Alright, I have some of the UDK basics down again. This is a little wall block in, tomorrow is finish up the arches, bake, start textureing, and maybe play with the terrain some.
edit- note to self, taller walls
so. I changed my texture for the trees and added grass to the terrain.
But it is reflecting the light so bright. Why? It should look like the tree.
I tried a relative dark specular map, but this doesn't change anything.
Has anybody an idea?
Okay, I'm at a lost... I need some critique on this. I was going for a more painterly feel with the textures, but I don't know where to go from here. Critiques please!
Ardent I like it so far but it does look like some of your textures still need a little work. You're at a great base point where you can start throwing more details onto all the textures.
The scale is off on the bricks in each building which looks kinda of funky.
It also looks like you have some kind of post processing that is kind of blurring out all the details of your textures.
The main thing however i'm seeing is not much of a variation of colors, and when this happens everything starts to feel flat. Look at the reference and notice how the trees pop out of the image. As well as the grass and more so the blue flowers. Those details will take the flatness away.
I've been working on this as much as I can, but work has been keeping me busy. This is what I have so far.
Still going to be working on the brick texture a bit more, to see how much I can make it pop. Working on a shader in udk.
@IArdentChimeraI - I agree with the points that theonewhoknocks made. The differing brick scale is making the scale of the scene unnatural. I also agree about the color variation. In addition, it's helpful to make a black and white version of your screenshot. By doing so, you can see how much your textures value may vary. Your blue textures are super dark compared to everything else. I would bring the value up to something similar to your other textures.
Now, that's not to say that contrast is undesirable. I would let the lighting dictate the contrast. As it is now, your entire scene is in shadow. There are only hints of direct sunlight beyond the gate, and a bit on the left most building. The sun in the concept art appears to be situated somewhere behind the gate and screen left. Play with the position of your "sun", and I think it will dramatically improve.
One more thing, I'm not sure if you have your camera positioned up there to get a better view of the whole scene, but the emptiness beyond the gate is distracting.
Don't get discouraged! As theonewhoknocks said, you have a great base. Much of the hard work is done. Try implementing some of those suggestions and see what it looks like
IArdentChimeraI - i believe you can turn that into something nice by adding a bit more variation in brick size within the texture itself, vary the colors of it and what i think is very important, make some transitions between objects to make them look more natural(terrain and wall).
Also, while i have no problem with your additions to the concept i think you should keep the proportions as they are in the concept, i mean the concept is made by tyler james and he is freaking good at what he does. I encourage adding details to a concept only if you keep everything in the same style, but bad proportions, even intended, do not impress.
As for the contrast, it's like detail and can help you very much. Contrast/detail attract the eye so you can use that to guide the viewer to wherever you like or want. As it is now, i look at the roof of the towers and then on the highlight of your water then stop.
theonewhoknocks - you too seem to have a problem with the proportions, you could try and match things a bit more accurate. For the brick texture, there is a lot of noise in what you posted and it covers the volumes, keep away from straight lines and make sure you have large volumes on your bricks. Also, the size of those is too big, as big as a person. It's ok to leave them like if you want that but then you have to change the detail because now, the details are more like those found on smaller bricks.
Great work everyone. Just a few things I noticed -
@theonewhoknocks I think there's too much noise and dark shadows in your diffuse. In my experience when using a Diffuse/Spec/Normal setup the shadow information should mainly come from the engine lighting, spec, normals etc. and not the diffuse. Having intense black shadows in the diffuse is outlining each brick and bringing a lot of attention to the tiling IMO. Not saying there shouldn't be any shadows in the diffuse, but toning it down might soften the effect a bit.
@Razielim I think you have shadows enabled on your grass cards? Make sure you disable shadows on your grass in the material editor. Are you using the foliage paint mode in UDK? I remember that would also cause some lighting errors for me...
Hey guys, I have a current WIP that's coming together. There's still a lot I want to add / change, but I need to start getting feedback! Time is quickly running out. If you have any suggestions, please let me know how I can improve! Thanks.
Hey guys, I have a current WIP that's coming together. There's still a lot I want to add / change, but I need to start getting feedback! Time is quickly running out. If you have any suggestions, please let me know how I can improve! Thanks.
The grass is too bright on the right side, the leaves are too big for the trees. The pathway seems odd, maybe add more uvw down the down, maybe some blue water to make it stand out as of right now it looks like mud.
Made a tiling slab path material to begin with, it was mentioned its not sharp enough, I think this is from generating the normals in knald, will try going back to the bake and creating properly :x
Hey Shiv, Knald has "enable noise reduction" enabled by default. This makes the textures slightly more blurry/smoother. Maybe that's what's causing it?
As for the texture I feel like the space between stones might be a bit to wide? Depending on what the size of your stones are supposed to be of course.
@sybrix
i tried t change the options under Lightmass in MaterialEditor, but this doesn't change anything at the grass
I put it manually in the scene, because i wanted to make it with the terraineditor, but than i checked that the foliage option in there was removed and i read that foliage must be put manually in the scene.
Thanks for the tipp with the foliage paint tool. I tried it. So much better ^^. But can you tell me, how i can put my material permanent on the mesh? Because if i paint my grass-mesh mit this tool, then i can't select it after that.
@uberphoenix - The best method for this is once the block-out is complete, break it into manageable chunks, ie: if you can make it from its modular pieces, then select the BSP brush or selection of brushes and right click> Convert> Convert to Static Mesh and place it in a package from there find the brush / now static mesh in the package right click> Export to File... and select its folder and you should have it as an OBJ for import into in my case Max.
@uberphoenix - The best method for this is once the block-out is complete, break it into manageable chunks, ie: if you can make it from its modular pieces, then select the BSP brush or selection of brushes and right click> Convert> Convert to Static Mesh and place it in a package from there find the brush / now static mesh in the package right click> Export to File... and select its folder and you should have it as an OBJ for import into in my case Max.
Thanks for your reply, i'll post my bsp blockout here before doing any exporting and see how you guys think I should go about it.
Haven't posted anything for a few days so I figured that I'd jump back in. Been wrestling with this it's diffuse only painted in Max's viewport canvas, no photoshop yet so it's real sloppy. Gotta fix alot of tonal issued and reconcile the moss I want in there but this is what I've got so far
Because of lack of free time, I don't think I will finish this before the end of the month.
I will keep an eye on all these promising environment :poly142:
Haven't posted anything for a few days so I figured that I'd jump back in. Been wrestling with this it's diffuse only painted in Max's viewport canvas, no photoshop yet so it's real sloppy. Gotta fix alot of tonal issued and reconcile the moss I want in there but this is what I've got so far
You call 'that' sloppy?
While I agree it isn't finished, it certainly is not sloppy.
While I agree it isn't finished, it certainly is not sloppy.
I guess what I meant was painting with viewport canvas cedes alot of contol compared to the control you have in photoshop. It's kinda a give and take. the one thing it does however (for me at least) is helps me establish scale early on which is always a problem for me. Just alot of clean up.
Alright, I have a slight update! Made a new tree (the reddish one) and finished my foliage shader, so variations should be a lot faster from here on out. I also finished my grass texture and started getting that into the scene. The two trees on the right are stand-ins from the default engine package.
Still need to finish my Pine tree, fix the ground UVs where there's obvious stretching (or cover it up : ), and then work out the architecture.
Haven't posted anything for a few days so I figured that I'd jump back in.
Love this!! Keep tightening and polishing... the one thing I'm not sure I'm crazy about is the texture you painted on the innermost arch---if I'm not mistaken I think arches usually have pretty precise stone placement (because gravity ), so I think that section is throwing it off a bit. I think it would feel more natural if you went with the same style that you used on the vertical cornerstones.
I can't wait to see this all come together though dude!
"I'm late
I'm late
For a very important date.
No time to say "Hello."
Goodbye.
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late."
Finally managed to get a blockout done in CE3, learning, but at a slower pace that I'd like to have. Hopefully I'll have something to show by the end of this month.
So here's the in-engine blockout(hope I did it right). Used brushes to get the two trees there for reference, the NPC standing under the arch(wasn't able to make a proper one using solids(am I missing something?)). I blocked out the drain as well but for some reason it isn't showing. Meh!
Onto Max(Going to be uber slow there, learning it). xD
Edit: I think I forgot the background buildings. Doh!!!
x____x
@JustinSlick I really like where your going with this ( your palette is very unique) , a very different take on the environment , but aside from the stretching I feel like your new tree feels like its from a different environment. I think it's a lovely tree I just think the color needs to find continuity with the rest of your palette. Then again when you get the walls in there it's going to look vastly different so I may be wrong. Great work P.S the grass is quite good. It feels like your telling a story your texturing has alot of continuity:) BTW I am going to repaint my arch..thanks
@Rockguy...WOW that was fast...great start, very dramatic.
Anyhow here's an update of sorts just polishing and tring to get all my textures to relate in Max before I start sculpting and pulling Normal maps. Please Critique ...be brutal I don't mind. It's the only way we get better
@poopsterspappy: The bark texture on the left looks better than the one on the right. Is the walkway supposed to be stone? If it is, its not reading that way but instead more like a carpet. Your other textures are looking good though, keep it up.
Was pointed to this thread by a friend Do these challenges start on the 1st of every month?
Yep!
Sometime in the next week AlexCatmasterSupreme will post a concept suggestion thread for people to post images they'd like to work on. Then we vote and start over .
@JustinSlick - Beautiful lighting man. Looking forward to seeing it all together.
@rockguy- Just a quick note, I know you are working on the lighting at the moment, but I wanted to add that your fog looks a bit intense. In the reference it looks fairly heavy in the far bg, but inside the walls it's quite clear. It just makes everything look hazy. I'm really liking that path texture, its so crispy and stoney!
@poopsterspappy - I agree with the notes that were given. The path will probably look better once you get some normals on there.
@sipher3325 - Those textures are fantastic! I really like that brick wall. I can't wait to see it on some geo in engine!
Thanks to the guys that gave me notes before. I have addressed a lot of things and will post it a bit later.
Well I ditched that path texture, at least I know how to make carpet now.lol. I really didn't want to use anything but a simple round brush on this project but nevertheless I introduced some scatter for these rocks for the pathway, I think I may use them as damage revealed on the walls as well as a decal.They will be heavily desaturated for the walk way but left more like this for the wall damage I think
I like it so far, could use some damage to make the walls varied and not look like a flat tiled texture. The walkway doesnt look like it belongs in this scene. Maybe make the cracks bigger, or tile it more because from this angle it just does sit right for me.
A question to stepcil and JustinSlick ,Is that your custom lighting or the UDK standar load scene ?
joshschmitt : didn't see your comment , I have some tileable cracks ready just need to finish the lighting , yeah I agree with you on the road , it goes into the FIX THIS NOW! list, I only have a week and a half working on this so I have a lot to do.
Also something else I noticed is that the grass is really thick in the small patches. It could look better to not make the grass thick on the actual image. Less grass means you can add more in the patches before exporting to get the same effect but be more dense.
Jajaja Rockjaw sounds better, mmm interesting I didn't notice that to be honest, I could lower the grass density or make the leafs on the diffuse thinner.
A question to stepcil and JustinSlick ,Is that your custom lighting or the UDK standar load scene ?
I started with the UDK midday preset I think (or possibly morning), and then I changed the settings to match what was shown in the 3DMotive foliage tutorial. Then I just played around with the environment color and sun angle and post settings until I found something I liked.
But honestly I doubt I know enough about UDK lighting to have built it all from scratch. I think the last thing I want to do if I have time is try to make a custom skybox.
I really like your sky by the way... did you make it?
Yeah its pretty easy , just make a sphere in 3d max , make it big enough , cut in half , invert faces and unwrap uvs , export and in UDK take off collison and lighting from the model.
As for the lighting and UDK you can find good tutorials here.
The reason why asked its because lighting is crucial to learn for an artist and is hard to give feedback to someone when the lighting its not made by the person , also I heard several times from friends already working in the industry that is a bad idea to use it when you trying to show your skills as a designer.
@poopsterspappy - The walkway texture definitely looks more rocky now, it looks like it fits better into the scene.
@rockguy - Looks much less hazy within the walls. Nice! I agree with what was said about the grass looking fairly dense. I really like the tree leaves you added to your trees, I just wish I could see them better. The shadow is pretty harsh on those trees. Do you have an sort of ambient lighting or something to simulate skylight? That would definitely help.
So I made many changes to my scene based on the awesome feedback and suggestions. Here's the result:
This has been a great exercise and forced me to try some new things I wouldn't normally feel comfortable trying. Feel free to leave feedback. I don't know if I will have more time to update it, but I always appreciate input.
I've been pulling my hair out on this walk way texture and this is the last one for better or for worse Gotta start sculpting .NOW.
Myaj85 thanks for the critique but those rocks just didn't fit the scene, they were better than the carpet.lol but I think these fit the theme. What do you think? Your scene is looking great, the only thing that bothers me is that left banner. Your wall and the tower are very close in value and temperature and it's hard to see where one form ends and the other begins making the banner wider will help it read better IMHO..Great work
I guess that's our cue for us to hurry the hell up...
*edit... Aaand an update just for the sake of posting something. I sculpted a heavy wood beam (because every scene needs one :poly142:), and mostly finished uvs/texture placement for the gate.
Replies
edit- note to self, taller walls
But it is reflecting the light so bright. Why? It should look like the tree.
I tried a relative dark specular map, but this doesn't change anything.
Has anybody an idea?
The scale is off on the bricks in each building which looks kinda of funky.
It also looks like you have some kind of post processing that is kind of blurring out all the details of your textures.
The main thing however i'm seeing is not much of a variation of colors, and when this happens everything starts to feel flat. Look at the reference and notice how the trees pop out of the image. As well as the grass and more so the blue flowers. Those details will take the flatness away.
I've been working on this as much as I can, but work has been keeping me busy. This is what I have so far.
Still going to be working on the brick texture a bit more, to see how much I can make it pop. Working on a shader in udk.
Now, that's not to say that contrast is undesirable. I would let the lighting dictate the contrast. As it is now, your entire scene is in shadow. There are only hints of direct sunlight beyond the gate, and a bit on the left most building. The sun in the concept art appears to be situated somewhere behind the gate and screen left. Play with the position of your "sun", and I think it will dramatically improve.
One more thing, I'm not sure if you have your camera positioned up there to get a better view of the whole scene, but the emptiness beyond the gate is distracting.
Don't get discouraged! As theonewhoknocks said, you have a great base. Much of the hard work is done. Try implementing some of those suggestions and see what it looks like
Also, while i have no problem with your additions to the concept i think you should keep the proportions as they are in the concept, i mean the concept is made by tyler james and he is freaking good at what he does. I encourage adding details to a concept only if you keep everything in the same style, but bad proportions, even intended, do not impress.
As for the contrast, it's like detail and can help you very much. Contrast/detail attract the eye so you can use that to guide the viewer to wherever you like or want. As it is now, i look at the roof of the towers and then on the highlight of your water then stop.
theonewhoknocks - you too seem to have a problem with the proportions, you could try and match things a bit more accurate. For the brick texture, there is a lot of noise in what you posted and it covers the volumes, keep away from straight lines and make sure you have large volumes on your bricks. Also, the size of those is too big, as big as a person. It's ok to leave them like if you want that but then you have to change the detail because now, the details are more like those found on smaller bricks.
Hf!
@theonewhoknocks I think there's too much noise and dark shadows in your diffuse. In my experience when using a Diffuse/Spec/Normal setup the shadow information should mainly come from the engine lighting, spec, normals etc. and not the diffuse. Having intense black shadows in the diffuse is outlining each brick and bringing a lot of attention to the tiling IMO. Not saying there shouldn't be any shadows in the diffuse, but toning it down might soften the effect a bit.
@Razielim I think you have shadows enabled on your grass cards? Make sure you disable shadows on your grass in the material editor. Are you using the foliage paint mode in UDK? I remember that would also cause some lighting errors for me...
Leaf Diffuse and a quick render of the high poly tree.
Also just realised that there's only 2 weeks left exactly so I think time management is something I still need to work on.
They actually didn't turn out as orange as I'd hoped..
The grass is too bright on the right side, the leaves are too big for the trees. The pathway seems odd, maybe add more uvw down the down, maybe some blue water to make it stand out as of right now it looks like mud.
Look back at the original piece and see how the water snakes round a little bit more or how the tips of the walls slant less.
Other than that possibly lessen the fog so the background elements are a bit more noticeable and possibly add in the little blue flowers?
Lastly your gatehouse looked so great, it even tempted me to throw in the towel, that it's a bit of a shame it's so far away and in the shade so much.
Made a tiling slab path material to begin with, it was mentioned its not sharp enough, I think this is from generating the normals in knald, will try going back to the bake and creating properly :x
As for the texture I feel like the space between stones might be a bit to wide? Depending on what the size of your stones are supposed to be of course.
Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a mil Maximus.
I am kinda getting a hang of Cryengine3, will post a blockout soon(hopefully).
i tried t change the options under Lightmass in MaterialEditor, but this doesn't change anything at the grass
I put it manually in the scene, because i wanted to make it with the terraineditor, but than i checked that the foliage option in there was removed and i read that foliage must be put manually in the scene.
Thanks for the tipp with the foliage paint tool. I tried it. So much better ^^. But can you tell me, how i can put my material permanent on the mesh? Because if i paint my grass-mesh mit this tool, then i can't select it after that.
Thanks in advanced
Thanks for your reply, i'll post my bsp blockout here before doing any exporting and see how you guys think I should go about it.
@ Sir poopsterpappy, Yes man. Just yes.
I will keep an eye on all these promising environment :poly142:
You call 'that' sloppy?
While I agree it isn't finished, it certainly is not sloppy.
I guess what I meant was painting with viewport canvas cedes alot of contol compared to the control you have in photoshop. It's kinda a give and take. the one thing it does however (for me at least) is helps me establish scale early on which is always a problem for me. Just alot of clean up.
Still need to finish my Pine tree, fix the ground UVs where there's obvious stretching (or cover it up : ), and then work out the architecture.
Love this!! Keep tightening and polishing... the one thing I'm not sure I'm crazy about is the texture you painted on the innermost arch---if I'm not mistaken I think arches usually have pretty precise stone placement (because gravity
I can't wait to see this all come together though dude!
Currently working on.
-Lighting
-fixing leafs shadows
-texturing cloth
-modeling water canal
-export background buildings
I'm late
For a very important date.
No time to say "Hello."
Goodbye.
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late."
Finally managed to get a blockout done in CE3, learning, but at a slower pace that I'd like to have. Hopefully I'll have something to show by the end of this month.
So here's the in-engine blockout(hope I did it right). Used brushes to get the two trees there for reference, the NPC standing under the arch(wasn't able to make a proper one using solids(am I missing something?)). I blocked out the drain as well but for some reason it isn't showing. Meh!
Onto Max(Going to be uber slow there, learning it). xD
Edit: I think I forgot the background buildings. Doh!!!
x____x
@Rockguy...WOW that was fast...great start, very dramatic.
Anyhow here's an update of sorts just polishing and tring to get all my textures to relate in Max before I start sculpting and pulling Normal maps. Please Critique ...be brutal I don't mind. It's the only way we get better
a photoshop mockup with simulated vertex painting
@poopsterspappy: The bark texture on the left looks better than the one on the right. Is the walkway supposed to be stone? If it is, its not reading that way but instead more like a carpet. Your other textures are looking good though, keep it up.
Yep!
Sometime in the next week AlexCatmasterSupreme will post a concept suggestion thread for people to post images they'd like to work on. Then we vote and start over
@rockguy- Just a quick note, I know you are working on the lighting at the moment, but I wanted to add that your fog looks a bit intense. In the reference it looks fairly heavy in the far bg, but inside the walls it's quite clear. It just makes everything look hazy. I'm really liking that path texture, its so crispy and stoney!
@poopsterspappy - I agree with the notes that were given. The path will probably look better once you get some normals on there.
@sipher3325 - Those textures are fantastic! I really like that brick wall. I can't wait to see it on some geo in engine!
Thanks to the guys that gave me notes before. I have addressed a lot of things and will post it a bit later.
Well I ditched that path texture, at least I know how to make carpet now.lol. I really didn't want to use anything but a simple round brush on this project but nevertheless I introduced some scatter for these rocks for the pathway, I think I may use them as damage revealed on the walls as well as a decal.They will be heavily desaturated for the walk way but left more like this for the wall damage I think
Thanks to poopsterspappy and mjay85 for the comments.
I like it so far, could use some damage to make the walls varied and not look like a flat tiled texture. The walkway doesnt look like it belongs in this scene. Maybe make the cracks bigger, or tile it more because from this angle it just does sit right for me.
joshschmitt : didn't see your comment , I have some tileable cracks ready just need to finish the lighting , yeah I agree with you on the road , it goes into the FIX THIS NOW! list, I only have a week and a half working on this so I have a lot to do.
Thanks for the feedback.
Also something else I noticed is that the grass is really thick in the small patches. It could look better to not make the grass thick on the actual image. Less grass means you can add more in the patches before exporting to get the same effect but be more dense.
Thanks for the feedback.
I started with the UDK midday preset I think (or possibly morning), and then I changed the settings to match what was shown in the 3DMotive foliage tutorial. Then I just played around with the environment color and sun angle and post settings until I found something I liked.
But honestly I doubt I know enough about UDK lighting to have built it all from scratch. I think the last thing I want to do if I have time is try to make a custom skybox.
I really like your sky by the way... did you make it?
As for the lighting and UDK you can find good tutorials here.
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/3D_Tutorials.html
The reason why asked its because lighting is crucial to learn for an artist and is hard to give feedback to someone when the lighting its not made by the person , also I heard several times from friends already working in the industry that is a bad idea to use it when you trying to show your skills as a designer.
@rockguy - Looks much less hazy within the walls. Nice! I agree with what was said about the grass looking fairly dense. I really like the tree leaves you added to your trees, I just wish I could see them better. The shadow is pretty harsh on those trees. Do you have an sort of ambient lighting or something to simulate skylight? That would definitely help.
So I made many changes to my scene based on the awesome feedback and suggestions. Here's the result:
This has been a great exercise and forced me to try some new things I wouldn't normally feel comfortable trying. Feel free to leave feedback. I don't know if I will have more time to update it, but I always appreciate input.
I've been pulling my hair out on this walk way texture and this is the last one for better or for worse Gotta start sculpting .NOW.
Myaj85 thanks for the critique but those rocks just didn't fit the scene, they were better than the carpet.lol but I think these fit the theme. What do you think? Your scene is looking great, the only thing that bothers me is that left banner. Your wall and the tower are very close in value and temperature and it's hard to see where one form ends and the other begins making the banner wider will help it read better IMHO..Great work
@Sipher Thanks man appreciate the help
I guess that's our cue for us to hurry the hell up...
*edit... Aaand an update just for the sake of posting something. I sculpted a heavy wood beam (because every scene needs one :poly142:), and mostly finished uvs/texture placement for the gate.