PopeAK49 - Thanks, you too. I like the simplicity of your overall structure, gives it a different personality. The bank looks very shallow though for the stairs.
KB.Arreza - Those are some BEAUTIFUL words right there, Already improved the clarity with the filtering and Aniso. The shadows are much cleaner and have a bigger range with deferred. All of it is awesome. The color space thing though, that changes the visuals DRASTICALLY, whats going on here in simpleton terms?
Image to show the different modes for comparison. The Linear seems to be less accurate in terms of actual selected material colour versus output.
- Trilinear filtering blends your textures' mipmap levels depending on how far/close you are to the texture (works like LOD but for textures) - good when dealing with normal maps.
- Aniso(tropic) filtering again works with texture - it prevents your texture from getting all blurry at narrow angles.
- All I can say about deferred lighting is that it separates your scene geo from the lighting, and so the light only affects the pixels it needs to.
- Linear lighting is different to gamma through:
- fall off (the shadows are sharper and thus brings out your textures)
- intensity (gamma makes highlights brighter than they should be)
- and overall blending between shadows and highlights (it's just the way to go )
Hell yeah thanks KB. I manage to tweak my scenes settings to regain the colors with linear and it does just feel nicer to load assets into it now. I had another try and the rock faces, seeing as i want to get my surrounding core geo down asap.
I feel like i can get out of this blobby phase with Sculptris, no matter what i try i cant get what i want :F heres a few of the tests along the way :
Hey guys, excited to join this challenge for this month! Finally getting some spare time from teaching
Pretty happy with my breakdown and blockout; although as others have said the perspective is severely warped. As such I'm not going to focus too much on the horizon for now, and instead focus on environment pieces. I am likely going to use UDK, and I would also like to do a test render in Marmoset Toolbag 2.
After playing around with the obscure square building for a while I settled on a simple tower, as the other roofs I was making just started to muddle the silhouette, plus it breaks the monotony up a bit!
I also got a little bored this evening and started sculpting some rocks.
Bought to start modeling out all the assets. I thought that I would post my breakdown for what I plan to do. I am looking into making everything pretty simple geo wise. The most detailed thing will probably be the hatch door on the front and the rocks/cliffs.
For the main buildings I plan to make a bunch of modular walls and windows that will have a variety of detail. The walls will be plaster and I plan to make plain plaster walls and some walls with detail like the smaller wood pieces.
For the roof tops I am going to make a tiling roof set with front and back pieces, along with a middle modular section for the tiling shingles.
The environment will consist of a few cliff sides and multiple rocks. I also want to implement some vertex painting on the rocks as well.
The vegetation will consist of some grass, trees (It would be cool to make some apple trees), bushes and Ivy. I'll also make a few tiling terrain textures and some rocks to add to the ground to break up the tiling.
And for the glass, I think I am going to use a shader in UDK. I would really like to try doing a condensation type of effect on the glass though. Would be a cool look. I am not sure how I would go about making it look realistic though.
Time to get this ball rolling, good luck everyone.
njackson4190 That breakdown of the cliff face is helpful! its completely changed how im looking at my own implementation of them. This makes this so much clearer, many thanks!
Im super frustrated with my current project, so I figure it was time to start something different. So I haven;t really done a full environment, just more or less props. I really haven't finished anything to completion, so that what the goal is for this. I am sure that my break down is not optimal, but here we are.
So I really looked at this as texture pieces, for some reason it helped me break down what I had to model. There is a good chance that those texture sizes are too large, but hey, time will tell.
As for Geometry, this is how I see it:
-Building- It looks like stucco as already mentioned. So I'm just going to do a texture for the base and apply it to a BSP, no point in modelling it.
-Wood elements- Model what I need and have it all referencing the one material
-Roof-Model, one side and duplicate as needed.
-Stairs- I see these as wood, so basically I'm going to make a modular piece and repeat it a couple times.
-Canyon walls- Model a basic shape for each section and add some independent rocks for variation.
-Rocks- Model 2-3 larger rocks and a few smaller rocks
-Vegetation- I have never modeled or textured vegetation. I figure that I will do 1 tree trunk and do everything else as cards. I really don't know so this will likely change.
-Dome- There is really a couple of parts. One that goes along the top, one that goes along the sides and one that fits the bottom. So maybe 6-7 modeled pieces. I plan on using one texture sheet for them all.
Again, this is all my best guess and I am super open to feedback.
Here is my block out in Maya. As many have already mentioned, the perspective of the concept is a little out of whack, so after much frustration trying to match it. I went with taking the essence of the concept and making that work.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
@Nine15ths-Those rocks look pretty good, the only crit I would have would be that they don't look weathered enough. I get the impression from the concept that this is an area where erosion has kicked the crap out of the rocks, the one that you have modeled looks like its fairly fresh from the quarry. The bottom left side looks like it would fit the concept, but the other 3 sides have too many sharp corners in my opinion.
That's my first WiP. Started this evening. I made a small adjustment to the front, giving it a small airlock. I'm feeling like the glass and ribs are almost finished modelling wise, so I think I'll approach the house and rocks next, and try to do the vegetation after.
Got a lot less done than I hoped today. I did some modelling on the house, made some minor changes to the dome and made some change to the stairs. Still quite clueless how to start on the rocks. Hoping to have some time for that tomorrow.
Again, all feedback is welcome.
I'm trying to learn zbrush since I'm use to creating textures with photoshop. But I'm struggling with creating wood.
I think I'll create all my textures within photoshop. I'll learn Zbrush later.
Give Sculptris a try man, it might not be as powerful or intuitive, but for the purpose of picking up and having fun it works. Ive just got mudbox educational to try myself.
Cubedparadox - Good job on that cage! Mind posting some alternate angles? looks like an odd shape. I like how you changed the dynamic of the concept by shortening the long valley on the left, makes it seem like there could be multiple amounts of these structures around the area rather than a solitary one.
Well, here is my really bad attempt at some rocks. My goal here was to create some tiling textures and use vertex blending to blend between rock and dirt. I spent all day making the low poly mesh, sculpting the tiling texture in Zbrush, and creating the texture itself. I am happy with the sculpt itself but when applied to the rocks it does not work at all, and lightmass is really amplifying the orange color making it look like it is glowing. I have not made the tiling dirt texture yet. I'm going to redo the tiling rock texture tomorrow with hopes of getting some better results. If anyone has any pointer's please help me out, I could use it. :poly127:
Maaan, I'm away from the computer for a few days and now I feel so overwhelmed. You guys have done so much. I'll have to see how much I can get done over the next few days. Everything is looking great though, especially Malatoar's dome.
I've been working solidly for the last 6 hours and I found it pretty hard making the dome but then I just couldn't get my head around making the dome ribs. I'd tried making them from planes, cutting up the dome after duplicating it but then I found this method using topogun (I thought half way through I could have used 3Dcoat but i was already too far gone) to be the best so if anyone is having trouble making it, I found this makes it much easier. I just kept exporting it and importing it into maya with my model and reference image in place and it shows you how close everything is but then it got to the point where I had to stop following the image due to the terrible perspective everyone has discovered the image to have. Once you've made it, you just import it and then scale extrude the faces. I hope this helps, pics on my process coming within an hour or two
First off, I started by cutting out all the excess polys from looking at everyone elses. No one bothered with the wooden beams in the geometry so they were the first to go and then I shaved off extra edges on the roofs
Then I just spent hours trying to get the dome shape from one perspective (a very bad perspective at that) and managed to come up with this. I'll get the block out of the rocks done tonight although I'm starting to get closer to the things I'm not so good at; the texturing and then putting it through a games engine, which will have to be unity as I don't know how to use any others
First time ever doing a proper environment, and i'm already a bit late to the game, made a tiny notch of progress today trying to understand the best way to get some decent curvature in that Dome, and the best I could come up with is this...
The shape in the background is the original Cylinder I shaped it from,
I applied symmetry to the cylinder, then using soft selection made it more of a 3D Oval, and from there cut it in half, applied an FFD 4x4x4 to bend it freely into the concept, and from here because of the existing geometry I should be able to use the existing loops to extrude part of/a good base for the Frame.
I hope this helps anyone struggling a bit, I know I was
Alright, attempt number 2. I am liking this a little bit better. I am going to do another sculpt except this time focus on smaller detail and remove the large scratch. Also played around with the blending of the terrain textures. I also redid the base mesh of the rocks and added much more geo to give it some surface variation.
@Danface: Nice idea with retopoing in Topogun. I did not think about that for the glass frame. Another way of doing it (if you are using 3Ds Max) is that once you have the dome made, you can duplicate edges as a spline and use max's spline feature to render it in viewport and then modify as needed. You can then convert it to edit poly and BAM!!!, you have a nice frame that follows the contours of the glass perfectly.
I've had quite a bit of free time to work on this and its still in WIP
Things to do:
- Foliage inside dome (the trees are placeholder I made for another thing)
- More detail on ground to blend rock and dirt together.
- more dust and dirt on the rocks (not sure how to get this done, maybe with a top down shader or vertex painting??)
- Fixing the refract glass (its white in some areas for whatever reason, I think its conflicting with the sky dome but don't know why)
- tweak around the lighting (perhaps something with more red)
- more dust
- fog tweaking
Obviously it looks nothing like mars but some things have to be given up in the pursuit of making things look better.
A lot of things were first time for me; Figuring out how to create reasonable looking materials with proper compression, creating a landscape and texturing it, constructing modular building assets, glass refract, sky domes, and more.
oddly enough the dome was actually quite easy, I rounded it outwards like a bulge but its not that noticable ingame.
Most rocks are just a single rock, the smaller ones being a cluster of them.
I've had quite a bit of free time to work on this and its still in WIP
Things to do:
- Foliage inside dome (the trees are placeholder I made for another thing)
- More detail on ground to blend rock and dirt together.
- more dust and dirt on the rocks (not sure how to get this done, maybe with a top down shader or vertex painting??)
- Fixing the refract glass (its white in some areas for whatever reason, I think its conflicting with the sky dome but don't know why)
- tweak around the lighting (perhaps something with more red)
- more dust
- fog tweaking
Obviously it looks nothing like mars but some things have to be given up in the pursuit of making things look better.
A lot of things were first time for me; Figuring out how to create reasonable looking materials with proper compression, creating a landscape and texturing it, constructing modular building assets, glass refract, sky domes, and more.
oddly enough the dome was actually quite easy, I rounded it outwards like a bulge but its not that noticable ingame.
Most rocks are just a single rock, the smaller ones being a cluster of them.
I've been lurking at the noob challenge threads for a while, but this one really intrigued me. From the start I wondered how I could make the dome...and tonight I tried. I block meshed it and...well it was actually easier than I thought to get an "ok" block out shape. I had issues regarding the "create shape from selection" when I selected intersecting edges : it wouldn't merge the common vertices, I found it weird. I hope there's a way to do that, not that I really need it because I ended up create one spline per support beam thingy, but I can't believe that there couldn't be a way to merge vertices when creating splines properly. Confused, I'll certainly look into that !
So I'm pretty late for that one...and some members have made a great job already it's inspiring ! For now I'll just..post the dome block out I guess. More progress soon, I'm looking forward to making those tileable rocks + modeling the asian / buddhist architecture, which I have never done before.
@njackson4190 I'd say the cut in the rocks isn't so bad, it only becomes bad when it's tiled everywhere so maybe have it for one in 5 or so rocks.
I've spent the night 'trying' to sculpt a canyon like mesh and I've made this, although I'm not sure if its good enough to be used or if using single rocks scaled and rotated around everywhere like Jimonions. It's been dragged straight from mudbox hence why it looks all pixelated
Today;s progress. Didn't manage to get as much done as I did yesterday (or so it feels it) but I guess learning to make rocks and having troubles with normals can do that to your time. Still unsure on the rocks, but they'll do for now. Probably table the rest of the shot in block form then start to add details to the houses and stairs
Got a lot done today. I tweaked the rock texture some more and removed the large chip in it. I am not calling it 100% done though. I'm going to make another with less chipping and just bumpy detail. For now I am moving on.
I finished the modeling for the modular pieces of one of the buildings and the glass dome as well. I made the entrance a bit big because I want it to be large enough for a supply vehicle to get through. The hatch is going to be a pretty large door with two hydraulic arms that will pick the door upwards. The same will go for the inside door. Tomorrow I plan to make the modular pieces for the larger building and start sculpting some dirt textures.
@Jimonions : Nice job, I am really digging the lighting. Keep it up.
So this is where I am at the moment. I think I'll start adding detail to the house later tonight, but feeling happy with the rocks now. Reshaped the mesh to have small mountains and contours here and there
@Danface, You're definitely making progress there. You have an awful lot of space in between your cliffs, you sure you can fill it up with enough interest?
Not to be nitpicky but the entrance to your dome look very small in comparison to your buildings. Admittedly mine doesn't even have a door. Maybe i'll just say its a bubble that just lets certain things through.
A bit more progress on the exterior.
Added some blowing dust
twiddled fog
added vertex shader dirt on rocks and grass on the dome ones
Changed up my trees for better ones
more blue on the dome
I am not sure if my fog is working out for me. It looks a lot more dusty which is what i wanted but it kinda washes out the colour of things inside the dome.
The glass on the dome is also shaping up really weird. Im thinking about just getting rid of the refract completely and putting something else in since its causing too many bugs
things to do:
- more general detail
- moss / grass on inside of dome
- fix dome material
- more dust?
- perhaps better texturing of my dome support
I cant really think of anything else to do after that point but I'm sure there's something I could improve on.
NJackson - Is that a standard UDK shader for the dome?
Danface - I think youve captured the scale pretty damn well, i want to change the width of my path now to accompany the scale of things. I prefer your approach of the this towering fortress as opposed to a secluded home.
My update, finally baked the rocks i made in Mudbox, but they didnt come out as i wanted to. Capture the smooth but sharp edged surface, against the rough deep purple crevasses.
@iWeReZ I found the best technique to keep the scale was constant importing and exporting of everything. For my 'ribs', if you look at one of my previous posts in topogun, I made the basic shape and then I'd import it into maya to see where they were in respect to the concept photo. I have it as an image plane in maya with a specific camera angle for it and then have all the camera values locked so i dont accidentally move it. I had to import it about 6-7 times for everything to be in place but then near the back of the dome, I had to stop following the image as the perspective is so warped, trying to match the photo ended up in straight lines being warped themselves so after getting the first 2-3 ribs in place, I just made sure that the back set were straight and normal looking.
@Jimonions I havent properly made the left side of the cliffs yet, I was just messing around with the other shapes to get something 'ok' so it looks more finished. I aim to have a big sun glare like you do in the centre though so hopefully that will close off a good amount of the centre space. I also aim to look into curving the road so it looks as though its going down, to add to the perspective. In regards to the entrance, I was trying to keep it the same rough size as the entrance of the small house with the stairs but I didn't think about things like supply vehicles like njackson mentioned so I may give it a bit of reworking in terms of the theory and practical asthetics of it. In terms of improvements, I wouldn't really say you need to improve anything, but maybe add some small things. I think you should add a door of somekind as keeping it without a door does stick closer to the concept but having a matter field seems like a bit of a cop out I want to try and think of something that isn't a decontamination / air lock entrance but I'd have to give it a good think and I think maybe you should too. It is looking really nice and I hope I can achieve something similar or even close to it in terms of lighting. Maybe try adding some visible trees as well so it doesnt just look like a bunch of bushes everywhere
Keep it up though everyone @iWeReZ I would say if you're havign trouble making the ribs, as I know I did, try using programs like topogun or 3dcoat as it lets you modet straight onto your base mesh as reference and helps maintain the shape and the polycount.
So this is where I start tredding into deep water.
This is what I've got so far, I've created some trees in unity and remodelled and messed about with the rocks and viewpoint a bit
I now have a barrage of questions.
How do I get good lighting? There only seems to be spot, directional and point to choose from which are okay, but not great. Running the basic unity, I can't have anything like an area light or a physical sun and sky like in maya. Am I restricted to only these using the basic unity?
Is this also as good looking as it will get? As the trees look pretty unrendered or refined. They look the same as when I was making them, unless of course thats the point? So is there any form of rendering like with maya and max?
Also, when importing multiple objects, is there anyway to drag and drop them all to be in the same place? I had them all set up in maya, imported them all separately and then drag and dropped them into the scene but they were all far from where they should be. Not by much, but I generally thought it would be an exact position import so I spent about 30 minutes getting it all lined up again.
Using flares on lights, I learned about mesh colliders which obviously stop light passing through them but how can I get it so if the light is overlapping, to only get that bit of light shining through? Like with Jimonions lighting.
I still have to put in all detail onto the houses but for the moment, I want to try and get at least good looking lighting so I'm in search for a fair bit of help and any received would be much appreciated.
@iWeReZ: The shader is custom made, nothing to difficult to make. I still have to add the reflection but that will get added at the end when I make the cubemap. Here is the shader network in UDK, really it is just some fresnel expressions multiplied with some colors to get the look I was aiming for. Feel free to copy and add to it.
After tirelessly searching, I'm coming to the conclusion that anything I need to do, requires unity pro which I'm not going to pay for so after downloading UDK for the first time and watching an intro video on it ([ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgSUbmKOX24"]UDK Tutorial 1 - Introduction to UDK - YouTube[/ame]), it seems the lighting I need is pretty basic for UDK. For anyone new to UDK like myself, I'd recommend watching the video as it explains most of the basics so I look forward to jumping into that later tonight. I'm sure I'll find other problems but for now, I'm feeling fairly confident.
Okay, so I seem to have hit a pretty big wall. I was mostly messing around in UDK, thankfully I hadn't got everything in place, I just exported them all as one .fbx file so I know where everything should go. I was trying to get some form of sun working outside of the skybox and I closed it (saving of course) then I reopened it. It said that basically the packages I'd made importing things were missing and everything was set to NULL. So it's basically wiped everything and I have no idea how to fix it. The "everything" in the image is just what I called the .fbx with all the objects combined andf so that's what I also called the package.
Ok never mind. I think? After making a package, I right clicked it and went to 'save' and then i closed everything, reopened it and now it's running like a saved file should. It'll be a bumpy ride as this the first time using UDK. The controls are a pain though, would be much nicer if it had universal controls like maya-3ds-zbrush-3dcoat etc.
Is there any way to get the sun in the udk skybox to be lowered? I'd want it to be between the rocks, almost at ground level like in the concept and then I wouldn't need to bother with making an in-game sun
So this is where I'm at now. I'm much happier with the lighting in UDK than in Unity and I would say I'm probably 85% happy with the lighting, baring in mind I hadn't touched UDK before today.
Now I can finally pay attention to the house detail and texturing and I also need to have a go at making the dome reflective (it's not in the scene because I knew I wouldn't be able to make it look good) so that's an adventure for tomorrow
I've unfortunately had an insanely busy week (24 hours spent on trains in 6 days, don't you just love England sometimes!), I haven't achieved as much as I'd like - in particular on the UDK front, I'm really behind on my engine imports. This is something I need to improve, so I will dedicate Saturday or my day off next week to just get everything into UDK and get some base lighting.
I've baked down all my sculpts and textured them. Each rock is individual (maybe too alike, but will break forms nicely), and currently sitting at 1000 polys, which I will nerf down to 1/2-1/3 of that now I'm happy with 'em. I've stuck to maximum of one photo per texture, and that photo is always high passed and manipulated heavily. Pretty happy with my rock work and the wood is getting there. Renders are in Marmoset. The wood is modular, so will be pieced together in UDK, the square beam is too small due to some export errors and me needing to sleep today! But I promised myself I'd post an update here.
I feel like 2/3 of the time consuming work is done, although the foliage is a BIG time sink, so I need a few days to tackle that. After this, the roof/stucco/dirt/dome should come in 2-3 days altogether. Leaving *fingers crossed* ample time to get it all finished and tinkered with!
@Jimonions - Nice work! I'm really looking forward to seeing some more wood detail on your temple, as it's going to draw the eye into specifics. Keep it up
@Danface - Nice progress, I feel you need to play with the camera angle again as it currently seems a little high/scene lacks a sense of scale. I'm sure this will come with time though!
Here is my progress so far. My main goal with this challenge is to do everything with little to no photo source for the textures and create all my normal maps and details using only Zbrush. So far the tiling textures have been made using only zbrush and some photoshop filters. The rocks have been made the same way using zbrush to sculpt the details and handpaint in the rest of the details and colors. I am pretty new to environment sculpting in Zbrush and I have learned a ton just by using the program.
The skybox is custom made using an old material network I made from one of my older projects. I still have to make some larger rocks/boulders and another tiling texture for the terrain... one that is more rocky than sandy. I also want to make a tiling cliff texture as well. For now I may take a break from rocks and start some of the vegetation.
I plan to do the textures for the buildings last. I think that will require the least amount of time to complete. I don't think I will be able to finish this by the end of the month but I may get close.
@Nine15ths : Nice job with the rocks and fence. Can't wait to see it in UDK.
Haven't had a lot of time lately, so I was quite glad I got to spend some time on this again today. I UV mapped most of the things in here, modelled the modular rocks in the back. I threw some (very) basic diffuse maps on some things and put in a light. All feedback is welcome!
And here is mine. I've been working on it for past 1,5 week. Most of this time learning to use modo My goal was to switch modelling entirely to modo, and use as few as unique textures and meshes as possible.
Also using World Machine to generate background and main terrain chunks (although main gameplay area is make with Landscape).
It's bit different from concept, but I really loved to make some terraces with cliff rocks..
Don't mind the rocks with wrong colors. They are placeholder. I realle like to have something to look at when I make level. even if it doesn't match.
I absolutely love how everybody went wild with concept, rendering it with different styles, and designing the pod airlock differently, and making the entire scenery original.
Unfortunately, I had a pretty hectic month, doing different projects, branching out into difficult designs to increase my experience, but I still managed to put somewhat of an effort into this one, so here it is:
Replies
KB.Arreza - Those are some BEAUTIFUL words right there, Already improved the clarity with the filtering and Aniso. The shadows are much cleaner and have a bigger range with deferred. All of it is awesome. The color space thing though, that changes the visuals DRASTICALLY, whats going on here in simpleton terms?
Image to show the different modes for comparison. The Linear seems to be less accurate in terms of actual selected material colour versus output.
- Trilinear filtering blends your textures' mipmap levels depending on how far/close you are to the texture (works like LOD but for textures) - good when dealing with normal maps.
- Aniso(tropic) filtering again works with texture - it prevents your texture from getting all blurry at narrow angles.
- All I can say about deferred lighting is that it separates your scene geo from the lighting, and so the light only affects the pixels it needs to.
- Linear lighting is different to gamma through:
- fall off (the shadows are sharper and thus brings out your textures)
- intensity (gamma makes highlights brighter than they should be)
- and overall blending between shadows and highlights (it's just the way to go
I feel like i can get out of this blobby phase with Sculptris, no matter what i try i cant get what i want :F heres a few of the tests along the way :
Pretty happy with my breakdown and blockout; although as others have said the perspective is severely warped. As such I'm not going to focus too much on the horizon for now, and instead focus on environment pieces. I am likely going to use UDK, and I would also like to do a test render in Marmoset Toolbag 2.
After playing around with the obscure square building for a while I settled on a simple tower, as the other roofs I was making just started to muddle the silhouette, plus it breaks the monotony up a bit!
I also got a little bored this evening and started sculpting some rocks.
Bought to start modeling out all the assets. I thought that I would post my breakdown for what I plan to do. I am looking into making everything pretty simple geo wise. The most detailed thing will probably be the hatch door on the front and the rocks/cliffs.
For the main buildings I plan to make a bunch of modular walls and windows that will have a variety of detail. The walls will be plaster and I plan to make plain plaster walls and some walls with detail like the smaller wood pieces.
For the roof tops I am going to make a tiling roof set with front and back pieces, along with a middle modular section for the tiling shingles.
The environment will consist of a few cliff sides and multiple rocks. I also want to implement some vertex painting on the rocks as well.
The vegetation will consist of some grass, trees (It would be cool to make some apple trees), bushes and Ivy. I'll also make a few tiling terrain textures and some rocks to add to the ground to break up the tiling.
And for the glass, I think I am going to use a shader in UDK. I would really like to try doing a condensation type of effect on the glass though. Would be a cool look. I am not sure how I would go about making it look realistic though.
Time to get this ball rolling, good luck everyone.
So I really looked at this as texture pieces, for some reason it helped me break down what I had to model. There is a good chance that those texture sizes are too large, but hey, time will tell.
As for Geometry, this is how I see it:
-Building- It looks like stucco as already mentioned. So I'm just going to do a texture for the base and apply it to a BSP, no point in modelling it.
-Wood elements- Model what I need and have it all referencing the one material
-Roof-Model, one side and duplicate as needed.
-Stairs- I see these as wood, so basically I'm going to make a modular piece and repeat it a couple times.
-Canyon walls- Model a basic shape for each section and add some independent rocks for variation.
-Rocks- Model 2-3 larger rocks and a few smaller rocks
-Vegetation- I have never modeled or textured vegetation. I figure that I will do 1 tree trunk and do everything else as cards. I really don't know so this will likely change.
-Dome- There is really a couple of parts. One that goes along the top, one that goes along the sides and one that fits the bottom. So maybe 6-7 modeled pieces. I plan on using one texture sheet for them all.
Again, this is all my best guess and I am super open to feedback.
Here is my block out in Maya. As many have already mentioned, the perspective of the concept is a little out of whack, so after much frustration trying to match it. I went with taking the essence of the concept and making that work.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
@Nine15ths-Those rocks look pretty good, the only crit I would have would be that they don't look weathered enough. I get the impression from the concept that this is an area where erosion has kicked the crap out of the rocks, the one that you have modeled looks like its fairly fresh from the quarry. The bottom left side looks like it would fit the concept, but the other 3 sides have too many sharp corners in my opinion.
That's my first WiP. Started this evening. I made a small adjustment to the front, giving it a small airlock. I'm feeling like the glass and ribs are almost finished modelling wise, so I think I'll approach the house and rocks next, and try to do the vegetation after.
Any feedback would be most welcome!
Got a lot less done than I hoped today. I did some modelling on the house, made some minor changes to the dome and made some change to the stairs. Still quite clueless how to start on the rocks. Hoping to have some time for that tomorrow.
Again, all feedback is welcome.
Never mind, I did it.
Finally got the scale and properties pretty nailed down. I also got my dome looking ok, so I should be high-polying soon.. Feedback welcome!
I think I'll create all my textures within photoshop. I'll learn Zbrush later.
Give Sculptris a try man, it might not be as powerful or intuitive, but for the purpose of picking up and having fun it works. Ive just got mudbox educational to try myself.
Cubedparadox - Good job on that cage! Mind posting some alternate angles? looks like an odd shape. I like how you changed the dynamic of the concept by shortening the long valley on the left, makes it seem like there could be multiple amounts of these structures around the area rather than a solitary one.
First off, I started by cutting out all the excess polys from looking at everyone elses. No one bothered with the wooden beams in the geometry so they were the first to go and then I shaved off extra edges on the roofs
Then I just spent hours trying to get the dome shape from one perspective (a very bad perspective at that) and managed to come up with this. I'll get the block out of the rocks done tonight although I'm starting to get closer to the things I'm not so good at; the texturing and then putting it through a games engine, which will have to be unity as I don't know how to use any others
The shape in the background is the original Cylinder I shaped it from,
I applied symmetry to the cylinder, then using soft selection made it more of a 3D Oval, and from there cut it in half, applied an FFD 4x4x4 to bend it freely into the concept, and from here because of the existing geometry I should be able to use the existing loops to extrude part of/a good base for the Frame.
I hope this helps anyone struggling a bit, I know I was
@Danface: Nice idea with retopoing in Topogun. I did not think about that for the glass frame. Another way of doing it (if you are using 3Ds Max) is that once you have the dome made, you can duplicate edges as a spline and use max's spline feature to render it in viewport and then modify as needed. You can then convert it to edit poly and BAM!!!, you have a nice frame that follows the contours of the glass perfectly.
Things to do:
- Foliage inside dome (the trees are placeholder I made for another thing)
- More detail on ground to blend rock and dirt together.
- more dust and dirt on the rocks (not sure how to get this done, maybe with a top down shader or vertex painting??)
- Fixing the refract glass (its white in some areas for whatever reason, I think its conflicting with the sky dome but don't know why)
- tweak around the lighting (perhaps something with more red)
- more dust
- fog tweaking
Obviously it looks nothing like mars but some things have to be given up in the pursuit of making things look better.
A lot of things were first time for me; Figuring out how to create reasonable looking materials with proper compression, creating a landscape and texturing it, constructing modular building assets, glass refract, sky domes, and more.
oddly enough the dome was actually quite easy, I rounded it outwards like a bulge but its not that noticable ingame.
Most rocks are just a single rock, the smaller ones being a cluster of them.
Man dose that look good.
I've been lurking at the noob challenge threads for a while, but this one really intrigued me. From the start I wondered how I could make the dome...and tonight I tried. I block meshed it and...well it was actually easier than I thought to get an "ok" block out shape. I had issues regarding the "create shape from selection" when I selected intersecting edges : it wouldn't merge the common vertices, I found it weird. I hope there's a way to do that, not that I really need it because I ended up create one spline per support beam thingy, but I can't believe that there couldn't be a way to merge vertices when creating splines properly. Confused, I'll certainly look into that !
So I'm pretty late for that one...and some members have made a great job already
Good luck with that to all
@njackson4190 I'd say the cut in the rocks isn't so bad, it only becomes bad when it's tiled everywhere so maybe have it for one in 5 or so rocks.
I've spent the night 'trying' to sculpt a canyon like mesh and I've made this, although I'm not sure if its good enough to be used or if using single rocks scaled and rotated around everywhere like Jimonions. It's been dragged straight from mudbox hence why it looks all pixelated
I finished the modeling for the modular pieces of one of the buildings and the glass dome as well. I made the entrance a bit big because I want it to be large enough for a supply vehicle to get through. The hatch is going to be a pretty large door with two hydraulic arms that will pick the door upwards. The same will go for the inside door. Tomorrow I plan to make the modular pieces for the larger building and start sculpting some dirt textures.
@Jimonions : Nice job, I am really digging the lighting. Keep it up.
Not to be nitpicky but the entrance to your dome look very small in comparison to your buildings. Admittedly mine doesn't even have a door. Maybe i'll just say its a bubble that just lets certain things through.
A bit more progress on the exterior.
Added some blowing dust
twiddled fog
added vertex shader dirt on rocks and grass on the dome ones
Changed up my trees for better ones
more blue on the dome
I am not sure if my fog is working out for me. It looks a lot more dusty which is what i wanted but it kinda washes out the colour of things inside the dome.
The glass on the dome is also shaping up really weird. Im thinking about just getting rid of the refract completely and putting something else in since its causing too many bugs
things to do:
- more general detail
- moss / grass on inside of dome
- fix dome material
- more dust?
- perhaps better texturing of my dome support
I cant really think of anything else to do after that point but I'm sure there's something I could improve on.
Danface - I think youve captured the scale pretty damn well, i want to change the width of my path now to accompany the scale of things. I prefer your approach of the this towering fortress as opposed to a secluded home.
My update, finally baked the rocks i made in Mudbox, but they didnt come out as i wanted to. Capture the smooth but sharp edged surface, against the rough deep purple crevasses.
@Jimonions I havent properly made the left side of the cliffs yet, I was just messing around with the other shapes to get something 'ok' so it looks more finished. I aim to have a big sun glare like you do in the centre though so hopefully that will close off a good amount of the centre space. I also aim to look into curving the road so it looks as though its going down, to add to the perspective. In regards to the entrance, I was trying to keep it the same rough size as the entrance of the small house with the stairs but I didn't think about things like supply vehicles like njackson mentioned so I may give it a bit of reworking in terms of the theory and practical asthetics of it. In terms of improvements, I wouldn't really say you need to improve anything, but maybe add some small things. I think you should add a door of somekind as keeping it without a door does stick closer to the concept but having a matter field seems like a bit of a cop out
Keep it up though everyone
This is what I've got so far, I've created some trees in unity and remodelled and messed about with the rocks and viewpoint a bit
I now have a barrage of questions.
How do I get good lighting? There only seems to be spot, directional and point to choose from which are okay, but not great. Running the basic unity, I can't have anything like an area light or a physical sun and sky like in maya. Am I restricted to only these using the basic unity?
Is this also as good looking as it will get? As the trees look pretty unrendered or refined. They look the same as when I was making them, unless of course thats the point? So is there any form of rendering like with maya and max?
Also, when importing multiple objects, is there anyway to drag and drop them all to be in the same place? I had them all set up in maya, imported them all separately and then drag and dropped them into the scene but they were all far from where they should be. Not by much, but I generally thought it would be an exact position import so I spent about 30 minutes getting it all lined up again.
Using flares on lights, I learned about mesh colliders which obviously stop light passing through them but how can I get it so if the light is overlapping, to only get that bit of light shining through? Like with Jimonions lighting.
I still have to put in all detail onto the houses but for the moment, I want to try and get at least good looking lighting so I'm in search for a fair bit of help and any received would be much appreciated.
I always feel like i hit the same wall with Unity, just doesnt feel as clean as UDK does, and the control for static meshes is easy enough to use.
Add stuff to your initial post by editing...
Now I can finally pay attention to the house detail and texturing and I also need to have a go at making the dome reflective (it's not in the scene because I knew I wouldn't be able to make it look good) so that's an adventure for tomorrow
Me and a friend are collaborating on this challenge, hope thats ok!
This is the progress of ~one day
I've baked down all my sculpts and textured them. Each rock is individual (maybe too alike, but will break forms nicely), and currently sitting at 1000 polys, which I will nerf down to 1/2-1/3 of that now I'm happy with 'em. I've stuck to maximum of one photo per texture, and that photo is always high passed and manipulated heavily. Pretty happy with my rock work and the wood is getting there. Renders are in Marmoset. The wood is modular, so will be pieced together in UDK, the square beam is too small due to some export errors and me needing to sleep today! But I promised myself I'd post an update here.
I feel like 2/3 of the time consuming work is done, although the foliage is a BIG time sink, so I need a few days to tackle that. After this, the roof/stucco/dirt/dome should come in 2-3 days altogether. Leaving *fingers crossed* ample time to get it all finished and tinkered with!
@Jimonions - Nice work! I'm really looking forward to seeing some more wood detail on your temple, as it's going to draw the eye into specifics. Keep it up
@Danface - Nice progress, I feel you need to play with the camera angle again as it currently seems a little high/scene lacks a sense of scale. I'm sure this will come with time though!
The skybox is custom made using an old material network I made from one of my older projects. I still have to make some larger rocks/boulders and another tiling texture for the terrain... one that is more rocky than sandy. I also want to make a tiling cliff texture as well. For now I may take a break from rocks and start some of the vegetation.
I plan to do the textures for the buildings last. I think that will require the least amount of time to complete. I don't think I will be able to finish this by the end of the month but I may get close.
@Nine15ths : Nice job with the rocks and fence. Can't wait to see it in UDK.
Like your rocks. But they seem, to much... noisy ? Maybe more flat surfaces would do better for them.
@njackson4190
Love your textures.
And here is mine. I've been working on it for past 1,5 week. Most of this time learning to use modo
Also using World Machine to generate background and main terrain chunks (although main gameplay area is make with Landscape).
It's bit different from concept, but I really loved to make some terraces with cliff rocks..
Don't mind the rocks with wrong colors. They are placeholder. I realle like to have something to look at when I make level. even if it doesn't match.
Unfortunately, I had a pretty hectic month, doing different projects, branching out into difficult designs to increase my experience, but I still managed to put somewhat of an effort into this one, so here it is: