Industrial Environment Project

Danielj_B

Hey,

For the final year of my degree, I will be Modelling, Texturing and implementing into UDK, an Industrial themed environment. The title of said environment is 'Industrial Decay' and is centered around a large, run down industrial style building.

I will be posting my progress on here throughout the University year, and would really appreciate some feedback on ways i can improve.

Cheers, Dan :poly136:

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Well that's pretty much where I'm at so far, some of what you see is just a place holder for when i do it properly such as the debris on the side of the smaller building, next I'm going to start connecting the two buildings together, and start destroying the bigger building .

Also i do intend to add more buildings to this so any ideas for a style of building to go for would be great:)

Danielj_B

Put a few holes in the roof and quickly put a texture on, considering changing the whole fthing now though ^^. Possibly much smaller sections of roof plates over lapping each other

Synaesthesia

Follow your references closely. The WIP isn't giving me the feeling that it ought to. You should add a lot more detail to the broken segments of the building. It's too faceted and lacks definition. The rust texture you're using is also kind of blah. You're tiling it way too huge. It's making the roof look like a window into the microscopic world of rust instead of accenting the details you've added.

The truck looks like you've taken a photo of a truck and slapped it on. Give it more detail by adding more geo. The windows look like they don't match the truck, and I highly doubt that they'd be perfectly intact with no visible grime or breakage.

In all, it looks like you're trying to invent your own industrial building instead of using your references to define key features. It's a bit discombobulated as it stands right now. If you follow your references closer (and get more of them, there's nothing wrong with having tons of references to work from) you'll have a better WIP and a better final product.

Danielj_B

Thanks for the feedback, yeah i was thinking of completely redoing the roof plates, as for the truck, i hadn't even started the texture for windows yet the whole thing is still a WIP, i should probably of been clearer on that.

But yeah i will add some more details into the broken parts of the building and post an update tomorrow

Danielj_B

Update:

Changed the style of the roof plates and changed the texture, and added a specular, just need to put a few holes in them and duplicate it over the whole roof.

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

if anyone can help me out i got a problem. My roof plates are just planes and when in UDK i cant see the plates when in the building looking at the under side of them, but if i go outside the building and walk back i can see them from the top. I'm sure its a simple fix, something to do with the normals i imagine, been unable to find a solution though.

Obscura

You need a 2 sided material. You can check this in in the roof's material's properties

Danielj_B

Nice one cheers

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

:poly142:

Danielj_B

g

Danielj_B

Pretty rushed texture, but only a small prop i suppose

Danielj_B

Danielj_B

Container next

Danielj_B

Got the basic shape sorted few more bits to finish after work then i can texture tomorrow...

Choppz

Hey dude, just a note on the pallet UV space. From the looks of it, the UVs look near identical and can be overlapped to save UV space (then you can scale the UVs up and have either a higher res wood, or optimise and bring the total image size down)

LMP

You could probably squeeze that entire pallet into a 256x256

Danielj_B

yeah that's true, i don't know why i didn't think to condense it ^^, and yeah i'll try get it to 256, or at least 512, cheers

Danielj_B

Optimized Pallet texture, couldn't quite get it down to 256x.

Danielj_B

Probably won't finish that container tonight after all. Please let me know your thoughts on this project so far if your reading this, it would really help , and thanks to those who have replied so far.
Cheers,
Dan

Synaesthesia

That wood is doubled up and looks terrible as a texture. There's no reason to have all of that extra space if you've essentially done nothing but copy the same texture repeatedly.

If you're going to do it, do it right. Spend the time to make it look unique. Even a "small prop" needs some kind of attention to detail.

DougClayton4231

My best advice is to pace yourself and use repeating textures for the different materials that you are trying to emulate, rather than using unique textures or wasting UV space for details that (honestly) no one really notices. Focus on the major details and make your UV's work for you, rather than work around them.

Also, don't be afraid to use the healing brush and the clone stamp brush to make your repeating textures more unique :P

Danielj_B

well it looks like a pallet to me synaethesia , and doug yeah i do need to pace myself =/ although I'm already behind on my project, since i had to change my entire idea about a month into the start of term xD. as for the repeating texture yeah that is something i will look at tomorrow

Synaesthesia

Of course it looks like a pallet. It's a wood texture applied to a model that was made to resemble a pallet. If it didn't look like a pallet, you'd have a serious problem!

You should take pride in the work you're doing. Even if it's a simple prop, there's ways to make it come to life that don't involve wasting UV space on a mirrored texture.

Danielj_B

i definitely would have a serious problem if i couldn't make a pallet ^^, but yea as i say, the repeating texture is something i will sort out, like doug says, I'll get the clone and healing brush on some areas of the texture and maybe put a grunge texture on top to vary it up a bit.

Danielj_B

Container pretty much finished just got to finish the bars on the front, but the UVs for the rest have been laid out

Danielj_B

As texturing is the area that i feel that i need to make the most improvements on, i will be posting updates whilst I make the texture for the container above. It would be great if you could give some critique and advice as i go
thanks, Dan.

So far i have a base colour. I took this aircraft panel texture and removed all the bolts and stuff. Seems i lost quite a bit of the detail doing this though.

Danielj_B

Darkened the texture slightly, and overlayed the metal texture to add some variety to the base colour.

Danielj_B

Added some detail on the doors

Danielj_B

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praetus

Most of your metal textures need some major work. You're using metal reference, to be sure, but you're applying it to the the texture without a care as to why it looks that way. Instead of looking like metal it looks like a garbled mess because you're missing contextual clues as to why it looks that way, even though the picture your using is metal itself.

Why is it stained? Where would scratches be? Does water pool here? Would it cause rust stains? Applying a picture of metal from CGTextures.com will not make for a good texture. You need to learn how to use those pictures as reference to create a believable texture as opposed to making them the texture.

https://www.3dmotive.com/f101201 While this video is centered on vehicle texturing, most of the lessons you could learn from it will apply to what you're doing.

Danielj_B

I'll check that tutorial out thanks

DougClayton4231

I agree with praetus, you should spend some time doing research. For unique assets like the shipping container, it should have a unique texture, rather than using a repeating grunge map and show wear and age in specific spots, instead of having an almost uniform noise quality to it.

Danielj_B

not had a chance to change the texture much yet, after watching the video though i decided using AO maps would probably help my textures a bit so I've made one and put it over my diffuse with a multiply blend mode, which is what he did on the texture tutorial.

Danielj_B

Thanks for that link praetus, had chance to look through it a bit more now and its helping me think about the way I'm making textures a lot more. unfortunately i couldn't get the whole tutorial its like £24, subbed to the website though.since making the AO map Ive looked at making a specular map, although i need to come back to this once the whole texture is finished obviously. And rather than slapping loads of CG textures material on top of my textures I'm experimenting with brushes, although hand painting details in like dirt and scratches is fairly new ground to me so looking very amateurish. Will show new texture and render later today, although probably going to have to move on from this model soon Just dusted off the old graphics tablet, this should help

Danielj_B

Heres is how the container is atm. Specular is a bit strong but im going to redo that when Ive finished.

WarrenM

I think the trouble, for me, is that it looks like someone came through with a grime sprayer and put a nice even coat over the entire thing. There's no "story" to the dirt or scratches, they're just ... there. The material response on the spec looks good but I would definitely spend more time on what is damaged/dirty and why.

Danielj_B

yeah i know what you mean, it definitely reflects the way i applied the dirt and grime, which was fairly random. The problem is, i find it hard to come up with a story for a container =/.

WarrenM

Well, "story" is a word loaded with meaning but in this case it translates more to "reason". You don't have to work up a back story about the crate to texture it (heh) but just generally think about why it would be scratched here and why rust would be over there. It's just common sense rather than anything laborious. Like, if there are spots where cranes can clamp on with hooks, scratches and damage will be heavier in those areas. Stuff like that...

Danielj_B

Okay so I've taken off a lot of the grime/scratch layers and started to re do them, started with some scratches going horizontally along the panels on the side and only on the bits that protrude the furthest.

Danielj_B

Well gonna have to leave that one there as i need to move on ^^ but thanks for the help with that one

Danielj_B