Arbor Vitae - UDK Scene [WIP]
polycounter lvl 13
Hey guys,
About a month ago me and PhilipK decided to do a little collab for Unearthly Challenge, any excuse to make good art is a good excuse. Unfortunatly there's not a lot of entries this year, but we'll still finish it of course, we're having loads of fun!
So the idea is here is that Humans have colonized this planetoid and are in the process of creating an atmosphere similar to planet earth by using an atmosphere processing station. The air outside is not 100% breathable yet, but it already allows for the growth of vegetation.The whole point of this facility is to create an atmosphere, so we want to push for strong elements of O2, water and greenery!
The scene will be set inside one of the outer rooms of the station, more specifically inside one of the big control room, featuring a gigantic window with a beautiful view to the outside world, which from that angle you'll be able to see the other end of the complex, natural terrain and the sky.
We want to make use of bold colors and staying away from the same old desaturated look you typically see in sci-fi, we're also set on staying away from gritty/scary as much as possible and instead try and make the space seem like it's livable and looking almost inviting.
I started out with a concept to get the idea of the visual language we would be going for, I'm taking very strong inspiration from Doom 3 and Halo 4.
But then we decided let's mix this style with COLORS, almost like mixing a Doom meets Mirror's Edge and have a child, PhilK did this amazing paintover of the blockout:
I started making the modular textures and assets, walls, floors all that shit. Everything on the grid, texture included.
So I can just chop the assets very easily like this, and they all fit together so we can create many variations and maybe expand the level later on.
While I was doing that, Phil made an awesome blockout of the scene, using modular pieces already and started modeling the middle main area, which should be the focus of the scene. Needless to say it has that awesome PhilipK style that we love all over the place! >D
So, whith that here's our latest WIP pic with all my stuff and phils put together with the new lighting. We have two weeks to wrap this up, still a lot to do but man these next two weeks will be hella fun!
Deffo more to come, stay tuned and thanks for checking, let us know your thoughts now's the time for feedback!
:::EDIT:::
Adding the final scene to this first post, feel free to check the rest of thread to check out the rest of the WIPs.
Guess we're calling it done now. I'll try and put together that breakdown asap and I'll then need to clean the package and release it for anyone who wants to fly around the scene.
Thanks Mapcore, Polycount, Jordan Walker for releasing his scene and allowing me to properly learn UDK, Quixel team for making nDo2 and dDo tools, and everyone who helped us with feedback! You helped it get much better!
And of course, PhilipK for kicking so much ass, it was an honor to do scene with him, this guy breathes talent!
UC_HP_PhilK_shot1 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot2 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot3 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot4 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot5 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot6 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot7 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_extra_background by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_extra_materials by HelderP, on Flickr
About a month ago me and PhilipK decided to do a little collab for Unearthly Challenge, any excuse to make good art is a good excuse. Unfortunatly there's not a lot of entries this year, but we'll still finish it of course, we're having loads of fun!
So the idea is here is that Humans have colonized this planetoid and are in the process of creating an atmosphere similar to planet earth by using an atmosphere processing station. The air outside is not 100% breathable yet, but it already allows for the growth of vegetation.The whole point of this facility is to create an atmosphere, so we want to push for strong elements of O2, water and greenery!
The scene will be set inside one of the outer rooms of the station, more specifically inside one of the big control room, featuring a gigantic window with a beautiful view to the outside world, which from that angle you'll be able to see the other end of the complex, natural terrain and the sky.
We want to make use of bold colors and staying away from the same old desaturated look you typically see in sci-fi, we're also set on staying away from gritty/scary as much as possible and instead try and make the space seem like it's livable and looking almost inviting.
I started out with a concept to get the idea of the visual language we would be going for, I'm taking very strong inspiration from Doom 3 and Halo 4.
But then we decided let's mix this style with COLORS, almost like mixing a Doom meets Mirror's Edge and have a child, PhilK did this amazing paintover of the blockout:
I started making the modular textures and assets, walls, floors all that shit. Everything on the grid, texture included.
So I can just chop the assets very easily like this, and they all fit together so we can create many variations and maybe expand the level later on.
While I was doing that, Phil made an awesome blockout of the scene, using modular pieces already and started modeling the middle main area, which should be the focus of the scene. Needless to say it has that awesome PhilipK style that we love all over the place! >D
So, whith that here's our latest WIP pic with all my stuff and phils put together with the new lighting. We have two weeks to wrap this up, still a lot to do but man these next two weeks will be hella fun!
Deffo more to come, stay tuned and thanks for checking, let us know your thoughts now's the time for feedback!
:::EDIT:::
Adding the final scene to this first post, feel free to check the rest of thread to check out the rest of the WIPs.
Guess we're calling it done now. I'll try and put together that breakdown asap and I'll then need to clean the package and release it for anyone who wants to fly around the scene.
Thanks Mapcore, Polycount, Jordan Walker for releasing his scene and allowing me to properly learn UDK, Quixel team for making nDo2 and dDo tools, and everyone who helped us with feedback! You helped it get much better!
And of course, PhilipK for kicking so much ass, it was an honor to do scene with him, this guy breathes talent!
UC_HP_PhilK_shot1 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot2 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot3 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot4 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot5 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot6 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_shot7 by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_extra_background by HelderP, on Flickr
UC_HP_PhilK_extra_materials by HelderP, on Flickr
Replies
His Tuturials for Materials are insane. Unfortunaly im too bad for his "high Level" Workflow.
Here http://www.philipk.net/tutorials.html His Materials for Interested people.
Yeap, for the reflections It'simply reflector planes .[ame="
When the scene is done we'll manually place a lot more and it will look much better and believable hopefully!
One crit I have is the overall concept. I'm just not sure what I'm looking at. Is this an observatory of some sort or some kind of control room at a water treatment plant?
Keep up the good work can't wait to see more.
Everything looks awesome so far. Look forward to some breakdowns later on. It's nice seeing your concept ideas too!
subscribed
I added some temp vines and whatnot, and I had this idea of placing some holografic looking monitors around the scene, I really like the old fashioned monitors phil made, adds color and it's a cool prop to place around but the old school monitor gives the scene a very 80's sci-fi look to it, so before leaving home for the day I made this quick mockup of possible new monitors to spice up the scene. They're pretty easy to do so unless anyone thinks it's a horrible idea I'll go ahead with it. (it's intentionally exaggerated on this paintover) I also added some canopies to the bg on this paintover, I like that it brings color, although I want to make all the vegetation more green and less orangy.
Whoa.
Really, this is astounding. Beautiful.
Was struggling with the mat editor tonight, unfortunatly I dont think there's a way to enable RT reflections on glass, so I had to do some trickery, bake a cubemap, etc to get this working.
Added a very soft wobly normal map (needs work still), and the usual glow map, looks much better when looking around but there's a very quick shot from my plane test, can't wait to start using these properly in monitors and such.
Watching Enders Game was a really good inspiration last night, I wanted to get a similar look to the hologram monitors they have.
Also this [ame="
Fanboy freakout aside (OMG, HP AND PHILLIPK!!!!!!!!), I'm wondering what you would think about adding a hint of stronger foreground contrast?
There's great color here, and some pretty nice value ranges too but it lacks a little bit of the darker end of the spectrum. There's some nice mid-grays and whites here so I'm wondering if your indirectly lit/ambient areas can drift off into some darker ranges? Obviously not pitch black, but the soft purple you have fills out the space pretty nicely and it might be nice to see that warm window light gradient off into some darker shadow information.
Minor thoughts really, everything looks really lovely.
-Jon
Thanks dude.
I killed the total blacks on post simply because of a personal taste decision, although I agree with you as the scene slowly starts to be a little bit more populated, and when we'll get around to make the diffuse maps I might be able to increase the spectrum a little bit and like you said bring more of the warmth into the ambient.
Cheers!!
Yeap, i ripped some of those shapes just to test out the shader for now! Amazing reference and I love the style!
PhilK did a badass job with the new bg, center piece, props and many smaller things as well. We still need to add the trees in the bg, and many other things.
Tomorrow, or maybe even today I wanna start messing around with ddo and finally start to make the dif/spec/gloss.
you guys did an amazing job!
Just wondering, but how exactly did you get that water shimmering effect on the material surface below the centerpiece?
Will be watching this thread closely!
TheRealFroman, you mean the caustics effect? Just like CE3, UDK supports light masking, just add a tilable caustic texture to a light (there's a couple in the UDK library)
You're gonna need to add a function, and input your function material.
WIP as fuck, mats look way too glossy, next up, textures!
This is looking awesome, Helder!
What I'm really liking here is the balance of natural elements with the sci-fi stuff. The composition shows this nicely, going from the metallic darks with sourced lighting from above to the giant window with warm natural lighting and beyond to the fields where it's at its most organic. The artificially lit (and cold) foreground makes for great contrast against the rich natural light that fades into the distance. Also, really liking how the scaffolding/walkway is framing Phillips big centerpiece.
I'm really stretching my brain to find something to critique but you guys are nailing it and you've added that additional pop of contrast I was looking for. So. Um. Keep doing good stuff?
Love,
-Jon
What's that you say? Include ALL the shinies? OK!