Had an idea when I started wondering where that spot of light came from in the foreground and have now decided to put in a second dome + skylight separated from the first by a short stretch of wall/ceiling/catwalk. Going to put in the little garden/foliage and the stairs that will lead down to a slightly lower level and probably another door.
Also considering doing the other sets of what appear to be stairs on the sides of the room (judging from the angle of the railing and the arch forming a doorway). Some walls are missing just so that the bottom area can be seen on the blockout. Hopefully I'll be able to work on it more tomorrow and over the weekend.
Hi , so back here again tried some scale test and partial block out in 3D Max. Here is the partial study i did on the props and dome plus added the final height based on what UDK player scale is. Dome is they tricky part and in case if anyone having issues do check out Modularity stuff on Polycount. It will save you trouble
JamesArk I think that bright light is opposite arch way door sort of, i would just mirror the opposite archway back there or the whole thing. Though I am not planning to make whats hidden behind the camera. I will try to position the camera as closely to the concept as well .
JamesArk I think that bright light is opposite arch way door sort of, i would just mirror the opposite archway back there or the whole thing. Though I am not planning to make whats hidden behind the camera. I will try to position the camera as closely to the concept as well .
Ahh that makes a lot of sense + a lot less work Will mess around with the blockout some more today. Thank you + shosh. :thumbup:
after a few hours of creating the pillar this is what i have :
The way i did this is to bend it around a circle whit a non linear bend deformer, my question is is this a good way of doing things or should it be done diffrently?
also i cant seem to figure out how to do the bottem circle on the pillar any tips?
Hi so after careful scale test I have set the main height to 320 units and made the first pillar . Now moving to modular textures, fingers crossed though cause im pretty sure circular parts will be pain especially on the floor which I still have to figure out how to model.
Yoda its looking nice, but its too much dense for game environment. That is if its your highpoly and you plan HI LO bake thing then its cool.
Lower part is tricky to model and too much time consuming unless you do it in Zbrush. However manually i would circles as guide infront of the pillar and use cookie cutter feature in 3DS max, clean the polys/vertices and make holes etc.
On the other hand focus on the whole enviro to get it done in time.
Yoda its looking nice, but its too much dense for game environment. That is if its your highpoly and you plan HI LO bake thing then its cool.
Lower part is tricky to model and too much time consuming unless you do it in Zbrush. However manually i would circles as guide infront of the pillar and use cookie cutter feature in 3DS max, clean the polys/vertices and make holes etc.
On the other hand focus on the whole enviro to get it done in time.
James glad the idea helped you.
alright thanks mate il give it a go, i think doing the uv's now before getting it in zbrush is better right?
Hi Yoda, My Zbrush is very early stage learning so not sure on that one. Now im worried face people will use Zbrush on this one . Ah well guess thats learning, I wanna master the grid snaps and circular stuff that is just so much pain if you get it wrong. lol
Blockout in progress. Put some reference characters(2 meters in height) in there to get a feel for the scale. I'm going for a more realistic look so I might have to make a few minor architectural modifications to make it fit full-size characters, and to make it look believable from a First-Person perspective.
JamesArk - Looks like a nice start! You seem to have the proportions under control. Keep up the good work!
ZweiBonobo - Looks good! I think the "chandelier" is a bit too big compared to the crystal, makes the crystal appear small, try to enhance that part as it is a focal point of the scene.
Shuaws - I know youre in an early stage but it seems to me that some proportions is a bit off atm, pillars look to thick, archway looks to wide. Middle hole and platform looks great!
So been working on refining my block-out so that it makes sense towards the concept. Going for a slightly oval shape because that's how I interpreted the concept.
Also experimented on some pillars which came out alright, just need to play around with the texturing and maps so they don't look to metallic and rusty. I'm not too familiar with UDKs lighting and material mechanics.
Progress Update, working on the high poly. Trying to keep my camera for the final render as close to the concept as possible.
For perspective issues I just picked one of the perspectives that were in the concept(The pilar positions relative to the center platform) and I'm just going to stick to it. If I find something that can't work with this perspective I'll just let it go and keep going.
So I've assembled about half of the scene in UDK today with placeholder meshes just to make sure everything aligns properly. Going to hopefully finish placing everything tomorrow (and start the 2D Noob Challenge) and then start high poly work.
I have never done a noob challenge but this concept got me intrigued!
Here is a rough block out I did not much time into it yet. the more I look at the more I know how I will lay out my textures. Mostly trim sheets created with Zbrush, and hand painted color but with the use of photo brushes. I had to take a good look at the architecture here its a little wonky but I think I got a good idea as did all of you! I am going to tackle the more repetative items first then work my way to the unique ones.
Well, I decided to give this month's challenge a try.
Here's my start:
Anyways, Curious to see where you all take this one.
Good luck everybody.
How many tris are those pillars? I'd like to see a wireframe if you have the time, I'm not yet familiar with the borderline of polygon amount, so just trying to figure things out as I go along. Looks really good by the way, like the colours.
alright thanks mate il give it a go, i think doing the uv's now before getting it in zbrush is better right?
You don't have to do UVs first, there are many tools in zbrush that will allow you to do the UVs whenever you want. From using goz to put UVs onto a model and bring it back in to transferring details from the sculpted model to a low poly model with UVs set up or creating UVs in zbrush itself on the sculpted model.
I have a few questions:
1. When you guys create blockouts do you make it in Maya or Udk?
1.5 Do you just start with bsp and then slowly replace it with models that you create in maya?
2. For non-modular things do you leave them as bsp? or do you still create them in maya?
I'm a little confused because I don't really understand the typical pipeline of creating environments. (I'm still really new to it) Thank you.
I have a few questions:
1. When you guys create blockouts do you make it in Maya or Udk?
1.5 Do you just start with bsp and then slowly replace it with models that you create in maya?
2. For non-modular things do you leave them as bsp? or do you still create them in maya?
I'm a little confused because I don't really understand the typical pipeline of creating environments. (I'm still really new to it) Thank you.
I create my block outs in modeling program (Maya in my case). If you setup the camera right you shouldn't need to go into whichever engine your using until you need to "run around and get a feel for how it flows/works whatever y'know"
Not really to sure on what you mean by leave them as bsp (i thought .bsp the map file extension, unsure lol. Haven't worked in UE, thought valve/id use bsp.
Though if your talking about workflow I would just make it in modeling program import into game engine of preference see if it feels right to move about and if it does (as the concept might not always be perfect (depends on how you interpret it) then continue modeling, UV, texture, as you would normally do.
Anyway started my block out, The concept is awfully confusing though I think I sort of worked it out. Perspective is near spot on. Though the concept is not very symmetrical (though it is a concept lol) so my looks a little different from the nearly same angle
Not looking forward to hand painting, though I really need to get better at stylistic art.
Ok so after several test with measurements on grid in 3DS Max, I have locked on the coordinates . Since I wanna learn modular on circular patterns this is perfect method I guess.
The trick is not to model in circular shapes (except pillars and few small props) . Instead I am rolling it like a red carpet, say you have 64 wide unit walk way and its 512 long you simply just bend it to make circular pattern and its save you ton load of pain later in UDK. Plus you can make modular textures and not circular textures .
Been understanding a little more on baking in XNormals. I've finally hit a achievement, personally for teaching myself how to bake to some degree. Rather happy, but I got a little issue at the moment, wondering if anyone could help.
I think my normal maps aren't being bakes to well. And I might be having issues with my smoothing groups, maybe I've added to much, I'm not sure. If anyone could understand what's shown bellow, let me know which way to go. Thanks!
Maybe it's because of the fact that I haven't added the 2nd UV set for the udk light maps...
Been understanding a little more on baking in XNormals. I've finally hit a achievement, personally for teaching myself how to bake to some degree. Rather happy, but I got a little issue at the moment, wondering if anyone could help.
I think my normal maps aren't being bakes to well. And I might be having issues with my smoothing groups, maybe I've added to much, I'm not sure. If anyone could understand what's shown bellow, let me know which way to go. Thanks!
Maybe it's because of the fact that I haven't added the 2nd UV set for the udk light maps...
Could be that your uvs are packed to tight, causing bleeds from the normals.
I'm having some trouble with modularity on this piece, how does one go about making circular modular pieces?
Been understanding a little more on baking in XNormals. I've finally hit a achievement, personally for teaching myself how to bake to some degree. Rather happy, but I got a little issue at the moment, wondering if anyone could help.
I think my normal maps aren't being bakes to well. And I might be having issues with my smoothing groups, maybe I've added to much, I'm not sure. If anyone could understand what's shown bellow, let me know which way to go. Thanks!
Maybe it's because of the fact that I haven't added the 2nd UV set for the udk light maps...
This normal map looks inverted. Try to flip green channel, change unpack min settings to -1 -1 -1 0 and compression settings to tc_normalmap.
It's not necessary to add second uv channel if your mesh hasn't got overlapped uv's, you can simply tweak mesh settings to use first channel. Just change light map coordinate index from 1 to 0.
Been understanding a little more on baking in XNormals. I've finally hit a achievement, personally for teaching myself how to bake to some degree. Rather happy, but I got a little issue at the moment, wondering if anyone could help.
I think my normal maps aren't being bakes to well. And I might be having issues with my smoothing groups, maybe I've added to much, I'm not sure. If anyone could understand what's shown bellow, let me know which way to go. Thanks!
Maybe it's because of the fact that I haven't added the 2nd UV set for the udk light maps...
If you have diff smoothing groups, or hard edges, your uvs must be detached where the smoothing groups meet or where the hard edge is. Just cut the uv and put a bit of space between the shells of UV
Pete this is being caused by number of issues, so far number one being the surface is 90 degrees sort of almost sharp angle which is and will always break your normal map like this.
one thing is for sure it happens in all games including BF Bad Company (pc version) the barricades concrete ones have this exact same thing when u just put your player very close to them.
To avoid it you have to chamfer that edge so that normal can read the surface during bake.
I cant find the link it goes something " Normal map creation for nextgen games" . It will explain in more detail your issue.
Thanks! I'm working at a studio that just opened up here which is a branch of FunPlus Games (Facebook games mostly...they did Family Farm). Only worked there one day but so far it's pretty awesome.
Here's a blockout of one of the trim texture sheets I'll use:
@David Wakeling I'm having the same question about the highpoly/sculpt detail. At first I started making the highpoly right away. But now I'm thinking of scrapping the highpoly work and stick to a Lowpoly + Diffuse.
From a small research I made yesterday I came to the conclusion(maybe a wrong one, point me if Im wrong please : D)
That making a highpoly sculpt will give something like a Darksiders style(obviously, not at the same quality, atleast for me, but I think you know what I mean). Which is based more on the baked AO and normals and less on the painting(You already have most of the shadows and highlights baked)
While I'm going for a WoW / Torchlight style, which clearly use no normal map and uses diffuse + spec only, having to handpaint all the shadows and highlights of the texture, give an even more stylized look.
Note : This is my conclusion on a 45min research over the internets, so please, if I'm wrong and nothing I said makes any sense, tell me! :P
Hello! This will be my first Noob Challenge. I usually go and sculpt most of my assets, but I am not sure if I will be taking that approach this time. I think zbrushing everything has become my crutch, because I use my AO bakes instead of learning how to texture well. I love modeling so I will just go an do that for now.
I colored out alot of the main modular assets in the scene. I will models those first & the ground.
I look forward to having this learning experience with the rest of you guys.
Thanks! I'm working at a studio that just opened up here which is a branch of FunPlus Games (Facebook games mostly...they did Family Farm). Only worked there one day but so far it's pretty awesome.
Here's a blockout of one of the trim texture sheets I'll use:
Since this is my first time challenge here. I am making it sort of real like and not cell shaded, so I ll be using some texture overlays from CGTextures. Is that ok or i get banned or something?
Since this is my first time challenge here. I am making it sort of real like and not cell shaded, so I ll be using some texture overlays from CGTextures. Is that ok or i get banned or something?
no you won't get banned but you should try to make it tileable or modify it slightly.
With the exception of a few props my blockout/placement is now pretty much final. I decided to use my original idea of having the dome mirrored on the other side of the room along with the another door under it so that the room now kind of makes sense as an actual functioning space. Going to start high polying stuff tonight or tomorrow.
Pillar Progress! Its the base highpoly I will take into Zbrush. Adding cracks, chips and what not's. Everyones stuff is coming along good, cant wait to see these.
I understand that its handpainted; but do I sculpt anything or is it merely lowpoly-handpainted textures to emphasise any detail?
Also; is there any tutorials out there for handpainted textures - this is my first attempt!
Hey, if you haven't already seen it, you should totally read through Jessica Dinh's "Handpainted Wells" thread in the showcase section. I seriously think it's one of the most informative threads on all of Polycount (and the art is stellar). Really helped clear up the mysteries of environment texturing for me.
@Selaznog - Love the start you have on that texture sheet! Congrats on landing a job!
Nothing special, just front projected and traced the gem/rock in the center. Suppose I'd bake the texture to the UVs from here to use as a base which would likely be completely painted over. Don't really know if I'm going to enter the challenge I just felt like screwing around.
Replies
Also considering doing the other sets of what appear to be stairs on the sides of the room (judging from the angle of the railing and the arch forming a doorway). Some walls are missing just so that the bottom area can be seen on the blockout. Hopefully I'll be able to work on it more tomorrow and over the weekend.
I started by making a quick breakdown of the scene to get an idea of what modules will be instanced or sharing the same textures etc.
Same colours = instanced objects that will share same geometry and textures
Dotted lines = modular breakdown
Hopefully the image shows below
Ahh that makes a lot of sense + a lot less work
The way i did this is to bend it around a circle whit a non linear bend deformer, my question is is this a good way of doing things or should it be done diffrently?
also i cant seem to figure out how to do the bottem circle on the pillar any tips?
Lower part is tricky to model and too much time consuming unless you do it in Zbrush. However manually i would circles as guide infront of the pillar and use cookie cutter feature in 3DS max, clean the polys/vertices and make holes etc.
On the other hand focus on the whole enviro to get it done in time.
James glad the idea helped you.
JamesArk - Looks like a nice start! You seem to have the proportions under control. Keep up the good work!
ZweiBonobo - Looks good! I think the "chandelier" is a bit too big compared to the crystal, makes the crystal appear small, try to enhance that part as it is a focal point of the scene.
Shuaws - I know youre in an early stage but it seems to me that some proportions is a bit off atm, pillars look to thick, archway looks to wide. Middle hole and platform looks great!
Also experimented on some pillars which came out alright, just need to play around with the texturing and maps so they don't look to metallic and rusty. I'm not too familiar with UDKs lighting and material mechanics.
For perspective issues I just picked one of the perspectives that were in the concept(The pilar positions relative to the center platform) and I'm just going to stick to it. If I find something that can't work with this perspective I'll just let it go and keep going.
Here's my start:
*This is my first challenge btw*
Anyways, Curious to see where you all take this one.
Good luck everybody.
Here is a rough block out I did not much time into it yet. the more I look at the more I know how I will lay out my textures. Mostly trim sheets created with Zbrush, and hand painted color but with the use of photo brushes. I had to take a good look at the architecture here its a little wonky but I think I got a good idea as did all of you! I am going to tackle the more repetative items first then work my way to the unique ones.
Good luck everyone!
How many tris are those pillars? I'd like to see a wireframe if you have the time, I'm not yet familiar with the borderline of polygon amount, so just trying to figure things out as I go along. Looks really good by the way, like the colours.
You don't have to do UVs first, there are many tools in zbrush that will allow you to do the UVs whenever you want. From using goz to put UVs onto a model and bring it back in to transferring details from the sculpted model to a low poly model with UVs set up or creating UVs in zbrush itself on the sculpted model.
1. When you guys create blockouts do you make it in Maya or Udk?
1.5 Do you just start with bsp and then slowly replace it with models that you create in maya?
2. For non-modular things do you leave them as bsp? or do you still create them in maya?
I'm a little confused because I don't really understand the typical pipeline of creating environments. (I'm still really new to it) Thank you.
I create my block outs in modeling program (Maya in my case). If you setup the camera right you shouldn't need to go into whichever engine your using until you need to "run around and get a feel for how it flows/works whatever y'know"
Not really to sure on what you mean by leave them as bsp (i thought .bsp the map file extension, unsure lol. Haven't worked in UE, thought valve/id use bsp.
Though if your talking about workflow I would just make it in modeling program import into game engine of preference see if it feels right to move about and if it does (as the concept might not always be perfect (depends on how you interpret it) then continue modeling, UV, texture, as you would normally do.
Anyway started my block out, The concept is awfully confusing though I think I sort of worked it out. Perspective is near spot on. Though the concept is not very symmetrical (though it is a concept lol) so my looks a little different from the nearly same angle
Not looking forward to hand painting, though I really need to get better at stylistic art.
GL Everyone
The trick is not to model in circular shapes (except pillars and few small props) . Instead I am rolling it like a red carpet, say you have 64 wide unit walk way and its 512 long you simply just bend it to make circular pattern and its save you ton load of pain later in UDK. Plus you can make modular textures and not circular textures
Hope it helps guys.
I think my normal maps aren't being bakes to well. And I might be having issues with my smoothing groups, maybe I've added to much, I'm not sure. If anyone could understand what's shown bellow, let me know which way to go. Thanks!
Maybe it's because of the fact that I haven't added the 2nd UV set for the udk light maps...
Could be that your uvs are packed to tight, causing bleeds from the normals.
I'm having some trouble with modularity on this piece, how does one go about making circular modular pieces?
I'm making it so that most pieces have the same pivot point and I'm just rotating them around the center.
This normal map looks inverted. Try to flip green channel, change unpack min settings to -1 -1 -1 0 and compression settings to tc_normalmap.
It's not necessary to add second uv channel if your mesh hasn't got overlapped uv's, you can simply tweak mesh settings to use first channel. Just change light map coordinate index from 1 to 0.
If you have diff smoothing groups, or hard edges, your uvs must be detached where the smoothing groups meet or where the hard edge is. Just cut the uv and put a bit of space between the shells of UV
one thing is for sure it happens in all games including BF Bad Company (pc version) the barricades concrete ones have this exact same thing when u just put your player very close to them.
To avoid it you have to chamfer that edge so that normal can read the surface during bake.
I cant find the link it goes something " Normal map creation for nextgen games" . It will explain in more detail your issue.
Thanks! I'm working at a studio that just opened up here which is a branch of FunPlus Games (Facebook games mostly...they did Family Farm). Only worked there one day but so far it's pretty awesome.
Here's a blockout of one of the trim texture sheets I'll use:
I'll start rendering it out on Monday funday.
Its a bit confusing. But once you realise the first two pillars are no in line with the centre of the hole it sort of works out.
Once you start breaking it down, there's sure a whole lot of things that needs to be done.....Won't be easy to finish it...
I understand that its handpainted; but do I sculpt anything or is it merely lowpoly-handpainted textures to emphasise any detail?
Also; is there any tutorials out there for handpainted textures - this is my first attempt!
http://wiki.polycount.com/TexturingTutorials
From a small research I made yesterday I came to the conclusion(maybe a wrong one, point me if Im wrong please : D)
That making a highpoly sculpt will give something like a Darksiders style(obviously, not at the same quality, atleast for me, but I think you know what I mean). Which is based more on the baked AO and normals and less on the painting(You already have most of the shadows and highlights baked)
While I'm going for a WoW / Torchlight style, which clearly use no normal map and uses diffuse + spec only, having to handpaint all the shadows and highlights of the texture, give an even more stylized look.
Note : This is my conclusion on a 45min research over the internets, so please, if I'm wrong and nothing I said makes any sense, tell me! :P
Hello! This will be my first Noob Challenge. I usually go and sculpt most of my assets, but I am not sure if I will be taking that approach this time. I think zbrushing everything has become my crutch, because I use my AO bakes instead of learning how to texture well. I love modeling so I will just go an do that for now.
I colored out alot of the main modular assets in the scene. I will models those first & the ground.
I look forward to having this learning experience with the rest of you guys.
I like this a lot.
no you won't get banned
Can I ask, are people zbrushing/sculpting this stuff or merely low-poly and textures?
Hey, if you haven't already seen it, you should totally read through Jessica Dinh's "Handpainted Wells" thread in the showcase section. I seriously think it's one of the most informative threads on all of Polycount (and the art is stellar). Really helped clear up the mysteries of environment texturing for me.
@Selaznog - Love the start you have on that texture sheet! Congrats on landing a job!
Nothing special, just front projected and traced the gem/rock in the center. Suppose I'd bake the texture to the UVs from here to use as a base which would likely be completely painted over. Don't really know if I'm going to enter the challenge I just felt like screwing around.