sybrix and rockguy, thanks for the feedback I'm aiming to maintain a consistent painterly look, but it seems to get problematic in large areas of tiled texture due to lack of variation. I'll experiment with adding decals to break it up a bit, or if anyone has other ideas let me know!
Calluhain: the tree's looking good, but the roots are a bit blobby - some sharper shapes would look better I think. Of course if they'll be submerged into the ground then don't worry
Looking forward to seeing more from everyone. I'll be on it this weekend so back with updates soon :thumbup:
edit:
Regarding the discussion going on in the background. This thread is what you make of it; nothing more, nothing less. If you don't like the way it is, do it differently. If you want feedback, ask for feedback. If you wonder how someone did something, ask. If you're discouraged by work that's 'better' than yours, don't be - learn from it instead. We can't expect rules and limitations to be enforced in this thread, nor should the OP or anyone else be under any obligation to do so. I think it's better as an organic process; there are no losers in this 'challenge', and for as long as we maintain a collaborative attitude, there are only winners
Looking good peoples! I'm myself quite new to modelling and these noobchallange threads seems to be a great place to learn a thing or two about creating an enviroment.
I have a question. creating the background for a piece like this, in this case the sky, how do you go about? AzzaMat posted some of his workflow, but I didn't understand what he was doing. Is that something done in Maya or some game-engine? "a rotator + panner with random 1 vectors plugged into time" are terms not familiar to me. If anyone would direct me to a thread or tutorial on this I would be very gratefull.
Also, and this may seem stupid I dont know, why would you do this in a game-engine? I mean if people model their stuff in maya and import it into such a program what am I not seeing?
hey man well firstly "You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used." its part of the brief. Secondly learning to make stuff in real time is invaluable if you want to make game art. Thirdly your a games artist surely you want your stuff in a games engine. Fourthly by putting things in a game engine you can quickly weed out whether you are optimizing your stuff for game use. If you bring in a model or texture and it causes your game to chug or refuse to import then you know something your doing isn't right.
As far as the sky is concerned, the network I am posting up is taken from the UDK material editor.
You need to make one in order to put textures onto a model. This can be as simple as a diffuse texture or as complex as simulated water and edge detection etc.. To make a skybox you need several things. I broke down the sky into several sections. 1: the background colour, Quite obvious this is a gradient of the colours I want made in photoshop. The second was the stars, then the moon and finally several layers of clouds (something i'm still trying to get right). UDK has several advanced shaders for all kinds of time of day. If you don't feel confident in tackelling an advanced skyshader then maybe just use the night time default. But definately look at the materials itself just to get an idea of how complex these things are. Alternativly you can paint a texture and wack that on a skydome. you wont get any movement but as a static image it will look fine. To get an idea of the kind of texture you need to make search sky in the content browser and it will bring up a few default images and sky dome meshes you can use. This should give you an idea of how to do it. Hope this helps! =D
Does anyone have any tips on doing leaves, I just painted some out in photoshop over a real photo for reference, I'm having trouble placing them the way I want to look.
I'm not actually taking part in this month's challenge as I am still working through last month's one and still learning lots. I've been having a little read through here nonetheless and I see lots of impressive progress as well as some very good advice and tips/links. Keep it up guys, I'll be keeping an eye.
On another note I just want to put forth my view on this 'noob/challenge' debate which is going on. I understand what people are saying about feeling a little overwhelmed by people who are clearly not 'noobs' as I am not near their levels just yet; BUT I disagree with making this exclusive to a certain level because the knowledge available within the forum would be very limited and we would not progress very far.
Obviously it can be a little demotivating to work on something for your portfolio knowing somebody has done a better job, but there are ways around it; you could take the concept in a slightly different direction or, as I am planning to do with last month's challenge, complete the concept then stick it in my portfolio while working on adding to the scene and possibly expanding it beyond that room/area.
Anyway back to the forum at hand, good work guys. Keep on posting your updates, all is interesting to follow... I always love to see how a 'noob' has progressed over the course of the project just as much as I like to see how a 'pro' has achieved a certain look/effect
I'm not actually taking part in this month's challenge as I am still working through last month's one and still learning lots. I've been having a little read through here nonetheless and I see lots of impressive progress as well as some very good advice and tips/links. Keep it up guys, I'll be keeping an eye.
On another note I just want to put forth my view on this 'noob/challenge' debate which is going on. I understand what people are saying about feeling a little overwhelmed by people who are clearly not 'noobs' as I am not near their levels just yet; BUT I disagree with making this exclusive to a certain level because the knowledge available within the forum would be very limited and we would not progress very far.
Obviously it can be a little demotivating to work on something for your portfolio knowing somebody has done a better job, but there are ways around it; you could take the concept in a slightly different direction or, as I am planning to do with last month's challenge, complete the concept then stick it in my portfolio while working on adding to the scene and possibly expanding it beyond that room/area.
Anyway back to the forum at hand, good work guys. Keep on posting your updates, all is interesting to follow... I always love to see how a 'noob' has progressed over the course of the project just as much as I like to see how a 'pro' has achieved a certain look/effect
I don't think anyone's actually said that they want it restricted to Noobs or Pro's just simply to take out the word noob within the thread title as It doesn't seem very Noobish to have people with a lot of experience participating.
It's that simple, everyone seems to have over complicated the original point I made which was that I don't think It should be called a Noob challenge if people who are clearly not Noobs participate.
I don't think anyone's actually said that they want it restricted to Noobs or Pro's just simply to take out the word noob within the thread title as It doesn't seem very Noobish to have people with a lot of experience participating.
It's that simple, everyone seems to have over complicated the original point I made which was that I don't think It should be called a Noob challenge if people who are clearly not Noobs participate.
I wasn't saying anybody said it as such, but I did see a comment or 2 that seemed to imply it. Maybe I read too much into it.
I do get what you're saying about the title, but I don't think it's all that important because at the end of the day if you're serious about wanting to better yourself and keep learning then it shouldn't matter what the challenge is called nor what level the participants are at [and if you're just looking for a little side project, rather than something to learn from, then it shouldn't make any difference what others are doing]
Calluhain : I will still suggest to redo the diffuse as of right now it gives more of a impression of the tree been made of flesh. Since the scene is cartoon style you can hand paint the texture, wood painted is not that difficult to do.
Calluhain:The tree is very well modeled, the shape works and the leaves are also very good, it just need the diffuse to work to make it great, if you decide no to go with hand painted, threres has to be some good real wood source texture to download.
I am going to add the leaves to it tomorrow and try and get the cliffs done before GDC. This was my first sculpt in zbrush still trying to figure out how to make my normals pop more.
update:
It's hard to match the perspective when I can't figure out how to change the FOV.
Missing: An island, the rest of the trees/brush, anchor & life preserver.
Gotta make the ropes bigger, fix some lightmapping issues (the back roof one will probably get hidden by the trees), and fiddle with the placement of some stuff.
The clouds have an alternate fluffier, filled out kind of look which I might go with to keep the stars from shining through.
Is there a better way to do clouds for this kind of situation? I just made a cloud in PS and stuck it on a bunch of giant planes way out from the scene. There is panning noise on them so it's not completely motionless...
Also, there has to be a way to get a better halo around the moon, but I can't figure it out. Also maybe a way to have the moon texture follow the moon, right now its just tiled a bunch and multiplied on top of wherever the light is :S
Here is what I got so far, I know its extremely late but tell me what you guys think, I am going to place some rocks and also get a tree in the background. Also need a skybox which I hope to finish it all tonight!
Replies
Calluhain: the tree's looking good, but the roots are a bit blobby - some sharper shapes would look better I think. Of course if they'll be submerged into the ground then don't worry
Looking forward to seeing more from everyone. I'll be on it this weekend so back with updates soon :thumbup:
edit:
Regarding the discussion going on in the background. This thread is what you make of it; nothing more, nothing less. If you don't like the way it is, do it differently. If you want feedback, ask for feedback. If you wonder how someone did something, ask. If you're discouraged by work that's 'better' than yours, don't be - learn from it instead. We can't expect rules and limitations to be enforced in this thread, nor should the OP or anyone else be under any obligation to do so. I think it's better as an organic process; there are no losers in this 'challenge', and for as long as we maintain a collaborative attitude, there are only winners
I have a question. creating the background for a piece like this, in this case the sky, how do you go about? AzzaMat posted some of his workflow, but I didn't understand what he was doing. Is that something done in Maya or some game-engine? "a rotator + panner with random 1 vectors plugged into time" are terms not familiar to me. If anyone would direct me to a thread or tutorial on this I would be very gratefull.
Also, and this may seem stupid I dont know, why would you do this in a game-engine? I mean if people model their stuff in maya and import it into such a program what am I not seeing?
Thanks for all the inspiration!
As far as the sky is concerned, the network I am posting up is taken from the UDK material editor.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsAndTexturesHome.html
You need to make one in order to put textures onto a model. This can be as simple as a diffuse texture or as complex as simulated water and edge detection etc.. To make a skybox you need several things. I broke down the sky into several sections. 1: the background colour, Quite obvious this is a gradient of the colours I want made in photoshop. The second was the stars, then the moon and finally several layers of clouds (something i'm still trying to get right). UDK has several advanced shaders for all kinds of time of day. If you don't feel confident in tackelling an advanced skyshader then maybe just use the night time default. But definately look at the materials itself just to get an idea of how complex these things are. Alternativly you can paint a texture and wack that on a skydome. you wont get any movement but as a static image it will look fine. To get an idea of the kind of texture you need to make search sky in the content browser and it will bring up a few default images and sky dome meshes you can use. This should give you an idea of how to do it. Hope this helps! =D
I'm looking foreward to when the time comes for me to dwelve deeper into operating these game-engines.
@Benji once again thanks for the feedback and yes they will be mostly submerged so I'm not worried too much about the roots.
here's an update on the tree, by the way If anyone did go to the Seattle meetup it was awesome!
I'm not sure my opinion is valid but I'd think speed tree isn't allowed?
I don't see why not, but I do think that by using it your are robbing yourself by not getting better at doing it by hand.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1384931
http://www.andyzibits.com/tut_maya_low_poly.html
or check out pc's wiki
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentFoliage?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryEnvironment%5Cb%29
Thanks a bunch for these, I will read up more on them tomorrow, but now time for bed.
On another note I just want to put forth my view on this 'noob/challenge' debate which is going on. I understand what people are saying about feeling a little overwhelmed by people who are clearly not 'noobs' as I am not near their levels just yet; BUT I disagree with making this exclusive to a certain level because the knowledge available within the forum would be very limited and we would not progress very far.
Obviously it can be a little demotivating to work on something for your portfolio knowing somebody has done a better job, but there are ways around it; you could take the concept in a slightly different direction or, as I am planning to do with last month's challenge, complete the concept then stick it in my portfolio while working on adding to the scene and possibly expanding it beyond that room/area.
Anyway back to the forum at hand, good work guys. Keep on posting your updates, all is interesting to follow... I always love to see how a 'noob' has progressed over the course of the project just as much as I like to see how a 'pro' has achieved a certain look/effect
I don't think anyone's actually said that they want it restricted to Noobs or Pro's just simply to take out the word noob within the thread title as It doesn't seem very Noobish to have people with a lot of experience participating.
It's that simple, everyone seems to have over complicated the original point I made which was that I don't think It should be called a Noob challenge if people who are clearly not Noobs participate.
I wasn't saying anybody said it as such, but I did see a comment or 2 that seemed to imply it. Maybe I read too much into it.
I do get what you're saying about the title, but I don't think it's all that important because at the end of the day if you're serious about wanting to better yourself and keep learning then it shouldn't matter what the challenge is called nor what level the participants are at [and if you're just looking for a little side project, rather than something to learn from, then it shouldn't make any difference what others are doing]
I am going to add the leaves to it tomorrow and try and get the cliffs done before GDC. This was my first sculpt in zbrush still trying to figure out how to make my normals pop more.
It's hard to match the perspective when I can't figure out how to change the FOV.
Missing: An island, the rest of the trees/brush, anchor & life preserver.
Gotta make the ropes bigger, fix some lightmapping issues (the back roof one will probably get hidden by the trees), and fiddle with the placement of some stuff.
The clouds have an alternate fluffier, filled out kind of look which I might go with to keep the stars from shining through.
Is there a better way to do clouds for this kind of situation? I just made a cloud in PS and stuck it on a bunch of giant planes way out from the scene. There is panning noise on them so it's not completely motionless...
Also, there has to be a way to get a better halo around the moon, but I can't figure it out. Also maybe a way to have the moon texture follow the moon, right now its just tiled a bunch and multiplied on top of wherever the light is :S