[UDK]-20th Century Kansas

AtomicArmy

Hi all! I've recently been playing around with UDK for the first time and all I can say is, UDK is the best thing that's ever happened. Anyways, I'm starting a rather simple environment that's based during the 20th century Kansas. I've gathered reference images for inspiration to help get me started.




So far, I have begun working on some basic assets and I plan to create additional props and buildings. However, I do not have Zbrush so I'm still limited on the normal maps, by just using height maps.

My goals of this project:
-Learn to create better quality game models and textures
-Zbrush (plan on getting the free trial soon)
-Creating assets more efficiently
-Learn more UDK
-Presenting game assets better
-Learning different types of maps, when to use them, how to use them, and where to use them.

I plan on using this scene for my first portfolio piece, please give as much feedback as possible to help me improve!

Telegraph/phone Poles:


Railroad:


Small Gas Station:
(still need to add props)


Small Gas Station Texture:

Paradan

can't wait to see how you go about dealing with the complexities of the terrain height map.

BARDLER

You have a lot of wasted geo in the telephone pole. It looks like you have edge loops that are doing nothing to hold the overall silhouette. Also you shouldn't be generating all your normals from photos, and should be doing high res models and sculpts instead. Hope that helps.

Thaurdol

The metal in the modular rail piece does not look like metal to me. It falls between wood and stone but in my opinion definately not metal. Also like the person above me said, some of the pieces use too many tris than they should, I would look into optimization more.

AtomicArmy

Okay, I'll go ahead and get a free trial of Zbrush and start learning it, and I'll go back to each model and try to optimize them. Thank you for the feedback.

Edit: Nevermind, they no longer have a Zbrush trial, do you guys know how I might be able to create a high poly telephone pole model in 3ds max?

Vailias

LOL @ Paradan.



As for sculpting: Have you looked into Scultpris? http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

I've found it rather handy. Its not as uberpowerful as zbrush, but it certainly gets the job done.

That said: aside from woodgrain, you can do plenty of the higher poly stuff you want in your regular DCC app.