There's a lot of really nice progress in this thread. I'll definitely attempt this if I can find the time but I'm an ultra noob lol. MY MODELING PACKAGE OF CHOICE IS MICROSOFT PAINT.
May I ask how you guys attempted this blockout in terms of scale? I'm having issues addressing the scale of the concept in 3D. If you could give us a quick word of advice then that would be greatly appreciated!
@david it depends on the engine you are using. I use udk and the size of the gameplay character in 3dsmax units its around 96 units tall by 32 or more wide. I usually base it off of that but you can scale them up in unreal later. So make a little guy in your scene to what ever looks best to you and make everything in relation to that.
edit: when I started mine I made the outer railing above waist high. on the 96 scale unit.
I havent used UDK in years; I used Unity throughout Uni and at the moment plan on using Maya then importing to UDK to gain enough practice for this sort of thing.
By Units what do you mean? I understand mm, cm and meters but "units" seems to generic.
Yes its just the generic/default units in max or maya. but if you make an object in max units and then turn the units to feet it translates to 6 feet tall.
I havent used UDK in years; I used Unity throughout Uni and at the moment plan on using Maya then importing to UDK to gain enough practice for this sort of thing.
By Units what do you mean? I understand mm, cm and meters but "units" seems to generic.
I think Maya defaults to centimeters, which works perfectly with the 32x96x32 scale reference! I've been using the scale/grid settings outlined in this tutorial for a long time and haven't run into any issues with it:
Loving everyone's stuff so far! It's so damn educational to see the different approaches and all the different ideas on the same concept
AlexCat, I love them textures so far. Kinda makin me want to go back and loosen my strokes up some.
So I don't have a heck of a lot of time with work and all so I put my full weekend into getting as much planning and initial blocking out as possible. I also did a few quick shitty textures using Zbrush, nDo2, and some lazy ass hand painting...
I haven't had the chance to get the whole thing in engine just yet, so I did a little testing with lighting in Max to get an idea of how the textures might show. I did throw the pillars in UDK to get an idea of how I should set up my mats. Hopefully I can get most of the stuff in this Saturday.
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...
@PeteHawk - I came across the same problem a few months ago with a circular asset I was baking and its happened in the past as well, but usually somewhere I could touch out in photoshop and it not affect the aesthetics of my final assets, but then I got the same problem, the curtain effect in a very visible area, I found two solutions!
1. Was baking in Xnormal, I decided it was probably a cage problem and decided to bake my high to low without a cage in Xnormal. This involves using the ray distance calculator. If you check the Eat3D tutorial on Xnormal, I went ahead and found a minute marker 30.00 min, that should help with some of it if you get stuck.
2. This I found on the polycount wiki, it has to do with the difference between a high poly and low poly cylindrical mesh. If you follow the link you are looking for the 'Solving Wavy Lines' section.
So jealous I can't participate this concept looks insanely fun! Looking forward to my first noob-ie month environment! Soon I hope! good luck guys, I am totally watching!!
First time in the noob competitions and one of my first posts on PC.
I've spent a couple of evenings on the basic blocking out and getting scaling right. Still have alot to do but it's coming along. Two working renders below (using Max, Photoshop and Unreal for anyone interested). Have just completed the roof and will upload more soon.
Any and all feedback is appreciated.
Keep up the good work fellow noobs, like what I've seen so far.
@PETEHAWK
You disabled PM's so incase you miss this, hope you find it...
@PeteHawk - I came across the same problem a few months ago with a circular asset I was baking and its happened in the past as well, but usually somewhere I could touch out in photoshop and it not affect the aesthetics of my final assets, but then I got the same problem, the curtain effect in a very visible area, I found two solutions!
1. Was baking in Xnormal, I decided it was probably a cage problem and decided to bake my high to low without a cage in Xnormal. This involves using the ray distance calculator. If you check the Eat3D tutorial on Xnormal, I went ahead and found a minute marker 30.00 min, that should help with some of it if you get stuck.
2. This I found on the polycount wiki, it has to do with the difference between a high poly and low poly cylindrical mesh. If you follow the link you are looking for the 'Solving Wavy Lines' section.
So jealous I can't participate this concept looks insanely fun! Looking forward to my first noob-ie month environment! Soon I hope! good luck guys, I am totally watching!!
You legend! This will be very helpful later on, thanks a lot. I have take a different approach to making normals for the pillars, but I will defiantly need this for other assets. Not sure why my pm is disabled and it sucks that you cannot join.
I'm dropping the challenge guys. A friend just told me they're looking for people in his studio and need to focus in doing portfolio pieces for that job!
Decided to try my hand at it today, the challenge looks great! This will be my first time trying out the monthly contest.
For this process I want to try painting the texture sheets by hand first and then model, rather than the usual saving them for last. Here's a rough blockout of the first sheet so far. Focusing on nailing all that concrete/stone first, and then hash out some more colorful wood/grass textures so its not bland.
This is my first noob challenge, I really liked the art, and I wanted to get better at doing hand drawn textures, so I decided to try it out.
Here is what I have got so far
Im struggling with the UVing on the floor. I get these weird wiggly lines. ive laid out the uvs flat and straight. Im using a tileable texture.
could anyone help me out?
Shoot some edges where the tile edges are,your texture/surface tension is too high causing waviness.This is because your uv's are perfectly straight,but your geometry isnt...shooting some extra edges is the solution here
@redhonour - Solid work! Doesn't look lazy to me! Inspired me to tackle the floor as well Will probably redo the pathway, stones too big.
Screen from Cryengine:
Little update on the textures, did some edge sharpening/refining and further work on it and made it actually tileable. I've been switching between corel painter and photoshop this time around for added fun! There still might be a little clean up need though depending on how it looks in game.
Soon I'll start on the geometry to see how it looks with some more materials.
I'm curious in trying to figure out how the illustration makes sense when it comes to the dome. It looks like a half dome and a full dome at the same time to me, especially with that light hole ellipse at the top and the side balconies. Any thoughts?
I might end up going half dome just because I have a feeling its going to be hard to get a nice view for the supposed player's camera and gives a better "approaching the mysterious crystal" feel.
Did up the floors today, might make some changes still. The larger outer brick is pretty big and a little more rough around the edges than I intended so I might make it cleaner tomorrow.
I've been pretty slow on this project but I am hoping to improve myself nonetheless. I am a lot better at modeling than I am at texturing so I am really trying to nail the textures this time. I looked at some of the tutorials around the internet and the Jessica Dinh thread and this is the result so far. I will most definitely tweak it but I need a fresh outlook.
Its my brick texture tile-able for the sections with big square blocks.
...and here it is tiled
Tell me what you think guys. I personally don't like the placement of my cracks since it gives away my pattern.
I dont have much spare time, but when I work on it I just keep adjusting the scale to fit a standard human size. I've adjusted my scale to UDK dimensions (thanks for the youtube link) but I cant quite sort out the scale of the island in contrast to the outer island?
May I ask what people have used for their sizes? I.e. is their middle island 10ft? whilst the outside island 30ft? is their bridge 6ft? I've even searched for stride lengths which is approx 2.2ft per stride, I am really lost!!!!
Did up the floors today, might make some changes still. The larger outer brick is pretty big and a little more rough around the edges than I intended so I might make it cleaner tomorrow.
The inside tiles are looking good, but there is a lot of negative space in your exterior and bridge tiling texture, which is showing the repetition in your texture. I feel its letting the other great work in you scene done as it is drawing the eye towards these, if it was sculpts I would try using the tile sculpts and using ZB and its MRGBZ Grabber to get the tiling texture for this one.
@David Wakelin: Just try to eyeball it, the concept image itself has wrong perspective so try not to get too wound up on the sizes etc. Currently my outer ring is 840 units wide, which I may end up changing the area around the back to match the concept more and fake some of the perspective.
I'm a bit late to the party and it's my first Noob Challenge! :baby: So here goes my progress so far, after struggling with the scale/perspective block out issue I have just gone for it adjusting as I go. I am still experimenting with the texture approach. Loving everyone's work so far, especially all the painterly texture work :poly124:
HELP! When I opened cryengine today I get a: "Files could be corrupted" message that prevents me from opening the map. Tried to open an earlier project but same there, "Files could be corrupted" then nothing. Worked fine yesterday. I can open the Forest example map but none of my own.. Anybody know what might have happened?
Starting cryengine today I get a Licence agreement checkbox-thing that wasn't there earlier, makes me believe there might have been a patch that somehow screwed with my files? crydev.net is still down so no help there
I tried creating a new map, it saves and opens, no problems, even using the same assets and materials.
Replies
new2lw: Lovin the look of the crystal. I like the way you got the geo to look like the crystal in the pic!
edit: when I started mine I made the outer railing above waist high. on the 96 scale unit.
Hope that helps!
By Units what do you mean? I understand mm, cm and meters but "units" seems to generic.
I think Maya defaults to centimeters, which works perfectly with the 32x96x32 scale reference! I've been using the scale/grid settings outlined in this tutorial for a long time and haven't run into any issues with it:
[ame="
So I noticed you guys saw the weird optical illusion of a roof too. lol. Here's my progress.
Loving everyone's stuff so far! It's so damn educational to see the different approaches and all the different ideas on the same concept
AlexCat, I love them textures so far. Kinda makin me want to go back and loosen my strokes up some.
So I don't have a heck of a lot of time with work and all so I put my full weekend into getting as much planning and initial blocking out as possible. I also did a few quick shitty textures using Zbrush, nDo2, and some lazy ass hand painting...
I haven't had the chance to get the whole thing in engine just yet, so I did a little testing with lighting in Max to get an idea of how the textures might show. I did throw the pillars in UDK to get an idea of how I should set up my mats. Hopefully I can get most of the stuff in this Saturday.
THAT DAMN DOME :]
Love the pillars!
I haven't even started with mine so fa, been busy with some other stuff. Oh boy, I am late, I am late, I am late. xD
You disabled PM's so incase you miss this, hope you find it...
@PeteHawk - I came across the same problem a few months ago with a circular asset I was baking and its happened in the past as well, but usually somewhere I could touch out in photoshop and it not affect the aesthetics of my final assets, but then I got the same problem, the curtain effect in a very visible area, I found two solutions!
1. Was baking in Xnormal, I decided it was probably a cage problem and decided to bake my high to low without a cage in Xnormal. This involves using the ray distance calculator. If you check the Eat3D tutorial on Xnormal, I went ahead and found a minute marker 30.00 min, that should help with some of it if you get stuck.
http://eat3d.com/free/xnormal_overview
2. This I found on the polycount wiki, it has to do with the difference between a high poly and low poly cylindrical mesh. If you follow the link you are looking for the 'Solving Wavy Lines' section.
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap/#Baking
Hope this helps!!
So jealous I can't participate this concept looks insanely fun! Looking forward to my first noob-ie month environment! Soon I hope!
First time in the noob competitions and one of my first posts on PC.
I've spent a couple of evenings on the basic blocking out and getting scaling right. Still have alot to do but it's coming along. Two working renders below (using Max, Photoshop and Unreal for anyone interested). Have just completed the roof and will upload more soon.
Any and all feedback is appreciated.
Keep up the good work fellow noobs, like what I've seen so far.
You legend! This will be very helpful later on, thanks a lot. I have take a different approach to making normals for the pillars, but I will defiantly need this for other assets. Not sure why my pm is disabled
For this process I want to try painting the texture sheets by hand first and then model, rather than the usual saving them for last. Here's a rough blockout of the first sheet so far. Focusing on nailing all that concrete/stone first, and then hash out some more colorful wood/grass textures so its not bland.
Here is what I have got so far
Im struggling with the UVing on the floor. I get these weird wiggly lines. ive laid out the uvs flat and straight. Im using a tileable texture.
could anyone help me out?
I started the centrepiece a couple weeks back as a quick portfolio piece. Here's what I ended up with...
View more, including sculpts on my portfolio: http://andrewpottage.com/work/crystal/
Shoot some edges where the tile edges are,your texture/surface tension is too high causing waviness.This is because your uv's are perfectly straight,but your geometry isnt...shooting some extra edges is the solution here
This will same me so much time I never knew about this.
http://youtu.be/yU8hy17vxuw - If anyone is interested
Screen from Cryengine:
Little update on the textures, did some edge sharpening/refining and further work on it and made it actually tileable. I've been switching between corel painter and photoshop this time around for added fun! There still might be a little clean up need though depending on how it looks in game.
Soon I'll start on the geometry to see how it looks with some more materials.
Very new to this whole MNC thing, could anyone perhaps just give some tips on how to go about doing this?
Many internet points to those who can help =]
I might end up going half dome just because I have a feeling its going to be hard to get a nice view for the supposed player's camera and gives a better "approaching the mysterious crystal" feel.
Its my brick texture tile-able for the sections with big square blocks.
...and here it is tiled
Tell me what you think guys. I personally don't like the placement of my cracks since it gives away my pattern.
Vase on a stand.
Or fancy lamp.
You know what I think I am going to start working on this. I gotta take break from whatever I have been doing. =\
It's in fact a lamp, and I guess with some kind of flowerornament on top of it. Here's what I've done:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Don't know if this will help anyone else; but it helped me
Thanks goes to kritskiy for the photoshop perspective plugin!
@davidosterlind: Thanks! Your cobbles look a loooooot nicer than what I did... I guess I better give mine another pass!
Hopefully I can get my stuff into UDK today
i found some time today to quickly create the pillar with the ring around it, not super close to the concept though:
@☺;davidosterlind: i really like your floor!
I dont have much spare time, but when I work on it I just keep adjusting the scale to fit a standard human size. I've adjusted my scale to UDK dimensions (thanks for the youtube link) but I cant quite sort out the scale of the island in contrast to the outer island?
May I ask what people have used for their sizes? I.e. is their middle island 10ft? whilst the outside island 30ft? is their bridge 6ft? I've even searched for stride lengths which is approx 2.2ft per stride, I am really lost!!!!
if anyone can advise me then that would be great!
The inside tiles are looking good, but there is a lot of negative space in your exterior and bridge tiling texture, which is showing the repetition in your texture. I feel its letting the other great work in you scene done as it is drawing the eye towards these, if it was sculpts I would try using the tile sculpts and using ZB and its MRGBZ Grabber to get the tiling texture for this one.
Here is a handy link to Andy Davies on the subject in an Eat3D video:
http://eat3d.com/free/zbrush_tile
@David Wakelin: Just try to eyeball it, the concept image itself has wrong perspective so try not to get too wound up on the sizes etc. Currently my outer ring is 840 units wide, which I may end up changing the area around the back to match the concept more and fake some of the perspective.
Overall good work!
Here is my progress on the pillars. I have other assets going but the textures are still in progress. Mostly trim sheets.
Keep it up everyone!
Half and half. I painted it pretty simply but also had to add fake SSS/reflections to make it stand out a little more.
Starting cryengine today I get a Licence agreement checkbox-thing that wasn't there earlier, makes me believe there might have been a patch that somehow screwed with my files? crydev.net is still down so no help there
I tried creating a new map, it saves and opens, no problems, even using the same assets and materials.
I was watching Disting's stream and he also had that problem.
And just logged in, and checked my own env/map and also getting that error.
So it seems like it's not only you, I really hope it's a temporary thing