a block out of some the assets. Pulled a bunch of ref that's really inspiring and fits the mood I'd like to set. And, I'm honestly the most inspired right now by this scene by Simon Besombes. It's got great mood, doesn't use lighting and I think it's gorgeous.

I'm hoping to nail most of this out in a week. This on is going to be built in Unity and I'm really hoping to do it without using lighting at all. The plan is to build it in Modular chunks. So each chunk can connect to the next and the levels can be built randomly each time you play. There will be some variation of height and obstacles, I hope to have a set of "chunks" concepted out before to long. Ho hum!

pixelb

I like your reference, good luck!

naruSol

Split the difference on the grass and desaturate the dirt a touch instead. It no longer complements the palette used in the rest of the scene.

Much fun otherwise.

industria

Made a bit of progress. Attempting some.. ah, interesting ways to achieve the lighting I want without lighting? I'm somewhat happy with the floor tiles and not happy at all with the texture for the rug. The window was just a quick, dirty texture because I wanted to try to get god-rays in there to see how the fake lighting pulls off.

_DMage_

Amazing cartoon style, This could be a pro Carton-Game

Snader

All of your reference and the sketch use a red carpet with golden trim, so I'm amazed you're using a purple checkerboard.

industria

Finally got some updates on this scene! I have it running in Unity. The scene is unlit.

cholden

Awesome lil' scene.

aajohnny

This has progressed very nicely! Keep up the great work.

Aerashi

This is all looking really nice industria, looking forward to seeing more of your stuff!

CerisierEnFleur

I stumble on this post through google, a pleasant surprise to find out someone inspired by some of my stuff

It turned out great, I love the side scroll scene and it looks excellent in unity !

Keep up the good work
Simon.B

Prism

Hey, maybe you can check out fanny vergnes floating island piece for reference. http://fafart.blogspot.nl/

Also i really like the hand painted textures on your stone and house/well props.