ziikutv - It might be the perspective in 3d coat, but his hands might also be pretty large. . I'll check the scale on them again but I think they're pretty close to the concept. Did you want a wireframe render?
d1ver - We should have an enviro update this weekend sometime. . Nik has started on tech models and textures and ill be starting on foliage this weekend. Chris(tkfrog) is finishing up the terrain block out right now.
Mark - My original plan was to do full rigs for the characters(facial as well) though at this point they may end up being simple just to get them posed. We'll see.
Thanks dudes! We're hard at work this weekend, and should have a good update tomorrow night. Slim is getting a "final" texture pass, terrain is almost modeled out, some of the tech props will be done, a plant or two.
Awesome work, I am still trying to figure out how you guys create your textures. Is it just an AO map with flat colors?Keep up the awesome work~!
They're all hand-painted. Some AO might be used as a base(not sure as each of us has a bit different workflow, but it's all mostly painted.) I'll post up a flat shaded version of Slim tomorrow and see if you've got any more questions after that.
So Nik hopped into 3d work this week, while still keeping up with his concepter duties as well. Good 'ol german engineering. He modeled and textured a tech prop that will be part of the landscape. All painted in photoshop I believe:
I went ahead and did a quickie spec map for it. The idea is to keep our color maps fairly low on real textural detail and bring a little bit more in with the spec. Still pretty clean overall which fits the look we're going for. I painted up a quick metal overlay(scratches, etc) to use while painting the spec to keep with the "from scratch" mentality.
We'll need to dial everything in once we've got it in-engine and working together. That'll probably be next week's major project for me while everyone else finishes up assets.
Awesome, flats would be great! So it is normal mapped then? Awesome work on the prop Nik!
Nope, we're not doing any high poly or normal maps. It's just straight "low poly" with painted textures(color, spec, glow if needed), though our specs are roughly current gen-ish. For instance, Slim is around 8k tris with a 2k texture map.
No prob Kenny! Let me know if you've got any specific questions or need some explanation.
Here's Slim textured and lit inside 3dsmax via xoliul shader. Glow is just done in photoshop, though I have a glow map done as well. I'll post it up again once in-engine with that stuff working.
Texture process with the spec map is the same as what I mentioned earlier with the tech vat that Nik made. Color/diffuse is painted and kept relatively clean, spec map brings in a bit of extra textural detail(scratches, fabric, etc). It's pretty subtle in many areas, but it helps break up larger areas of specularity as well as fresnel along the edges. Also, since I painted some lighting information into the color map, I took that, desaturated it, and ran a high pass filter to get rid of broad shading. This left me with a pseudo cavity map that helped to give some volume to parts that weren't modeled out.
Here's a flat shaded version to show what's in the color texture map:
You can see that I didn't go super contrast-y with the textures, as I knew that lighting would do quite a bit. Since I painted the color map inside 3dCoat I was constantly turning lighting on and off to make sure I got the overal values correct.
Dude so much knowledge! I cant wait to start doing texture work like this! Your post are becoming more and more helpful! So from what I understand you are just using a light and dark color in your diffuse and faking a cavity map?
The "cavity" map is just a processed version of my diffuse texture map that I can use to knock back some specularity and help preserve some details. In my day job, I do all low-poly and painted textures(no spec), and our lighting isn't super strong or dynamic. We end up painting a lot more contrast/value difference between light and dark into the diffuse textures. For this project since we're using CE3 and have nice lighting, we can go lower on the contrast level for the diffuse and let the lighting take care of the lightest values and darkest values. Hopefully that makes sense. There's still a subtle amount of overall lighting that I've painted in to help pop some areas and accentuate volumes.
For what I was talking about with my spec process, hopefully this will clear it up. Since we're not dealing with normal maps in this project, adding specularity can do a lot to flatten out details that have been painted into the diffuse. For example(and these are just painted in photoshop, so not 100% accurate):
Flat diffuse:
Specular with a flat value applied(again, this is faked in photoshop to illustrate my point):
Specular with some lighting information included to help break up detail/shapes:
Now, if I had done a high-poly and bakes, some of that would come from an AO bake or cavity maps. The normal map would also help break up the specularity anyway.
Since I don't have anything but my diffuse map, I used a high pass filtered version of my diffuse:
Diffuse:
Base specular value:
Greyscaled version of my Diffuse:
Base spec value with this multiplied. This I do not want as it adds too much shading to the spec map and would essentially kill any specular values on the underside of the arm.
So what I do is take the greyscaled version of the diffuse and apply a high pass filter to it(in some cases I also adjusted the levels and surfaced blur to rid myself of extra noise):
And multiply that on top of the base spec value:
While not physically accurate, it does help punch out some forms that I've painted in.
I figured I'd post this up as people were asking about the environment and process/progress. This is the block out mesh that the set started from and I'm currently working on the refined/final geo for the set terrain. At this stage of the process this mesh is only 6.6k tris, not a dense mesh by any means but gets things in a spot where then I can make more deliberate sculpting of the mesh and add in any tertiary rocks/boulders and points of interest. I will post up another shot shortly once the refined/final terrain is in a more complete state. Nik has been working on more tech prop pieces during the weekend (blast shields, doorway, etc.) so those will be placed soon as well.
We're still hard at work on finishing this up. Lots left to do, but we're making good progress and should be good to finish on time. Plenty of late nights.
Nik is working on the rock textures, Chris just finished up the rock modeling and is back on texturing the stage coach, and I'm getting all the stuffs into CE3. Hopefully we'll have the sheriffbots in tomorrow or Tuesday.
Thanks guys! We're going to post nightly updates from here 'til submission. Nik finished up the rock texture and moved onto some more pipes to outfit the environment. We are still planning to cut in some geo on the rock walls to help add depth if time permits. Chris is still UV'ing the stagecoach, but should be done shortly. I mostly worked on tweaking environment stuff tonight and started posing Slim for the first beauty shot. Waiting on Frank to deliver the sheriff so we can get that in. Hopefully we'll at least have it roughly placed for tomorrow's update. Billy had stuff come up, so he's no longer contributing anything to our entry.
Thanks! Sorry for lack of updates, I had to switch over to model and texture the sheriff's bike. Here's an update on that. I'll finish up the glow and spec maps for it tomorrow and then back to environment stuff.
Update, still lots to do! Today I got the sheriff rigged and put him and the bike in, did some spec map work across various things, and tweaked some textures. Gotta do an fx and foliage pass tomorrow to tighten up them graphics. Sheriff bot texture is still WIP and there's currently no spec map on him.
Chris is plugging away on the stage coach texture, so tomorrow's update should have something on that front.
Looks like the image got a bit squished when I rendered out of cryengine, so I'll fix that tomorrow. Not sure if the fov got tweaked or what.
edit: Went ahead and just stretched it horizontally to fit the earlier composition for now.
Well dudes, we're going to have to call this. We're not going to get the entry done in time for the deadline, but we shall continue! Sorry to dissapoint.
Chris(TKFrog) and I are planning on finishing up this main beauty shot over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.
Don't give up now! You should submit what you have anyway. What have you got to lose? On second look, yeah the carriage is not textured, just colored. An alternative would be to just put the cowboy dude on one of them police bikes. Could look like he's stolen one.
Really, this is too good to just stop before the finish line. Take what's finished or look finished enough and make the best of it.
Just wanted to chime in with everyone else, I really hope you guys submit something! This thread is my favorite of all the submissions.
Not only have I enjoyed watching it come together but it's rather inspirational as it's pushed me to start creating art in a painted style. Was just the kick in the butt I needed.
And a big thank you for the texture process/workflow break down. I'll certainly be giving it a try in the near future.
Hope I get to see it completed! Keep up the amazing work!!!
Thanks for the kick in the butt guys. My loving wife gave me one this morning as well. I'm pretty happy overall, though we will probably still go back and revisit the main beauty shot to polish it up.
Here's the finals:
The workload ended up being:
Nik - Concepts, Tech props modeling/texturing, environment textures.
remix - Sheriff bot modeling/texturing.
TelekineticFrog - Stagecoach modeling/UVs, terrain modeling/UVs.
Jason Young - Everything else. :P
I just want to take the time as a team member and friend, to say a big thank you to Jason for busting his ass to pull the ending together and get our presentation put together so that this could be shared with the community here at Polycount. We had some speed bumps, some good times hanging out while working together, and some downs as well...but just like production work at any time, these things come into play and you adjust, persevere and carry on. I would work with him on anything and respect his drive to get this up here on time. I think I owe him beer or something now.
Thanks as well to all who watched and the kind words as well. It was a lot of hours but a lot of fun to work on. Nik provided some fun concepts to work from and I believe we all want to see more games in a style like this and what is being done with games like Wildstar (an inspiration for sure). We do plan to do some more with this after the contest and go back in and give some things the love and time that they deserve. I am proud of what has been achieved. So keep your eyes open, we will have more good stuff up on the forum soon.
Ditto, so glad you guys were able to submit this, even if you didn't get to polish it to the point you wanted. Still turned out FANTASTIC! I'd say without a doubt a solid contender!
Great work! Love the final scene, lots of energy and great composition. Really impressed with the all the work you guys put in to make this a believable world with a super cool art style.
I just want to take the time as a team member and friend, to say a big thank you to Jason for busting his ass to pull the ending together and get our presentation put together so that this could be shared with the community here at Polycount. We had some speed bumps, some good times hanging out while working together, and some downs as well...but just like production work at any time, these things come into play and you adjust, persevere and carry on. I would work with him on anything and respect his drive to get this up here on time. I think I owe him beer or something now.
As one of those speed-bump/downs, I'd just like to say publicly how impressed i am with the sheer amount of work Jason and Chris have put into this. Its an amazing entry. I am sad and bit jealous that I was unable to finish my contribution. That, being said, the entry does not lack anything because of it.
For personal reasons I couldn't help out in the last 2 days but you guys pulled it together nicely. Once again thanks to Jason for the incredible amounts of work and hours he put in. Chris for busting out the environment in the past couple days, and everyone else who helped out on the team.
Replies
Are you guys planning on rigging them up or just posing them in place? Also how is the environment coming?
d1ver - We should have an enviro update this weekend sometime.
Mark - My original plan was to do full rigs for the characters(facial as well) though at this point they may end up being simple just to get them posed. We'll see.
They're all hand-painted. Some AO might be used as a base(not sure as each of us has a bit different workflow, but it's all mostly painted.) I'll post up a flat shaded version of Slim tomorrow and see if you've got any more questions after that.
So Nik hopped into 3d work this week, while still keeping up with his concepter duties as well. Good 'ol german engineering. He modeled and textured a tech prop that will be part of the landscape. All painted in photoshop I believe:
I went ahead and did a quickie spec map for it. The idea is to keep our color maps fairly low on real textural detail and bring a little bit more in with the spec. Still pretty clean overall which fits the look we're going for. I painted up a quick metal overlay(scratches, etc) to use while painting the spec to keep with the "from scratch" mentality.
We'll need to dial everything in once we've got it in-engine and working together. That'll probably be next week's major project for me while everyone else finishes up assets.
More to come!
Nope, we're not doing any high poly or normal maps. It's just straight "low poly" with painted textures(color, spec, glow if needed), though our specs are roughly current gen-ish. For instance, Slim is around 8k tris with a 2k texture map.
Here's Slim textured and lit inside 3dsmax via xoliul shader. Glow is just done in photoshop, though I have a glow map done as well. I'll post it up again once in-engine with that stuff working.
Texture process with the spec map is the same as what I mentioned earlier with the tech vat that Nik made. Color/diffuse is painted and kept relatively clean, spec map brings in a bit of extra textural detail(scratches, fabric, etc). It's pretty subtle in many areas, but it helps break up larger areas of specularity as well as fresnel along the edges. Also, since I painted some lighting information into the color map, I took that, desaturated it, and ran a high pass filter to get rid of broad shading. This left me with a pseudo cavity map that helped to give some volume to parts that weren't modeled out.
Here's a flat shaded version to show what's in the color texture map:
You can see that I didn't go super contrast-y with the textures, as I knew that lighting would do quite a bit. Since I painted the color map inside 3dCoat I was constantly turning lighting on and off to make sure I got the overal values correct.
For what I was talking about with my spec process, hopefully this will clear it up. Since we're not dealing with normal maps in this project, adding specularity can do a lot to flatten out details that have been painted into the diffuse. For example(and these are just painted in photoshop, so not 100% accurate):
Flat diffuse:
Specular with a flat value applied(again, this is faked in photoshop to illustrate my point):
Specular with some lighting information included to help break up detail/shapes:
Now, if I had done a high-poly and bakes, some of that would come from an AO bake or cavity maps. The normal map would also help break up the specularity anyway.
Since I don't have anything but my diffuse map, I used a high pass filtered version of my diffuse:
Diffuse:
Base specular value:
Greyscaled version of my Diffuse:
Base spec value with this multiplied. This I do not want as it adds too much shading to the spec map and would essentially kill any specular values on the underside of the arm.
So what I do is take the greyscaled version of the diffuse and apply a high pass filter to it(in some cases I also adjusted the levels and surfaced blur to rid myself of extra noise):
And multiply that on top of the base spec value:
While not physically accurate, it does help punch out some forms that I've painted in.
Shhhhhhhh.
We're still hard at work on finishing this up. Lots left to do, but we're making good progress and should be good to finish on time. Plenty of late nights.
Nik is working on the rock textures, Chris just finished up the rock modeling and is back on texturing the stage coach, and I'm getting all the stuffs into CE3. Hopefully we'll have the sheriffbots in tomorrow or Tuesday.
TK get on the textures! Can't wait.
Lookin fantastic guys!
Chris is plugging away on the stage coach texture, so tomorrow's update should have something on that front.
Looks like the image got a bit squished when I rendered out of cryengine, so I'll fix that tomorrow.
edit: Went ahead and just stretched it horizontally to fit the earlier composition for now.
Update on the environment. I am going to move on to some character and fx stuff this evening, Chris is still plugging away on the coach texture.
Chris(TKFrog) and I are planning on finishing up this main beauty shot over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.
Really, this is too good to just stop before the finish line. Take what's finished or look finished enough and make the best of it.
Not only have I enjoyed watching it come together but it's rather inspirational as it's pushed me to start creating art in a painted style. Was just the kick in the butt I needed.
And a big thank you for the texture process/workflow break down. I'll certainly be giving it a try in the near future.
Hope I get to see it completed! Keep up the amazing work!!!
Here's the finals:
The workload ended up being:
Nik - Concepts, Tech props modeling/texturing, environment textures.
remix - Sheriff bot modeling/texturing.
TelekineticFrog - Stagecoach modeling/UVs, terrain modeling/UVs.
Jason Young - Everything else. :P
Thanks as well to all who watched and the kind words as well. It was a lot of hours but a lot of fun to work on. Nik provided some fun concepts to work from and I believe we all want to see more games in a style like this and what is being done with games like Wildstar (an inspiration for sure). We do plan to do some more with this after the contest and go back in and give some things the love and time that they deserve. I am proud of what has been achieved. So keep your eyes open, we will have more good stuff up on the forum soon.
Good luck guys!
As one of those speed-bump/downs, I'd just like to say publicly how impressed i am with the sheer amount of work Jason and Chris have put into this. Its an amazing entry. I am sad and bit jealous that I was unable to finish my contribution. That, being said, the entry does not lack anything because of it.
Excellent job guys! Amazing work!
For personal reasons I couldn't help out in the last 2 days but you guys pulled it together nicely. Once again thanks to Jason for the incredible amounts of work and hours he put in. Chris for busting out the environment in the past couple days, and everyone else who helped out on the team.