[CE3] Skygate
polycounter lvl 7
Hi guys, here is my another personal project named Skygate. I've been messing with it last few months once in a while but in the wrong direction (the result I got was unsophisticated and simple). Initially I wanted to make just some interior scenes and take a couple screenshots but eventually I decided to create a big scene with indoor and outdoor scenery and make a video like I did with my Toxic Caves. After a long romance with UDK this time I decided to work with CryEngine3 to try out what the beast is, so it will be kinda challenge for me to learn new tool.
Backstory: Skygate is a big corporation that first invented an upper atmosphere flights in 2083 and after that they are still maintain a monopoly in that field. These kind of flights are really fast and economically reasonable (you can get from London to New York just in 30 minutes) First time they had a lot of problems with landings and take offs due to sophisticated construction of the shuttles. It was expensive because shuttles consumed a lot of fuel taking off as well as more dangerous. After 10 years of service they finally invented another feature - a space elevator. They managed to build special hubs in the upper atmosphere and get people there by elevators. Shuttles now need to fly just between these hubs without landing on Earth, flights became safety and more affordable.
Here is a quick blockmesh of one of those hubs, I'll probably change some design features in future as well as replace everything with more detailed geometry. I want to make industrial looking outdoor and more refined and clean indoor area.
I also have some old indoor stuff. I'll try to maintain the same mood and style but gonna add some details to gemetry and textures.
I don't have a lot of time on my hands but I'll try to have an update at least once a week or two. Crits and comments are welcome.
Backstory: Skygate is a big corporation that first invented an upper atmosphere flights in 2083 and after that they are still maintain a monopoly in that field. These kind of flights are really fast and economically reasonable (you can get from London to New York just in 30 minutes) First time they had a lot of problems with landings and take offs due to sophisticated construction of the shuttles. It was expensive because shuttles consumed a lot of fuel taking off as well as more dangerous. After 10 years of service they finally invented another feature - a space elevator. They managed to build special hubs in the upper atmosphere and get people there by elevators. Shuttles now need to fly just between these hubs without landing on Earth, flights became safety and more affordable.
Here is a quick blockmesh of one of those hubs, I'll probably change some design features in future as well as replace everything with more detailed geometry. I want to make industrial looking outdoor and more refined and clean indoor area.
I also have some old indoor stuff. I'll try to maintain the same mood and style but gonna add some details to gemetry and textures.
I don't have a lot of time on my hands but I'll try to have an update at least once a week or two. Crits and comments are welcome.
Replies
Looks good btw!
@Cactus on Fire - nope, this is a realtime sun.
Still blocking it out. Trying to find interesting shape. Guys I have my first question about CE - I used to have really good shadows from any distance, but right now they disappear when I go farther.Is there any distance setting for shadows?
Thanks man.
Here is my latest progress. Started gradual swapping of a block mesh with final geometry. Mostly been working on a dock area and corridors. To clarify the shuttle will dock here using magnetic field and those constructions are actual magnets.
Also cleaned up a recreation module inside as well as outside.
Steel pleeenty work to do. Hope I'll have enough motivation to unfold it further. Probably my next task is to make some tileable textures and to texture some constructions to get the whole feeling.
It's looking pretty nice at the moment and if'd have to make any crits it would be the different sized windows on the latest shots.
You have 4 very narrow windows and then 4 more of a much larger size and inconsistend between them too.
I'd make them them even all along the structure, like having only 2 in the smaller space and 4 evenly spaced in the other... or maybe following some pattern like
[][ ][] (hope it gets my point across xD).
Anyway subbing!
looks like a lot of work to be done considering the diversity,
but if you keep at it I'm sure it'll be great.
@Fnitrox:
Totally agree man. There is definitely an inconsistency with the windows and with the shape of the corridors. I wanted to keep the form of the corridors with small windows since they were the initial idea but seem like I need to keep up with the new design. The thing is I want to keep a big size of windows in the dock area because I like the feeling in airports when you see a plane that you are about to fly on and I want to make a screenshot with the shuttle
@frmdbl I'll try to maintain a motivation
The visual design is just so god damn on point. Ugh. Beautiful.
@stxtch: Looking forward to see your stuff man.
Nicely done, dude! Only suggestion (not even a crit) that I have is to open up more of the ceiling in the passenger-accessable areas so that they can look at the stars at night.
EDIT: By the way if you have any unanswered CE questions try the Tech Talk forum: http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=64
@foredea: Thanks.
@stxtch: Thanks man, a lot of useful info there.
Here is some update. I reimagined all my corridors and decided to get rid of my old style. Also made some texture placeholders for big panels.
Keep it up!
It's time to show some progress. I've been working on corridor's supports this week. Also replaced some placeholder elements.
Just wanted to ask, are you modeling all this from reference or a concept? Or are you just making it up as you go along?
5 *
@Hayden Zammit: I would say that I got some boost from several sources such as Elysium, Oblivion, Mass Effect etc. and after that just pure improvisation, going back and forth and so on. I do some small draughts once in a while. First of all I always try to come up with some back-story of the device and after that I just follow it's purpose.
Thanks again!
And a couple shots from inside.
P.S. Happy Easter!
Reminds me of my days with modeling halo architecture and Oblivion the movie. Love it!
I hope you finish this!
If you don't mind me asking. You seem to focus on large purposefully designed pieces rather than small reusable ones, do these have their own unique texture? Or is it a modular texture for the whole scene?
@Joshflighter: Yeah Oblivion is one of my main inspiration. Basically my station is a further development of their small station.
@fearian: Agreed. I need to round up some big angles especially on the main building. On the other hand I don't want to make it too much refined, I want to keep this industrial look.
@Synthet: Actually I have both - big ones and small reusable. So far I have just two tileable placeholder textures and one atlas for the "heros" - objects that have unique texture. So far just one object in the scene uses the unique texture space all other stuff mapped with tileable ones. I don't want to run any challenge such as "one texture level" etc. probably a texture amount will be increased it the future.
@ScrotieFlapWack: I try to use modular stuff as often as possible. I have some big parts such as main tower but other stuff is modular. Here are some screens:
Thanks again everybody.
I'd like to see how you create your modular asset UVs and assign materials to them as part of your workflow. It's a struggle of mine lately, and my current assignment looks a lot like this one. Any snapshot of a UV next to a model with wire-frames will blow my mind.
Cheers
Ok it's time for some update. First of all I decided to migrate to U4. CryEngine is a great tool but is completely cohesive with 3DSMax. I'm a Maya user and it's a pain in the ass to export all the stuff. I don't like the overall resources management in CryEngine. I'm pretty familiar with Unreal so I couldn't resist when U4 showed up
Ok enough engine bullshit. I finally changed my placeholder textures with some real ones but they're still not finished, but at least they have normal maps and some PBR maps. Also I worked a lot on the platform and it's almost done, need to finish some unique elements and put them on the place. I'm thinking to star make some WIP videos since they better represent the scene but so far just screens. Hope you'll like it guys. Cheers!
P.S. Does anybody know how to change the name of the thread to U4?
/crys
Also, rather random (and non offensive opinion) but my first thought opening this thread was "this poor sod is working in CE3 with maya"
UE4 has made that sparkle. Really nice work, was the transition hard to get it all over to UE4? I assume you had to rebuild it piece by peice?
Front page/archive material here at any rate!