Monthly Noob Challenge 5
interpolator
Welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge 5!
Last month was amazing guys! We reached 30 pages! Keep it up!
I had a hard time picking the concept this month, a lot of people wanted two different ones, but I think this one has the least assets and will take the least time, that will give you more time to work on each asset. So that's my reason for picking it even though the other concept got one or two votes more. So please don't get upset.
RULES:
Please read all the rules.
This may seem like it's pretty complicated, and if you are starting out it can be overwhelming, so take it piece by piece. This can be broken down into a segments. Think about what will be unique, what will be tiled, what kinda textures you'll need to make, just plan before you go. Set your standards high for your work, do your best.
PLEASE look at the ref, and work hard to get the blockout right. Take your time before you dive into it and plan, this will make your life easier.
All that matters is that you learn and give and get advice and are willing to be critiqued.
So here are the specific rules:
Must make your own textures, no stealing, we can't keep you from it, but the goal is to learn, even tileables, I mean you can take someone else's image and make it tileable, that's fine.
You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used.
You must try your best and finish as much as you can in this month.
Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique and we don't have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
Well that's about it, if you think the rules should be changed let us know.
I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
Please stay away from Ddo, yeah, it's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, please don't complain.
Have fun!
PS: I am extremely familiar with Cryengine and can answer probably any question you happen to have when using it. Furthermore ask anything to anyone here, combined there is a wealth of knowledge.
PSSSS:
OPEN TO EVERYONE!
GOOD LUCK
Last month's thread
Last month was amazing guys! We reached 30 pages! Keep it up!
I had a hard time picking the concept this month, a lot of people wanted two different ones, but I think this one has the least assets and will take the least time, that will give you more time to work on each asset. So that's my reason for picking it even though the other concept got one or two votes more. So please don't get upset.
RULES:
Please read all the rules.
This may seem like it's pretty complicated, and if you are starting out it can be overwhelming, so take it piece by piece. This can be broken down into a segments. Think about what will be unique, what will be tiled, what kinda textures you'll need to make, just plan before you go. Set your standards high for your work, do your best.
PLEASE look at the ref, and work hard to get the blockout right. Take your time before you dive into it and plan, this will make your life easier.
All that matters is that you learn and give and get advice and are willing to be critiqued.
So here are the specific rules:
Must make your own textures, no stealing, we can't keep you from it, but the goal is to learn, even tileables, I mean you can take someone else's image and make it tileable, that's fine.
You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used.
You must try your best and finish as much as you can in this month.
Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique and we don't have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
Well that's about it, if you think the rules should be changed let us know.
I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
Please stay away from Ddo, yeah, it's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, please don't complain.
Have fun!
PS: I am extremely familiar with Cryengine and can answer probably any question you happen to have when using it. Furthermore ask anything to anyone here, combined there is a wealth of knowledge.
PSSSS:
OPEN TO EVERYONE!
GOOD LUCK
Last month's thread
Replies
Obviously the grass and cliff would be tiliables. So would the tree bark, and brick of the house. I probably could tile more, but I want to try handpainting textures which I have never done, so the more unique textures the more practice.
Breakdown of the scene:
Tillable Textures:
- Grass
- Tree Bark
- Bridges
- Bricks/Plaster (House)
- Planks/Straw (Roof)
- Stone/Dirt (Ground)
I will most likely create a few different stone/rocks for the ground and then use them as static meshes to create the ground for the islands. Then use 3 static meshes for the terrain.I think I will learn a lot from this looking forward to seeing how everyone elses turns out
Here's my texture plan.
So, the way I'm seeing the breakdown, we've got our "hero" assets, i.e. the main tree and the house. There's not much, if anything they'll be sharing with anything else in the scene (though I like benji's suggestion of the bridges and the roof sharing a texture. I do, however, think the bridges look a little rougher than the planks that make up the roof).
Then comes the scene itself; I hesitate to call it the "background", but it's the lower-detail, repeatable stuff, tileable rock and grass textures, the grass cards, the big bushes, and props, like the bridges. I made a point of drawing out the grass cards separate in my breakdown because I know I'll want 'em to hide transitional edges between the ground and… everything else.
Finally, you've got the sky. I'm no skydome expert, but I'd guess a moon that big and bright won't really communicate on a skydome, so I've made it separate, which will hopefully enable some fun to be had making it really pop. Clouds are definitely sitting in front of the sky, so they'll be separate chunks as well.
what i have so far
My first attempt and what I've done in the hour I was alotted this morning.
I am having a bit of trouble making the terrain and distance/perspective. Artelios how did you block that out maintaining perspective?
I just made a cube with the image in Max, used Alt+ X to make the cube invisible. Then I just dragged it along the image, adding loops where I thought it needed to be raised at the max height and lowered it by vertexes where I thought hills needed to be..it's all guessing work for th emost part. It looks okay from this view, but if I were to spin the image around, it drops straight down. There's no natural grace or beauty to it at all. XD
I also will probably end up retopologizing over the layout because I know as is, the mesh won't smooth correctly in Mudbox how I want.
Exactly, I am having trouble trying to block it out as well.
I don't know which modelling program you're using, but in Maya I usually map the concept to a plane and have it either off to the side so I can constantly look at it or centered in my front viewport and model on top of it. I will also make a scale figure before I even start the blockout so I'm not modeling at some arbitrary huge or tiny scale.
Good luck guys, I'll be watching this and trying to give critique where I can, but I think finishing last month's challenge to being portfolio-worthy will eat too far into this month's challenge, and I LOVE hand-painted texturing so I'm really bummed I might not have time for this one. We'll see.
Mostly having trouble blocking out the terrain, the large part close to the camera. I think I need to build it just like all the other parts, instead of just a simple plane.
since were dealing with foliage, I'm hoping someone can tell me how do I make a polygon/mesh always face the camera/player in UDK? in 3DS max it would be a look at constraint, but I don't know if UDK has something like that, I know game engines can tell a polygon/mesh to always face the camera/player since I've played a few games where that was implemented, but it would be nice to know how to do it myself, sorry if this is a noob question, I'm not very good with game engines
Beginning to model the house. Heavy is my scale-guy. Expect to see a lot of him.
You could look here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79143
Too bad I can only start on this on monday.
Good luck everyone!
I know it's not a popular solution any more, but I was curious as to how the end product will look in comparison to the 3D Motive tutorial jordan.kocon posted in the previous page, so more than anything, I'm just playing with my options, also will try playing with cel-shading if I can, just to try and learn alternate ways of presenting work.
@ng.aniki
thank you! that looks like exactly what I was thinking of, admittedly it looks a bit more complicated than I anticipated, will be the first time scripting/coding anything in a game engine, so that should be a fun learning experience.
How are people setting up their concept in max? I added mine as the background of the viewport, but when its in perspective mode it's hard to keep the model in the same place as it.
here's what i've got atm, the pink block being the height of a player in UDK
Instead of worrying about individual models, I decided to separate by texture sheet. I have never done this, so I'm sure I will run into road blocks, but right now it makes sense.
I like the image a lot, its going to be quite challenging to get the lighting done correctly and I look forward to it.
With everyone saying that the block out is difficult, I tried this to see if it helps me, and I think it does. I just tried to visualize the "islands" as they would be in the top view. I figure the rest should be easier from there.
I will be much more involved this month and look forward to everyone's kick ass work!
<edited for grammatical error>
A (no so) quick blockout. Rabant is a champ for pointing out that the other bridge could be smaller, it makes this 100x easier.
Imported into UDK to see how it would look.
This works fine if I still try and model to camera. Had to adjust the FOV in UDK for this however. Going to have another go at this from more of a map layout i think.
Beats the heck out of modeling a kid
I also just noticed that the rope in the background is coming from two of the big posts. The bridges don't connect to those, only the draping rope in the mid-ground does, lending further credence to the "it's just a rope" theory
I currently am employed as a programmer with a CS degree, but I like to do art when I can find some free time. So please crit any work I post heavily because I may not see it myself.
Overhead view to try and get a feel for where things are positioned.
Toolbag is great for showing off single props/characters, but it's not meant to be used to render a whole scene.
Need to adjust the building, block in a window and tweak the bridge.
I think I'm done with the tree for now in terms of blocking it out.
Also, seeing as I'm new to this..
should I create a new post each time and post progress, or just edit my original post and paste the links so you can view all the progress pics in one post?
I need to figure out how to do the grass properly. I wish there was an easy way to edit vertex normals in Blender.
The bushy trees are made using Unity standard assets, so I need to do something about those too.
And the clouds...
Then there's the rest. Still a lot to do.