[UDK] Hand Painted - Haunted Pumpkin Yard
polycounter lvl 8
Well it's October already, no better time to start this thread 
This low poly environment is one of two final projects for my semester I'll be posting here. I'm hoping to replace some older hand painted pieces to avoid an over stylized portfolio.
I'm pretty confident in my hand painting, I just need to push my color variation, speed, and for this piece I'm going for the Blizzard/WoW style.
Concept I spent too much time on...First time doing this really :P
Blockout! My concept's perspective wasn't correct, so I had to fix the composition while modeling. The trees are just rough placeholders.
Props with UDK scale.
Sculpted a tree since doing that in maya was a nightmare. This will go on the right side, entwined with the other tree as they connect to the pumpkin house's stem.
Next on my list is to sculpt the left tree, retopo both, make them connect, UV all my stuff and start painting. I want this to be real spooky.
Feedback/comments welcome!
This low poly environment is one of two final projects for my semester I'll be posting here. I'm hoping to replace some older hand painted pieces to avoid an over stylized portfolio.
I'm pretty confident in my hand painting, I just need to push my color variation, speed, and for this piece I'm going for the Blizzard/WoW style.
Concept I spent too much time on...First time doing this really :P
Blockout! My concept's perspective wasn't correct, so I had to fix the composition while modeling. The trees are just rough placeholders.
Props with UDK scale.
Sculpted a tree since doing that in maya was a nightmare. This will go on the right side, entwined with the other tree as they connect to the pumpkin house's stem.
Next on my list is to sculpt the left tree, retopo both, make them connect, UV all my stuff and start painting. I want this to be real spooky.
Feedback/comments welcome!
Replies
Yeah the center chunk of it is bothering me too. I don't know what to put there other than the pathway texture with grass alphas overlapping from the side, and some stones too. I'm also hoping that lighting and vegetation will help solve that as well. It's not too late to change the composition.
Thanks for the encouragement and feedback everyone! Can't wait to nail this thing.
Thoughts on my paintover?
Those barrels don't make sense
I can't decide what to put on the front of this grave... Suggestions?
These props' textures are from my crate and door (which still needs a doorknob!)
Silhouette of the focal point.
Seams everywhere on the trees. I've never done something as complex as that. Hoping to cover up seams with props/vegetation (and lighting will help?).
(Incoming post-mortem of my semester. Skip if you want, read to learn from my mistake)
At first I was ashamed and angry with myself, but then I took it as a learning experience with time/task management. This project was supposed to be done by the end of fall semester for my environment modeling class. The instructor quietly relied on us to set our own pace to have one environment completely done and lit with collision by the end. We all relaxed, "easy. 3 months? pfff, cake." ... No one finished. We all were terrible at managing our time with this class since our other classes were heavy and the instructors for those classes were actually assigning us homework and grilling us to do it. It became real easy to skimp out on our environments to make more time for those other classes. Despite none of us finishing, our grades all sat in the B range the entire semester. Most didn't even have textures or lighting. It's definitely our fault for doing so poorly, but we should have all failed, seriously. My unfinished final (first image) was a B+, and other students with zero textures or lighting got a B+ as well... The instructor knows a ton of stuff, really experienced and a great artist, just not a strong teacher -- plus the language barrier didn't help. At least he unintentionally taught us all what time management really means. It was certainly a reality check for self control and how fast I can work with a fire under my ass. I modeled and painted textures for 4-5 props a day on top of my other homework for a week up until the deadline, so that helped gauge how fast I can work...I just wish the circumstances of that lesson were different.
TL;DR: I learned a bit about time management and I'm a big boy now.
Comments/feedback welcome.
B. I'm also not sure you need put anything on the grave, maybe a bit of faded stuff that looks like it could be writing if only you could see it clearer.
Looking good for the most part though!
I personally think that the grass tiles just fine. It's only noticeable in the background and that seems to be a normal thing. Once props and grass and the path are added that won't be noticeable either.
The silhouette of your trees are awesome but I don't care for the texture too much. I think its just the grooves in the bark are too dark and have too much contrast?
Your doing great and I hope you continue to flesh this thing out.
Subscribing so I can get updates
I did a little paintover of your trees to give you some ideas regarding how you approach hand painted, stylized objects. Mainly, to avoid using black as a shadow color (use real colors instead), and try to paint more to the shape of the object. Zbrush's polypaint tools or programs like bodypaint 3d can be helpful for hand painted textures on complex objects, especially for organic shapes like this with seams in hard-to-hide places. You did fine with that on your other props, but I've got a soft spot for stylized trees and had to do a little paintover.
Also, that time management thing is, as you saw, something pretty much everyone learns the hard way. It's ridiculous how important that skill is, and how few professionals are actually good at it.
Megacorpse - I had that method in mind when I started my trees, but the shapes of the trunk/branches were much easier to achieve in zbrush. Making those branches in maya was a bit nuts.
TerryMosier - Thanks a lot! I can't wait to redo the tree textures.
locater16 - I'm hoping to break up the grass with some different tiling ground textures (dirt path, dead grass patches, leafy/rocky etc) alaong with props etc. I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion on the grave! I had the same idea. I might go with that plus a dead leafy looking engraving.
I really appreciate the responses, good stuff!
1. How about change the size of the house pumpkin?
I really like your 2D concept art. There are many props and trees in the scene. But my eye goes to the pumpkin house, because it is BIG!! However, it seems likely your tree are taking over the whole scene in 3D. In 3D layout, I'm not sure where I should look at.
2. How about change the direction of the small pumpkins?
If you think that the house pumpkins is the main object, please consider to change the direction of the small pumpkins. If small pumpkins are facing to the pumpkin house, it would be good guideline for viewers.
My only complaint is I wish this was out during Halloween and not January!
Kidding asside though, your terrain needs a bit of work to make it intresting, a few bumps and patches, a few little vines here and there, nothing major just stuff to break up its so flat and repeating.
I think the main thing is trying to get your focal point to read. Make that pumpkin wayyyy bigger! I see that you plan to add a path, that will help a lot with directing the eye.
Another thing that will help your focal point is the lighting. Right now the lighting is kindof flat. I would light up the main pumpkin more (torches?), and also make the forest feel like a darker, more claustrophobic place - adding more trees in the bg (could be painted on planes), suggest a canopy, hide the sky.
The trees are also pulling away from the focal point. They have a fun style, but they stand out a lot and that is to do with the contrast. Your value range for the tree texture seems really wide; I would make the darks less dark, and pull back the highlights a lot.
Spend some more time on the main pumpkin texture too, it currently seems to have the level of detail of the little pumpkins when it should have more. Little unique characteristics like scratches or warts or dimples or whatever - but subtle!
The composition of the props along the path is nice
p.s. I love the gravestones textures, they have a ton of character =D
p.p.s. While you are painting your textures, try to remember how they are all going to fit together in the big picture. Like let's say you are painting more details on the pumpkin. If you aren't careful, it can just become noise if you make the details too small or too contrasty or too many. I have done this a lot of times, so I know to try to pay attention to this now
And Jessica, I hadn't really thought about the forest vs. hill path element. I wish I could have both... hahah. Maybe the path on the hill leads into the forest where the pumpkin house sits? so not as many trees on the hill, but many more the path leads left. As for clutter and mundane stuff, I'll need to get on that soon. I'm brainstorming up some small storytelling clutter. Also, I was looking at your gravestones from the escape challenge when I painted mine
seforin - Man, I was shooting for it to be done around halloween (maybe a bit after), but that's when I thought I could play it by ear and float by just fine (WRONG!) hahah. I was thinking I should break up the terrain a bit with some steep inclines with dirty/rocky/dead texture on the slope/side, maybe a ruined grave on top.
I'll post screenshots by tomorrow night. Yell at me if I don't!
Also started re-doing the trees and I'm having trouble for some reason. I started with an outline of my bark shapes and when I went to color/shade, it was really hard get rid of the outlines. Here's the WIP texture of the unique tree bark. I feel like I forgot how to paint over my small break.
I took what Ferg said into account with my shadow color looking less black, and it looked wierd for a while and threw me off. I also recorded my painting process on justin.tv: http://www.justin.tv/snafubar7/b/495843267
Tomorrow I should have this texture done and I'll post it then, and I'll start working on new 'regular' trees to replace those crappy ones...I need to get faster.
Btw I highly recommend streaming/recording your work. It helped me focus on my work more and stay on track -- because what am I going to do, record myself checking facebook? that's lame.
Getting rid of the black outlines was a pain in the ass
In the future I'm not starting with a black outline.
Looking forward to seeing the final product. Good luck.
Thanks! Haha yep most of my pieces are wood-heavy...Luckily I get to downsize my portfolio once this environment is finished.
Today I'm redoing the outer trees, I'll try 256 x 1024
Looking good.
I'm not really a 3D artist so I can't comment much on geometry or other aspects unique to the medium, but there are a few things I wanted to say:
- Firstly, I think your trees look far too healthy. I would try and stay away from rich saturated browns as much as possible.
- I also think hand painting gives you a real opportunity to push the variance in hues between shades that you haven't really taken advantage of in your piece. If you look at the art from Blizzard which uses a similar style, they unify all the disparate elements of a scene by tinting their highlights and shadows certain colours depending on the mood they're going for (this is particularly noticeable in Diablo 3) and then separate individual objects through mid-tones. I understand a lot of this can be done in post production with lighting in 3D scenes, but you can achieve a greater degree of subtlety and control in your textures.
- Lastly in regards to the grass texture which I understand is temporary, I think it's far too detailed for the scene you're trying to create. I don't have a 3D reference, but I think the approach used in this http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/82572.htm could lend itself well to the 3D medium as well. Actually I think everything is suffering from an over-saturation of detail. The human brain is very good at filling in missing detail, and you can use that to your advantage to keep your scenes clean.
Perhaps, now is the time to think about the layout of the submission. I'd like to say that please make it professionally.
If you are not good at wire-frame or some texture are not best quality, make it smaller than others or don't show it in the final layout. Few idea sketches and drawings would be the best way to show your creativity and your idea develop skills.
If you can put animation on the props or visual effect, it would make you an exceptional artist.
I'm looking forward to see your final.
That sounds tasty. I hope I have time to get that working!
Thanks for the feedback guys, I'm laying out my lightmap coordinates for UDK, sorry I haven't updated with new screenshots. My next shots will be renders from UDK.
Took forever to get this scene set up in UDK due to learning skydomes/lightmaps/udk and troubleshooting other stuff. Something feels like it's missing. I have a much better shot on my viewport than when I hit "Play in viewport window" and then fly around with some different FOV angle...
Barely any difference, but here's what I set up with one viewport on my other monitor, while I went around and arranged my scene in another viewport on my main monitor.
Thoughts/crits welcome.
Loving the progression
I'm still going to be adding onto this scene to make a good flythrough for AAU's spring show, so I'll be filling in the rest of what's off camera. Also I'm learning particle effects now, so some low fog and maybe a chimney with smoke puffs will be added later.
Edit - To add the gradient to the tree you've got two main options. Use the second or third UV set, multiply a gradient using a texture coordinate specifically to the UV channel with a planar projection over the diffuse.
Second way, Add vertex color information in the software of choice and import in the mesh, then multiply a vertex color node with your diffuse texture. Pretty sure that will work as well. good luck!
Edit edit - Just saw somebody else said the same thing , oh well
Also I'd focus the lighting a bit more on the larger pumpkin. The orange pumpkins should darken some as they get further away from the big pumpkin.
It looks just great. But some gradients could really help the seen to be even better!
This will make a lovely piece for your portfolio!
My biggest comment is that the scene is very flat, and the pumpkins have a lot of forced shading on them, which makes them feel awkward. Its hard for the eye to rest in the scene, hard to dance around and find things, when the values are pretty even. Its also missing a lot of atmosphere, feels very sterile. The stuff in the background is fucking great, wish it pulled more into the foreground!
I honestly did not see the door on the side of the pumpkin until i stared at the image for about 10 minutes. I wonder if pulling some saturation and contrast back from the surrounding elements, and adding some candles to the top of the overhang + some extra lighting contrast to it would help draw attention there.
Also feel like the two branches in the center leading to the pumpkin aren't doing great things, and feel a stalk of sorts could help weigh it down some?
finally, the colors overall are a little all over, feel like you could pull back a bit, give the scene a bit more spooky tone with cooler colors throughout.
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