Game Level Uni Project -Apocalyptic Building

Shockwolf

Hi folks,

Okay, I'm a second year student studying 3D game art and design at AIE. I'm just sticking some renders of my first group assignment on here for year 2 to show and let you critique "YIKES!!".

I worked on it with two other people. We all agreed on doing an Apocalyptic City Building. One guy did the inside and outside lower front of a Cafe, the other did the inside of an apartment, behind the blown out wall and I did all of the outside of the building (Except the lower cafe), road, pavement and other assets, but not the outer buildings. Those were done as a group effort but mostly by one of the other guys as a quick "Slap it in at the end, even if it looks crap, job" lol.

Most of my parts are fairly modular, which made some of the extra detail I wanted in there not happen. There are some parts where I could have snapped it together a bit better, but hey. The scene was put together and rendered in the Unity Game engine. Overall I think I've done okay with it. I'm not overly happy with the way a lot of my alpha textures appeared, especially on my decals. On some angles they were too bright and others too dark.

Cheers Folks.

Limewax

All of the images are broken.

Shockwolf

Yeah, I think you jumped in too quickly. I fixed them as soon as I could. They should be fine now?

Limewax

Yeah it looks as if some of them are working while others may not be? So I do see some work.

Not sure if you're looking for critique, but I figure I can pass along a few notes:

The designs of everything could be pushed further. Everything right now feels like the first pass of design, or for instance if I tell you "I need a garbage can model, but it has to be grimy and dirty!", this is a representation of the first thing that comes to mind. The same kind of goes for the buildings and the set dressing... its all relatively predictable.

Additionally I think you shouldn't operate with so much restraint in your polycount. Go ahead and throw an extra bevel on to the corners to really catch the light. Look for the imperfections that would be otherwise pretty subtle and then spend a few extra tris to capture those moments.

Shockwolf

Okay. cool. Thanks Limewax.

BinaryJunkie

I don't know if you were going for the sort of old school GTA style but it feels like your textures are very flat. If you're using diffuse, normal and specular maps your textures really don't show it to me as everything feels very flat and has the same shading. Could you maybe post some texture flats?

Also, some of your windows are differently toned for some reason? Could that be a lighting error or ? Just something to look into.

Your geometry looks pretty and if you spend a lot of time in the textures and shaders I think you can have a really nice looking scene!

Shockwolf

At AIE we are encouraged to keep polycounts and draw calls low, so I was trying to achieve something fairly low budget and cheap on resources, but still looked relatively nice. For the textures, I didn't really go all out. They were a bit rushed and there were still too many of them. In order to reduce draw calls I should have combined more of them onto fewer but bigger texture sheets. Most of my normals and specmaps were done with Crazybump and editied in photoshop a bit. Some were also done or tweaked with NDo2, although I've just realised I forgot to tweak my window texture in NDO, ah well. Although everything has a normal map, my teacher did say that it wasn't always necessary to slap them on everything. He reckoned I could have easily got away with not using them on the bricks and most things. Just the main features instead.

Okay here are the texture sheets.

BinaryJunkie

Oh hey, I graduated from AIE a while ago. Who is your instructor? If there's one thing I've learned after coming out of the course it's that for something like this you should really focus on being able to make something pretty, then head off into the realm of optimization (These two aren't mutually exclusive.) If you're in your second year (probably) then you shouldn't even be dealing with that kind of restriction to polycount and optimization because employers will be looking for something that stands out and looks pretty, not the scene with the fewest polygons. Idk if AIE is still teaching in that old as hell version of Gamebryo or they've finally moved into UDK.

Your normal maps are just very flat and uneventful, they don't contribute to the scene as it is now and could really be strengthened. Try taking them into photoshop and duplicating your normal and then overlaying it until you have a good result.

Your speculars could do with some more attention and difference between different materials (I don't really think it's a good idea to have the specular for a brick wall to look the same as an air conditioner)

Take a look at this for some protips on speculars:
http://www.manufato.com/?p=902

Also, try doing your textures by hand without the use of Crazybump. Whenever I see students touch that program they end up making really noisy, pointless normal maps.

As long as you're using your normal maps and specular maps to the fullest and they improve your scene, use them as much as you possibly can!

miqdadi

great job

Shockwolf

Cheers BinaryJunkie

Yeah I'm in second year at Melbourne. My Teachers are Brenden and Sam(He's new). They have moved away from Gamebryo and gone to the Unity Engine.

I know what you mean about the Textures, I do think I may have had some conflicting advice and I do like what you are saying, its a very good point. I definitely winged my textures and I could have done better, but with such tight time scales I often lose the love for it. lol

BinaryJunkie

Yeah your work looks good, just don't let AIE steal away the artist in you. Among the rush to get assessments turned in and the push to learn new techniques it's easy to forget how important it is to focus on making something beautiful. Your teachers aren't going to be the ones paying you to work for them, make something that stands out and that's awesome.

Also, I went to the Sydney campus and I had Matt Barker. I think Sydney is using UDK this year from what I hear and you should consider giving it a whirl, your scene will look much better much faster with it. Always feel free to skip past your teachers and make something in a new engine. I can promise you they'll be glad you did instead of just following along. Just by posting here you're showing a lot of initiative that your other classmates don't seem to share by the lack of AIE students 'round this time of year. Good luck with your scene, with just a few touches I'm sure it'll look great!

Shockwolf

Cool, thanks BinaryJunkie!

Yeah I've heard the UDK Engine makes things look a lot better than Unity. They even say that at AIE, but they use Unity anyway. I think it has something to do with it being better for the programmers on the course, if I remember correctly.

BinaryJunkie

Yeah but UDK is really easy to get stuff set up in as an artist.

Everything you need:
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_udk.php

The programmers I've worked with absolutely hate both Unity and UDK (Hipster programmers I suppose.) If you can show them how epic your scene looks with all the tricks UDK has to offer they'll be glad to switch. That or you can just make a game on your own with Kismet for your final game project. It'll be a lot of work but it'll give you a lot of experience doing things on your own.

I honestly think it's silly that all the AIE campuses haven't switched yet. Look at AIE Sydney students levels this year compared to the last year. The two are like night and day.

If you want any help with your course feel free to PM me here, I'm on like always and love to help!

Shockwolf

Thanks again. I heard we get to choose which Game Engine we want to use for the end of year assignment, so with a bit of luck our team will go for UDK. Thanks for the link, I might give it a whirl some time and see if I can start showcasing my solo work within the UDK at some point. Even if its the stuff I do after the course.