ESCAPE - Mountain retreat

TrevorJ

Hey, iv been flip flopping all over the place with different ideas. Have to just pick one though, its not the idea its the execution.

So i'm going to do a mountain cabin retreat scene. I really wanted to do something with vegetation and landscapes as I don't have a lot of experience with that yet. Ill most likely be doing this in UDK. Here's a cobbled together blockout concept.

I ain't no concept drawer, but it will have to do!

Any feedback on the composition would be much appreciated

TrevorJ

geez, didnt realize how obnoxiously big that last picture was, hah, anywho here's my blockout so far, a quick mudbox sculpt followed by some world machine magic, thanks to Choco's excellent tutorial series. Going to model up some pines soon to use instead of the ones in there now, there just from one of UDKs packages.

Composition comments? not sure about the lighting or time of day yet either, open to suggestions.

Still not sure what else to add for more foreground elements, maybe include more of the cabin, once i get the close up ground and rocks in ill see.

(blocks on the dock and deck are for human ref)

TrevorJ

Update
- Re jigged the framing and shot setup
- Reshaped the mountains
- Threw on a bunch of quick textures/materials
- Figured out a quick process for tiling rock sculpts in zbrush, and made one rock sculpt
- blocked out the cabin
- Got rid of Unreals stock water and had first pass at making my own, still needs a lot of work


Notes:
Looking at my past shot, i think i liked the early morning lighting better. I'm probably going to ditch the world machine mountains/landscape stuff for the right side mountains, i wasn't able to get enough control and get some of the really interesting shapes and cliffs i wanted to get, so i made some quick meshes with the shapes i wanted, ill end up refining them more.

Still not sure about the far mountains as well. Might just refine them with udk's landscape shaping tools. It will be hard to tell until i get some more rock variation textures to blend between. Right now there's only one.

Next focus will be on Rock materials for the close up cliffs to the right. Ill prob end up using them for the far away mountains as well. I also need to refine the broad color texture im using in the landscape mesh. After that its starting to dress up the ground in the foreground.

Iv got tomorrow off for work before the big push to ship so ill be able to work on this all day tomorrow, and probably play a round or two of Dota2! Yah!

If anyone has any feedback id love to hear it

TrevorJ

long time no update, iv been working away just haven't been keeping up on updating the thread enough. Still soo much work to do, most the large elements are there, just a lot of material and texture refinement to do.
Ill update soon with some texture flats,and material shots if people could give some feedback that would be awesome.

I put a lot of time into a river wash stone shore material which in hindsight, was probably a waste of time. oh well, maybe ill frame some other angles looking from the shore.

Still need to fien tune the overall terrain color texture i dont like the way it tinting the riverwash and basic grass textures quite green. Im thinking i may split of the "terrain" meshes in the far mountain ones and then making another one with another material for the close stuff. Trying to combine the really macro mountain textures with these close up micro ground textures is becoming a hassle. I think doing them separately would give more control.

scrawld

Nice work! It makes a change to see a peacefull entry, something that doesn't involve escaping robots or dodging bullets ;P.

I think it would benifit with some more dramatic lighting. The scene looks a bit overcast at the moment, maybe a sun seting over the mountains, or a bright summer sun high in the sky would work nicely. Check out UDKs post processing effects too. It's a quick way to change the scenes overall colour. Be weary it is easy to over do it though :P.

Something else I thought was the cabin looks a bit abandoned, especially in the second image where it's hidden in shadows. A quick way to change that would be to make a simple emissive map for the windows, just to make it look like there is some light coming from within. You could also pop a point light under the canopy with a low intensity, just to give it a bit of focus.

Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing the finished scene!

EDIT: I was looking at your thread on my Ipad before. Now that I've seen it on my PC it doesn't look so dark and overcast. Perhaps it was just my screen >_>.

TrevorJ

Soo fucked up this one. Something i did today has broken my map, can't build lighting. Spent the last two hours trying to debug it, but that put me over the due date. Had all my construction stuff built and ready to go. I thought about just posting one of my earlier shots ,and swapping the image in my hosting later, but that's a little underhanded. It's my own fault

Anywho, kinda pissed, put a lot of work into this. A bummer i couldn't meet the deadline, shouldn't have pushed it so close.

Here's the construction sheets, beauty shots forthcoming if i can figure out how to fix the lighting build issue. Still taking critiques/comments, as i will work on it more to put it into my portfolio. Seen some great entries, good luck to all those who entered!

TrevorJ

Well, i had to delete a bunch of trees placed with the vegetation system to get the lighting to finally build. I might have been pushing that system way past what it was meant for, hah.

Here are my two beauty shots, better late than never... god I hate that saying, hah.

ricardobrady

Second and third picture seem to be nice and edited well. The first one is good but the blue sky color doesn't suits out the rest of background.