UDK: 3D Environment
polycounter lvl 8
I've been doing a UDK level for the past few weeks, here are some of the models I've been working on.
This is a piratey island environment.
I require a lot of feedback and suggestions to try and push my texturing and lighting as far as I can
So far I've done a pirate ship, but for now, I'm working on a tavern, and experimenting with the textures.
This is a piratey island environment.
I require a lot of feedback and suggestions to try and push my texturing and lighting as far as I can
So far I've done a pirate ship, but for now, I'm working on a tavern, and experimenting with the textures.
Replies
I've added diffuse, normal and spec maps to the UDK test in the last post.
2nd UDK test, no lightmaps
I'm still reasonably new to UDK but I've been using displacement maps to get an extra kick out of my textures. But i guess it depends on how your generating your normal's..
It has helped me a lot with portraying that sense of depth. I think it'd be an effective way of giving your details more pop...
And i agree with switz, a bit of wear underneath your supporting beams would break up some of the contrasting areas in your textures.
Here's a free tutorial from Eat3D. Might help you conjure a few ideas as to how you want to approach your maps...
http://eat3d.com/free/mudbox_displace
Terrain layout Looks cool.
Here's the terrain so far, working on the cliff
Includes diffuse, parallax and specular maps.
Still feels a little flat. Any suggestions?
For the image above could I see a wire render? You said you played with vertices so I'm guessing this roof has a much higher polycount then it did when it was just a plane? It might also help to see what your color map and normal map look like. It's hard to tell how well your depth is coming across because there seems to be some compression happening in the picture above, but the depth doesn't seem terrible, especially for a roof.
Also, in the first image you have of the house I noticed that roofing right above the door looks like a scaled sown version of the big roofs. When you do that it makes tiny little roof tiles just for that one area. I would make sure that the roof tiles are consistent in scale no matter where they are.
I look forward to updates.
Hope this helps!
As for your terrain, you have a lot of really large details and really tiny details, but no medium ones. Try and add some flatter sheered faces to that rock cliff and stuff.
I'll get a wireframe up but its a flat surface with a texture on it. I played with the vertices but it made it look worse, so I kept the flat surface. I'll use more careful dodge and burn
More updates
Another thing that might help is going for a quick walk around your block and looking at the roofs on your neighbor's houses. Look at the underside part of the roof where it connects to the house. There are a couple different styles and I would consider implementing one of those into your roof since that is the part the player will see if they are running around on the street looking at these houses.
started putting detail into the rocks, put a rock stencil over them, then added some shadows and highlights with the paintbrush to shape them out
This should help if you haven't seen it already:
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Now trying a different approach to the rocks, they're lower poly with more textures and less pinching than before.
It seems to make more sense any way
But that's some good advice with the cannon! Maybe I could look at replacing the bottom windows with those cannons
They'll be getting smaller as I shape out the edges on the island properly
You might have come across this tutorial already, but I'm linking it here so you get a visual idea of what I mean by a vertical, modular rock with a different shape to your current set. [ame="
Nothing's absolutely set in stone here, just playing with landmarks. Need to make some more rocks, maybe some more islands in the background.
So after much googling and referencing, I've expanded the market, added another house and a mill. I'm going to look at smaller props later in the project.
This is a rough layout of everything.
As for your roof texture, I am confused as to why its so blurry. Not sure if it was down res'ed and then you are scaling it back up when applying it to the model? Not really sure, but you have a GREAT base for a texture. I did a little paint over for ya!
(Had to make this quick, about 10-15min in photoshop, including the .gif setup, excuse the poor quality of the paint over, used to just give an idea)
Do NOT be afraid to really push the shapes, details, and exaggerate the composition. It doesn't have to make 100% sense, but it has to create a believable reality. As you can see below, some of the overlapping doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it creates that life and feeling of personality. Really push the borders of the objects with highlights and shadows. Avoid blacks and whites, if you are using either, apply a blend mode or lower opacity.
Here is a hand painted texture I worked on with a colleague (who now is interning at Blizzard
(about an hour or so of work, it is down res'ed and watermarked because the project is in production and this texture is in current use, all rights belong to Bad Moon Industries.)
This time I've decided a more simple approach, using modular assets. I'm going to keep the old tavern as a spare house (there's three separate house models). Here is the old tavern and new tavern. The new tavern is already looking better. After looking at some reference imaging, taverns tend to be bigger/wider than the one I've done.
As of tavern I think you have a good start, but I personally would advise you to keep blocking it out untill you know what assets you will need, how many variations of beams, windows etc etc. It will make it easier to know all this before you actually jump into doing final details, textures etc. hope it helps
I'm really happy with the result!
Also I think I acn see some tiling in the image above with the plastering, or is that something to do with lightmapping? It's the line that goes across the plaster from just below one window to anohter. Keep up the good work, windmill is looking fly.
As for the window question, I have always used cubemaps before. Not sure what your wanting to achieve but recently I've been working on a technique that can give some really cool results.
Bump offsetting can be used for adding height detail to brickwork but in this method it Makes the windows look like they have rooms behind them. I'm pretty sure that he also focuses on the reflectiveness of your window during the tutorial...
[ame="
Be cool to see a custom painted tavern interior as you walk down your street