@Iniside - I really like that ivy, it adds a really nice contrast to the worn stone work. I think your grass tufts need work on their placement, they don't look like they've got anywhere they could be growing from - especially the one on top of the altar. Try moving them more to the edges and joints in stone where dirt would naturally collect.
@Rockguy - Welcome back I think your scene is lacking contrast (much like my own) everything seems to be a similar colour which doesn't draw attention to areas and makes it look a tad flat and lifeless.
Managed to hit my target today - to finish a base texture on everything and get the cave built and textured as well. I even had 5 mins to play around with lighting but I'm not happy with it at all yet. Currently it's all too blue with not enough contrast but I'm hopeful the grass/moss/ivy might help change that as I was going to go for a more staurated green/yellow look to them.
Okay, sorry for any late replies, I've been working on trying to get the scene to a more presentable state. I doubt I'll get it finished for the end of the challenge, but I'm going to carry on working on it afterwards for my portfolio.
@Sir_Dillon - Thanks for your kind words! I tried to tie it in with my honours project which is why it's so colourful. I'm glad it's not too noisy as it was one of the main concerns I had.
@Chaos_WWW - Thanks for pointing those out! Like I said, it was pretty mashed together for the presentations I had so there's a lot I overlooked. Hopefully I've fixed them better in my progress (it's hard to tell now, I've been looking at the scene for so long.
@Iniside - I really like the torches you've added. They contribute a nice source of warmth to the scene. The ivy is looking great too, though to my eyes it looks a little out of place next to the grass (or vice versa) due to the difference in saturation levels.
@rockguy- There's some really nice rock textures going on, but it's kind of hard to distinguish them - especially the borders between the stairs and the cave floor. Cave rocks sometimes have streaks of orange and other colours in them due to mineral deposits, so it might be worth having a look at some photos to see what kind of colours you could add to pull out some of the detail.
Well, I finished the altar and did a quick plant test. I plan to mix broader leaves with grassy patches to add some variation. I'm finding it kind of hard to match the plants with the style of the rock though, because of the dark lines.
I tried to make the altar more of a blue colour to direct the eye (it's opposite on the colour wheel) - when it was the same colour as the rest of the stone it didn't really stand out. Hopefully when I fix the lighting I'll be able to direct the eye a bit more, as I'm worried the contrast is a bit jarring.
My first pass at the altar, had to fix the normals a bit:
Plant number 1!
I've also put in a test texture for the cave floor. I was kind of stuck what type of floor to do that a) would fit the style and b) not be OTT. I kinda fell with these large, triangular shapes. What do you guys think?
Also, here's an overview of the scene from above, hopefully with the collision issues fixed a bit.
Hannah : Cool take on the concept I wonder how will you make the cave, maybe is nothing or is WIP but the center piece is just grey, compared to the rest of the structure, wich seems odd but it could be just me.
TazN : Its going good , In future update, some torches could help with the contrast,if you are worried about the colro play with the midtones highlights in postprocess.
iniside : Cool piece , really good ambience , but like the rest said, you could tweak the vegetation a bit.
you have a really consistent color sheme. But I guess your altar pops out a bit too much with this grey color, some slight yellowish tones would make it fit a bit better
@ rockguy
Your plants are looking nice, the shading looks cool and they dont pop out so much I would adjust the shape of the cave a bit, currently the light comes in as a perfect square. This gives it a slight unnatural look. Your pillars also could use some more polys to make them not so blocky
My current progress. I wont make it till the end of this month but I will finish it either way. Still inside of marmoset. Maybe i will create the whole lightning here and not move into Unreal, Cryengine or Unity.
There are still some tiling issues at the upper ring, I will hide/fix them with some random placed rocks and some foliage (still needs to be created ). Ahhh and i need to break the geometry of the upper ring at some points.
After that i will create some kind of diorama (not a full cave, just some stone blocks and mud on the floor). But even if its only a diorama I want to catch the look of the concept image and will try to mimic the lightning.
Edit: Ahhh and I need to adjust the diffusemap of my small rocks, they will be used for hiding the seams, currently they just pop out because of their greenish grass overlay.
Finally managed to finish my scene and textures, not really looking like I'll win but at least I learned something making this. I hope I can help someone learn something too as I'll also be linking to the .upk and .udk files under the screens.
inside. not sure whether I like your idea with the bright gleaming object in the middle because it catches the eye so hard and all the rest gets nearly invisible thereby... but its till in progress, I guess? All the "rest" as I just called it is actually very fine work too.
My work of today:
I sculpted the sarcophagus
and I completed this plinth or what you would call it... Its actually a bunch of geometry with textures reused. they stretch quite painfully in places... but time is running short.
Okay and anyone care to tell, how he/she got the rock texture for the cave? 'cause I just don't get anything sculpted in this time that tiles... And I'd appreciate a hint how to do it quick and dirty.
Rework of the plants is postponed.
Technical issues as texture-paint and smoothing groups also.
anyone care to screenshot their FBX-exporter window of MAYA, so I finally understand why it doesn't export smoothing groups??
I'll post crits tomorrow - been working on this too much today and my eyes are all blurry... where I'm at. So much more to do and only tomorrow for me to finish it so statue is out need to focus on altar and then plants and lighting.
Sir_Dillon : Dont know if it helps but for the rocks at least in my case its just a bunch of lowpoly kinda square but not much, rock shape with a strong normal map, I set up the shadow with a decent lightmap resolution and scattered in the room/cave randmonly.
You can always check the map the fooliage map in the showcase folder of UDK to see the asset setup.
I created some quick foliage for my scene. With just some subdivided and stretched cubes in Softimage. I created a normalmap for the grass but it creates too much contrast so i dont use it.
Because there is not so much time left i just created some damaged feet for the statue.
Next step would be the ground for my diorama and then the final light setup inside of marmoset. Because of work and my studies I dont have enough time to put it inside an engine.
Edit:
Small update, need to create a texture for the floor which currently uses the same like the altar floor.
Edit2:
I guess these are my final images for this month. I will optimize this scene next week but for this challenge I´m done. I´m not very happy with the lightning yet.
I just worked out how the Vertex paint works and I tried it. And guess what... Yeaahhp, now its so ugly that I don't even want to post it (yet). Guess you have to put some feel into the vertex-paint. xD And also now with a tiling moss texture painted on my objects you can see where all this tiling is not happening because of UV-maps ^^
maaaaan.. quite amused by my green-vomit-temple... =D
rockguy. Thanks for the tip! I'll see if it will help me. didn't get to try it yet...
.Wiki. xDD Haven't thought much of what I am going to do with my statue. But eyy... what a cheap way out ;D
...nice presentation though!
worked hard.... got almost nothing out of it. still feels good somehow! looking forward to the result posts!
Hey wait! My left hemisphere got poked by the right one and came up with a
Q u e s t i o n !!
looking at all your stuff I realize: compared to your scenes, mine always looks flat. There's not much highlight and shadow stuff happening. The structure and texture of my assets are too flat...
Now I wonder: Is that because of my normal maps?? Because actually I think they are not too flat, so they should give more lighting contrast for the materials.
So what kind of lights are you all using? maybe my lights are wrong or too weak or I don't know!?
@Hannah: Really love the toon style, didn't except anyone to try it, let alone make it so lovely, can't wait for the final result.
@.Wiki: Love the way you made the rock surroundings, they look really so good I can't believe they're lowpoly.
@rockguy: Absolutely love way the cave looks, the foliage really gives some color, can't wait for the final lighting to see how it looks.
@Sir_Dillion: Did you try adding a blend map made out of a cloud texture on the Lerp node? They really help with the blending, especially if you multiply it with a constant to control the sharpness. Check out the master shader I made with my map if you'd like to see how I made my vertex shaders.
@Sir_Dillion: Now that you mention it, your scene is too flat! It's probably the normal maps. You can increase the normal map depth in a simple way by opening it in Photoshop(or GIMP), and duplicating it on top of itself multiple times, while making all duplicates into an Overlay blend, increase duplication to increase depth.
@.Wiki: Love the way you made the rock surroundings, they look really so good I can't believe they're lowpoly.
I created 3 rocks in Softimage, they are duplicated randomly. I can post some wires tomorrow. I guess each rock has 100 polys so they are not really lowpoly. I created them really easily in 1hr or so because I wanted to finish it somehow.
I just scultped 3 cubes in Zbrush, imported these at their lowest sub D into Softimage and shrink wrapped some uv mapped tesselated cubes on them.
@Sir Dillon - Can you post an update? I haven't really got decent normal maps in mine to the point they could probably be removed and you wouldn't notice. It's all about making things pop, contrast is great to help achieve it.
I'm just about done, couldn't figure exponential height fog so had to go with a panner tex'd plane with clouds looks ok though. Foliage was very quick and cheap tricks as I didn't have time to do anything too detailed. When I come back to polish it up I will play around with post and some effects. If I get time tomorrow I will just adjust the lighting to help kill some of those shadows.
Be sure to check in the option box when exporting to UDK that the flip green channel option is checked as well as the texture compression is TC_normal map
As for lighting be sure to have a post process volume to adjust the highlight and mid tones and dominant directional light for realistic sunlight and some no shadow point lights for ambiance.
mmrashad : Thanks for the comment
.Wiki : Is looking really good , and yeah those low poly rocks are spot on but I will say that the dark edges between the bricks in the diffuse is way to big and affects the structure
Here's my finished scene. Still more I would have liked to have done with it but overall still a good learning experience, especially with learning UDK. Ran out of time with the statue though so the tomb will just have to be the focus. Also wanted to thank everyone for the cc, and I tried to do my best to fix some of them, and I know there are some issues remaining.
Some comments and critiques:
TazN- Your scene looks good, but I think some color variations on the bricks would help break things up a little bit. I used vertex painting with mine in UDK to blend the moss in, but I'm sure you can do it in cryEngine3 or anything else you're using.
.Wiki- Really liking your textures and the rocks you made on the bottom of the scene. I also think you could use more color and moss variations in your bricks though.
mmrashad- I love the strong sun lighting in your scene. For everything else, I think your texture quality resolution seems a little low so it appears blurry/muddy in some areas, especially the lower section of the cave walls.
Ok guys, time to wrap it up for me!
Finally completed the statue after 2 days of killing myself on it, and even tho my anatomy was pretty rusty it still came off somewhat decent (i think)... then I did some foliage experiments and they are not the best foliage out there but still good enough.
I do consider these shots my final shots for the challenge but if you have any crits i'll be sure to write them down and will eventually come back to implement them at a later time
There are some things I wish I had done better, and some things I wanted to get in but didn't... overall I must say I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I really learnt a lot this time
@Xerafel: Thanks for the critique, and you're absolutely right, I'll fix it now. As for the statue, you can use mine if you want, download my UPK package above and use it if you feel it fits your scene.
@Fnitrox: Daaayuum, That looks pretty damn good! I really love the way it looks, especially because you chose to make a sort of dark/macabre scene which really works out nice for it.
Thanks everyone for cirts. I changed or rather added more vegetations to scene .
Overall it was very good learning experience, as I finally learned how to make tileable textures inside zbrush. Next step will be baking mat caps from unique objects .
mmrashad
Hey! Well, I know of blend masks and their purpose and yeah, its a good Idea. However I haven't used them in UDK so far. I'm sure I'd get it done, but I wont do it now. I'll spend the last hours on other stuff.
And thx for your opinion on my normal maps. I'll give it a shot strengthening them!
rockguy
Yap, I meant the normal maps. I'm quite sure they have all TC_normalmap on. I'll doublecheck.
Thank you for your lighting advice! Hope I get it all updated in the last hours.
TazN
heres a screen from my scene. I'm under the impression, normal maps could be ignored here... it is as if theres only AO in the texture and thats it... =/
heres texture samples of the pillars and the arches as used.
Xerafel : The scene looks good but you seem to have a bit of a problem with the contrast, some areas looks really nice like the floor but in the ceiling of the cave looks way to bright for a dark place
EDIT :that issue with contrast seems to be in different renders
Fnitrox : Cryengine ? nice , Where you going for a watery cave it does looks like that , I really like it , ammm for critiques some of the textures in the rocks have problems , in the second render you can see the diffuse too stretched.
iniside : Thats a really good lighting but the moss does seems to look more like slime for some reason.
Sir_Dillon : Is looking better , something I forgot to type is that you need to be sure that the LOD group in the normal is WorldNormalMap.
Glad I could get a lot out of it in the last hours. Thanks to all of you who gave good advice!
wrap-up:
- vegetation is not polished
- Cave is quick and dirty
- Statue is a dummy
- Vertex painting is just lerp blending, no blending mask... and its not polished.
- didn't understand the full use and potential of the post process volume in UDK. So this is also not polished.
But YAY! here is what I managed tu build =D :
Again: thanks guys for every good advice!! Normal maps are better now. strengthened them and adjusted UDK-settings. Light looks better that way. Awesome! I'm happy
Fnitrox. architecture has really bad-ass material!
...I'm so done. glad I made it.
Cheers!
Sir_Dillon
And this is far as I can go, I end up rushing a lot of details in the structure due to time limitations and also because I wanted to focus more in my lighting issue but enough of excuses. As always this month was fun thanks for the feed back and good luck.
Rockguy- looks awesome, how did you achieve the strong lighting and soft rays? I'm still struggling with lighting in udk and curious about your light setup and settings.
Xerafel : thanks for the comments , I have a domiant directional light with a somewhat high indirect lighting and point lights with no shadows with an orange and blue colors for ambience , a height fog with a reddish tone and and post process volume with adjusted highlights and midtones.
Hope that helps.
Edit: for the soft rays falling from the cave is just a mesh with a material simulating volume light .
Didnt get as much done as i would have liked these past few days so... not all the things are in the place, I want to do at least the bricks on the top of the arches and some of the vines maybe, not so bothered about the statue.
Heavy fog is heavy
Rockguy - Nice result, it's a bit of a shame that the arches appear to be concrete rather than rock blocks tho, removes some of the majesty for me.
Also that light is really sharp.
Post Mortem: Overall I really enjoyed the challenge, I will probably do it again at some point in the future. In terms of my personal goals, I'm very happy with how everything turned out. One of my initial goals was to just have a finished environment done, so I'm happy that I did actually finish it . My other goal was to get more comfortable with zbrush for texturing and just in general experimenting with using that tool almost exclusively for hand-created textures, and I think that aspect worked out very well. In general I'm just happy to be able to use zbrush more. I tried different techniques for almost every texture, some of which worked better than others, and some of which were more time consuming than others. Either way, I learned a lot of applicable techniques for later work. Also, enjoyed the challenge of trying to make a good looking scene in Unity, an engine that gets a bad rep for not being so great on the graphical side.
Most of the negative points regarding this project have to do with time. Some of the things that could have been better with more time were the statues, some textures that were a bit lazy and the lack of some detail that I wanted. I would really have liked to make the statue look better then it does and include the vines in the concept, but I'm pretty happy I managed to get it in there at all, despite it needing some improvements. Three of the textures on the outside cave area were not done in zbrush and I think they would have looked better if they had been. Some other detail I would have liked were more grass variation, vines hanging from the bricks and singular bricks on the ground to show decay. These time problems mostly came due to the time of year I decided to do one of these challenges. Finals for college were (and still are) pressing down on me pretty hard, making working on this more stressful then it should have been. I sort of had to push college work aside for this toward the end, and I'm thinking I might regret that in the coming two weeks. Overall next time I'm going to chose a better month when things aren't so hectic
Good work overall everyone, the challenge was a lot of fun. Looking forward to doing another one!
Okay tried to do some minor adjusting with the lighting before deadline, so this will probably be the final shots I post. Thanks again to everyone who helped. Everyone's work was really inspiring and motivating to keep me pushing.
I wasn't sure what time zone the Challenge went by. It is 11pm my time, so I'm just going to hope I didn't spend too long at the last minute getting presentable shots to post up!
Post Mortem:
I am new to doing full scenes like this. I think I should have put more time into the foliage, improved the stone floor texture, and put more geometry into the platform, pillars, and arches. The pillars and arches could use some variation in the texture as well, besides just the moss.
I made a custom shader for vertex blending the moss into most of the textures, but I think it could use some improvements. It is just a lerp blending without much of a blending mask.
Lastly, I kind of wish that I had put more interest around the platform instead of just a very vacant flat cave.
I completed the scene and I'm proud that I can say that, but I don't feel like I captured the magic/mystic atmosphere from the concept. My low poly models look much better in marmoset than in UDK which I'm sure is mostly because of my own inexperience with UDK shaders and lighting.
Any feedback, even if it is just to reiterate or comment on something I already said, would be incredibly appreciated, thanks!
Feedback:
@Xerafel -
I love the detail in the surrounding cave, the rocks and foliage are great. I would say you were successful in capturing the wonder of stumbling upon some ancient ruins in an otherwise normal cave.
@ChaosWWW -
I really like the style of many of your textures, especially the platform floor rocks and tiles, they came out great. The floating dust particles in the light beam are great, I really wish I had made the time to quickly add some of those into my scene as well. It definitely gives it a more mystical vibe. The moss texture looks a bit washed out I think. I feel like it could use some more detail or it isn't as texel dense. I also would have liked to see a little bit more of the surrounding area. In the second screenshot I can slightly see some of the outside detail, but it is mostly lost. I mean.. It is in a dark cave of course, but I think just a tinge more radius on the surrounding lighting would be nice. Overall I think your scene came out great!
@Shiv - The fog is heavy like you said, but really.. I like it hah. If there was more dark cave around for it to recede into then I think the fog would be really successful actually. When I view your scene I feel like the air is thick and musty, which is great hah. Your textures are great from what I can see, and the variation in the geometry of your scene is lovely. I really wish I had put more geometry into my pillars and arches to achieve a result more like yours. ^^
@rockguy - The lighting is fantastic. Similar to what I said to Xerafel, your lighting really accentuates the point of interest and your surrounding cave and foliage is fantastic. I love all the detail in it, the stalagmites, stalactites and mushrooms, and how there is just enough light to really be dazzled by the surrounding detail. The grittiness of your textures is spot on for me. Really like your scene!
@Sir_Dillon -
I really like your plants, the ivy and cattail looking ones. I feel like they have a rigidness to them that the rest of the scene is lacking though. Most of the structures look really smooth and undefined. I also feel that the moss could be toned down. It is extremely vibrant and draws the focus chaotically. It almost seems to glow. I think your brick textures on the arches, the floor stone texture and the stone tile textures look really nice. You got the whole scene done for the most part which is quite an accomplishment. This is the first noob challenge that I've done and I barely managed to finish mine. Yours has more of a cave feel than mine does, which is great. Your surrounding cave walls are spot on. I think the last thing I'd say is the lighting might look better if it was more of a focused beam and the indirect lighting didn't extend out quite so far as to make the surrounding cave darker and more mysterious. Overall, great job, I hope to see your work again next month!
@iniside - The lighting and overall atmosphere in this scene is spot on. It feels extremely mystical and interesting. I love the grittiness of your textures and the foliage. The contrast between the surrounding warm torch light and the center mystic object's cool glow give a really cool effect. Your scene blows me away, man! Great job!
Plyxis- Thanks for the comment and kind words . Love the sculpts on your scene, the details on those are nice. Modeling wise, I think you can probably push more details for the ruined sections of the pillars and arches, as they're looking a bit too rough and jagged/low poly. The moss can probably come on a bit stronger too since they're looking a bit too subtle.
Rockyguy- Forgot to mention thanks for your reply about the lighting. It helped me and I didn't even know about those settings (or any settings) in the post process.
mmrashad- Thanks for offering to use your statue! I ended up running out of time to add it, and also wanted to be responsible for all assets created in my scene, but I appreciate the offer
Plyxis- Thanks for the comment and kind words . Love the sculpts on your scene, the details on those are nice. Modeling wise, I think you can probably push more details for the ruined sections of the pillars and arches, as they're looking a bit too rough and jagged/low poly. The moss can probably come on a bit stronger too since they're looking a bit too subtle.
I agree about most of my platform structures being too low poly and jagged. It actually made it difficult as well when working with my vertex shader. My goal for the next challenge is to try to get everything up to the same quality as the sarcophagus I did in this scene. I know the workflow I did for it, so I can try to do that for each of my assets. The sarcophagus still doesn't look nearly as good when in the actual UDK scene though. I'll need to improve on that as well! Thanks for the comment!
I think that will do for now!
Kind of want to play with volumetrics and shizzle... but I am tired... and the month is totally completely over.. as of yesterday X(
Next project time
Plyxis - It's a shame that you lost so much of the texture detail in udk compared to marmo :c The sculpt is waayyy nicer than mine
Plyxis - It's a shame that you lost so much of the texture detail in udk compared to marmo :c The sculpt is waayyy nicer than mine
@Shiv - Yeah I definitely lost a good deal of detail in UDK. I'll probably need to look into UDK shaders some more. I look forward to the next challenge and will be following your scene if you participate!
I got really busy with work the last couple weeks so I haven't made any progress on this. Still I had fun and it was a nice break from characters. I might complete some more pieces and post later but I won't make the end of month.
Wow guys! very good interpretations of the scene ...
it is december now but i try to finish my scene anyway!
NO Diffuse - only cavity normalmap displacementmap for tesselation - marmoset as always
Hey, man! You give some good and honest crits there! I am really thankful for that!
Getting the whole scene at least somewhat represented was my absolute goal. Throwing in dummies and unpolished stuff, just to have everything there to make the scene complete, even if it is not polished. Its also the first noob-challenge for me. And I am quite proud of the amount I got finished. But coming directly from an 3D-art-internship boosted confidence and efficiency a lot I think.
The flaws my scene still has... Yes, you are quite precise about that. And I am very aware of them myself. That is good, but still it is better to hear judgement from strangers. Lighting is very new terrain for me. I just could not get it any better for now for the lack of ideas. And my moss texture... Well my girlfriend described it as "radio-active" and yeah... maybe its a liiittle too glowing?!? xD
yet, You could do me a favor and explain a bit more what you meant here, because I am not sure whether I understand it all correctly.
I feel like they have a rigidness to them that the rest of the scene is lacking though. Most of the structures look really smooth and undefined.
much appreciated, if you lost some additional words to that!
As to the December-challenge: I am sorry, but I wont participate. For one thing, December is always cut a bit short with all the Christmas-stuff happening, and also I got struck by other events and longings, so that I cannot let myself sink into 3D-work too deep again. Maybe another, next year.
Thanks for your feedback and good luck on your next challenge!
did some progress, most of the time testing the new marmoset release - added some debri and variation to the model but still not finished
direct from marmoset - not happy with the materials yet marmoset + photshop + awesome grass brush :P
Replies
@Rockguy - Welcome back
Managed to hit my target today - to finish a base texture on everything and get the cave built and textured as well. I even had 5 mins to play around with lighting but I'm not happy with it at all yet. Currently it's all too blue with not enough contrast but I'm hopeful the grass/moss/ivy might help change that as I was going to go for a more staurated green/yellow look to them.
@Sir_Dillon - Thanks for your kind words! I tried to tie it in with my honours project which is why it's so colourful. I'm glad it's not too noisy as it was one of the main concerns I had.
@Chaos_WWW - Thanks for pointing those out! Like I said, it was pretty mashed together for the presentations I had so there's a lot I overlooked. Hopefully I've fixed them better in my progress (it's hard to tell now, I've been looking at the scene for so long.
@Iniside - I really like the torches you've added. They contribute a nice source of warmth to the scene. The ivy is looking great too, though to my eyes it looks a little out of place next to the grass (or vice versa) due to the difference in saturation levels.
@rockguy - There's some really nice rock textures going on, but it's kind of hard to distinguish them - especially the borders between the stairs and the cave floor. Cave rocks sometimes have streaks of orange and other colours in them due to mineral deposits, so it might be worth having a look at some photos to see what kind of colours you could add to pull out some of the detail.
Well, I finished the altar and did a quick plant test. I plan to mix broader leaves with grassy patches to add some variation. I'm finding it kind of hard to match the plants with the style of the rock though, because of the dark lines.
I tried to make the altar more of a blue colour to direct the eye (it's opposite on the colour wheel) - when it was the same colour as the rest of the stone it didn't really stand out. Hopefully when I fix the lighting I'll be able to direct the eye a bit more, as I'm worried the contrast is a bit jarring.
My first pass at the altar, had to fix the normals a bit:
Plant number 1!
I've also put in a test texture for the cave floor. I was kind of stuck what type of floor to do that a) would fit the style and b) not be OTT. I kinda fell with these large, triangular shapes. What do you guys think?
Also, here's an overview of the scene from above, hopefully with the collision issues fixed a bit.
Hannah : Thanks for the advice , I added a fog with a orange colour and it did seems to help the scene.
Also sorry didnt give any feedback.
Hannah : Cool take on the concept I wonder how will you make the cave, maybe is nothing or is WIP but the center piece is just grey, compared to the rest of the structure, wich seems odd but it could be just me.
TazN : Its going good , In future update, some torches could help with the contrast,if you are worried about the colro play with the midtones highlights in postprocess.
iniside : Cool piece , really good ambience , but like the rest said, you could tweak the vegetation a bit.
you have a really consistent color sheme. But I guess your altar pops out a bit too much with this grey color, some slight yellowish tones would make it fit a bit better
@ rockguy
Your plants are looking nice, the shading looks cool and they dont pop out so much
My current progress. I wont make it till the end of this month
There are still some tiling issues at the upper ring, I will hide/fix them with some random placed rocks and some foliage (still needs to be created
After that i will create some kind of diorama (not a full cave, just some stone blocks and mud on the floor). But even if its only a diorama I want to catch the look of the concept image and will try to mimic the lightning.
Edit: Ahhh and I need to adjust the diffusemap of my small rocks, they will be used for hiding the seams, currently they just pop out because of their greenish grass overlay.
Dropbox Files:
UPK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dummlr88q2qaxbr/polycountNOV2013.upk
UDK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bdqzrm9fw8t5ehc/polycountNOV2013_map_01.udk
Youtube timelapse and final result: http://youtu.be/FVn2jnhrnPg
PS: I've made my scene as modular as can be, so feel free to experiment with the .upk and make your own scene from the content.
Rock Guy. fine job!
inside. not sure whether I like your idea with the bright gleaming object in the middle because it catches the eye so hard and all the rest gets nearly invisible thereby... but its till in progress, I guess? All the "rest" as I just called it is actually very fine work too.
My work of today:
I sculpted the sarcophagus
and I completed this plinth or what you would call it... Its actually a bunch of geometry with textures reused. they stretch quite painfully in places... but time is running short.
Okay and anyone care to tell, how he/she got the rock texture for the cave? 'cause I just don't get anything sculpted in this time that tiles... And I'd appreciate a hint how to do it quick and dirty.
Rework of the plants is postponed.
Technical issues as texture-paint and smoothing groups also.
anyone care to screenshot their FBX-exporter window of MAYA, so I finally understand why it doesn't export smoothing groups??
thanks!
You can always check the map the fooliage map in the showcase folder of UDK to see the asset setup.
Because there is not so much time left i just created some damaged feet for the statue.
Next step would be the ground for my diorama and then the final light setup inside of marmoset. Because of work and my studies I dont have enough time to put it inside an engine.
Edit:
Small update, need to create a texture for the floor which currently uses the same like the altar floor.
Edit2:
I guess these are my final images for this month. I will optimize this scene next week but for this challenge I´m done. I´m not very happy with the lightning yet.
I just worked out how the Vertex paint works and I tried it. And guess what... Yeaahhp, now its so ugly that I don't even want to post it (yet). Guess you have to put some feel into the vertex-paint. xD And also now with a tiling moss texture painted on my objects you can see where all this tiling is not happening because of UV-maps ^^
maaaaan.. quite amused by my green-vomit-temple... =D
rockguy. Thanks for the tip! I'll see if it will help me. didn't get to try it yet...
.Wiki. xDD Haven't thought much of what I am going to do with my statue. But eyy... what a cheap way out ;D
...nice presentation though!
worked hard.... got almost nothing out of it. still feels good somehow! looking forward to the result posts!
Q u e s t i o n !!
looking at all your stuff I realize: compared to your scenes, mine always looks flat. There's not much highlight and shadow stuff happening. The structure and texture of my assets are too flat...
Now I wonder: Is that because of my normal maps?? Because actually I think they are not too flat, so they should give more lighting contrast for the materials.
So what kind of lights are you all using? maybe my lights are wrong or too weak or I don't know!?
answweeeeers please!!
thanks!
@.Wiki: Love the way you made the rock surroundings, they look really so good I can't believe they're lowpoly.
@rockguy: Absolutely love way the cave looks, the foliage really gives some color, can't wait for the final lighting to see how it looks.
@Sir_Dillion: Did you try adding a blend map made out of a cloud texture on the Lerp node? They really help with the blending, especially if you multiply it with a constant to control the sharpness. Check out the master shader I made with my map if you'd like to see how I made my vertex shaders.
I just scultped 3 cubes in Zbrush, imported these at their lowest sub D into Softimage and shrink wrapped some uv mapped tesselated cubes on them.
I'm just about done, couldn't figure exponential height fog so had to go with a panner tex'd plane with clouds
Be sure to check in the option box when exporting to UDK that the flip green channel option is checked as well as the texture compression is TC_normal map
As for lighting be sure to have a post process volume to adjust the highlight and mid tones and dominant directional light for realistic sunlight and some no shadow point lights for ambiance.
mmrashad : Thanks for the comment
.Wiki : Is looking really good , and yeah those low poly rocks are spot on but I will say that the dark edges between the bricks in the diffuse is way to big and affects the structure
Some comments and critiques:
TazN- Your scene looks good, but I think some color variations on the bricks would help break things up a little bit. I used vertex painting with mine in UDK to blend the moss in, but I'm sure you can do it in cryEngine3 or anything else you're using.
.Wiki- Really liking your textures and the rocks you made on the bottom of the scene. I also think you could use more color and moss variations in your bricks though.
mmrashad- I love the strong sun lighting in your scene. For everything else, I think your texture quality resolution seems a little low so it appears blurry/muddy in some areas, especially the lower section of the cave walls.
Finally completed the statue after 2 days of killing myself on it, and even tho my anatomy was pretty rusty it still came off somewhat decent (i think)... then I did some foliage experiments and they are not the best foliage out there but still good enough.
I do consider these shots my final shots for the challenge but if you have any crits i'll be sure to write them down and will eventually come back to implement them at a later time
High Res Shot: Link
High Res Shot: Link
High Res Shot: Link
There are some things I wish I had done better, and some things I wanted to get in but didn't... overall I must say I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I really learnt a lot this time
@Fnitrox: Daaayuum, That looks pretty damn good! I really love the way it looks, especially because you chose to make a sort of dark/macabre scene which really works out nice for it.
Mine. Idk, if that is last screenshot, but it's close to final.
@Fnitrox
Awsome work!
Thanks everyone for cirts. I changed or rather added more vegetations to scene
Overall it was very good learning experience, as I finally learned how to make tileable textures inside zbrush. Next step will be baking mat caps from unique objects
Thank you all for your feedback on my question!
mmrashad
Hey! Well, I know of blend masks and their purpose and yeah, its a good Idea. However I haven't used them in UDK so far. I'm sure I'd get it done, but I wont do it now. I'll spend the last hours on other stuff.
And thx for your opinion on my normal maps. I'll give it a shot strengthening them!
rockguy
Yap, I meant the normal maps. I'm quite sure they have all TC_normalmap on. I'll doublecheck.
Thank you for your lighting advice! Hope I get it all updated in the last hours.
TazN
heres a screen from my scene. I'm under the impression, normal maps could be ignored here... it is as if theres only AO in the texture and thats it... =/
heres texture samples of the pillars and the arches as used.
well... I'll keep trying until the end..
EDIT :that issue with contrast seems to be in different renders
Fnitrox : Cryengine ? nice , Where you going for a watery cave it does looks like that , I really like it , ammm for critiques some of the textures in the rocks have problems , in the second render you can see the diffuse too stretched.
iniside : Thats a really good lighting but the moss does seems to look more like slime for some reason.
Sir_Dillon : Is looking better , something I forgot to type is that you need to be sure that the LOD group in the normal is WorldNormalMap.
Glad I could get a lot out of it in the last hours. Thanks to all of you who gave good advice!
wrap-up:
- vegetation is not polished
- Cave is quick and dirty
- Statue is a dummy
- Vertex painting is just lerp blending, no blending mask... and its not polished.
- didn't understand the full use and potential of the post process volume in UDK. So this is also not polished.
But YAY! here is what I managed tu build =D :
Again: thanks guys for every good advice!! Normal maps are better now. strengthened them and adjusted UDK-settings. Light looks better that way. Awesome! I'm happy
Fnitrox. architecture has really bad-ass material!
...I'm so done. glad I made it.
Cheers!
Sir_Dillon
And this is far as I can go, I end up rushing a lot of details in the structure due to time limitations and also because I wanted to focus more in my lighting issue but enough of excuses. As always this month was fun thanks for the feed back and good luck.
Sir_Dillon : diffidently looks better, congrats.
Hope that helps.
Edit: for the soft rays falling from the cave is just a mesh with a material simulating volume light .
Didnt get as much done as i would have liked these past few days so... not all the things are in the place, I want to do at least the bricks on the top of the arches and some of the vines maybe, not so bothered about the statue.
Heavy fog is heavy
Rockguy - Nice result, it's a bit of a shame that the arches appear to be concrete rather than rock blocks tho, removes some of the majesty for me.
Also that light is really sharp.
Post Mortem: Overall I really enjoyed the challenge, I will probably do it again at some point in the future. In terms of my personal goals, I'm very happy with how everything turned out. One of my initial goals was to just have a finished environment done, so I'm happy that I did actually finish it
Most of the negative points regarding this project have to do with time. Some of the things that could have been better with more time were the statues, some textures that were a bit lazy and the lack of some detail that I wanted. I would really have liked to make the statue look better then it does and include the vines in the concept, but I'm pretty happy I managed to get it in there at all, despite it needing some improvements. Three of the textures on the outside cave area were not done in zbrush and I think they would have looked better if they had been. Some other detail I would have liked were more grass variation, vines hanging from the bricks and singular bricks on the ground to show decay. These time problems mostly came due to the time of year I decided to do one of these challenges. Finals for college were (and still are) pressing down on me pretty hard, making working on this more stressful then it should have been. I sort of had to push college work aside for this toward the end, and I'm thinking I might regret that in the coming two weeks. Overall next time I'm going to chose a better month when things aren't so hectic
Good work overall everyone, the challenge was a lot of fun. Looking forward to doing another one!
Post Mortem:
I am new to doing full scenes like this. I think I should have put more time into the foliage, improved the stone floor texture, and put more geometry into the platform, pillars, and arches. The pillars and arches could use some variation in the texture as well, besides just the moss.
I made a custom shader for vertex blending the moss into most of the textures, but I think it could use some improvements. It is just a lerp blending without much of a blending mask.
Lastly, I kind of wish that I had put more interest around the platform instead of just a very vacant flat cave.
I completed the scene and I'm proud that I can say that, but I don't feel like I captured the magic/mystic atmosphere from the concept. My low poly models look much better in marmoset than in UDK which I'm sure is mostly because of my own inexperience with UDK shaders and lighting.
Any feedback, even if it is just to reiterate or comment on something I already said, would be incredibly appreciated, thanks!
Feedback:
@Xerafel -
I love the detail in the surrounding cave, the rocks and foliage are great. I would say you were successful in capturing the wonder of stumbling upon some ancient ruins in an otherwise normal cave.
@ChaosWWW -
I really like the style of many of your textures, especially the platform floor rocks and tiles, they came out great. The floating dust particles in the light beam are great, I really wish I had made the time to quickly add some of those into my scene as well. It definitely gives it a more mystical vibe. The moss texture looks a bit washed out I think. I feel like it could use some more detail or it isn't as texel dense. I also would have liked to see a little bit more of the surrounding area. In the second screenshot I can slightly see some of the outside detail, but it is mostly lost. I mean.. It is in a dark cave of course, but I think just a tinge more radius on the surrounding lighting would be nice. Overall I think your scene came out great!
@Shiv - The fog is heavy like you said, but really.. I like it hah. If there was more dark cave around for it to recede into then I think the fog would be really successful actually. When I view your scene I feel like the air is thick and musty, which is great hah. Your textures are great from what I can see, and the variation in the geometry of your scene is lovely. I really wish I had put more geometry into my pillars and arches to achieve a result more like yours. ^^
@rockguy - The lighting is fantastic. Similar to what I said to Xerafel, your lighting really accentuates the point of interest and your surrounding cave and foliage is fantastic. I love all the detail in it, the stalagmites, stalactites and mushrooms, and how there is just enough light to really be dazzled by the surrounding detail. The grittiness of your textures is spot on for me. Really like your scene!
@Sir_Dillon -
I really like your plants, the ivy and cattail looking ones. I feel like they have a rigidness to them that the rest of the scene is lacking though. Most of the structures look really smooth and undefined. I also feel that the moss could be toned down. It is extremely vibrant and draws the focus chaotically. It almost seems to glow. I think your brick textures on the arches, the floor stone texture and the stone tile textures look really nice. You got the whole scene done for the most part which is quite an accomplishment. This is the first noob challenge that I've done and I barely managed to finish mine. Yours has more of a cave feel than mine does, which is great. Your surrounding cave walls are spot on. I think the last thing I'd say is the lighting might look better if it was more of a focused beam and the indirect lighting didn't extend out quite so far as to make the surrounding cave darker and more mysterious. Overall, great job, I hope to see your work again next month!
@iniside - The lighting and overall atmosphere in this scene is spot on. It feels extremely mystical and interesting. I love the grittiness of your textures and the foliage. The contrast between the surrounding warm torch light and the center mystic object's cool glow give a really cool effect. Your scene blows me away, man! Great job!
Your high polys are fantastic , really dig the detail on the altar.
Rockyguy- Forgot to mention thanks for your reply about the lighting. It helped me and I didn't even know about those settings (or any settings) in the post process.
mmrashad- Thanks for offering to use your statue! I ended up running out of time to add it, and also wanted to be responsible for all assets created in my scene, but I appreciate the offer
I think that will do for now!
Kind of want to play with volumetrics and shizzle... but I am tired... and the month is totally completely over.. as of yesterday X(
Next project time
Plyxis - It's a shame that you lost so much of the texture detail in udk compared to marmo :c The sculpt is waayyy nicer than mine
@Shiv - Yeah I definitely lost a good deal of detail in UDK. I'll probably need to look into UDK shaders some more. I look forward to the next challenge and will be following your scene if you participate!
Great work guys, nice job in the end Shiv too.
My large lowpoly rocks have a really messed up polygon distribution. But in the end it looks fine.
it is december now but i try to finish my scene anyway!
NO Diffuse - only cavity normalmap displacementmap for tesselation - marmoset as always
Hey, man! You give some good and honest crits there! I am really thankful for that!
Getting the whole scene at least somewhat represented was my absolute goal. Throwing in dummies and unpolished stuff, just to have everything there to make the scene complete, even if it is not polished. Its also the first noob-challenge for me. And I am quite proud of the amount I got finished. But coming directly from an 3D-art-internship boosted confidence and efficiency a lot I think.
The flaws my scene still has... Yes, you are quite precise about that. And I am very aware of them myself. That is good, but still it is better to hear judgement from strangers. Lighting is very new terrain for me. I just could not get it any better for now for the lack of ideas. And my moss texture... Well my girlfriend described it as "radio-active" and yeah... maybe its a liiittle too glowing?!? xD
yet, You could do me a favor and explain a bit more what you meant here, because I am not sure whether I understand it all correctly. much appreciated, if you lost some additional words to that!
As to the December-challenge: I am sorry, but I wont participate. For one thing, December is always cut a bit short with all the Christmas-stuff happening, and also I got struck by other events and longings, so that I cannot let myself sink into 3D-work too deep again. Maybe another, next year.
Thanks for your feedback and good luck on your next challenge!
added some parts and did a little cleanup
Its starting to look good. It would be nice to see some color on your assets.
@ .Wiki colors are on its way
@ Mr Significant thank you very much!
@ Harford any progress?
some progress - still to do: foliage, textures, effects + lighting
i think i skip the statue
direct from marmoset - not happy with the materials yet
marmoset + photshop + awesome grass brush :P
Those colums looks little strange for me. Also for the moss maybe some normal can be added ? Now looks like painted on rocks.
i do this often for myself sometimes i post it
and a turnaround
[vv]81723065[/vv]