Some new updates, I've done some more to the lighting, increasing the contrast of the shadows mainly by dropping the bounce to 1. I also turned them into cooler blue hues instead of mauve/purple. Also played with the sky box gradient to add in some more cooler hues. Thanks again Endfinity Jon for the great crits . I started adding in some of the props too.
@aajohnny, taipoh, Ichban, ivanzu, and _Kratos_ thanks for the kind words! Ill be working on getting into the next round of props now.
The harsh lighting is starting to make the foliage planes look very flat, and it's sort of ruining the effect for me. I'm sure you want to keep the lighting, but you may need to adjust the normals on your foliage planes to make them appear softer.
For my tast you overdid the lightning, I seems like some of your texturework is getting lost due to the strong light. Some parts really feel a little blown out right now.
Hey guys, thanks for the crits, its nice to get fresh eyes on this stuff, I'll have a tweak as I add in the new assets, maybe a happy medium between this result and the previous maybe a bit nicer.
A midway might be great, since the lightning is really nice, but I'd love to see more of your texture through... because they are awesome =D
The bark for example is loosing some details due to the light.
And yet that Wonkey mentioned it, yeah, your textures are having lightsources from diffrent angles... on the mill it's from the upper left and on the ground right before the mill it seems to be from the right.
Toned down the contrast values, and fixed up the texture light direction issue on the stones, thanks Wonkey good spotting Working on adding a well and some of the other prop suggestions for now.
Thanks for the compliment Chris! I think if you had anymore epic art skills you'd just com-bust!
Another update, I finished up the well and I see a few people requesting flats and breakdowns so I thought I'd do one for this with wire, silhouette and map for anyone who may find it helpful.
I have a few more props to knock out and then I'll do some more updated scene shots, thanks for looking!
Amazing job you are doing there! I really dig the overall feeling and the well is awesome! The only thing I really don't like is the white tree, it looks too flat imo.
I though the point of handpainted textures is that they already contain light information.. That's why I think your earlier screenshots were better when it comes to lighting.. just my humble opinion.
@HapZungLam2 - Although it seems fairly obvious, making sure your grass planes and ground texture use the same color palette and value range is a good step towards getting them to blend nicely. I find that larger shapes for the ground texture grass blades as opposed to that more realistic noisy grass helps a lot too for painterly style.
The other thing that may help is distributing your poly planes with interesting size variation and "clumping" them around areas of terrain or props similar to how real life grass grows. I hope that helps
May I ask you how you did your terrain?
Did you model it? Or is it a heightmape generated through a sculpt or something like that?
Or is it just a build in landscape-thingi from the game engine?
I'm asking since I dunno what's the best way to archive a terrain if you're wanting a certain look (like when you know that you'll need a cliff with a bridge and a mountain all around, and a big forest space and so on)...
I wonder if they used models to do the landscapes in games like WOW?
More update shots I've put in the well, made a wheelbarrow and some grain sacks. I'm pretty happy with the mill area for now, I'm going to make a cart and sign for the entrance area of the path down the bottom next.
@Fenyce - Thanks for the kind words! This terrain I made with the terrain sculpting tool in UDK (which is essentially painting a height map in 3D). Last I saw WOW uses a similar setup in their engine for creating terrain, but they also have really nice things now like being able to paint alpha'd terrain textures on top of other terrain and paint-able terrain vert lighting etc. But the terrain itself is made very similar to UDK's terrain sculpting tool.
And WOW! This latest renders look amazing! But I'd recommend to revisit that mills textures, the upper floors wall (that white one) looks really flat and missing detail compared to everything else.
Those new probs are great, I'm loving those flour sacks! And the barrow looks sweet, too!
Awesome job so far. I agree the upper part of the mill texture needs a little more work, like making the stone that is peeking out from under the plaster more prominent. Also it needs more dripping grunge as water would seek a path down from the roof and onto the plaster areas, especially around the stones. All in all though, the textures and scene look amazing.
Another update, I've made a small cart prop, this is going to be a focal point for the road entrance area, I'm making some more smaller props to go on/around this at the momoent and will have up some new scene shots soon. Thanks for looking
Another update, put in the cart and made some terrain changes around it, I'm thinking zone-wise it could be an opportunity for a mini quest-hub where an npc would interact with players maybe giving them a reason to explore a bit and take the path less traveled Next up I'm going to do another pass on the mill textures. Thanks for looking!
I love the work you've done on this, but the lighting is a disaster. You need to start from square one. There are areas that are just so flat and full bright, not sure what is going on with them. Your previous env shot. That tree in the middle....the leaves are full bright and there is no definition or shading. It's full bright and the lighting is killing this scene.
Here is a good trick. Make all your textures a flat color. kinda a creamy neutral color, then tackle your lighting, make sure there is depth and you can make out your forms and things are not blown out. Then bring back your textures and tweak from there.
Just make copies of all your textures and save em to your desktop, update everything to the flat color and light your scene, then when you want to bring everything back....just replace with your backups.
So how'd I get here....overall a slight de-saturation, Your fog color should have more blue, you need to lower your global ambient light to match the foreground grass opacity/value. Then you can adjust your main directional. As far as getting the dark shadows in the trees you may need adjust your texture if you can't get there with the lighting, but you can see that there is a light and dark side to the middle canopy. (I've done this with vertex painting on similar models in the past in order to get those shadows.)
Hey pixelpatron thanks for the feedback, the lighting has arrived to where it has from lots of tweaking and great community input, I see what you've done in your example would be nice if I was going for a more realistic (witcher style?) type lighting, if that were the look I was after, you're right I'd need to start again from scratch. I'm trying to hit a more painterly/whimsical fantasy with more saturation brighter lights and not so darker shadows.
This just gets better and better! You're obviously very comfortable painting wood and planks. I for one would love to see if you've developed some technique or if you have some tips!
That terrain rock texture just gets be every time! Can't stop staring at it! xD
yea would love to hear about your workflow when doing haintpainted textures. Do you have seperate layers for highlights and shadow or is it all in one layer
Hey guys, thanks for your compliments I'll be glad to put up some breakdowns on my hand painting workflow, I'm having a break for a couple of weeks from this project but when I start it up again I'll put up some stuff for you.
To answer your question though Iciban, I paint the textures with a light direction in mind right from the start, almost always neutral top down (sometimes there are exceptions) so light and shadow are a part of the texture from the initial rough block-out and I develop it more as I go though to refining, hope that helps!
Thanks, I hope you can record one of your handpainted props. Would love to see how you approach your painting. I know what you mean by the light direction. Just wondering when you paint. Do you try to have everyting in one layer. All the highlights, shadows, stuff like that.
Hey thanks for the kind words guys Sorry for the delay on updates, I'm back on to this project to get it finished up and post up some breakdowns from next week so stay tuned!
@Iciban - Yeah I often end up with it all in one or at least a few layers, I try to keep the layers merged down where possible after I'm happy with adjustments and changes so it doesn't get too out of hand. In staying that sometimes it is nice to keep any painted AO or lightening type adjustments at the end separate for tweaking, but it really comes down to what suits your workflow, I don't think there's really a right or wrong with that stuff if the end result is awesome .
but the light is really not interesting ... the lamps for example are at spots where the sun is still falling down which kills them .. they could give some nice mood to the scene ( some orange glow with a nice drop shadow on the floor )
but anyway add some birds/animals or so and its awesome;>
Hey guys thanks heaps for the input! I'll be starting off back into it with a polish pass on the mill textures addressing the plaster and such and finally to finish off with some modular rock formations to add around the cliff areas.
@Gannon - Thanks for the kinds words, really glad you like it!
@fx01 - Thanks for the crits I'll definitely take it on board, I was thinking the other day a nice night lighting setup would look cool actually, maybe some stage I'll give it a whirl! As for the birds and animals totally agree a nice painterly horse tied to the tree next to the cart and a merchant leaning on the cart would be pretty sweet too... now if only I were a character artist >.<
I was wondering. Since your going for handpainted style and you paint the highlights in. So are you only relying purely by diffuse? No spec or normals?
Do you find trouble when it comes to lighting ur environment?
Replies
Did anyone notice that trees in the background look kinda flat?
@aajohnny, taipoh, Ichban, ivanzu, and _Kratos_ thanks for the kind words! Ill be working on getting into the next round of props now.
Sweet little red flowers btw.
The bark for example is loosing some details due to the light.
And yet that Wonkey mentioned it, yeah, your textures are having lightsources from diffrent angles... on the mill it's from the upper left and on the ground right before the mill it seems to be from the right.
Another update, I finished up the well and I see a few people requesting flats and breakdowns so I thought I'd do one for this with wire, silhouette and map for anyone who may find it helpful.
I have a few more props to knock out and then I'll do some more updated scene shots, thanks for looking!
great work nonetheless! :thumbup:
@Tomm - Yeah there is definitely more than one way to approach lighting hand painteds, thanks for your input
@mbischof - Cheers for the compliment!
@HapZungLam2 - Although it seems fairly obvious, making sure your grass planes and ground texture use the same color palette and value range is a good step towards getting them to blend nicely. I find that larger shapes for the ground texture grass blades as opposed to that more realistic noisy grass helps a lot too for painterly style.
The other thing that may help is distributing your poly planes with interesting size variation and "clumping" them around areas of terrain or props similar to how real life grass grows. I hope that helps
May I ask you how you did your terrain?
Did you model it? Or is it a heightmape generated through a sculpt or something like that?
Or is it just a build in landscape-thingi from the game engine?
I'm asking since I dunno what's the best way to archive a terrain if you're wanting a certain look (like when you know that you'll need a cliff with a bridge and a mountain all around, and a big forest space and so on)...
I wonder if they used models to do the landscapes in games like WOW?
@Fenyce - Thanks for the kind words! This terrain I made with the terrain sculpting tool in UDK (which is essentially painting a height map in 3D). Last I saw WOW uses a similar setup in their engine for creating terrain, but they also have really nice things now like being able to paint alpha'd terrain textures on top of other terrain and paint-able terrain vert lighting etc. But the terrain itself is made very similar to UDK's terrain sculpting tool.
And WOW! This latest renders look amazing! But I'd recommend to revisit that mills textures, the upper floors wall (that white one) looks really flat and missing detail compared to everything else.
Those new probs are great, I'm loving those flour sacks! And the barrow looks sweet, too!
Very, very inspiring project!
Agree on the top of the mill, not reading perfectly yet.. but all in all love this, will be going straight in the inspiration folder!
@Fenyce - Thanks! Yeah totally agree about the plaster texture I'll do another pass on it and give it some lovin.
@spectre1130 - Cheers for the crit and compliments!
@Yuke - Thanks for the kind words, all the great input from the community has definitely helped push it so I certainly can't take all the credit.
@YBourykina - Thanks heaps! Glad you're liking it, I should be able to get a lot of it done this week so hopefully you don't have to wait too long!
[SKETCHFAB]a853bfeeaf9f4a01b41d087953ca5772[/SKETCHFAB]
Here is a good trick. Make all your textures a flat color. kinda a creamy neutral color, then tackle your lighting, make sure there is depth and you can make out your forms and things are not blown out. Then bring back your textures and tweak from there.
Just make copies of all your textures and save em to your desktop, update everything to the flat color and light your scene, then when you want to bring everything back....just replace with your backups.
So how'd I get here....overall a slight de-saturation, Your fog color should have more blue, you need to lower your global ambient light to match the foreground grass opacity/value. Then you can adjust your main directional. As far as getting the dark shadows in the trees you may need adjust your texture if you can't get there with the lighting, but you can see that there is a light and dark side to the middle canopy. (I've done this with vertex painting on similar models in the past in order to get those shadows.)
Good luck, lighting will make this scene sing!
That terrain rock texture just gets be every time! Can't stop staring at it! xD
To answer your question though Iciban, I paint the textures with a light direction in mind right from the start, almost always neutral top down (sometimes there are exceptions) so light and shadow are a part of the texture from the initial rough block-out and I develop it more as I go though to refining, hope that helps!
@Iciban - Yeah I often end up with it all in one or at least a few layers, I try to keep the layers merged down where possible after I'm happy with adjustments and changes so it doesn't get too out of hand. In staying that sometimes it is nice to keep any painted AO or lightening type adjustments at the end separate for tweaking, but it really comes down to what suits your workflow, I don't think there's really a right or wrong with that stuff if the end result is awesome
but the light is really not interesting ... the lamps for example are at spots where the sun is still falling down which kills them .. they could give some nice mood to the scene ( some orange glow with a nice drop shadow on the floor )
but anyway add some birds/animals or so and its awesome;>
i would love to see that scene at night :P
@Gannon - Thanks for the kinds words, really glad you like it!
@netghost03 - haha
@Torch - Cheers for the feedback and compliment!
@fx01 - Thanks for the crits I'll definitely take it on board, I was thinking the other day a nice night lighting setup would look cool actually, maybe some stage I'll give it a whirl! As for the birds and animals totally agree
Do you find trouble when it comes to lighting ur environment?