Gears of War Judgment Art
polycounter lvl 9
Hey guys, my name is Josh Marlow and Im an Associate Artist at Epic Games. Ive been a long time lurker and finally getting the nerve to post some work I did for Gears of War Judgment. 
Most of the stuff is from the Gondola MP map. The rubble is from the Epilogue campaign,the drill is from the Rig MP map, and the signs are from the Streets MP map. Thanks for looking!
Ill post some in game shots later on as well!
Most of the stuff is from the Gondola MP map. The rubble is from the Epilogue campaign,the drill is from the Rig MP map, and the signs are from the Streets MP map. Thanks for looking!Ill post some in game shots later on as well!
Replies
Sigh, straight into the inspiration folder.
As Scott said, straight to the inspiration folder!
And the key to everyone success is all the micro brews in Raleigh! lol
PixelSuit: Thanks a lot! Eh I havent really shown anything outside of the company before so its kind of nerve racking, hehe. Im glad you like them
Jet_Pilot: Damn right! Big Boss is still my fav, hehe. They are actually Zbrush renders. I used a matcap called fg_grey_Metal. Here's the link: http://fanny.vergne.free.fr/Tools/fg_grey_metal.ZMT
WarrenM: Haha, thanks dude. I'm really fortunate to be working along side you guys!!
I hunted down your portfolio, and I only saw Gears stuff and your Epic Games Art Test. Wish I could see more of your work, surely it must be good if you were able to get a job at Epic!
You went from QA to making badass art like this! truly inspirational!
Awesome work!
You have really nailed these assets and I am loving the details, especially the 3rd image down.
Post more please!
gutty333: Thanks!
Auldbenkenobi: Thank you. I went through a couple of iterations on it. It was a running joke in our room for awhile
rv_el: Thanks dude
MeshModeler: Thanks man! It really shows that hard work does pay off. Im so fortunate to have gotten my chance
metalliandy: Thanks a lot bud! That trim piece was a lot of fun! I should be posting some shots of the level soon.
RILKE: Thanks!
Really great stuff, mind sharing your process for making that HP rock ground tile like that?
Ok so as I promised, here are some in game screens. This will be showing off some stuff from our Gondola multiplayer map. This map was done by Nick Donaldson and myself. I did the modeling (Not all models are mine, just what Im showing) and Nick did the meshing/lighting/ect. Paul Svoboda did some meshing as well. Most texturing was done by Eric Terry and the FX were done by Tim Elek. The layout was a collaborative effort. When we were given the basic shell by one of our level designers, all we knew was that there was going to be Gondolas going up and down the middle of the map. The rest was up to us.
So, we wanted to go with a Mediterranean coastal village vibe to it. Being a multiplayer map, and limited memory, we wanted to get the biggest bang for our buck, so we created one master stucco shader that we could use for all the buildings. Here is an example of the shader we used.
As you can see, the R channel we used for the destroyed parts, showing the stones coming through underneath. We were able to use a height map to really sell the depth. The G channel is simple overall grunge channel. The B channel we used for more grunge streaks. The blue channel, we used the normal map from the stones just to give more surface variation. Using that in conjunction with the R channel really gave a cool result.
Here are the modular meshes I made for the map. Holy crap thats a lot of meshes! I made even more that we didnt use as well. Since we wanted a unique feel, we tried to come up with as many random shapes for small buildings as possible. Keeping everything on grid and the textures lined up was a great learning experience. I also tried to keep the meshes evenly quad so that we could get uniform painting to hide seams and repetition. I ended up going back at the end and stitching some of the complete buildings together for lightmap purposes.
Here are some screens of the models that I posted at the start of this thread. All the textures were done by Eric Terry.
And here are some shots of the map.
I don't suppose you fancy posting some wires, eh?
and thanks for the small writeup/breakdown of the process of the map.
also, page 3? fuck dat noise, buuuump
Ditto on the shader nodes would love to see more texturing breakdowns, this stuff is unreal
I assume there is some blending between them with something like mesh paint, and maybe some way to swap the textures in and out of their respective channels, if it is all in one master shader. Don't mean to jack your thread with techy questions, but I second the interest in a shader breakdown:)
Again, great stuff and inspiring. Thanks for sharing
The highpolys are great but I also love to see these breakdowns, thanks!
I would love to see some shader tisp/hints/snippets as well
Awesome awesome awesome
Specially how those modular piece are placed together to make the entire City. Woohoo.
Can we have more breakdowns and gameshot Plzzzzzz
joeriv,Gannon,leleuxart: Thanks guys, Im glad you like them!
MeshModeler: hehe, sorry dude I cant post the actual shader
Khangaroo,carlobarley,Stromberg90,polycrunch,maximumproductions: thanks a lot guys, that means a lot!
moose: thanks for the bump dude
Ootrick,Ignacio: Sorry dudes, I dont think I can post the actual shader. Check out 3dmotive.com mesh painting tutorial though. There is some great stuff in there, that you could translate into any type of cool shader
cmtanko: thanks man! Ill post a few more in game shots soon
Subtle 1rony: Right. there is only 1 per channel, I was just showing progressive painting. Yep there is some tinting being used for the grime as well.
I was wondering how you have those mapped out. Like is the main roof part on it's own tiling texture, and the ends on a larger trim sheet, or do you have a section of the roof tiles that tile horizontally and the ends below... or some other way?
I'm planning out a pagoda type scene, and trying to figure out how to do the roof tiles which are a similar setup to yours.
Is the base done in Max and then an added "detail pass" in Zbrush? Or full on Zbrush?
Oh and superb work btw
m4dcow - thanks! here is how I layed them out. I tried to do just as flat as possible, so we could get easy reuse out of it if needed. The lower section in the unwrap is the small gutter piece. In hindsight, I could have done a lot more with them, but production is what it is
dtscultz - thanks man. Im glad you found it useful!
Jeff Parrott - Thanks a lot man
AbKl - thank you, my pleasure!
reiro and Jet Pilot - Sure thing. Yeah I do all my bases in Max beforehand. Its a better workflow for me personally. As for the specific trim piece, yeah I made it in max. Here is the base mesh as well as the low poly. The low poly strait piece came out to 36 tris
Thanks again !!
Ged Alphavader - Thanks! Im glad you guys liked it
dudealan2001 - Your friend is correct. We use bump offset on the underneath stones with the help of a height map to create the parallaxing effect
peanut - Thanks! Credit goes to Nick Donaldson who did the composing/lighting/post.