There is some bigs chunks of dead space that isn't being used by the texture on 2 of the branches, it would be worth it to add more polygons to reduce over draw, as long as you're not doubling the polycount.
Thanks ZacD ! I will test it out with more polygons and compare it to my original polycount.
On a seperate note..
I realized google wasn't getting me the photo results I wanted, and I needed a break from the computer. So I recently went on a hike with my good buddy, I Fought A Bear!! Super great time, and gathered a bunch of reference! I saw great ground breakup ideas that will be used as inspiration on my scene!
My first attempt at sculpting/baking a rock. I need to add rocks/cliff rocks to my foliage level, and I was inspired to start making some by my good buddy I Fought A Bear’s rock thread!! Rock on! hahahaha …...
Refined my rock sculpt due to some great feedback! Here is my second pass at it with the normals and AO baked. Also tried making a diffuse even though I still feel it may need more, but hopefully plants/moss/leaves I place in the engine will help cover it more ! But I am very pleased with the results, but I know it can always be better Making organic objects is soooo &%$^^#* awesome.
Oh cool, definitely looking more realistic in your second attempt. What changed for you, in terms of your thought process for achieving a more realistic rock, the second time around?
It needed to be said once more, but god damnit your foliage is amazing Also that trunk shader looks amazing. and those leaves, makes me want to jump in. Keep sending the awesome
Thank you very much Scythe! Your nice words will help motivate me even more!!
ALSO..here is an update on my scene! Added my new ground textures/ bark textures and rockA to the scene! The rock helped a ton And I got a lot of modularity out of it.
I took out that super sharp fallen tree. Instead of that, my next plan is to start sculpting a tree stump, which a polycounter recommended to do (I agree).
Definitely! Hayden showed me the ways, and I only just scratched the surface. He definitely helped me learn the anatomy of rocks more. I definitely consider him sensei for my new understanding/appreciation of rocks!
Damian!!!! Thank you for your comment! Without you good sir, my love of foliage would of never become a reality. Your 3d motive tutorials ROCK (which I really respect) and your portfolio work is my biggest inspiration as an environment artist.
Thank you everyone for the continual motivation !! I love polycount.
There's a great progress being shown since the start of your project. Looks like you're learning fast by iterating on your work and accepting to come back on previously made assets based on the feedback.
There's quite a margin of progress left in terms of color and composition.
In terms of style in your texturing it might be because you've redone some parts of the scene already but some of your foliage tends toward a realistic treatment (pine needles foliage) whereas the grass softness and style looks slightly stylized to an extent (as do the bushes). The treatment on your rock texture also makes for a pretty stylized look with the edges highlights very much reinforced in the texture and sculpt lines that could still benefit from more reference work in terms of rock layering. But I believe more than the rock strata and fine details, it's the fact that red rock boulders hardly belong in a forest of this kind (to me), I believe grey stone even if with slight layers of iron in it will work better. It might also give the eye some rest in terms of colours.
And speaking of colour if you want to introduce that red at all cost you can always set the scene in autumn and have non-evergreen trees in the background with nice shades of yellow to red canopies.
It might also make your scene richer in terms of color palette.
Try to put your terrain to use, if your winning shot is this close to terrain you'll want to increase the level of detail by a lot to make it appealing. Have a tiny path lost between smaller stones, muddy footsteps, pebbles scattered around, or a tiny stream of water. Anything that wouldn't steal the attention too much if your focus is your background for example and help reinforce the composition if leading the eye somewhere.
Your fog is currently not helping much with colour either. It's eating most of your contrasts so depending on the mood or the importance of strong colours in your scene you might want to edit it.
On chaos, if you have the budget to do so you should add more chaos into the pine trees silhouettes, in smaller branches and lower trunk silhouette. Sculpting a lower part of the tree and blending it into a tileable trunk texture above it will also help giving more character to the trees in the foreground
Hey Steve0, is there any chance you could post up your shader networks in UDK at a higher resolution? You've got some great techniques and I'd love to learn from what you've created.
Question for you stev0:
I've been working on some trees for real time use and someone asked my why I wasns't using speedtree and having never used it before I didn't have a good answer for him.
Why do you choose to build your foliage from scratch, rather than use a procedural option like speedtree?
Again, I haven't used it to create anything, but if it allows for proper customization (so it's not instantly recognizable speedtree asset) and speed, why wouldn't we use it?
Thank for any help, and I hope your scene is coming along still!
ParoXum...THANK YOU! Your feedback really really helped. I already have a gameplan for taking my environment to the next level.
I am going to get started on introducing a more diverse ground plain with roots and pebbles, rocks, etc.
What I have done so far though...
I redid my grass and I am starting to add more realistic looking plants /trees. Trying to match the level of detail/quality that I have in the Evergreen needles.
I also started to redo my rock texture to get rid of the red rock completely, because your totally right, those rocks don't belong in a mountain forest.
I took down some of the fog because it really was eating my contrast. And to make my composition more interesting, I decided to make a good heightmap and new terrain.
Here is my new heightmap inside the UDK engine. I CAN’T WAIT.. to start adding all my foliage to this new mountain level ! Ahhhh!!!!!!!
I REALLY RECOMMEND watching AMIR ABDAOUI’s tutorial on how to create awesome landscapes for UDK and Cryengine. His workflow is great and I learned a lot of awesome techniques to help better my landscapes. He showed the basics of World Machine and made it super clear and encouraged to try and experiment with settings!
Amir is a great artist and he definitely sets the bar/inspiration for landscapes in my opinion .
That makes me soooo happy !!!!!! I'm very excited to see your results! Foliage rules.
I just finished a modular rock pile piece for the bottom of my creek bed. Cant wait to slap some lilly pads and other smaller plants around these rocks!
Love the way the light hits the needles and reflects on the trees! You've come far since your first post on this thread... kudos!
It might be worth it to get some dead branch alphas on the end of the dead branch geometry, to help mix up the silhouettes even more. I feel like some bushes that are about as big as a person would help fill the space more too, and give more interesting silhouettes.
This thread is so inspiring, you learned a lot since your first post, it is motivating ! Also thanks a lot to post yours tricks and techniques to achieve this, I learned a lot !
Thanks
Here is an update to my scene! I started to place my new foliage models on my new terrain! Definitely loving the results so far . Only 3 different types of foliage in the scene as of now.
One clustered Pine Tree
One Deciduous Bush
One Bushy Grass Model
I want to say @ParoXum, your feedback helped out a TON!
I really have tried to concentrate on the depth of my foliage textures, especially in my grass/bush. I am really working on trying to maintain a consistent level of quality with all my textures.
I am going to continue to sculpt and paint in unique textures for my trees because I feel it really helps sell the realism more. Adding roots and smaller dead branches near the bottom of the trunk also helps with the silhouette and I think that is a crucial step about getting nice foliage.
All you fellow polycounters feedback and comments IS REALLY motivating and helping me as an artist. I really love this community and it has definitely been one of the best resources for helping me be meticulous about my asset creation and making sure my environments are on the right track.
Next plan is to add Aspen trees to get a nice red/ yellow color variety, and thinner shape variety, to the scene. Also many smaller plants/flowers plus the creek.
I'm starting to sculpt a tree in Zbrush. Is there any point to sculpting any fine details beyond the major and minor forms if a bark texture will just be overriding all of it? A tiling bark texture will have its own maps "aligned" with itself rather than anything you do in Zbrush...
Thanks for all of the tutorials and pointers. Your work is very inspirational. I'm prepping to make a scene similar to Moraine lake in Alberta,Canada. Lots and lots of Subalpine Firs to be found there. This thread will be very useful!
Also, I just received a great book about trees called "Seeing Trees". Really informational and lots of great closeup shots of leaves and buds/flowers. Check it out.
I love your foliage, it's very inspiring. I have a question; would you always tile the bark texture or would you every map it out uniquely? Obviously a unique/thirded etc texture would be much more expensive, but you could work some really nice variation in to it. I guess with a tiled bark you could always still overlay in additional maps?
Replies
There is some bigs chunks of dead space that isn't being used by the texture on 2 of the branches, it would be worth it to add more polygons to reduce over draw, as long as you're not doubling the polycount.
On a seperate note..
I realized google wasn't getting me the photo results I wanted, and I needed a break from the computer. So I recently went on a hike with my good buddy, I Fought A Bear!! Super great time, and gathered a bunch of reference! I saw great ground breakup ideas that will be used as inspiration on my scene!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58705466@N05/sets/72157636674063983/
P.S. Rocks are the best.
Only AO and normal maps at the moment.
Oh and…
TRIM SMOOTH BORDER BRUSH RULES!!!!
Refined my rock sculpt due to some great feedback! Here is my second pass at it with the normals and AO baked. Also tried making a diffuse even though I still feel it may need more, but hopefully plants/moss/leaves I place in the engine will help cover it more
ALSO..here is an update on my scene! Added my new ground textures/ bark textures and rockA to the scene! The rock helped a ton
I took out that super sharp fallen tree. Instead of that, my next plan is to start sculpting a tree stump, which a polycounter recommended to do (I agree).
His rock thread helped out a ton!!
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125857
Now I am just waiting to help return the favor by helping him with his foliage/ and or 3ds max!!
Thank you everyone for the continual motivation
There's quite a margin of progress left in terms of color and composition.
In terms of style in your texturing it might be because you've redone some parts of the scene already but some of your foliage tends toward a realistic treatment (pine needles foliage) whereas the grass softness and style looks slightly stylized to an extent (as do the bushes). The treatment on your rock texture also makes for a pretty stylized look with the edges highlights very much reinforced in the texture and sculpt lines that could still benefit from more reference work in terms of rock layering. But I believe more than the rock strata and fine details, it's the fact that red rock boulders hardly belong in a forest of this kind (to me), I believe grey stone even if with slight layers of iron in it will work better. It might also give the eye some rest in terms of colours.
And speaking of colour if you want to introduce that red at all cost you can always set the scene in autumn and have non-evergreen trees in the background with nice shades of yellow to red canopies.
It might also make your scene richer in terms of color palette.
Try to put your terrain to use, if your winning shot is this close to terrain you'll want to increase the level of detail by a lot to make it appealing. Have a tiny path lost between smaller stones, muddy footsteps, pebbles scattered around, or a tiny stream of water. Anything that wouldn't steal the attention too much if your focus is your background for example and help reinforce the composition if leading the eye somewhere.
Your fog is currently not helping much with colour either. It's eating most of your contrasts so depending on the mood or the importance of strong colours in your scene you might want to edit it.
On chaos, if you have the budget to do so you should add more chaos into the pine trees silhouettes, in smaller branches and lower trunk silhouette. Sculpting a lower part of the tree and blending it into a tileable trunk texture above it will also help giving more character to the trees in the foreground
I've been working on some trees for real time use and someone asked my why I wasns't using speedtree and having never used it before I didn't have a good answer for him.
Why do you choose to build your foliage from scratch, rather than use a procedural option like speedtree?
Again, I haven't used it to create anything, but if it allows for proper customization (so it's not instantly recognizable speedtree asset) and speed, why wouldn't we use it?
Thank for any help, and I hope your scene is coming along still!
Edit:
There is a bit of talk about it on an old thread here for anyone else interested: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74541&highlight=speedtree&page=2
I am going to get started on introducing a more diverse ground plain with roots and pebbles, rocks, etc.
What I have done so far though...
I redid my grass and I am starting to add more realistic looking plants /trees. Trying to match the level of detail/quality that I have in the Evergreen needles.
I also started to redo my rock texture to get rid of the red rock completely, because your totally right, those rocks don't belong in a mountain forest.
I took down some of the fog because it really was eating my contrast. And to make my composition more interesting, I decided to make a good heightmap and new terrain.
Here is my new heightmap inside the UDK engine. I CAN’T WAIT.. to start adding all my foliage to this new mountain level
I REALLY RECOMMEND watching AMIR ABDAOUI’s tutorial on how to create awesome landscapes for UDK and Cryengine. His workflow is great and I learned a lot of awesome techniques to help better my landscapes. He showed the basics of World Machine and made it super clear and encouraged to try and experiment with settings!
Amir is a great artist and he definitely sets the bar/inspiration for landscapes in my opinion
Here is the link for his tutorial:
[ame="
I just finished a modular rock pile piece for the bottom of my creek bed. Cant wait to slap some lilly pads and other smaller plants around these rocks!
Love the way the light hits the needles and reflects on the trees! You've come far since your first post on this thread... kudos!
It might be worth it to get some dead branch alphas on the end of the dead branch geometry, to help mix up the silhouettes even more. I feel like some bushes that are about as big as a person would help fill the space more too, and give more interesting silhouettes.
Thanks
Here is an update to my scene! I started to place my new foliage models on my new terrain! Definitely loving the results so far
One clustered Pine Tree
One Deciduous Bush
One Bushy Grass Model
I want to say @ParoXum, your feedback helped out a TON!
I really have tried to concentrate on the depth of my foliage textures, especially in my grass/bush. I am really working on trying to maintain a consistent level of quality with all my textures.
I am going to continue to sculpt and paint in unique textures for my trees because I feel it really helps sell the realism more. Adding roots and smaller dead branches near the bottom of the trunk also helps with the silhouette and I think that is a crucial step about getting nice foliage.
All you fellow polycounters feedback and comments IS REALLY motivating and helping me as an artist. I really love this community and it has definitely been one of the best resources for helping me be meticulous about my asset creation and making sure my environments are on the right track.
Next plan is to add Aspen trees to get a nice red/ yellow color variety, and thinner shape variety, to the scene. Also many smaller plants/flowers plus the creek.
Thank you
Tut's saved :P
Also, I just received a great book about trees called "Seeing Trees". Really informational and lots of great closeup shots of leaves and buds/flowers. Check it out.
Would love more info on the lighting model setup you did here. Can't really see what's going on in the pics.
However his tutorials are now on his website:
http://www.stevenoberman.net/#!resume/cazn