The Hero's Lodge: A hand-painted bananza

anglorum

-Latest Progress-

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKLvvIMPO6A"]The Champion's Lodge - YouTube[/ame]











-Original Post-

Hey there guys! My latest project on my long arduous campaign towards Blizzard's doorstep has been a fun one, and something which I'm taking as a major learning experience, every step of the way. I wasn't originally going to share stuff in the beginning because I just didn't really know if anyone would find it all THAT interesting, BUT, in the end, I just figured what the heck.

So here I'll show WIP shots of the model as I go through it, but first I guess I should give you a bit of a synopsis of my objective.

Basically what I'm putting down is a 3D diorama of a lodge owned by who you could assume is a great an mighty champion who's probably got a bit of an inflated ego (Think Gaston from Beauty and the Beast). Anyways, the top half of the diorama will be his lodge deep in some piney-wood forests. His walls will be filled with row upon row of trophies, monsters, furs, literal trophies... ya know. BUT, there will be ONE trophy that stands out over them all, and that will be the goblin KING'S HEAD! Mounted right on the wall.

So seeing this well lit, centerpiece goblin king head, we will then see that the base of the diorama, which is hollow, and also a cave, is filled with boxes. WHAT DO THE BOXES SAY!? "Goblin Corp." WHAT DO THE BOXES HAVE IN THEM!? Goblin explosives. So I intend to tell a bit of a story with this piece in that the lil green buggers are going to get revenge on the cocky champion with classic fire power.

ANYWAYS. There will be other little character-ful pieces scattered throughout this project. I want it to really ooze with story from every crevice, but for now I'm just putting down the base.

Rokugan

Great stuff I'm curious to see where this will go ^^. I will just work a bit more the grass, doesn't look quite right imo.

anglorum

SO. DOORS. LIGHTING MESSING AROUNDING. I DUNNO. PROGRESS?



And I've incorporated an old piece into this one. (It was actually the prop that inspired this whole diorama)

DougClayton4231

Dat roof texture :P Great WIP

Aerial_Knight

The roof is really well done!

Evil raz

nice

Aerial_Knight

how did you paint the texture. Did you do it in zbrush or all in photoshop?

jmiles

looking hot! great exaggerated shapes. looking forward to more of this

Snafubar7

Did you use zbrush for the plaster wall texture? I can see brush strokes in them. I'll copy paste something I posted in someone else's thread:

"From a Warcraft standpoint, bulk everything up. Making everything thick and chunky comes partly from the RTS background of the game and partly because it reads better when you consider the field of view. You’ll notice in most games objects tend to recede quickly, so to compensate for that we exaggerate everything. Of course that means things often get too big when you get close to them, oh well.

Your textures show promise- the same rules apply. Bulky shapes, clearly defined, and dimensional. Generally you make about 25% of the detail that you want and make it big. So instead of 20 planks for a floor texture, you might only make three, and take up the whole texture with them.

Keep it up and make time to build stuff you think is awesome, the stuff that makes you glad you’re an artist.

Good luck!"

-Eric Browning (Lead Prop Artist, World of Warcraft)

I received that in an email after the blizzard student contest last year, along with a paintover that I posted in a previous thread I made a while ago. The rest of his email was specific to my environment :P

anglorum

Snafubar: Thanks man! Those are some great tips to share. I always knew WoW used those exaggerated shapes, but I wasn't exactly sure why. And yeah, I used zbrush for that texture, I've yet to go back and touch up all the strokes that were left behind.


Thanks otherwise guys. Just going to keep plugging away at this.

anglorum

Aerial_Knight wrote: »

how did you paint the texture. Did you do it in zbrush or all in photoshop?

Oh hey, I didn't see your question, sorry. So the roof texture was painted from scratch in photoshop, but the plaster, and the wooden beams were done in zbrush.

anglorum

Further inundation of the PnP thread continues with skyboxes

anglorum

Just a couple concepts I drew up tonight to lead the way for my modeling process. These will serve as a couple of the trophies hanging around the champion's lodge.

anglorum

Couple hours of solid painting later! Mounted fairies. This guy's a JERK!

Pixelatedkiwi

I like what you have going here so far!

One thing that stood out to me was that some of the textures feel a bit inconsistent. The first few (wood, roof tiles and grass) have a really nice painterly feel and look great but the plaster and last wood texture feels like it has a lot more sharp visual noise and details that for me, make them feel different to the others, almost like you've rendered them up using a different technique.

Anyways I know its early days still and I'm looking forward to seeing more progress

Jakob Gavelli

I agree with Pixelatedkiwi, I'm assuming the plaster and last wood was made using Zbrush as a base. I understand that testing out new techniques is important and a great way to learn, but I suggest you keep it uniform on this project and make some heavy modification to those textures or rework them altogether.

Other than that it looks awesome! I love the concept and the concepts. I also wonder about the floor, looks a bit high poly and I can't find the texture sheet, I guess it's WIP ^^

Best of luck! Super Excited!

anglorum

Hah, you guys zeroed in directly on what I'd done. The plaster and wooden beams were made in zbrush, while everything else has been developed strictly in photoshop. I think I'm going to stick to photoshop for now, and rework those textures later.

Thanks so much for the crits, guys! Hope to have an update up really soon.

Jeff Parrott

Everything right now feels designed independently but put together as part of a whole scene. It makes everything less complete feeling and more like a random set of props and pieces. I would paint over and sketch out your whole scene. Not just prop after prop. Focus on the storytelling then the texture rendering.

anglorum

Went back and reworked my wood texture for the beams. It's part one of my two step process to rework those two textures I made in zbrush I think this will pull the coherency of the piece together infinitely.

This is a lil test box.



ALSO. Directional lighting My new best friend.

Torch

Is it me or is the scale off on the goblin head? In one shot it almost looks the same size as the chair. The textures look great though, nice one! When you mentioned directional lighting, you mean baking the light into the texture right?

anglorum

Ah, the scale's pretty big on the head, but I'd kind of wanted to go under the theory that he's going to be the KING goblin, so he may have magically... or by pseudo scientific means made himself larger than other goblins to impose his kinglyness. If there's enough of an outcry for it to change, It's as easy as scaling it down in unity, so I don't mind much.

But thanks I appreciate the compliment! I've been a longtime admirer of your work, so that means a lot! And I more just meant picking a strong directional light in even tilable textures and basing the lighting in the texture off of that light (usually one projected from the top of the texture) to create a more dramatic source, and some more intense lights and shadows. I've been meticulously picking apart fanny vergne's stuff and her zbrush renders all have it, so I figured, Eh, why not?

anglorum

Yo guys! I know it's been a while since I've put up any recent update, but this VVVV has more or less been me for the past couple weeks. ;D



Retooled all of the textures I'd done in zbrush. And I've created the BED! It's been quite a bit of sweat and tears but I'm really happy with the final result.

Feel free to C and C. Also, sorry about the cruddy gif quality, uploading gifs with a reasonable quality and size is UNPOSSIBLE.

WadeWT

Came here expecting a hand painted BANANA - was pleasantly surprised (and a little )

Really nice progress, can't wait to see it finished. sub'd

lotet

dude, those last 2 post are tons better, and that gif is freaking sweet! I love the direction this is going.

87roach

Love the latest gif man! Great simple idea that I think I might have to take inspiration from some time

anglorum

A new day dawns on the Maricopa Valley, and here I am... painting bricks.

Here's the latest progress! A nice n' cozy fireplace, built to last through the long winters.

87roach

Looks great, but a little hard to get wood in there don't you think?

Torch

Hey dude this is turning out great, lots of life to it Did you say you were baking from a high poly to low similar to Fanny's method on the recent Orgrimmar art dump?

anglorum

87roach: Haha Thanks! You're right about the wood though. I figured I'd justify it by saying that the bars could be removed or something like that. It totally didn't occur to me until after i'd finished the design, but I figure I can ad a little hinge thing at the bottom there soon enough.

Torch: Thanks yo! I really want to tell a story with this whole thing, so having it brim with character is like my number two priority. Number one being quality of textures, which at this point, all were created entirely from scratch in maya. I tried doing the Fanny method on it, but I just couldn't get the shader to spit out the detail the way I wanted, and working with the data given was too vague to pinpoint her exact style. I figured I could recoup whatever time had been spent sculpting in zbrush, by putting an extra layer of attention and detail into the texture painting itself. Both of the blizz reps who I spoke to when presenting my portfolio in the last month said I should aim for her style, so I guess if it's still apparent that it's drawing direct inspiration from her workflow, than I am more than happy to continue working down this path.

anglorum

More updates, more updates! Getting a lot of time to work on this stuff in the evening, and I'm really feeling like things are coming together. Hope you guys agree Probably gonna throw a window on this bad boy then start on the many many trophies!

Torch

Cool man, yeah definitely coming along! The smoke particles are being done in Shuriken I'm guessing?

anglorum

Yup! I'm loving working with it and pretty much trying to find any excuse that I can to put particle somewhere in the scene haha.

dissonance

anglorum wrote: »

Yup! I'm loving working with it and pretty much trying to find any excuse that I can to put particle somewhere in the scene haha.

Clamp some particles to a plane and use them for bugs running around the basement?

anglorum

That's the cave pretty much finished!

lotet

love the gifs! its super cool, keep it up

Snafubar7

The gifs are awesome, I need to get some particle-ish animation stuff in my scenes... :P

You're nailing the style, keep it up!

Fenyce

You really improved a lot!
Can't wait for a final fly through video.

Bartalon

If this is supposed to be a revenge hit, I see two things that you might want to consider changing:

1) I feel like the goblin race would go over the top with explosives so there should be way more TNT packed under the house. It's a revenge plan too, so there would probably be even more, even by goblin standards!

2) Goblins from what I've seen are into all sorts of explosives so perhaps you could add some variation like some round black bombs or some fat rockets or something.

Also it would hit pretty close to home if the goblins were a part of Venture Co.

spectre1130

This whole thing looks pretty awesome to me. All the little animations and particles are really telling a story. Are you using Unity for this?? I can't wait to see this done. Also, how did you get the "caustic" type effect on the ceiling of the cave from the water below?? Some sort of moving/morphing decal?

anglorum

Thanks so much guys for all the encouragement! This piece has been a blast to make so far, and really a challenge to push myself to get all the detail crammed into the textures that I can.

Bartalon: I'm definitely gonna look into doing something like that. Should be pretty fun to get outrageous with the explosives.

Spectre: Ah yeah I'm using unity! It's great. Also basically it was a "cookie" on a spotlight being projected up on the ceiling. I animated the light to pulsate slightly in time with the rhythm of the drifting foam on the surface of the water.

Here's what the texture looks like:



All of the white is alpha'd out. Thanks a ton though. Glad you hear you're feeling a story emerge as that's exactly what I want to happen with this piece.

But yeah! Here are some quick updates. I've been makin' some weps this weekend!





My mantra throughout this project has really been to try and make sure each and every prop could stand as it's own piece in my portfolio! I think it's really helped to motivate me and keep myself from rushing through stuff unnecessarily!

Nefarius24

Wow! I'm really enjoying how this is coming a long! Some of your hand painted work is amazing!

anglorum

Finishing out the attic. Just a few more bits and pieces here and there and I'm gonna call this puppy done!

Fenyce

Haha, I love that treasure chest! I wonder what's in there... And where the key is hidden.
Those gifs are damn adorable! I'd love to some, too! But first I'd have to make a scene... which I'm planning at the moment. Hehe.

Keep up the great work!

Torch

Bloody hell Anglo, really going the distance with this piece love the chest, great work!

RMeeks

That chest is frickin' awesome.

lotet

haha thats adorable, I think you can work some more on the animation of the chest though, the animation could use some more physics if that makes any sense xD

deadpixl

That addict looks awesome, lights through the window really sell it. Fantastic work!

anglorum

Thanks so much for all the kind words guys! Your support really helps to inspire me to push myself to the next level every step of the way on this stuff.

ALSO! A rabid bout of insomnia has forced me to get a bunch more done tonight than I thought possible.





That second image is a lot to do with the story telling of the piece. Also, I've picked out the song for my fly through. It's gonna be awesome

Cremuss

Nothing to say.. overall everything is looking really good. and the blade is really superbe. Nice job

spectre1130

Yeticorn!!!! That's classic:D!

Torch

Trophy is looking awesome, good job