[UDK] [WIP] "The Two Towers" Abandoned Water Tower Hideout
polycounter lvl 12
MOST CURRENT:
The Two Towers
Structural Blockout WIP V0.5
Here is a structural (VERY VERY EARLY) Blockout for a new scene I am working on.
Here is the premise:
Abandoned Water Tower Hideout
Survivors have taken refuge inside an empty water tower. They have been held out for a while and have spruced up the exterior with decorations, paint, banners, lights, and pulley system for getting heavy items to the tower as well as a plank that bridges the gap between the two structurally identical towers.
*INSPIRATION PHOTO*
(maya render for blockout)
Obviously, this is a very early build, and normally I wouldn't post so early, however I would like to get feedback on not just the art but the idea as well. You can expect all the next-gen bells and whistles on this one as I am trying to go for grungy and realistic with my materials. The Scene will be comprised of lots of cool props to indicate that this is a lived in area with real people. More more awesome work to do!
I plan on working on this when I have time, which may be somewhat slowly. I have 5 more weeks of teaching UDK at NYIT and then a possible job opportunity with a studio in Boston (with a relocation involved) so the progress may be a bit slow. I plan on updating pretty steadily though so please stay tuned!
The Two Towers
Structural Blockout WIP V0.5
Here is a structural (VERY VERY EARLY) Blockout for a new scene I am working on.
Here is the premise:
Abandoned Water Tower Hideout
Survivors have taken refuge inside an empty water tower. They have been held out for a while and have spruced up the exterior with decorations, paint, banners, lights, and pulley system for getting heavy items to the tower as well as a plank that bridges the gap between the two structurally identical towers.
*INSPIRATION PHOTO*
(maya render for blockout)
Obviously, this is a very early build, and normally I wouldn't post so early, however I would like to get feedback on not just the art but the idea as well. You can expect all the next-gen bells and whistles on this one as I am trying to go for grungy and realistic with my materials. The Scene will be comprised of lots of cool props to indicate that this is a lived in area with real people. More more awesome work to do!
I plan on working on this when I have time, which may be somewhat slowly. I have 5 more weeks of teaching UDK at NYIT and then a possible job opportunity with a studio in Boston (with a relocation involved) so the progress may be a bit slow. I plan on updating pretty steadily though so please stay tuned!
Replies
GEIGER COUNTER
Doomsday Canister/Makeshift Bomb (Inspired by Mission Impossible 3)
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I just found out that the picture I am using for reference (the one that inspired me) is taken on Long Island; only 30 minutes away from me! It is located at Caumsett State Park, and I will be headed there tomorrow to take some close up reference pictures!!! Super pumped for the little mini adventure! In the meantime (ie tonight) I shall be working on some simple props for the scene!
I made this while there was some downtime at work, for what it's worth =P
(oh, and keyshot render cuzI was bored xD)
Getting ready to head out for my adventure! I made this in about an hour and twenty minutes last night (to add to the scene)
I'm looking forward to see awesome refsheets! Have fun.
http://imgur.com/a/b5tXF#0
Here is the reference sheet I created from the pictures I took of the tower.
Gonna get started adding detail as soon as possible!
Couldn't help myself, just a quickie paint up but you get the jist.
I think another tower would be neat. Maybe one that serves as the "HQ" or private quarters for the leader for the base. I see you have some sort of cut out on the left one so maybe the third could be a cooking / sleeping area or something. Perhaps cooking on the first half with a ladder up to the 2nd floor which will be the sleeping area.
First thing that came to mind for the sleeping area. Feel free to ignore everything above. Just some quick ideas that came to mind. It looks great so far.
Thank you so much for the inspiration!!! Gonna use a lot of these ideas!
edit1: grammar
Super pumped to work on this this weekend!!!
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These past weeks have been kinda crazy, not gonna lie.
I interviewed for a 3D Artist position at a company in Boston (not saying which, just yet) last Tuesday and it went amazing. I pretty much got hired on the spot due to a stellar interview, however we're just waiting for mundane paperwork to be filed as well as background check and stuff of that nature. Otherwise, I'd say there is a 97.5% chance I will be hired to work on their new IP and I'm super excited. I'll hold off on the emotional stuff until it is official official...but needless to say, it means a lot to me. (it meant even more to me because the head AD told me I beat out a candidate that had been with the company for 3 years >.> )
I've been trying to get some work in, inbetween planning to find a new place in Boston in the next >2 weeks which has been a bit stressful. However, after talking with an employee of Crytek (Frankfurt) I decided to give Cryengine 3 a shot for this project.
(From now on, unless I switch back to UDK (which is not likely) I will be using Cryengine 3 for this project. I will leave it up to the viewers of this thread to decide if I should make a new thread with a new title or keep this WIP up and running. If a MOD reads this, and has the ability to change the title to '[CE3] [WIP] "The Two Towers" Abandoned Water Tower Hideout' then I'd REALLY appreciate it!)
This past Saturday I shut myself in, and learned AS MUCH as I possibly could about Cryengine 3 !
Things I learned this weekend:
Importing from Maya to Cryengine 3
Importing geo with multiple sub materials
Greating a multi material
UI Navigation
Customizing the UI
Editing Terrain
Tweaking the ocean
Time of Day manipulation and Sky manipulation
Full environment and sun light tweaking
Placing individual lights
Creating custom clouds
Using solids to build
Creating a vis area
A vis area for showcasing or interior
Using environment probes
Deffered lighting
Light masking
Material editing and advanced material settings
This is my progress thus far, obviously extremely WIP
Looking to learn much more about Cryengine 3 and it's workflow soon!
A rope bridge
Side Ladders
Lookout Tower
Wood Support Beams
Lots of UV mapping!
Stuff I still need to do before I start texturing aka To Do List:
Build ladder going down the tower
Cloth/Sheet blocking in the main entrance
Prop Lighting (Christmas Lights, Etc.)
More Props! (Possibly barrels, crates, and other goodies)
Destroy some of the railing
Pulley System
Sculpt Wood items: (Lookout tower, rope bridge, wood beams- all sculpted)
Climbing ivy and other foliage
Then lots of texturing and decal making!
Hope you enjoyed this update!
Thanks for checking me out!
I will leave the foliage for after the initial texture pass, because I wanna make sure it looks good even without the foliage. This way the foliage will serve as a layer of polish.
I'm pretty happy with where everything is so far and I know that the textures will breathe life into the scene greatly.
I'm hard at work bustin out base materials for the scene at hand. Here is the clean version of the main watertower tiling texture. This is still WIP and will be further expanded upon with more detail. What I'm going to do is create a completely rusted and grungy version and then vertex paint between them. (Does anyone know if Vertex Painting is possible in CE3? If anyone has any tuts or write ups they can point me towards, I'd appreciate it!
I'll be churning more textures out tomorrow.
edit: added this for shiggles
To me, the hole looks a little bit too much like the near-clipping of polygons. (That's just what it calls to mind. I know it wouldn't make literal sense.)
Maybe try to make the hole a little less planar? Or otherwise avoid a view from such a straight-on angle?
Otherwise, I'm really enjoying this so far. Really cool.
Right now, I'd say I am about 80% through with the project.
Stuff to do:
Lots of ivy!
Graffiti on the left tower
Finishing touches on the top-of-the-tower turret
Work on the base
A few other odds-and-ends and texture work
Definitely gonna try to finish up this project this week if I can, then on to the next !!
After somne feedback on other sites as well as self review I notice a few things
I need to step my Ivy game up and just generally make it better. A more low-poly, varied, color varied, and overall randomized look would be better for this project I think, especially after re-looking at my reference pictures.
I need to bite the bullet and throw in some sort of interesting background. Presentation counts. If I want the project to "pop" I'm going to need SOMETHING around it to ground it in reality. I still could go back to my original idea of a black background with a "base" but I'm thinking this project just may need that extra push when it comes to surrounding environment.
Once again, ANY sort of feedback is much appreciated! Especially when it comes to what I could do as far as a background landscape goes.... still thinking about what I could do.
Thanks!
Edit: also...
im sure you could push that subject a lot higher if you wanted to spend the time, its a really great idea to build up upon
For a backdrop, Id take a photo in the right angle +-, blur it hard and make it a little lighter , probably the easiest way
I dont really get the reply o meter. Is it about the skill level of the people answering, or the skill level of the people posting ?
Thanks for the suggestion! After much though, I think I'm going to go that way with the image plains.
As for the chart, it is basically saying that people only usually comment on threads where the OP is either an inexperienced noob, or an amazing masterful inspirational artist.
-The ivy seems to have to much spec/gloss making it seem a bit plastic.
It also seems that on the left on the tower you have repeated one set to much, wich causes some noticable repetition.
And maybe I am wrong, but isn't a plant like that still supposed to grow out of something (earth/soil), it just seems kind of weird to me just randomly growing at such a height.
-Some of the graffiti seems out of scale, the black text on the left tower for example, judging by the scale of the other things, and how a text like that would be done (just a single fast motion), you would need a rather huge spraycan.
-The circular base could use a bevel/chamfer on the edge, looks a bit to sharp now.
And the material on that part (and the "legs" of the tower)could use some more work.
-The banner seems a bit to much like a plane with a tiling texture on it, can't exactly pinpoint why but it looks a bit fake.
maybe 2 things that could help:
-A more visible attachment point, now it just sort of floats.
-Some actual folding/pulling like this
http://factorydirectcraft.com/pimages/20120907091705-120441/83x_20_red_blank_fabric_banner_ready_to_decorate_sign.jpg
-The boxes, make another one (maybe one that is closed), add some actual things in it, or around it, to give a bit of a purpose to them instead of just random boxes.
And they could also use a bit of beating up/weathering if they have been left there for a while (rain for example).
-The brown part that is in the cut in the watertower seems a bit lowres
-Same with the grunge on the banner.
Can't say there is a single thing you mentioned that I don't agree with, so thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it when people take the time to out give me crits; especially at this point when my eye is just so used to what it's seeing that it gets REALLY hard to pick stuff out to fix. I Will spend tomorrow tackling those issues for sure!
- The wires wrapped around the towers, nice touch, but their motion path seems strange, moving up and down, perhaps you could try pinning it at intervals to the underside of the roof and having it droop down in between the fixtures?
- The walkway, this area might benefit from being a different material, or at least having a different colour hue to the legs, perhaps the surface would also have a tread, to make it non slip, or accumulated dirt/weathering damage. After all, it shelters the legs of the structure from the elements (at least the top of the legs) and so you would expect it to show signs of this.
- I'd also investigate the modelling on the walkway, particularly the edge, it needs a little more visual interest (such as stains from the railings, or modelled detail where the railings merge with the base) or even just a bevel for that hard edge that runs around the top of it.
- The ivy is a good start, but as I believe someone else has said, Ivy needs to grow from the ground up in this situation, rather than sprouting from metal. You could adjust the layout of your planes to show this perhaps...the main critique on your ivy however is that it needs more volume - a few additional texture variations, perhaps of a thinner layout, or individual leaves would allow you to break up the repetition of your current layout. If you look at your reference, the growing ivy columns are much thicker than the legs of the tower themselves due to their volume....Ivy is tough though! Especially creating believable, thick layouts - the polycount wiki might help you though, it has a few foliage tutorials
Adjoining edges - often edges that meat at angles create an area of occlusion, whether it be from light, or as an area for dirt and dust to collect in. For example the right angle created where your roof meets the sides of the tower. You have a stain running down the tower, but it would be nice to see some occlusion in there too, to soften this join, as well as some accumulated dirt, or even just some spread from the stain on the metal, to the underside of the roof. A quick note also on the other side your shadow ranges need to increase to remove the light leak you have.
- The red rooftops in the bottom right corner of your background seem to draw the eye and are a little distracting...they also seem a little too similar to the red hues that exist on your assets (the graffiti, the banner). Looking at the bottom left, the trees at the base of the tower work really nicely and provide a good visual contrast, it might be nice to have similar trees lining the base of your image and fogging out a lot of those buildings in the background to remove the visual noise.
I hope you might find this critique useful, if you're done with this project then I hope it helps with the next. Don't be disheartened by people not commenting on your thread so much, people tend to comment on familiar names rather than because your work is of a certain quality. What you have here is a nice piece, just keep on pushing!
Good luck, looking forward to seeing the final images!
Some of the issues I addressed:
Beveled Edge on walkway.
Add grunge on boxes, as well as closed version.
More Rust and Grunge
7TH TIME re-doing the IVY!! This is a less poly solution and overall I think I like this one the best.
Definitely have gotten to that point where I just wanna ut it to bed. I feel like my time would be better spent working on pre-production on my next project.
Overall I'm more than satisfied with how much I've learned. I completely taught myself how to use CryEngine during this project and I'm pretty proud of that...ESPECIALLY as a Maya user =P
I feel like this piece came out pretty strong though.
Thanks for everyone who followed the thread and provided feedback! Very much appreciated!
Well, after many weeks of hard work, I am calling this project complete. You can find the final beauty shot located here, or visit http://www.rad-3d.com/Pages/thetwotowers.html to view breakdowns of the completed project.
In Memorandum:
First of all, I must say that I think that this project was overall, a success.
Firstly, I believe it was a success because I believe the construction quality and final product is visually appealing and well made.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, I believe the project was successful just for all of the awesome things I learned during it’s creation. I came into this project knowing absolutely nothing about CryEngine 3 and left with a really good understand of a lot of it’s processes. I learned a lot more about dDo, 3D Coat, and just about my overall workflow and application.
Some things that were not so successful:
First, the Ivy, after being re-done close to 6 times, could absolutely be better.
Secondly, I am not the greatest designer. I know this. I’m not quite as good at designing as I am at constructing. Although, I would say that I pushed myself pretty far considering that fact. My next project is going to mostly be based off concept art- this way I can spend more time building than designing (which is a bit more realistic to my role in the industry if I were to get a job; concept artists would be illustrating designs that I would build)
Even though I have a pre-pro petpeeve, and love to plan- more planning could have been done.
Moving forward, I will take everything I learned from this and apply it to my future projects.
Thanks everyone for following and critique!
-Rogelio
A couple of things - the ivy on the left side tower looks more like curtains made out of moss. I think this is because they seem to have formed no attachments, and they are hanging down somewhat awkwardly as the demarcation between the tower hole and the tower exterior. Also, typically ivy has a falloff element where its tendrils reach out to grab whatever, and here it just seems like concentrated leaves.
I really like the rusting damage on the metal, looks great and natural.
I mentioned this before, but that font is killing the presentation for me. It looks like the kind of thing you create when you google 'sweet photoshop text tutorial'. Maybe consider something simpler and monocolor, like just white Bebas.
That's about it. I'm not crazy about the background, but I personally cannot think of any other way to do it without creating your own, and I think that's probably too much work.
Anyways, cool stuff.
Thanks all!