This was a quick study I did with baking my tiling bark textures Displacement map, that was derived from Mudbox, and then using the newly baked in displacement map to "sculpt with" in Mudbox. This gave me the base bark sculpt of my tree and I added larger sculpt details to see how much they would hold up.
I'm also presenting it in a couple ways and would like your feedback on which presentation you like better. Thanks.
I like the first version the most, mostly because it is the most lit one. The lighting in the other two seems to hurt the model rather than help.
Anyhow good job on the mesh, I like the curvy bendy feel to it, although the end branches seem too thick and short, at least to me.
I really like the shapes of the texture, and I think the color in the last image of the first post is amazing. The tree model is really cool, I prefer the somewhat darker one. I think it'd be awesome if you gave the twisty tree model the same color and lighting as the on above, and gave the background corresponding colors. The watermark would also benefit from the color balance.
Yes. In fact, you should. A lot of silly people on the internet like to make absurd claims like “using photos is cheating”. Ignore comments like that. The most important goal is to make work that looks good – how you did it does not matter, so discard any notions you may have about “cheating”, because they’re just counter-productive and unnecessarily purist. Unless you’re working on a project that specifically requires a hand-painted look, try to avoid hand-painting your texture maps as much as possible, unless you’re a very highly skilled painter. This is because hand-painted textures tend to look hand-painted, which isn’t good for realism. Photographs, when properly shot and graded, provide an essential range of details that are difficult to emulate with hand-painting. It is standard industry practice to use photographs for most texture work in visual effects, so get used to it.
its from vfx industry professional texture artist, but i think is applicable to gamedev. If you wanna do something stylized, paint textures by yourself and use photos for realistic work
Your texture on the texture sheet looks really good, the tree model itself is nice aswell, but your presentation is terrible
Use more than one light, get a rim light
Make lights colored (warm and cold , complementary)
Dont use such harsh gradients. Gradients running over a wide area of lightness look
bad in general.
Also it looks like you didnt even apply the normal on the 2 and 3rd one. Make it stronger, even on the first one, it looks awkward how the texture is running along and is far from believable i have to say.
Please ignore the sculpt normals. This was a couple hour sculpt study focused around baking displacement maps from the tiling texture that I created separately and quickly adding tiling + rotated UVs to the tree model and baking the displacement map into the UV's of the tree. I then "Sculpted using displacement" in Mudbox to quickly add all the bark details. Then I added some large strokes in Mudbox.
Right now, I am just exploring presentation alternatives. The only reason I started presenting this unfinished work is because it is a tree study assignment that is due for week two of David Lesperance's course.
@Shrike
Thank you you for the feedback. I added the drop shadow to give the tree a little separation from the background.
Replies
I'm also presenting it in a couple ways and would like your feedback on which presentation you like better. Thanks.
Anyhow good job on the mesh, I like the curvy bendy feel to it, although the end branches seem too thick and short, at least to me.
its from vfx industry professional texture artist, but i think is applicable to gamedev. If you wanna do something stylized, paint textures by yourself and use photos for realistic work
Use more than one light, get a rim light
Make lights colored (warm and cold , complementary)
Dont use such harsh gradients. Gradients running over a wide area of lightness look
bad in general.
Also it looks like you didnt even apply the normal on the 2 and 3rd one. Make it stronger, even on the first one, it looks awkward how the texture is running along and is far from believable i have to say.
totally agree, where did you seen such bark alignment on trees?
and normal map looks like you sculpted tree, got normals from it, and put flat bark texture ontop. I know that this isnt true, but it looks like that.
http://www.natures-desktop-hd.com/images/wallpapers/1920x1200/background-wallpapers/tree-bark-background.jpg
I just noticed that you use a photoshop drop shadow, dont do that, it makes it look like its not in your scene
Texture is still a problem, also try making the transition on the right between the tree and the rocks better
Right now, I am just exploring presentation alternatives. The only reason I started presenting this unfinished work is because it is a tree study assignment that is due for week two of David Lesperance's course.
@Shrike
Thank you you for the feedback. I added the drop shadow to give the tree a little separation from the background.