Progress. Stripped out the textures and just focusing on the normal maps for now. Changed the pillars to be retopped from the sculpt in order to maintain some volume (the cylinders were depressingly two dimensional)
Still in marmo heh, still not happy with the column. Just going to keep tweaking it as more of the rest of it gets built
Havent done much to it, stupid ills. Latest cryengine also just crashes on startup and the tesselation seems to be unable to do the cracks and such, it kind of cant be arsed and just smooths over it ..
The pom is alright but needs a lot of tweaking.
My cryengine so old
DesktopPirate: Unf, your stairs are wiiiiiidddddeeeeeee tho!
Hannah: Cool colours! I think the more brick like texture does look a little bit flat, and all of it is the same angle, might be worth at least throwing in some variations to the depth and angles so the lights catch it nicely.
ChaosWWW: The rocks on the columns currently look stuck on and wrapped around it. It's causing some strange pinching a long the edges. I guess like chewing gum with curled edges.
Higuy: You seem to have a lot of noise in your texture thats covering over everything else, it might be worth reducing a fair amount. You also seem to be lacking contrast, just throwing a levels over the top of the diffuse/colour/albedo and getting that a bit tighter should help.
started putting the pieces together in cryengine today:
(cave model is placeholder for now)
Still have a lot of work to do, gotta touch up all of the materials, gotta make a couple more props, and then to begin working on all the moss and the cave
E: another pic
Another thing, the arches UVW's got totally trashed somehow during the sculpting process, I was thinking about throwing the tiling stone texture on them (the one that is closest to the screen), It looks fine with out parallax occlusion mapping, but I feel like it doesn't blend well without it.
L3XICON
Thank You for the good words, man! And thank you for your improvement-suggestions and your tool-tipps! I'll give it a try when I next work on it.
And for your work: I like the style you put up! your scene is damn fine and clean! No noise and nothing to kill it... Just great! Thats where I have a lot of concerns: That it will all fall apart because elements dont match together...
desktoppirate
You too! Thank you for the good spirit and I'll also give your improvement-tipps some space as I refine my work in the upcoming days.
Dave Jr
Thank you!
For my "workflow": I didn't use dynamesh at all so far. I always fall back on using Subdivision-Levels and Layers only...
It's just sculpted. Have a look at the pic of my low-poly-pillar above the sculpt. Thats what I did: I made these sections which should define the single stone-rows. I made them subtools, isolated them in "solo" mode and cut in the stone pattern with "damStandard" brush and others.
....Think I'll use dynamesh for the next steps. Detail and stuff.
One word to Shuaws:
I think you've gone a good way with your tiling stone texture so far. You did a good job improving it after serveral feedback-posts you got.
I think your texture pattern works just fine for now The only thing I'd mention:
If you return to work on that texture again at any time, get rid of that L-shaped stone right there in the centre! Its such a strange form for a stone and in my eyes kills the whole thing If this pattern tiles across a large surface, this stone will pop out like hell I'm afraid. Just cut it to two separate stones!
Last one for now: Higuy!
No problem! I'm glad this little feedback seemed to help.
Your pillar is not bad and I see you already baked normals... Still, if you find some time to refine it, my tipp:
Show us, that your pillar is made up from seperate stones. Their shapes are fine. all you have to do is cut a little deeper to strengthen the gabs between them. Dont go nuts on it! Just pick some locations for a start and define the gaps. (especially at corners, where 3 to 4 different stones touch)
Now Ill have to catch up with you all since I feel like lazy-guy here ;D
Good work everyone!
Still in marmo heh, still not happy with the column. Just going to keep tweaking it as more of the rest of it gets built
These pillars look great. I think you shouldnt modify them too much from now. Your stair looks abit too even. Maybe make some small adjustments there
I did a small test with a pillar. Next step would be to create the other tilable textures. Currently its 1024x1024 but I think for the normalmap and displacement map I can decrease the resolution to 512
With the sculpted highpoly stones I will create some unique stones to break the silouette.
I have been putting off posting here for far too long. But better late than never. So here's my progress:
I have decided to model everything uniquely this time around. I did use somewhat of a modular approach to this though. I started off with a cylinder of 12 sides and deleted all but one side. Then I used the symetry modifier to make 11 copies and work on them at the same time. Then when everything was done I just collapsed the stack and adjusted the result.
Textures are places holders at the moment. It is mostly just one 1024x1024 texture for the entire thing. Just a few tiling textures packed into one. No normal maps at the moment. Eventually, in UDK, I will use some extra tiling textures and vertex painting to break up the tiling
The statue is somewhat completed aswell:
It has a 1024 texture of it's own since it is a rather important center piece.
Some people are doing a sculpt for every piece here, but I think it is better to just use a bunch of tiling textures and not unwrap everthing uniquely. I think it saves time and resources. And you can get a lot of the uniqueness through vertex paiting.
Hey Sander,
Nice work and blockout. The statue looks pretty good overall but quite low res at this stage. The cuts could use some love so they look a bit more like pieces of stone.
I agree about saving time by creating more tiling textures, but I guess it depends on what results you are going for.
Sorry for not giving any replies or crit, I wanted to sneak this update in before I go sleep. I'll edit tomorrow once I've looked at the thread again
Just blocked out the base textures for path, wall and floor textures, but a lot more work needs doing so any crit would be cool
Still in marmoset at the moment but I'll bring it into UDK soon and get some vert painting to break up the noise, which currently is a massive issue. I'm really hoping the vegetation and lighting will also break up all the really similar colours and noisy textures.
@desktoppirate: Liking that you are using a more unique art style for this project. I would look out for how the textures cut off and intersect with one another, right now there are some things that look off. For example, the part of the big arch that is broken and coming toward the screen has diagonal bricks that don't match up with the bricks on the outside of the arch, and in the arched part of the arches in the background the bricks cut off without actually showing any signs that they should cut off there (lacking a bevel that the edges of the bricks have). I'll elaborate if I'm not making any sense.
@shiv Looking good so far! I'm questioning how you are taking the screenshots / what compression you are using, though, because in your most recent post there is a lot of weird artifacts which detract from your excellent art. Looks like you are using JPEGS, I'd recommend using a higher compression rate or upgrading to pngs. Also right now the pillars look too obviously repeated. A very easy way to fix that would be to rotate each pillar randomly a bit so you don't see the same details on every side. Overall very good though.
Hey guys, I'm in too.
Did a quick block out and was making a tillable rocks texture. I'm having an issue with the ZAppLink. Texture gets darker in Photoshop as seen below.
Any idea , what's wrong ?
Hey man, I don't know if you've fixed this or not, but this usually happens when your layer is hidden when you use Zapplink. Make sure all the layers you want to link are visible in the layers palette.
You can also save out layers of your scene assets and just import it if your .cry is corrupted.
I usually have the autoback option enabled, it's been awhile since I worked with CE, should have paid attention. Oh well, gives me the chance to improve my scene's terrain I guess.
Mine. Haven't been posting anything for a while, because I've been learning how to make textures inside zbrush. Finally after browsing rocks thread, I got some grasp on it, and while those texture are still crap, I'm proud of them, they are best sculpted textures I have made so far .
I will upload textures alone later.
As for statue. It's going to be robed wizard with staff and some fancy spell effects. That girl from concept art is just to dull, to be here.
@desktoppirate
Love your textures, but I think that the main platform is bit to small.
@Shiv
Nice columns, but stairs look to uniform right now. Maybe try using bigger bricks (twice the current size), with more height varation ?
@SanderDL
Statue can easily go to 2k texture. Or better yet 2k normal map, 1k color map and clever blending in shader of tileable color map on top of it, to add more varation. Epic did this for rocks in their jungle map. You can check it out.
@iniside:
2k texture? I thought I was going pretty high with 1k haha. But I'll try 2k since I'm probably going to redo the sculpt on the statue anyway.
Hey guys I'm struggling with displacement in udk, anyone have a simple to follow tutorial? I found one but it isn't working and the tutorial doesn't go into enough detail for me to understand why.
Will try and get some updates later tonight as I've been working on my base diffuse texture.
Also, is everyone building the statue from scratch? I hate character models and this is the one part I'm not looking forward to doing
@rockguy those texture spheres are looking good though the one for the base looks a little bland and odd as it has no moss on it.
@inside the texture work looks very good on the arch and pillars. The base texture seems to be lacking a little compared to these others. It feels a little flat so have a look at the normal and spec on it.
@desktoppirate, I love that hand drawn texture style you have going on there! Much like what I am aiming for only better
Just got back on track , after Im done with the broken pillars I'll move the assets to UDK.
Your materials are looking good. But the texture distribution is a bit too evenly. I would recommend using Vertex Blending with materials and some more unique meshes in your scene.
A little update from my pillar. Tomorrow I start with the other tilable textures. The lower and upper part of the pillar will share one texture sheet with the stairs.
Currently the texture is baked at a really low resolution compared to my tilable stone texture, so its a bit blurry. I also need to break up the visible patterns, without making it to obvious.
Regardless, since I was able to read your question before editing I will answer how I start, since I was complete noob unable to make most basic textures from scratch and now I can at least understand the process.
1. I crated base brick box, subdivided it and exported to zbrush.
2. In zbrush I just randomly sculpt edges (TrimDynamic brush with alpha). Or don't do it. Depends how sharp the brick has to be. Then I use stndard brush to drag alphas randomly over brick. After that use again TrimDynamic brush with alpha to trim details I created with standard brush. I repeat it couple of times until I'm happy. Important part I have discovered at this stage, was to not to try to plan anything ahead or try to precise, deliberate with sculpt. Just toss randomly different stuff and see how it look.
Another thing is not to try sculpt to many micro details. First of all normal map won't be able to catch them (depends on your target resolution). They will look blurry, or just bad. Try to keep details at medium size. Most important thing at this stage is to get enough height variation over surface but not over do it. Sketch04 and SketchGummy matcaps will help with that, when you look at brick at angle, look how the dark gradient propagate along surface.
3. I create couple of brick variations as separate tools.
4. Then Create new document, resize it to your target resolution. Add grid using Texture > Image Plane > Load Image. After that Layer > Create New.
On new layer place your bricks. It's important to not to go into edit mode. Use only 2.5D drawing at this point.
5. After my placing of bricks is finished, I go back to first layer (the one with grid), use Standard Brush to paint MRGB (pick diffrent one than your bricks). Paint layer (without using Depth!). Then switch to AlphaBrush, disable MRGB and use Zadd, Zsub, to add depth. This will serve as mortar for bricks. It's important to spend some time on that stage, otherwise normal map will look like crap and will have to much depth.
6. Now switch again to standard brush and use different matcaps to render different textures. I like Outline, Gradient, Framer 01, 02, SketchShaded 02, 04.
7. I usually use gradient only with grayscale textures. Remember to zero out everything in shader 1 expect for Z and offset.
8. In Photoshop I just throw bunch of photos and mask them out using the textures i rendered out of zbrush (and some overlays, especially from matcaps).
9. You can of course try to paint using only colors, without photos, but I found using photos more convenient, faster and easier.
Regardless, since I was able to read your question before editing I will answer how I start, since I was complete noob unable to make most basic textures from scratch and now I can at least understand the process.
1. I crated base brick box, subdivided it and exported to zbrush.
2. In zbrush I just randomly sculpt edges (TrimDynamic brush with alpha). Or don't do it. Depends how sharp the brick has to be. Then I use stndard brush to drag alphas randomly over brick. After that use again TrimDynamic brush with alpha to trim details I created with standard brush. I repeat it couple of times until I'm happy. Important part I have discovered at this stage, was to not to try to plan anything ahead or try to precise, deliberate with sculpt. Just toss randomly different stuff and see how it look.
Another thing is not to try sculpt to many micro details. First of all normal map won't be able to catch them (depends on your target resolution). They will look blurry, or just bad. Try to keep details at medium size. Most important thing at this stage is to get enough height variation over surface but not over do it. Sketch04 and SketchGummy matcaps will help with that, when you look at brick at angle, look how the dark gradient propagate along surface.
3. I create couple of brick variations as separate tools.
4. Then Create new document, resize it to your target resolution. Add grid using Texture > Image Plane > Load Image. After that Layer > Create New.
On new layer place your bricks. It's important to not to go into edit mode. Use only 2.5D drawing at this point.
5. After my placing of bricks is finished, I go back to first layer (the one with grid), use Standard Brush to paint MRGB (pick diffrent one than your bricks). Paint layer (without using Depth!). Then switch to AlphaBrush, disable MRGB and use Zadd, Zsub, to add depth. This will serve as mortar for bricks. It's important to spend some time on that stage, otherwise normal map will look like crap and will have to much depth.
6. Now switch again to standard brush and use different matcaps to render different textures. I like Outline, Gradient, Framer 01, 02, SketchShaded 02, 04.
7. I usually use gradient only with grayscale textures. Remember to zero out everything in shader 1 expect for Z and offset.
8. In Photoshop I just throw bunch of photos and mask them out using the textures i rendered out of zbrush (and some overlays, especially from matcaps).
9. You can of course try to paint using only colors, without photos, but I found using photos more convenient, faster and easier.
Amazing and thank you ! Keep this up incase anyone else is interested!
This is my first time posting in the forums. I followed along last month, and learned a lot while working on that noob challenge, but I guess I was just too embarrassed to post along. I decided that I would this time and hopefully it'll help me improve.
I've blocked out the main scene for the most part and done some uving, texture, and shader work. It is still all attached in a less ruined version of the shrine. My next step will be cutting up the pieces and making it look more broken down with rubble.
I built the scene modularly in 3ds Max, but I've exported it into UDK as a single object. I've usually in the past exported in pieces and then built it again in engine, but this method seemed easier and faster for this project. Is it wrong to export it in as a single object when my polycount is so low on the shrine? The shrine altogether is only about 2000 tris (though once I start breaking it up and adding rubble it will probably be a bit higher). The statue and the sarcophagus will be separate objects.
Blockout Geometry:
Flat Color Only (show the vertex painting a little more clearly. I could probably tweak and tone down some of the painted texture):
Lighting Only (show the normals a bit more clearly):
UDK Viewport Realtime Final (I haven't done the shadowmaps for baking lighting yet):
Another Angle:
I feel like my square stone and my cracked stone floor textures could improve quite a bit. I tried to do them really quickly drawing them and using xnormal and/or crazybump, but the sloppiness shows.
@Shiv - I really like your work so far. I feel like I should increase the geometry of my scene. I wonder if it is too late for that, hah.
@iniside - I like how the lighting in your scene is coming along. I imagine you are planning to add some light rays filtering in catching dust in the air. I think it'd go a long way.
I'll probably do more critiques as I get more comfortable posting here, heh.
Heres an update gonna be home working on some stuff tomorrow so ill have another update tomorrow. Some pieces looking really nice and thanks for everyones compliments on my texture work
Update. All of the looping modular stuff is done, up next are the unique breakups for the general structure, then I'm going to move on to hero pieces like the stairs, coffin and statue.
@shauws - I do like your texture work but the gaps between the stones, especially on the floor need to have something other than just black. Currently it makes them stand out as being incredibly deep (unless you mean it to read like this)
@www - I like your approach on the arches, makes a change from the smoothed undersides most have done. My main point on yours would be to look at the join between the pillar and the base it sits on top. It could use some ao or dirt to help show they aren't all part of the same bit of stone.
For the statue you could use something like: Make human
You would still have to do a bit of rigging to get a good pose, but it could give you a good base to work from.
On the other hand, if you have trouble with characters, this is a good moment to practice it and get over your fears of making characters yourself. That's what this challange is all about.
I did voted for this concept art too... hehe Joining now as I got free now.
Did a tilable rock texture and modular pieces.
WIP#1:
(worked hrs:~20 hrs)
Did a basic lighting in UDK to get the feel.
I feel everything is abit flat with no normal map(though its there :P)(happens everytime)
Anyways, that for tonight, C&C always welcomed
Couple of wips for along the way. I'm just getting to grips with maya ( total maya noob ) , but I have the whole process from maya - zbrush - bakes - cryengine down now, and that's half the battle.
(still in marmo )
Quickly put the tiles into the world, something somewhere broke so going to have to sort that out (yay shiney tiles!) andd... the ones round the side are horrible stretched and nasty, no way I am letter that stay! :c
Will spend tommorow after work cleaning those bad boys up.
Dave Jr - the columns were done with boxes in zbrush that i pushed around and trim dynamic smacked and hard polished, thats it ;x. The texture is just the bakes with some layer adjustments thrown over the top.
Harford - Those are looking really crumbly, and it feels a bit more like sponge than rock at the moment, maybe it has too much noise allover?
Thanks man. You're right they look a little ' spongey ' but I hope that goes away when I texture them with stoney textures.
Here's another shot. Hope it's okay to show lots of assets in progress as I'll be working my way through the unique ones while putting the scene together.
Heres the front part, I messed up and got some stones the wrong way round, so fixing that tomorrow so it's more worn where people would have walked up it.
Will spend tommorow after work cleaning those bad boys up.
Yeah I´m having the same problem. Maybe I will create tilable unique geometry like harford does. Seems to be the better approach for this element.
And also a small update of my scene. Only AO and Normalmaps, I need to figure out how to UV map the upper ring efficiantly without having distortion or visible seams.
I dont want to use too much unique textures. Currently there are 3 tilable texture sets and one unique still with space for the middle part.
Time to post my progress, its my first polycount challenge, and the first time im sculpting anything resembling stone, which didnt really end up looking like stone.
Current progress on sculpting out the pillars... I'm still pretty new at working with ZBrush and kinda find the program unreasonably frustrating (it's like they've taken all the lessons of usability and UI design everyone else has learnt and then wandered off in the other direction... this when I'm not wasting five minutes trying to banish the damn Lightbox window or having to restart because saving the project magically made my pen pressure sensitivity disappear...) but it's the industry standard so... sigh.
Blocked out the large stone forms with the Clay brush, scouring out the crevices some more with Slash and then used the flatten tool to roughen things up. Those four bits at the top are stones for the caps whilst I'll be instancing / flipping / faffing around with in 3ds Max to make the final highpoly.
Its been a little bit longer since my last update than I would prefer. I just keep putting off posting my work because I don't really like where it is, but I guess that is the whole point of posting here.
Thanks L3xicon Higuy for the feedback.
Update on my textures. I added color variation to the bricks, but I'm still working on reducing the noise. I also still need to darken the trim, it stands out a bit much when on the meshes.
I made a whole new floor texture and I like this one much better, although the moss needs work, and the whole texture is a bit to green.
and here is my updated mesh in the Cryengine (no lighting or anything, just thrown in a night scene)
I also started working with vertex blending in the Cryengine. I'm very familiar with it in UDK, but I'm new to the Cryengine so its something I had to learn all over again.
@ Setes:
It looks like you have a good start, but I think your main problem with the stone is that there is a lot of noise. Maybe if you hit it with a trim or scrape brush to smooth some parts out it might look a little more stone-like. Also, your entry arch (the one with the keystone) looks like it would fall down, maybe spread the curve of the arch more evenly so the top isn't so flat.
@ harford:
Your stones look awesome, they do look a bit spongy as Shiv said, but I'm almost positive the texture will fix that.
Its been awhile since I used zbrush, I'll use this challenge to reacquaint myself with the program
My first update is the base pillar sculpt, feel like I spent to much time on it for what it is.
McFearson - Nice work man . You have some great textures in there. Especially like the slate type bricks at the top of the columns. The floor tile is pretty cool too, I like the moss growing in the gaps.
Hey McFeason, can you explain to me how you went about creating the floor texture? I planned on making something similar but I'm not sure how I should go about it making sure it tiles perfectly. (mainly before sculpting process, if that is what you did)
Slander: That's look great man. Keep at it! The only thing that looks a bit off is the green moss so far, but I'm sure thats just wip (should be darker imo, a bit more grungier as well)
I tried a bunch of different things to get the floor texture, but what ended up working out the best was the method L3XICON pointed out. I used wrap mode on my brushes in zbrush and just sketched the cracks on a plane using the clay brush to get the basic shapes then used the clay brush to build up the stones and make the cracks deeper and smoothed it all out with a light pass with hPolish.
alecchalmers posted this helpful video that walks you through the process, just make sure your mesh is aligned to the unified space. Mine wasn't and I didn't notice until I was almost done which made getting the tillable part of the texture quite a task.
If you just have Mudbox you can sculpt the cracks just in the center of a plane, export the displacement map, offset it in photoshop, then use the offset displacement map to sculpt a new plane and finish filling in the cracks. (I was going to use this one at first, but I had problems with mudbox recognizing brush strokes with the smaller brushes)
Thanks for that Video . It's a good method. I've tried that a few times and it works well for some type of tiling textures. I find if you do the methods on zclassroom well for tiling textures then you can fix any small problems in photoshop after and it's quite easy.
Here is my pillar base. Right hand side is with marmoset tesselation which I hope to add in cryengine, or at least some POM
Still in marmo heh ... need to try and figure out why cry install hasnt been working.
Re made the bordering tiles, followed Harfords way of working and it made better results for me (Thanks! )
Next is probably the base of the columns and re-aligning all the values as they have warped a bit, probably just darkening them down.
Still lots to do .. like breaking the columns, and the arches... the chest, statue blarg :x
Harford - Those new rocks are looking a lot better, less finnicky cracks through it, tis nice
Update from myside, base looked okay.. But not very happy with it yet...
Next: Make a moss texture and make a Shader to mesh paint it on the ruin pillars.
Replies
Nice Pillar Sculpt!
Did you just dynamesh and sculpt into the mesh or did you create bricklike subtools?
Some progress. I got the main brick texture done. I need to break up the stone arch, and I gave the character's basemesh a go.
Still in marmo heh, still not happy with the column. Just going to keep tweaking it as more of the rest of it gets built
Havent done much to it, stupid ills. Latest cryengine also just crashes on startup and the tesselation seems to be unable to do the cracks and such, it kind of cant be arsed and just smooths over it
The pom is alright but needs a lot of tweaking.
My cryengine so old
DesktopPirate: Unf, your stairs are wiiiiiidddddeeeeeee tho!
Hannah: Cool colours!
ChaosWWW: The rocks on the columns currently look stuck on and wrapped around it. It's causing some strange pinching a long the edges. I guess like chewing gum with curled edges.
Higuy: You seem to have a lot of noise in your texture thats covering over everything else, it might be worth reducing a fair amount. You also seem to be lacking contrast, just throwing a levels over the top of the diffuse/colour/albedo and getting that a bit tighter should help.
(cave model is placeholder for now)
Still have a lot of work to do, gotta touch up all of the materials, gotta make a couple more props, and then to begin working on all the moss and the cave
E: another pic
Another thing, the arches UVW's got totally trashed somehow during the sculpting process, I was thinking about throwing the tiling stone texture on them (the one that is closest to the screen), It looks fine with out parallax occlusion mapping, but I feel like it doesn't blend well without it.
L3XICON
Thank You for the good words, man! And thank you for your improvement-suggestions and your tool-tipps! I'll give it a try when I next work on it.
And for your work: I like the style you put up! your scene is damn fine and clean! No noise and nothing to kill it... Just great! Thats where I have a lot of concerns: That it will all fall apart because elements dont match together...
desktoppirate
You too! Thank you for the good spirit and I'll also give your improvement-tipps some space as I refine my work in the upcoming days.
Dave Jr
Thank you!
For my "workflow": I didn't use dynamesh at all so far. I always fall back on using Subdivision-Levels and Layers only...
It's just sculpted. Have a look at the pic of my low-poly-pillar above the sculpt. Thats what I did: I made these sections which should define the single stone-rows. I made them subtools, isolated them in "solo" mode and cut in the stone pattern with "damStandard" brush and others.
....Think I'll use dynamesh for the next steps. Detail and stuff.
One word to Shuaws:
I think you've gone a good way with your tiling stone texture so far. You did a good job improving it after serveral feedback-posts you got.
I think your texture pattern works just fine for now The only thing I'd mention:
If you return to work on that texture again at any time, get rid of that L-shaped stone right there in the centre! Its such a strange form for a stone and in my eyes kills the whole thing
Last one for now: Higuy!
No problem! I'm glad this little feedback seemed to help.
Your pillar is not bad and I see you already baked normals... Still, if you find some time to refine it, my tipp:
Show us, that your pillar is made up from seperate stones. Their shapes are fine. all you have to do is cut a little deeper to strengthen the gabs between them. Dont go nuts on it! Just pick some locations for a start and define the gaps. (especially at corners, where 3 to 4 different stones touch)
Now Ill have to catch up with you all since I feel like lazy-guy here ;D
Good work everyone!
I did a small test with a pillar. Next step would be to create the other tilable textures. Currently its 1024x1024 but I think for the normalmap and displacement map I can decrease the resolution to 512
With the sculpted highpoly stones I will create some unique stones to break the silouette.
Nice work so far guys, those pillars are looking great shiv
I have been putting off posting here for far too long. But better late than never. So here's my progress:
I have decided to model everything uniquely this time around. I did use somewhat of a modular approach to this though. I started off with a cylinder of 12 sides and deleted all but one side. Then I used the symetry modifier to make 11 copies and work on them at the same time. Then when everything was done I just collapsed the stack and adjusted the result.
Textures are places holders at the moment. It is mostly just one 1024x1024 texture for the entire thing. Just a few tiling textures packed into one. No normal maps at the moment. Eventually, in UDK, I will use some extra tiling textures and vertex painting to break up the tiling
The statue is somewhat completed aswell:
It has a 1024 texture of it's own since it is a rather important center piece.
Some people are doing a sculpt for every piece here, but I think it is better to just use a bunch of tiling textures and not unwrap everthing uniquely. I think it saves time and resources. And you can get a lot of the uniqueness through vertex paiting.
Nice work and blockout. The statue looks pretty good overall but quite low res at this stage. The cuts could use some love so they look a bit more like pieces of stone.
I agree about saving time by creating more tiling textures, but I guess it depends on what results you are going for.
Just blocked out the base textures for path, wall and floor textures, but a lot more work needs doing so any crit would be cool
Still in marmoset at the moment but I'll bring it into UDK soon and get some vert painting to break up the noise, which currently is a massive issue. I'm really hoping the vegetation and lighting will also break up all the really similar colours and noisy textures.
grumble grumble marmo.
I really should break those columns apart heh.
To bed!
Why.
You can also save out layers of your scene assets and just import it if your .cry is corrupted.
@shiv Looking good so far! I'm questioning how you are taking the screenshots / what compression you are using, though, because in your most recent post there is a lot of weird artifacts which detract from your excellent art. Looks like you are using JPEGS, I'd recommend using a higher compression rate or upgrading to pngs. Also right now the pillars look too obviously repeated. A very easy way to fix that would be to rotate each pillar randomly a bit so you don't see the same details on every side. Overall very good though.
Hey man, I don't know if you've fixed this or not, but this usually happens when your layer is hidden when you use Zapplink. Make sure all the layers you want to link are visible in the layers palette.
I usually have the autoback option enabled, it's been awhile since I worked with CE, should have paid attention. Oh well, gives me the chance to improve my scene's terrain I guess.
Mine. Haven't been posting anything for a while, because I've been learning how to make textures inside zbrush. Finally after browsing rocks thread, I got some grasp on it, and while those texture are still crap, I'm proud of them, they are best sculpted textures I have made so far
I will upload textures alone later.
As for statue. It's going to be robed wizard with staff and some fancy spell effects. That girl from concept art is just to dull, to be here.
@desktoppirate
Love your textures, but I think that the main platform is bit to small.
@Shiv
Nice columns, but stairs look to uniform right now. Maybe try using bigger bricks (twice the current size), with more height varation ?
@SanderDL
Statue can easily go to 2k texture. Or better yet 2k normal map, 1k color map and clever blending in shader of tileable color map on top of it, to add more varation. Epic did this for rocks in their jungle map. You can check it out.
2k texture? I thought I was going pretty high with 1k haha. But I'll try 2k since I'm probably going to redo the sculpt on the statue anyway.
@Shiv, How did you do those amazing columns!
EXPLAIN!
Will try and get some updates later tonight as I've been working on my base diffuse texture.
Also, is everyone building the statue from scratch? I hate character models and this is the one part I'm not looking forward to doing
@rockguy those texture spheres are looking good though the one for the base looks a little bland and odd as it has no moss on it.
@inside the texture work looks very good on the arch and pillars. The base texture seems to be lacking a little compared to these others. It feels a little flat so have a look at the normal and spec on it.
@desktoppirate, I love that hand drawn texture style you have going on there! Much like what I am aiming for only better
A little update from my pillar. Tomorrow I start with the other tilable textures. The lower and upper part of the pillar will share one texture sheet with the stairs.
Currently the texture is baked at a really low resolution compared to my tilable stone texture, so its a bit blurry. I also need to break up the visible patterns, without making it to obvious.
found my answer on the polycount wiki!
Regardless, since I was able to read your question before editing I will answer how I start, since I was complete noob unable to make most basic textures from scratch and now I can at least understand the process.
1. I crated base brick box, subdivided it and exported to zbrush.
2. In zbrush I just randomly sculpt edges (TrimDynamic brush with alpha). Or don't do it. Depends how sharp the brick has to be. Then I use stndard brush to drag alphas randomly over brick. After that use again TrimDynamic brush with alpha to trim details I created with standard brush. I repeat it couple of times until I'm happy. Important part I have discovered at this stage, was to not to try to plan anything ahead or try to precise, deliberate with sculpt. Just toss randomly different stuff and see how it look.
Another thing is not to try sculpt to many micro details. First of all normal map won't be able to catch them (depends on your target resolution). They will look blurry, or just bad. Try to keep details at medium size. Most important thing at this stage is to get enough height variation over surface but not over do it. Sketch04 and SketchGummy matcaps will help with that, when you look at brick at angle, look how the dark gradient propagate along surface.
3. I create couple of brick variations as separate tools.
4. Then Create new document, resize it to your target resolution. Add grid using Texture > Image Plane > Load Image. After that Layer > Create New.
On new layer place your bricks. It's important to not to go into edit mode. Use only 2.5D drawing at this point.
5. After my placing of bricks is finished, I go back to first layer (the one with grid), use Standard Brush to paint MRGB (pick diffrent one than your bricks). Paint layer (without using Depth!). Then switch to AlphaBrush, disable MRGB and use Zadd, Zsub, to add depth. This will serve as mortar for bricks. It's important to spend some time on that stage, otherwise normal map will look like crap and will have to much depth.
6. Now switch again to standard brush and use different matcaps to render different textures. I like Outline, Gradient, Framer 01, 02, SketchShaded 02, 04.
7. I usually use gradient only with grayscale textures. Remember to zero out everything in shader 1 expect for Z and offset.
8. In Photoshop I just throw bunch of photos and mask them out using the textures i rendered out of zbrush (and some overlays, especially from matcaps).
9. You can of course try to paint using only colors, without photos, but I found using photos more convenient, faster and easier.
Amazing and thank you
I've blocked out the main scene for the most part and done some uving, texture, and shader work. It is still all attached in a less ruined version of the shrine. My next step will be cutting up the pieces and making it look more broken down with rubble.
I built the scene modularly in 3ds Max, but I've exported it into UDK as a single object. I've usually in the past exported in pieces and then built it again in engine, but this method seemed easier and faster for this project. Is it wrong to export it in as a single object when my polycount is so low on the shrine? The shrine altogether is only about 2000 tris (though once I start breaking it up and adding rubble it will probably be a bit higher). The statue and the sarcophagus will be separate objects.
Blockout Geometry:
Flat Color Only (show the vertex painting a little more clearly. I could probably tweak and tone down some of the painted texture):
Lighting Only (show the normals a bit more clearly):
UDK Viewport Realtime Final (I haven't done the shadowmaps for baking lighting yet):
Another Angle:
I feel like my square stone and my cracked stone floor textures could improve quite a bit. I tried to do them really quickly drawing them and using xnormal and/or crazybump, but the sloppiness shows.
@Shiv - I really like your work so far. I feel like I should increase the geometry of my scene. I wonder if it is too late for that, hah.
@iniside - I like how the lighting in your scene is coming along. I imagine you are planning to add some light rays filtering in catching dust in the air. I think it'd go a long way.
I'll probably do more critiques as I get more comfortable posting here, heh.
@www - I like your approach on the arches, makes a change from the smoothed undersides most have done. My main point on yours would be to look at the join between the pillar and the base it sits on top. It could use some ao or dirt to help show they aren't all part of the same bit of stone.
For the statue you could use something like: Make human
You would still have to do a bit of rigging to get a good pose, but it could give you a good base to work from.
On the other hand, if you have trouble with characters, this is a good moment to practice it and get over your fears of making characters yourself. That's what this challange is all about.
Did a tilable rock texture and modular pieces.
WIP#1:
(worked hrs:~20 hrs)
Did a basic lighting in UDK to get the feel.
I feel everything is abit flat with no normal map(though its there :P)(happens everytime)
Anyways, that for tonight, C&C always welcomed
(still in marmo
Quickly put the tiles into the world, something somewhere broke so going to have to sort that out (yay shiney tiles!) andd... the ones round the side are horrible stretched and nasty, no way I am letter that stay! :c
Will spend tommorow after work cleaning those bad boys up.
Dave Jr - the columns were done with boxes in zbrush that i pushed around and trim dynamic smacked and hard polished, thats it ;x. The texture is just the bakes with some layer adjustments thrown over the top.
Harford - Those are looking really crumbly, and it feels a bit more like sponge than rock at the moment, maybe it has too much noise allover?
Here's another shot. Hope it's okay to show lots of assets in progress as I'll be working my way through the unique ones while putting the scene together.
Heres the front part, I messed up and got some stones the wrong way round, so fixing that tomorrow so it's more worn where people would have walked up it.
And also a small update of my scene. Only AO and Normalmaps, I need to figure out how to UV map the upper ring efficiantly without having distortion or visible seams.
I dont want to use too much unique textures. Currently there are 3 tilable texture sets and one unique still with space for the middle part.
Current progress on sculpting out the pillars... I'm still pretty new at working with ZBrush and kinda find the program unreasonably frustrating (it's like they've taken all the lessons of usability and UI design everyone else has learnt and then wandered off in the other direction... this when I'm not wasting five minutes trying to banish the damn Lightbox window or having to restart because saving the project magically made my pen pressure sensitivity disappear...) but it's the industry standard so... sigh.
Blocked out the large stone forms with the Clay brush, scouring out the crevices some more with Slash and then used the flatten tool to roughen things up. Those four bits at the top are stones for the caps whilst I'll be instancing / flipping / faffing around with in 3ds Max to make the final highpoly.
Thanks L3xicon Higuy for the feedback.
Update on my textures. I added color variation to the bricks, but I'm still working on reducing the noise. I also still need to darken the trim, it stands out a bit much when on the meshes.
I made a whole new floor texture and I like this one much better, although the moss needs work, and the whole texture is a bit to green.
and here is my updated mesh in the Cryengine (no lighting or anything, just thrown in a night scene)
I also started working with vertex blending in the Cryengine. I'm very familiar with it in UDK, but I'm new to the Cryengine so its something I had to learn all over again.
@ Setes:
It looks like you have a good start, but I think your main problem with the stone is that there is a lot of noise. Maybe if you hit it with a trim or scrape brush to smooth some parts out it might look a little more stone-like. Also, your entry arch (the one with the keystone) looks like it would fall down, maybe spread the curve of the arch more evenly so the top isn't so flat.
@ harford:
Your stones look awesome, they do look a bit spongy as Shiv said, but I'm almost positive the texture will fix that.
My first update is the base pillar sculpt, feel like I spent to much time on it for what it is.
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/sketchbooks/7794-stefan-morrell-environments-x-y-z-2.html#post70488
It's pretty old, that post, but it could be a usefull method to get a base for your sculpt.
EDIT:
Testing some assets in UDK, still lots of stuff to do/fix but it is getting there.
Slander: That's look great man. Keep at it! The only thing that looks a bit off is the green moss so far, but I'm sure thats just wip (should be darker imo, a bit more grungier as well)
I tried a bunch of different things to get the floor texture, but what ended up working out the best was the method L3XICON pointed out. I used wrap mode on my brushes in zbrush and just sketched the cracks on a plane using the clay brush to get the basic shapes then used the clay brush to build up the stones and make the cracks deeper and smoothed it all out with a light pass with hPolish.
alecchalmers posted this helpful video that walks you through the process, just make sure your mesh is aligned to the unified space. Mine wasn't and I didn't notice until I was almost done which made getting the tillable part of the texture quite a task.
[ame="
If you just have Mudbox you can sculpt the cracks just in the center of a plane, export the displacement map, offset it in photoshop, then use the offset displacement map to sculpt a new plane and finish filling in the cracks. (I was going to use this one at first, but I had problems with mudbox recognizing brush strokes with the smaller brushes)
This tutorial from the wiki goes into more detail about this process.
http://saschahenrichs.blogspot.com/2009/11/here-another-tutorial-concerning.html
Here is my pillar base. Right hand side is with marmoset tesselation which I hope to add in cryengine, or at least some POM
Still in marmo heh
Re made the bordering tiles, followed Harfords way of working and it made better results for me (Thanks!
Next is probably the base of the columns and re-aligning all the values as they have warped a bit, probably just darkening them down.
Still lots to do
Harford - Those new rocks are looking a lot better, less finnicky cracks through it, tis nice
Everyone going good.
Next: Make a moss texture and make a Shader to mesh paint it on the ruin pillars.