@cmtanko - I think it's looking good so far, your stairs however are quite different to that shown in the concept art and could maybe be refined a little bit.
Some really nice progress coming along from everyone here. Just a quick question. I've finally got some time to sit down and carry on with this challenge and want to start creating some tiling textures. I've watched a few videos, particularly the ones from the guy who did this one [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e04k4Cz8UBo"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e04k4Cz8UBo[/ame] but am just a bit unsure how to proceed as I haven't attempted this before.
So how have some of you gone about creating your tiling textures. As I understand for the stone bricks in particular should I be sculpting a few variations of the brick and then place them together in Zbrush and make them tile ready for baking? Has anyone got any good reference they have used for the process?
Tesselation is off on this shot...still in marmo HA :c
Re-aligned the textures some then desaturated the hell out of it in marmo so... more texture adjusting to do at some point heh :c
Currently sculpting the tomb in the center but it's bed time so that will have to wait!
Cmtanko - A long with the stairs comment I would probably use the texture created for the base of your columns on the top wider bit just under the arches as these angular (god this concept has so much change) pieces are in the concept.
Its is probably also worth trying to get some more contrast into the floor and cracks. (Not too much like i probably have) So that it doesnt read as a big grey single piece of slate, but rather lots of broken up bits for the floor.
lol Harford, I think you went into the wrong thread This is the noob challenge!!
Raul, that is already looking really really good! Your stone tiles are superb Especially your stones are very sexy!
How do you go about sculpting tilable stuff? I have never found something that quite works the way I want it to.
Finally managin to update the scene a bit... I haven't been doing so well on the health side lately and didn't get much time to work on it.
Today i cut some time to remake the brick texture and add a bit more (floor, rock walls), also made some adjustments to the environment surrounding the shrine and i think I'm happy with how it's proceding
I'm currently working on the altar/grave thing in the middle and the statue, and will hopefully show something decent in the next days.
EDIT: Also I seriously need to remake that moss texture and get a better looking blending : /
Anyway, I see people kickin asses in here!
Harford - Top notch stuff so far, my only crit would be... we need to see more of it!
Shiv - Are you keeping it in marmoset till the end? Anyway I'd tone down the displacement on the pillars a bit as they look a bit too exagerated and somewhat lumpy...but it might just be my preference
McFearson - Textures are looking nice on flats but in 3d they come off a little too noisy imho. It might be less noticeable with proper lighting tho
Shuaws - I'm liking those textures but maybe you've got too much AO on them? I usually don't like seeing that much black in mines and actually i'm currently not using any AO or baked in lighting and loving how they feel in engine
EDIT: Also I seriously need to remake that moss texture and get a better looking blending : /
That would have been my only crit (except for the obvious stretching on the arch above the entrance, but I am sure you will get to that)
Very good progress!
Hey guys, sorry for disappearing, I know you weren't worried
Finally got my lazy ass get out of Deus Ex and working on this thing.
OMG PROPORTIONS
So I kinda took the image instead and drew humans and human size ratios on all the things since the scale for me is important to get right.
Turns out this is a way smaller scene than the concept made it look like, so that was helpful. As for a blockout, well every time I made one, I never looked at it again, so I will just go with my gut this time.
Working in blender as always...
Aaaand since for some reason my PC stopped being able to handle more than 200k Zbrush polys, I am forced to do this the old school way and go mess with CG Textures.
I did my best damn it, if there are any texture artists, I could really use a tip or two on how to make these blend better with eachother, the 3rd one, right to left, is where I plan to make the floor tiles, tomorrow, as well as make normal maps and a sort of 'before-after' shot...
I really want to get the architecture done as fast as possible so that I can focus on that cutie of a stone statue until the end of the month...
@Mischievous - The blockout looks good, proportions all seem to be right. You've got a lot to do in a short space of time so all the best.
@Fnitrox - I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the texturing work. My advice is to finish everything to the level you have done so far and then go back and rework things. (Something I'm trying to force myself into doing this time also)
I haven't spent much time on this recently, I watched blizzcon and well my time has disappeared with a new sub to wow again (oh the shame) and afew days off to enjoy other hobbies. Spent yesterday finishing off the base texture and made a start on the pillar. I'm trying to follow my own advice and get it all done to this level and then go back IF I have time otherwise I wont finish anything again. The textures are not my strong point so progress is slow and painful. I keep thinking I should of gone back and added some more detail into the mesh but will have to see if I have time to fiddle around with them afterwards. (Lighting needs to be looked at as does some sort of surrounding enviro - more work!)
Hi TazN, Good idea getting the whole thing blocked out early. It's a good plan to make sure you get 'something' done. I must say that after watching blizzcon I reactivated my wow sub too !. Just had to get my guys ready for WoD.
Mischievous - The blockout looks good, but your textures look a little dry and very flat. Are you going with a physically based texturing approach ? because I think they could use some small amount of baked lighting and depth. Plus some color and texture variation. They also look very bright for the darker stone.
I made some headway with my rocks and rock textures. I livestreamed most of this on twitch. Had a lot of fun making these guys and the single rock assets will be dotted around the scene too.
The tileable texture will be used on the columns and around the base of the plinth ? and in a few other places.
Hi TazN, Good idea getting the whole thing blocked out early. It's a good plan to make sure you get 'something' done. I must say that after watching blizzcon I reactivated my wow sub too !. Just had to get my guys ready for WoD.
Mischievous - The blockout looks good, but your textures look a little dry and very flat. Are you going with a physically based texturing approach ? because I think they could use some small amount of baked lighting and depth. Plus some color and texture variation. They also look very bright for the darker stone.
I made some headway with my rocks and rock textures. I livestreamed most of this on twitch. Had a lot of fun making these guys and the single rock assets will be dotted around the scene too.
The tileable texture will be used on the columns and around the base of the plinth ? and in a few other places.
Onto the upper arches now.
Wow amazing hartford; Are you baking them down to a plane or merely retop/ applying a bend modifer? Looks really good
Fnitrox - Thanks, I agree about the blobby, but that doesnt have any displacement on it in that shot Will re-make the columns at the end if I have time and try and make them a bit more regimental.
I want to get it into cry, but it just crashes on start so :c
might end up in udk, which i am pretty comfy in but wanted to learn CRY!
Your greenery looks a bit solid at the moment, the mossy stuff in the concept is still partly transparent and sits in the cracks, I dont know if you have any kind of heightmap to control the falloff but it might be worth looking into.
Raul - those are beautiful tiling textures, and the mood is looking really solid already, looking forward to more
Got started on the Tomb in the middle, my ability to keep styles consistent throughout seems lacking, probably something worth working on heh.
Fnitrox - That lighting is looking fantastic, I considered picking up cryengine3 when I saw your initial blockout. Not sure if the learning curve will leave me time to do anything else.
Mischievous - Going old school is not a bad thing. Those textures are looking a bit bleached thou a bit of a grunge overlay would help getting some of that dark tone in the concept.
Shiv - That center tomb piece really seems to pop, you did a good job with the sculpt.
Slowly getting sculpts done. Made one of the smaller arches using the multi mesh tool. Its been mostly a learning a experience.
Finalised the tomb/altar thing in the middle even tho i'm not 100% happy with its texture...i think i'll be revisiting it later.
Remade the moss texture after gathering some more accurate reference and i'm now quite pleased
I fixed some of the stretching in the front and the rest will be covered by additional meshes.
- Shiv: I do have heightmaps...even tho i can't get the blendmap,which should be the one to control the blending, to actually control the blending.
I think I'm doing something wrong since when i plug in one the blending just disappear... : /
Hope i'll eventualy figure it out, but i'll take time since the doc on the blendlayer is also outated.
- Sailblade: Thanks! If you decide to take it to CE3 and have any doubts feel free to ask! I'm not the most expert on the subject but i did quite a lot of digging and solved quite a bit of issue over time. And after all this challenge is allb about learning
Now I really need to get done with the platform trim and then statue... after it'll be retouching and implementing crytiques and changes people might suggest (hint hint)
Spoon - i try to think about what i need to do first, then try moving on to making basic patterns that tile. Meaning i duplicate subtools a lot and arrange them around to make a pattern. I then drop the tool into 2.5 and tile it. Pick up the alpha, project that alpha into a plane and use a insert brush to fill in the gaps. all the details come at the end.
So here is an update from the last two nights. got a chance to sculpts the pillars, arches. when i sculpt, i try not to put too much noise. focus only on the big shapes. so will be adding cracks and noise through photoshop.
I kinda fell behind because of obligatory Uni presentations and stuff. I haven't had a chance to look through the thread in a while but from skimming it over everyone's look great!
Here's a quick snapshot of where I'm up to, starting to move the pieces over to UDK. Some of the normals are kind of messed up because I had to rush a lot of them for the aforementioned presentations (luckily no one noticed).
I'm still having an issue with the normals looking quite flat in UDK, but I'm not sure if that's just because the diffuse textures are quite dominant.
But yeah, today's work is starting the altar and baking out the stairs which I finished sculpting last night.
Man, Hannah, I like your approach! Its so weirdly colorful and bright, but not in a bad way. And its a good deal of unique compared with the things most of the rest of us deliver!!
Its colorful but still easy on the eyes I think. No noise and stuff. I really like it. Cant see which normals are bad on the quick look anyways, can you?!
Neat Job!
A lot of nice things by the rest of u guys, too!
I'm a bit stuck at the moment... I have some technical issues I have to solve, some Workflow-Issues I have to solve also... Aaand:.... Adobe messed up my PS language swap, so I dont have a working version right now and cant do textures! Suxxxx...
Update will come soon anyways.
Cheers guys and gals!
I will need to rebake this one piece in the middle. It conists of 4 tilable and one unique segment but xNormal rendered the Normalmap wrong. Maybe there was something wrong with my export settings. The hard edges in Softimage were not written into the FBX file, I need to check this tomorrow.
I need to redo those large blocks, they currently have no depth compared to the other elements of my scene.
Hey guys, i have the block out for the middle stone altar. I have the base in zbrush and started with the scull, im not sure what to put around it, not a big fan of those wings from the concept but i might just do that, also what do you guys think of the base of the altar? does it look ok? i still need to sculpt the rest of it just wanted to know about the general look. I added only one corner piece because im gonna mirror it later.
Thanks for all the comments and crits for my texture work. Theres some nice work so far this month keep going!!
I started working on my sculpture:
YEs it is completly diffrent than the one on concept, but at this point I will try to mix some sci-fi elements into scene.
The statue will have staff and sword along with some magic effect.
@Hannah - Cool style. Just watch out how you define how things collide. The way the arches hit the top of the pillars doesn't seem logical and and the base of the floor on the bottom looks like it's sticking out a bit from the stone path.
@.Wiki - Like you're harder stones a lot but the stones on the pillar and on the base (same texture) seem a bit too soft to me. Adding some harder details like cracks or sharp edges on the stone would go a long way I think.
@Shauws - I'm questioning the detail on the skull a bit. I know it's not supposed to look like a real skull but a lot of the lines seem a bit random. Maybe it's just the softness of sculpt, which looks more like clay than something like stone or metal.
@inside - Your statue is looking badass, even if it's not true to the concept. Liking the sculpted cloth folds so far, can't wait to see it finished.
@chaoswww yah I'm gonna refine it more I did that in about 15-20 min just before I had to leave for work so its definitely not done yet so I'll post another update when I think I'm done with it
@.Wiki - Like you're harder stones a lot but the stones on the pillar and on the base (same texture) seem a bit too soft to me. Adding some harder details like cracks or sharp edges on the stone would go a long way I think.
Yeah thanks for the critique
I will put those stones into Zbrush again and refine them a bit more to make them a little bit harder in some areas. The problem is I cant make those scratches and dents too obvious because I will reuse these maps for the upper part of the set.
Looking for some crits on this let me know what you guys think
I think the frame on the older model you posted looked better as it was a lot sharper. So in my opinion you should either just sculpt the frame sharper as it looks very undefined and muddy right now or you could make it a rusted metal frame around the rock base otherwise. If you were to make a metal frame you could get in some more interesting color variation and it would probably read better from a distance.
Good Shauws , but a little soft and mudy in places. I'd suggest hardening up some of the forms and looking into images of stone tombs or medieval kings tombs for reference.
A couple of images from tonights livestream. Been quite busy with work so not so much time on this but trying to get at least one texture or asset done per night. Next images will be the full scene in current form.
Hey guys, posting a bit late but I did want to jump in this month's challenge.
@Harford- Drool..your textures are incredible. I'll have to catch you on your livestream sometime to learn a thing or 2..billion.
@Fnitrox- Like the lighting in your scene, and the new moss texture looks a lot better than your old one.
@iniside- I like the change in the statue design. Almost reminds me of Star Wars Jedi/Sith style haha. Don't mean that as a bad thing, and it'll prob look a lot different once you get your sword and staff in anyway haha.
Here's my stuff so far, trying to take a stab at it in UDK. There's a lot for me to learn here in terms of materials and lighting so I'm still working through it. Still have work to do and fixing obvious texture seams as well. I went the tiling approach to create my textures.
Xerafel - There seems to be something wierd with the normal maps towards the top of the caves you have at the moment, and the full bright leaves on the left are pretty distracting. The atmosphere and ground is looking really nice tho
Shauws - Same as everyone else has said, i would also suggest maybe avoiding using a general noise over the entire mesh (as it seems) as it doesnt help with everything softening off.
Finally threw the scene into engine, spent a decent chunk of the day trying to get the latest cryengine working but no luck ... so this is 3.4.5 cryengine.
Also put it in udk as I was frustrated with cry but it doesnt look quite as good in there (tesselation works properly tho!! *shakes fist*)
Tomb normals need re-baking as they are a bit flaky. I want to start getting some of the nice greenery in there soon... and the surrounding rocks/broken column. Should probably make that statue at some point heh.
Finally threw the scene into engine, spent a decent chunk of the day trying to get the latest cryengine working but no luck ... so this is 3.4.5 cryengine.
What issues are you having? Let me know or post it on CryDev, we might be able to help you there.
@Shiv - Yeah you're right, I haven't been able to figure that out yet. The only opening in the cave is from the top, yet I dunno how the light is hitting that area.
I imported the basic mid-poly statue to see how it works.
Texture on that platform is to be changed, I was trying to figure out some easy and fast way to sculpt it. Mission successful
@Xerafel Thanks. Yes I was actually inspired by this guy: http://www.dailydesigninspiration.com/diverse/3d/shaunabsher/Sith-Inquisitor.jpg
Although my robes are completely different, more similar in sews to Assassin's Creed ones.
Weapons are well, Eldar of course. These are going to be real weapons, made from steel or sth, but definitely not stone.
You should look into normals on your mesh. Because now everything look to smooth. I guess everything is under single smoothing group, or whatever it is called in software you are using.
Also the moss on stone in back look noisy. Idk, if that because of screenshot or texture.
As for you lighting issues, try to use VisArea, to cut any outside lighting. You can afte that add portal to allow some sun light trough hole on top.
Managed to get some more progress done...still need to add vegetation, finish sculpting the statue, stairs and final fixes to lighting and some mistakes and shittiness all around
Also I've decided on additional shots for my final submission. While I still can't get my head around the blend masking for the CE3 BlendLayer : / guess i'll give up on that for now... If anyone has some info about making it work i'm all ears.
On a side note I've been looking at the PSD file I use for the screenshots and it's funny and pleasing to see how the scene evolved from its initial blockout
- nbac: GoGo! Try to get done as much as you can and you'll still look back at it with pride!
- iniside: I'm liking your take but the lighting seems a bit randomly thrown in : / you've got a light bluish main light with torches around it and the rest of the room is filled with those purlish spot which are kind of distracting.
I'd take off the purple, have the torches/flames be the main source of light (and shadows) and just have a light colder fill light in the room... would make it a bit more balanced and separate planes better.
- Xerafel: Thanks for the comment . For your lighting issue does your cave mesh have thickness? I've noticed (at least in CE3) that having meshes with no thickness tends to mess up direct lights as faces with their normals opposite to the light source actually let the light pass through... Now i don't know if it's the same in UDK but it might be worth a shot.
- Shiv: Nice progress! Nice to see you took it to an engine. Also as Brygelsmack which issues did you run into with CE3?
ps: I always thought your stones looked a bit shiny and belived it was only in marmoset... now i know that it's the light tones in the diffuse making them look like that xD
need to get some sleep now...tomorrow I'm sculpting boobies!
Falling behind on my own stuff. Here is a sculpt of the floor. Made it tileable, figuring out the offset for this was a pain. Don't understand why zbrush doesn't have configurable units.
Fnitrox - That scene is really looking beautiful. Your meshes seem to have a really round bulbous look, I mean this could be because that structure has been weathered down in that cave. But I almost want to add some floating brick pieces inserted here and there to break up that rounded silhouette,personal preference thou.
nbac - I really liked the tiling piece you did for the pillar, did it not work out? This new one is is nice thou.
@Fnitrox: omg I can't believe I overlooked that. It worked, so thank you so much! I don't have to say about your scene other than it looks great. Originally I thought the moss was looking too bright and saturated, but now that you have the rest of the textures in, it isn't as overpowering anymore.
Hi guys, hopefully I'll have all the textures blocked out and at a basic level tomorrow which means my next task will be doing the surrounding cave area. How have people tackled it? Unique mesh or udk's terrain editor?
I have 28/29th off work so those will be my final days to get this finished and I'm going to make sure it is finished, even if it's to a lower standard than I hoped. Time just seems to run out so quickly after that initial first week so think next time I'll need to try and speed up my texturing work.
Good luck on the final push to finish this months challenge off!
Falling behind on my own stuff. Here is a sculpt of the floor. Made it tileable, figuring out the offset for this was a pain. Don't understand why zbrush doesn't have configurable units.
Looking good so far, you could exaggerate those insets a bit more so you have more control about the depth in the end
As long as your rocks are not too highpoly you could tile it in your normal modeling programm. I´m using softimage to create my basic tilable rocks. Then I import them into zbrush. Afterwars I tile them in Softimage, with the grid snap. I used this method for my 2 tilable rock textures.
So, heres my current progress. Tomorrow I need to bake the altar and create the upper rings for the pillars
Currently its still inside marmoset Toolbag. Maybe I export it into Unreal or Cryengine in the end when there is time left.
Don't understand why zbrush doesn't have configurable units.
Well i had in mind for some times to make a tutorial or explaination on how Zbrush coordinates works... this made me do it
Here you go, hope it helps anyone
Edit: on a side note I almost misspelled my own name in there so sorry if there's any typos I didn't notice ...my fingers are cold today
- Saiblade: The weathered and kind of smoothed down look is something i was going for, but now that you mention it I might have exaggerated it a bit. It has something to do with both my sculpting and the inflation from the tesselletion... I'll get aroun to fix it or reduce it, thanks
- Xerafel: Nice, glad I could help ... I'm actually extremely proud of the new moss texture and infact in those images it doesn't even show really well... I was actually thinking about an additional shot in which to show it better xD
Hey, people! I finally have a post again. should have done earlier... but nevermind...
here's what I got so far:
still have a lot of problems.
- got to find out why my FBX-exporter wouldn't export smoothing groups...
- got to find out how texture painting works...
still got some ugly places in there which I will partially ignore. Because if I dont, I wont get through all the workflow-stuff I want to try out.
some of the new assets:
foliage is very noisy atm. It turns to green blobs on the distance. Will have to ease it up a bit if I have the time...
Yeah, I too wish, this ZBrush workflow knowledge from the tutorial would have been known to me. xD Could have saved loads of hard battles.
Your foliage looks good, but its too bright. Maybe its just the specular atm, but I would darken up those strands and use only a specular map to create some highlights. You could also get away only with a diffuse map when you paint a subtile highlight into the map, but it should only be barely visible.
How are the normals of your foliage model? For grass its betther to make them facing upwards, so the shading is consistent from every angle. Currently it looks like if they are facing in different directions.
thanks for the Feedback! And Yeah, good thinking! Totally forgot to put the normals upward. Theyre averaged atm. Will fix that. Padding is 8 pixel ugly padding.will do that again too. There's this handy trick in the 3Dmotive tutorial on UDK foliage. Will have to look up how he did it with this automated process in PS.
For the color... I actually wanted to have a very light and bright green, so this was intentional... But okay. Maybe I did too much. I'll try out different things.
Replies
So how have some of you gone about creating your tiling textures. As I understand for the stone bricks in particular should I be sculpting a few variations of the brick and then place them together in Zbrush and make them tile ready for baking? Has anyone got any good reference they have used for the process?
Thanks
---
Never mind, just found this video series
http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/environments-with-tate-mosesian/
Tesselation is off on this shot...still in marmo HA :c
Re-aligned the textures some then desaturated the hell out of it in marmo so... more texture adjusting to do at some point heh :c
Currently sculpting the tomb in the center but it's bed time so that will have to wait!
Cmtanko - A long with the stairs comment I would probably use the texture created for the base of your columns on the top wider bit just under the arches as these angular (god this concept has so much change) pieces are in the concept.
Its is probably also worth trying to get some more contrast into the floor and cracks. (Not too much like i probably have) So that it doesnt read as a big grey single piece of slate, but rather lots of broken up bits for the floor.
my asset breakdown, already inside of udk.
some quick tiling sculpts for the brick and the tiled floors.
Raul, that is already looking really really good! Your stone tiles are superb
How do you go about sculpting tilable stuff? I have never found something that quite works the way I want it to.
My hard-drives gone on my laptop
Ordering a HD shortly and will work on bits with my spare time at work..:'(
Today i cut some time to remake the brick texture and add a bit more (floor, rock walls), also made some adjustments to the environment surrounding the shrine and i think I'm happy with how it's proceding
I'm currently working on the altar/grave thing in the middle and the statue, and will hopefully show something decent in the next days.
EDIT: Also I seriously need to remake that moss texture and get a better looking blending : /
Anyway, I see people kickin asses in here!
Harford - Top notch stuff so far, my only crit would be... we need to see more of it!
Shiv - Are you keeping it in marmoset till the end? Anyway I'd tone down the displacement on the pillars a bit as they look a bit too exagerated and somewhat lumpy...but it might just be my preference
McFearson - Textures are looking nice on flats but in 3d they come off a little too noisy imho. It might be less noticeable with proper lighting tho
Shuaws - I'm liking those textures but maybe you've got too much AO on them? I usually don't like seeing that much black in mines and actually i'm currently not using any AO or baked in lighting and loving how they feel in engine
Very good progress!
Finally got my lazy ass get out of Deus Ex and working on this thing.
OMG PROPORTIONS
So I kinda took the image instead and drew humans and human size ratios on all the things since the scale for me is important to get right.
Turns out this is a way smaller scene than the concept made it look like, so that was helpful. As for a blockout, well every time I made one, I never looked at it again, so I will just go with my gut this time.
Working in blender as always...
Aaaand since for some reason my PC stopped being able to handle more than 200k Zbrush polys, I am forced to do this the old school way and go mess with CG Textures.
I did my best damn it, if there are any texture artists, I could really use a tip or two on how to make these blend better with eachother, the 3rd one, right to left, is where I plan to make the floor tiles, tomorrow, as well as make normal maps and a sort of 'before-after' shot...
I really want to get the architecture done as fast as possible so that I can focus on that cutie of a stone statue until the end of the month...
@Fnitrox - I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the texturing work. My advice is to finish everything to the level you have done so far and then go back and rework things. (Something I'm trying to force myself into doing this time also)
I haven't spent much time on this recently, I watched blizzcon and well my time has disappeared with a new sub to wow again (oh the shame) and afew days off to enjoy other hobbies. Spent yesterday finishing off the base texture and made a start on the pillar. I'm trying to follow my own advice and get it all done to this level and then go back IF I have time otherwise I wont finish anything again. The textures are not my strong point so progress is slow and painful. I keep thinking I should of gone back and added some more detail into the mesh but will have to see if I have time to fiddle around with them afterwards. (Lighting needs to be looked at as does some sort of surrounding enviro - more work!)
Mischievous - The blockout looks good, but your textures look a little dry and very flat. Are you going with a physically based texturing approach ? because I think they could use some small amount of baked lighting and depth. Plus some color and texture variation. They also look very bright for the darker stone.
I made some headway with my rocks and rock textures. I livestreamed most of this on twitch. Had a lot of fun making these guys and the single rock assets will be dotted around the scene too.
The tileable texture will be used on the columns and around the base of the plinth ? and in a few other places.
Onto the upper arches now.
Wow amazing hartford; Are you baking them down to a plane or merely retop/ applying a bend modifer? Looks really good
I want to get it into cry, but it just crashes on start so :c
might end up in udk, which i am pretty comfy in but wanted to learn CRY!
Your greenery looks a bit solid at the moment, the mossy stuff in the concept is still partly transparent and sits in the cracks, I dont know if you have any kind of heightmap to control the falloff but it might be worth looking into.
Raul - those are beautiful tiling textures, and the mood is looking really solid already, looking forward to more
Got started on the Tomb in the middle, my ability to keep styles consistent throughout seems lacking, probably something worth working on heh.
Tazn- nice blockout,
Mischievous - Going old school is not a bad thing. Those textures are looking a bit bleached thou a bit of a grunge overlay would help getting some of that dark tone in the concept.
Shiv - That center tomb piece really seems to pop, you did a good job with the sculpt.
Slowly getting sculpts done. Made one of the smaller arches using the multi mesh tool. Its been mostly a learning a experience.
Finalised the tomb/altar thing in the middle even tho i'm not 100% happy with its texture...i think i'll be revisiting it later.
Remade the moss texture after gathering some more accurate reference and i'm now quite pleased
I fixed some of the stretching in the front and the rest will be covered by additional meshes.
- Shiv: I do have heightmaps...even tho i can't get the blendmap,which should be the one to control the blending, to actually control the blending.
I think I'm doing something wrong since when i plug in one the blending just disappear... : /
Hope i'll eventualy figure it out, but i'll take time since the doc on the blendlayer is also outated.
- Sailblade: Thanks! If you decide to take it to CE3 and have any doubts feel free to ask! I'm not the most expert on the subject but i did quite a lot of digging and solved quite a bit of issue over time. And after all this challenge is allb about learning
Now I really need to get done with the platform trim and then statue... after it'll be retouching and implementing crytiques and changes people might suggest (hint hint)
Spoon - i try to think about what i need to do first, then try moving on to making basic patterns that tile. Meaning i duplicate subtools a lot and arrange them around to make a pattern. I then drop the tool into 2.5 and tile it. Pick up the alpha, project that alpha into a plane and use a insert brush to fill in the gaps. all the details come at the end.
So here is an update from the last two nights. got a chance to sculpts the pillars, arches. when i sculpt, i try not to put too much noise. focus only on the big shapes. so will be adding cracks and noise through photoshop.
Here's a quick snapshot of where I'm up to, starting to move the pieces over to UDK. Some of the normals are kind of messed up because I had to rush a lot of them for the aforementioned presentations (luckily no one noticed).
I'm still having an issue with the normals looking quite flat in UDK, but I'm not sure if that's just because the diffuse textures are quite dominant.
But yeah, today's work is starting the altar and baking out the stairs which I finished sculpting last night.
Man, Hannah, I like your approach! Its so weirdly colorful and bright, but not in a bad way. And its a good deal of unique compared with the things most of the rest of us deliver!!
Its colorful but still easy on the eyes I think. No noise and stuff. I really like it. Cant see which normals are bad on the quick look anyways, can you?!
Neat Job!
A lot of nice things by the rest of u guys, too!
I'm a bit stuck at the moment... I have some technical issues I have to solve, some Workflow-Issues I have to solve also... Aaand:.... Adobe messed up my PS language swap, so I dont have a working version right now and cant do textures! Suxxxx...
Update will come soon anyways.
Cheers guys and gals!
I will need to rebake this one piece in the middle. It conists of 4 tilable and one unique segment but xNormal rendered the Normalmap wrong. Maybe there was something wrong with my export settings. The hard edges in Softimage were not written into the FBX file, I need to check this tomorrow.
I need to redo those large blocks, they currently have no depth compared to the other elements of my scene.
Thanks for all the comments and crits for my texture work. Theres some nice work so far this month keep going!!
YEs it is completly diffrent than the one on concept, but at this point I will try to mix some sci-fi elements into scene.
The statue will have staff and sword along with some magic effect.
@Hannah - Cool style. Just watch out how you define how things collide. The way the arches hit the top of the pillars doesn't seem logical and and the base of the floor on the bottom looks like it's sticking out a bit from the stone path.
@.Wiki - Like you're harder stones a lot but the stones on the pillar and on the base (same texture) seem a bit too soft to me. Adding some harder details like cracks or sharp edges on the stone would go a long way I think.
@Shauws - I'm questioning the detail on the skull a bit. I know it's not supposed to look like a real skull but a lot of the lines seem a bit random. Maybe it's just the softness of sculpt, which looks more like clay than something like stone or metal.
@inside - Your statue is looking badass, even if it's not true to the concept. Liking the sculpted cloth folds so far, can't wait to see it finished.
I will put those stones into Zbrush again and refine them a bit more to make them a little bit harder in some areas. The problem is I cant make those scratches and dents too obvious because I will reuse these maps for the upper part of the set.
@ Shuaws
The skull reminds me of the punisher
A couple of images from tonights livestream. Been quite busy with work so not so much time on this but trying to get at least one texture or asset done per night. Next images will be the full scene in current form.
@Harford- Drool..your textures are incredible. I'll have to catch you on your livestream sometime to learn a thing or 2..billion.
@Fnitrox- Like the lighting in your scene, and the new moss texture looks a lot better than your old one.
@iniside- I like the change in the statue design. Almost reminds me of Star Wars Jedi/Sith style haha. Don't mean that as a bad thing, and it'll prob look a lot different once you get your sword and staff in anyway haha.
Here's my stuff so far, trying to take a stab at it in UDK. There's a lot for me to learn here in terms of materials and lighting so I'm still working through it. Still have work to do and fixing obvious texture seams as well. I went the tiling approach to create my textures.
Shauws - Same as everyone else has said, i would also suggest maybe avoiding using a general noise over the entire mesh (as it seems) as it doesnt help with everything softening off.
Finally threw the scene into engine, spent a decent chunk of the day trying to get the latest cryengine working but no luck
Also put it in udk as I was frustrated with cry but it doesnt look quite as good in there (tesselation works properly tho!! *shakes fist*)
Tomb normals need re-baking as they are a bit flaky. I want to start getting some of the nice greenery in there soon... and the surrounding rocks/broken column. Should probably make that statue at some point heh.
Your stuff is looking real good btw
I imported the basic mid-poly statue to see how it works.
Texture on that platform is to be changed, I was trying to figure out some easy and fast way to sculpt it. Mission successful
@Xerafel Thanks. Yes I was actually inspired by this guy: http://www.dailydesigninspiration.com/diverse/3d/shaunabsher/Sith-Inquisitor.jpg
Although my robes are completely different, more similar in sews to Assassin's Creed ones.
Weapons are well, Eldar of course. These are going to be real weapons, made from steel or sth, but definitely not stone.
You should look into normals on your mesh. Because now everything look to smooth. I guess everything is under single smoothing group, or whatever it is called in software you are using.
Also the moss on stone in back look noisy. Idk, if that because of screenshot or texture.
As for you lighting issues, try to use VisArea, to cut any outside lighting. You can afte that add portal to allow some sun light trough hole on top.
@ChaosWWW thanks. Also nice work so far!
@Harford Cool texture. Got me working on my own very sharp stone texture. But that just to see if I can do it. And done it
i have reworked my pillar.
really good stuff in here - so far behind
Also I've decided on additional shots for my final submission. While I still can't get my head around the blend masking for the CE3 BlendLayer : / guess i'll give up on that for now... If anyone has some info about making it work i'm all ears.
HighRes Shot: Link
HighRes Shot: Link
HighRes Shot: Link
On a side note I've been looking at the PSD file I use for the screenshots and it's funny and pleasing to see how the scene evolved from its initial blockout
- nbac: GoGo! Try to get done as much as you can and you'll still look back at it with pride!
- iniside: I'm liking your take but the lighting seems a bit randomly thrown in : / you've got a light bluish main light with torches around it and the rest of the room is filled with those purlish spot which are kind of distracting.
I'd take off the purple, have the torches/flames be the main source of light (and shadows) and just have a light colder fill light in the room... would make it a bit more balanced and separate planes better.
- Xerafel: Thanks for the comment
- Shiv: Nice progress! Nice to see you took it to an engine. Also as Brygelsmack which issues did you run into with CE3?
ps: I always thought your stones looked a bit shiny and belived it was only in marmoset... now i know that it's the light tones in the diffuse making them look like that xD
need to get some sleep now...tomorrow I'm sculpting boobies!
Fnitrox - That scene is really looking beautiful. Your meshes seem to have a really round bulbous look, I mean this could be because that structure has been weathered down in that cave. But I almost want to add some floating brick pieces inserted here and there to break up that rounded silhouette,personal preference thou.
nbac - I really liked the tiling piece you did for the pillar, did it not work out? This new one is is nice thou.
I have 28/29th off work so those will be my final days to get this finished and I'm going to make sure it is finished, even if it's to a lower standard than I hoped. Time just seems to run out so quickly after that initial first week so think next time I'll need to try and speed up my texturing work.
Good luck on the final push to finish this months challenge off!
As long as your rocks are not too highpoly you could tile it in your normal modeling programm. I´m using softimage to create my basic tilable rocks. Then I import them into zbrush. Afterwars I tile them in Softimage, with the grid snap. I used this method for my 2 tilable rock textures.
So, heres my current progress. Tomorrow I need to bake the altar and create the upper rings for the pillars
Currently its still inside marmoset Toolbag. Maybe I export it into Unreal or Cryengine in the end when there is time left.
Well i had in mind for some times to make a tutorial or explaination on how Zbrush coordinates works... this made me do it
Here you go, hope it helps anyone
Edit: on a side note I almost misspelled my own name in there so sorry if there's any typos I didn't notice
- Saiblade: The weathered and kind of smoothed down look is something i was going for, but now that you mention it I might have exaggerated it a bit. It has something to do with both my sculpting and the inflation from the tesselletion... I'll get aroun to fix it or reduce it, thanks
- Xerafel: Nice, glad I could help
here's what I got so far:
still have a lot of problems.
- got to find out why my FBX-exporter wouldn't export smoothing groups...
- got to find out how texture painting works...
still got some ugly places in there which I will partially ignore. Because if I dont, I wont get through all the workflow-stuff I want to try out.
some of the new assets:
foliage is very noisy atm. It turns to green blobs on the distance. Will have to ease it up a bit if I have the time...
Yeah, I too wish, this ZBrush workflow knowledge from the tutorial would have been known to me. xD Could have saved loads of hard battles.
Anyone got honest critique? Fire away plz!
Cheers!
Mr. Dillon
Your foliage looks good, but its too bright. Maybe its just the specular atm, but I would darken up those strands and use only a specular map to create some highlights. You could also get away only with a diffuse map when you paint a subtile highlight into the map, but it should only be barely visible.
How are the normals of your foliage model? For grass its betther to make them facing upwards, so the shading is consistent from every angle. Currently it looks like if they are facing in different directions.
How is your padding for the foliage textures?
cheers
thanks for the Feedback! And Yeah, good thinking! Totally forgot to put the normals upward. Theyre averaged atm. Will fix that. Padding is 8 pixel ugly padding.will do that again too. There's this handy trick in the 3Dmotive tutorial on UDK foliage. Will have to look up how he did it with this automated process in PS.
For the color... I actually wanted to have a very light and bright green, so this was intentional... But okay. Maybe I did too much. I'll try out different things.
Thanks man!
Cheers!
Got an extra day of work tomorrow and decided on mesh for the cave so I'm going to try to get that done by this time tomorrow...
Thanks for the feedback given a couple weeks ago and good luck.