UDK starting over with a simple scene

orion5175

starting over with a simple scene and I'm going to show my work in progress as I go through each phase until completion. Feedback and suggestions welcome along with any comments.
basic cabin model done in Maya.

orion5175

my progress with the texturing, the quality of the textures were sized to fit this forum so they lost some of there detail in here.

zombieminteractive

I like it alot, how did you go making the interior (I'm trying to figure out how to make a building for udk) are the walls separate pieces?

Oh this looks like the type of building that would be in a snowy forest environment :]

GragGunslinger

I would try to make texture kits* and then modeling your pieces to your models so that you have a more modular and less wasteful approach.

Similarly, I would also recommend using something like Zbrush, or Sculptris to sculpt your detail as opposed to using crazy bump.

I feel like your model work is fine, but you're going to lose a lot of detail with your textures.

Texture kits are essentially a planned out set of textures that you use over the course of an entire scene. So you'd have 1 1024x1024 of wood that you would use across the entire wood area of your building, this will make it look consistent not only in detail level but also in texel density.

You would do this with many different objects, a metal kit, a wood kit, etc and then you would just model your objects and unwrap them to that sheet.

orion5175

zombiemineractive, thanks this might explain more than I can.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHNzPpXemR4&feature=share&list=UUCCjEjIPlWF-rBMZyOga6gQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHNzPpXemR4&feature=share&list=UUCCjEjIPlWF-rBMZyOga6gQ[/ame]

GragGunslinger the modeling was done in mudbox, do you have a link or a tutorial to explain the texture kit? I was looking into 3d coat to see what that has to offer. I was also looking at how UDK textures there meshes as well.

orion5175

still in the process of retexturing the cabin, but this is the work so far. the cabin is going to be nested back under a cover of trees, there will be a fence in the back along with more grass mesh over the painted landscape. I like how the river turned out and I'm eventually going to add ripples where it is flowing past the grass and the dock supports.

orion5175

progress today, more trees and a few more props.

orion5175

okay so I tried the cel shader and it works but it came out a with a lot of detail missing and the material itself takes too long to create and is to big to do a whole scene in unless you keep it simple like in borderlands. This couple is from a few days ago and I went back to the regular texturing and I have more plant groups now which I will post updates later in the day.

zombieminteractive

I kind of find it a bit bright.
Also the mossy texture on the hill really stands out.

orion5175

I thought I should post an update since it's been awhile. retextured the lightmaps and added more foliage and grass along with changing the lighting.

Radiocity

orion5175 wrote: »

I thought I should post an update since it's been awhile. retextured the lightmaps and added more foliage and grass along with changing the lighting.

WOW ! Looks so great now. How long are you working/learning with UDK ?
I want to give it a try after I saw this.

orion5175

thanks, about two years udk and about four maya

orion5175

still a work in progress, interior shots
please feel free to suggest or comment anything.

orion5175

done with the prop placement but still a work in progress as far as the lighting and color post processing and final rendering.

orion5175

Higuy

It looks cool but I think the tree's leaves texture really stands out from the rest of the scene. Did you try baking down a branch/leaf texture from highpoly and going with that route? For example, the way they built the trees in this tutorial:

https://www.3dmotive.com/f102101

One other thing that seems to stand out:

Try increasing the resolution or tiling of your wooden floor inside the home, it seems a bit stretched, same with the wooden table.

Otherwise your scene is coming along and looks quite nice!

orion5175

it's just a basic speedtree model (9 to be exact)
as far as the flooring , they are elongated boards, I will mess around with it but not sure how to make a elongated texture not look that way
but i will give it a try and thanks.

BARDLER

There is not reason why a cabin should have 8 2048 texture maps on it, and have no way of being broken into multiple different assets. You should look into how to build modular assets, how to use a grid system in your textures, and how create tileable textures.

zombieminteractive

Where did you get your grass texture/s ? Im struggling with my grass and not sure if Im using good ones :O

orion5175

that was one of the first post before the whole conversation with Graggunslinger about material kits and pretty much everything you just listed, it has been updated since that first post.

sybrix

I love the personality of this scene, and there are nice personal touches everywhere like the axe in the stump, and drawing easel, and the family portraits. I like scenes with touches of story like that in them.

The lighting camouflages the stretching of the roof and floor textures and the chimney a bit but I feel like it should be addressed because the resolution shift between them and everything else is the first thing that stood out to me. When you unwrap your models, do you use a checkered pattern to check for stretching and texel density? Something like this:



You can see above that the example on the left is a cube that was scaled up but the UVs were not scaled up to match the texel density of the cube on the right. On the right the UVs of the cube was scaled up to approximately match the texel density of the cube on the right (it does not have to be exact.) Then, when you apply a tiling texture there is little stretching and you don't get wood that looks tiny and huge everywhere.

I love how you put together the scene, but that is what stands out the most IMO.

orion5175

close to finish, I'm now going back to fix the light contrast on the exterior by adding a lantern around the main door, in the mean time hopefully get more feedback on what to fix on this.

thanks Sybrix for the demonsration, i'll give it a try on the next pass.