UDK - Stone Bridge Scene
triangle
Hey everyone. Its been awhile since I've posted here. I started working on a new portfolio piece based on a Hubert Robert painting.
One trap I don't want to fall into is to try and replicate the painting, but to stay close to the overall look and feel of it.
Here's my scene:
The rock meshes are very placeholder right now. I've put most of my effort into the stone bridge. There are some foliage actors that I've placed, but I plan on updating the look of those.
Next on my list of things to do is to work on the waterfall area. It's in need of some serious work and it's a very important part to the scene.
Also, I plan on modeling a stone railing piece for the top of the bridge, as well as a wooden railing that goes at the top of the waterfall.
I'm open to any and all critiques. I look forward to your feedback.
Thanks!
One trap I don't want to fall into is to try and replicate the painting, but to stay close to the overall look and feel of it.
Here's my scene:
The rock meshes are very placeholder right now. I've put most of my effort into the stone bridge. There are some foliage actors that I've placed, but I plan on updating the look of those.
Next on my list of things to do is to work on the waterfall area. It's in need of some serious work and it's a very important part to the scene.
Also, I plan on modeling a stone railing piece for the top of the bridge, as well as a wooden railing that goes at the top of the waterfall.
I'm open to any and all critiques. I look forward to your feedback.
Thanks!
Replies
Do you intend to include the horse and cart carrying hay as well? Adding the swimmers and dog would be asking a big much, but adding the ducks would be a lovely touch.
Great subject choice.
Toskineuro - The bridge is one mesh. Just under 6,000 triangles at the moment.
Suba - Thanks! Long way to go to completion. Hopefully, I can capture the look and feel of the painting.
DWalker - Good eye. I'll definitely keep that in mind going forward.
Maybe too much green on the foliage, but it's just for me
the arch is too wide and not deep enough and the bricks are too small and sharpe (not worn enough)
dont take this the wrong way as i think youve been concentrating on the technical sides which look good but i think you have missed the woods for the trees. youve concentrated on the details and missed the mark on the main shapes and feel of the piece.
where the original has a romantic edge to it youres looks a bit prison like and too severe. as you said you didnt want to replicate it but keep the feel, im not sure you have sorry
dont want to be too harsh its a technically sound peice BUT i think you didnt manage to succeed on the basis that you set out to
No worries. That's the kind of feedback I need. I appreciate your comments and I agree. I will revisit the bridge mesh
Thanks!
* I reworked the bridge mesh a bit.
* Did a first pass on the waterfall mesh and material.
* Rearranged the rocks for better comp
* Lowered the water level after placing water fall.
* modeled a proxy mesh for the wooden railing.
* iterated on foliage material. Added translucency and normal map. Played around with the spec.
Working on next:
*Iterate on bridge model and textures. Create new bridge texture for meshpainting purposes. This will add variety to the masonry. Also, need to soften the look of the stone masonry texture. Probably a combo of the normal and diffuse maps.
* model and texture the wooden cart.
* Model and texture the stone railing at the top of the bridge.
* Iterate on tunnel/building at the top of the bridge.
* Create a new rock mesh to add variation to the scene.
* Fix/optimize foliage. Get rid of floating meshes.
There's a lot more to do, but that's the main stuff for now.
Having a hard time getting the waterfall shader to look right. If anyone knows of a good tutorial for having water flowing over rocks, please send me a link.
As you said, waterfall and water is biggest problem in scene. Hopefully you can get it sorted out.
Good luck, can't wait for more.
Makkon - Thanks. I'll definitely post a breakdown as well as a mini tutorial when the project is done.
For the waterfall, right now it's more like a gelatinous coating than moving water. Even a slow waterfall like this one will have the water separate where it moves over rocks and look a lot more foamy. It will also create foam where faster moving water impacts slower water.
http://www.wallpapergate.com/download/3289/1920x1200/crop/waterfall-wallpaper.jpg
This is obviously taken with a long exposure time so it's exaggerated, but clearly shows where the most air bubbles are.
As for the misting, a slow fall such as this would not create a whole lot of mist (if any) and certainly not so far away as your mist is now. It's also more reminiscent of steam as it is now. I'd say move the misting to the very base of the fall and into it and make it more subtle if you want to keep it.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7770783/paintover/SeveredSon_paintover.jpg
I made a real quick paintover to show a bit what I meant. I also framed it slightly with darker moss on the sides, didn't do anything with the misting.
It's not a great paintover so take it with a grain of salt, haha. What I didn't put in for instance was some sharper highlights and faster cutoffs to white to alleviate the feeling of it being a bit too blobby.
Anyway, awesome job! I think the rest of the scene looks fantastic.
A big part of this, I personally think, is that it would be unlikely anyone would build a bridge with two decks over what is essentially a trickle of water and a puddle - whereas in the original, the bridge clearly self justifies.
Anyways, modeling and texturing a look great.
ysalex - I agree. The waterfall should definitely be more prominent. I will definitely work on that.
Other changes: I blocked in the horse and cart on the bridge, rearranged some of the rocks and moved some of the foliage around. The railing at the top of the bridge is next. Also, I have to adjust the color of the waterfall rocks to match the surrounding rocks.
It might also look really nice to get some of that warm light you have bouncing under the bridge hitting the rocks.
Tiredpaintover
awesome work (y)
DavidBrumbley - Thx man. I will keep plugging away at the rocks. In this update I reduced the detail normal and rotated the rock closest to the bridge around to a more planar looking side. I still plan on creating another rock that has a more planar look, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
RaventhePirate - Yeah, colorwise it has a long way to go. I turned off the advanced environment color in this update and the shadows came back when I baked lighting. For some reason adv enviro color blows out your shadows. Also, I played around with the sun angle a bit, because I think it looks cool to have the light come through the arch and hit those rocks.
I added the railing piece that has some damage on the left side. Also, I added people and textured the horse and cart. Next on my list is the building at the top of the bridge.
Color is something that I'll be playing around with quite a bit as I iterate. Keep the comments coming, I appreciate them quite a bit.
Also the hay on the cart needs work, model and texturewise. I'll be adding some alpha planes to the hay stack to make it look more like hay. Right now it's still a block mesh.
Thanks!
****Edit****
Here's a wireframe of the bridge. Quite a hack job, but it's around 3,600 tris at the moment. Needs a lot of cleanup work.
Mr Significant - Thank you. I dialed down the detail normal quite a bit and I think that was the main cause of the plastic wrap look. The skydome is about 50% painted and 50% photo. The photo I took one morning, very early, as the sun was coming up.
RaventhePirate - True, it's easy to keep picking away at a piece. I plan on putting a few ducks in the pond, but no people in the foreground. The people on the bridge are mapped to planes.
Thanks as always for your comments.
Would love to see some break downs of this now and how you went about making bits of it
1st the bloom threshold could do with increasing (haven't used UDK for ages so...not to sure on the technical name in UDK) so that not the entire image is bloomed
2nd the original paintings green tones are offset beautifully by the splashes of deep red, yours are getting a bit lost it would be nice to pick those out a bit more