Monthly Community Noob Challenge March 2014 (17)
interpolator
Welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge March 2014 (17)!
Join our Skype group too if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Skype: alexmasterofcats
You don't have to join the Skype if you don't want to though, you don't need to ask to participate or anything, just start doing it and post in this thread!
This month's concept:
Kskb
Feel free to approach this however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized:) It's up to you, as long as you are learning then it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up the concept a bit as some people wanted feel free, interpret this concept how you want.
There are some things that I would like to point out to for newcomers,
if you only want to do a few props as best you can, go for it! This way you can work on building up to a full scene.
RULES:
Please read all the rules.
When you are just starting out making a scene can seem complicated or imposing, so break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible plan it out, a lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some refs as well for different parts of the scene, maybe gather some refs and make it your own.
Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.
All that matters is that you learn and give and get advice and are willing to be critiqued.
So here are the specific rules:
Furthermore, I know this was not the most voted concept, but it is the concept, I put a disclaimer on the voting thread before posting this.
Join our Skype group too if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Skype: alexmasterofcats
You don't have to join the Skype if you don't want to though, you don't need to ask to participate or anything, just start doing it and post in this thread!
This month's concept:
Kskb
Feel free to approach this however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized:) It's up to you, as long as you are learning then it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up the concept a bit as some people wanted feel free, interpret this concept how you want.
There are some things that I would like to point out to for newcomers,
if you only want to do a few props as best you can, go for it! This way you can work on building up to a full scene.
RULES:
Please read all the rules.
When you are just starting out making a scene can seem complicated or imposing, so break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible plan it out, a lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some refs as well for different parts of the scene, maybe gather some refs and make it your own.
Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.
All that matters is that you learn and give and get advice and are willing to be critiqued.
So here are the specific rules:
Try to do one crit for every post you make, this will make for a better learning environment and help us grow as artists.
Must make your own textures, no stealing, we can't keep you from it, but the goal is to learn, even tileables, I mean you can take someone else's image and make it tileable, that's fine.
You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used, but feel free to use any.
You must try your best and finish as much as you can in this month.
Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique and we don't have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
Well that's about it, if you think the rules should be changed let us know.
I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
Please stay away from Ddo, yeah, it's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, please don't complain.
Must make your own textures, no stealing, we can't keep you from it, but the goal is to learn, even tileables, I mean you can take someone else's image and make it tileable, that's fine.
You must use a game engine OBVIOUSLY. UDK or Cryengine will probably be the most used, but feel free to use any.
You must try your best and finish as much as you can in this month.
Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique and we don't have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
Well that's about it, if you think the rules should be changed let us know.
I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
Please stay away from Ddo, yeah, it's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, please don't complain.
Furthermore, I know this was not the most voted concept, but it is the concept, I put a disclaimer on the voting thread before posting this.
Replies
It will be my first one. Any pointers?
Here's my plan, hope I'm doing this right:
Scene blockout in UDK, 2 days
Transparent plastic cover - I'll be using zbrush or mudbox for this one. 2 days
Metallic fences & construction beams, 2 days
Foliage, 3 days
Tiling concrete river walls 3 days
Rusty beams 0,5 days
Concrete shapes - using 1 or 2 tiling textures, with vertex paint for stains and such, 2 days
Tiling concrete wall small 0,5 days
Water shader 0,5 days
Tiling cinder blocks - using zbrush or mudbox, 1 day
Recycling stations, using unique textures, 1 day
Duplicated concrete buildings, very basic structures, built with 2 modules, 1 for windows, 1 for walls, perhaps using vertex colors as well for stains etc... 1 day
Air vents/electrical cabinets - I'll make 2 different electrical cabinets, 1 air vent (unique textures), and 1 air vent drum with tiling textures. 2 days
Propane tank/ dumpsters - 2 different dumpsters and 1 tank (unique textures) 1,5 days
Building modules - 2 different building modules, 2 days
Dark building concrete walls skeleton - here I will make some subtle shapes in the shadows with concrete walls, 1 day
Skybox, 0 days
Construction warning stripes - will implement these with any of the unique textures, 0 days
Shader balancing (diffuse, specular, gloss), 1 day
Lighting, LUT, post process 2 days
This should add up to 28 days, starting from tomorrow to march 31.
The only area I don't think would work with this style is the trench/river area. If I have time I might make a sci-fi canal lock to break up what would be a pretty boring area of the scene if I were to do it this way. Or alternatively make a nicer bridge and put it in the foreground.
I'm still on a foliage binge from running over on the last challenge, I feel some grass and 2 bushes + a tree will suffice to create a nice, lush variation.
Everything else in the scene can just be made as a modular kit with simple textures, the plastic tarp will require some Zbrushing or possibly some cloth modifier FUN in 3DS max. I'll run 2-3 types of beams for variation, with some high poly baked details and some warning stripes. 3 modular fences of varying styles.
Forgive the crude blockouts, I'm using a trackpad on my mac at work on break!
was thinking the bridge but cant tell if that's a small bridge with a rail or a large one with a roof :P
There is a lot of reference images that I found online. Just search up the Shibuya River on Google or something.
Here is a reference sheet I have gathered so far. You can see the bridge in a few of them.
I split up the colors into the sections that I want to work on individually. I'm trying to use as few textures as possible (going in line with the modularity concept that I want). It's a complicated scene, but I will try my best to make sense of it through an actual 3d block-out.
Good luck to everyone else!
Any ideas?
Thanks
Here is my overlay for the concept:
This is the first time I have done one of these, so hopefully it is right. I am also fairly new to actively posting on polycount, so sorry if I break any rules haha.
I'm going to attempt to do a rough blockout of the scene now and try to figure out a timescale for all of this.
EDIT:
Here is a rough timeline that I will try and stick to in order to get the project finished in time:
Tarp - 1 days
Wire Fencing - Repeatable - 1 day
Foliage Bushes x2 - 1 days
Tree - 2 days
Scaffolding - Repeatable - 1 day
Metal Gurders? - Repeatable - .5 day
Wood planks - Repeatable - .5 day
Concrete plinths - repeatable - 1 day
Concrete river sides - 1 days
Bridge handrail - 1 day
Air con vents x3 - Repeatable - 2 days
Bins etc (Bins, boxes, gas tank) - 2 days
Building segments x3? - 3 days
Satellite dish - 1 day
Air Duct - 1 day
Hand Rail x2 - Repeatable - 1 days
Shed x 2 / 3 - 2 days
Concrete wall - repeatable - 1 day
BG Tree - 1 day
River - 2 days
This makes 27 days in total.
I'm hoping that it will take less than that, but it all depends on how much free time I have around work.
Always good when you can have that level of foliage in an urban environment
it looks like it is a photo from opposite side
You could use tileable textures instead of modular geo! Dirty it up with vertex painting and you're good to go.
This is a pretty cool choice--I wasn't crazy about the concept art, but the real world photos give it a lot of context.
Here is my rough blockout in maya:
There's still a long way to go, but I am enjoying myself so far!
EDIT:
I decided to do an update of where I am up to before bed:
https://www.google.co.jp/maps/@35.654939,139.706438,3a,15y,317.51h,86.53t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sm1k5jTBQxxvwJCULcIHErw!2e0?hl=en
Im busy with other projects so good luck!
Edit:
I believe the pic was taken from the small bridge front the one I marked in Google Street. But google street didn't take pics in the right place so from the small bridge the pics looks off.
Anyway you will be able to see with details the left part of the stage.
Thanks for the link
I have this bad habit to "expand" my scene until too much that I couldn't handle or taking to much time and lead to being abandoned and never finish due to "lack of motivation" typical reason. I really wanted to fix this bad habit so I hope anyone would share their thought of how to overcome this whether from personal experienced on the past or just giving a fresh new perspective for me to see. Thanks~
I struggle with the same bad habit
I see the canal as basically being a spline into a loft easily and work from there to separate it into pieces. I've broken down the fences on both sides to be part of the same grouping. Buildings are not going to follow the flush design and follow more of some concept art I found. The left side will have the construction set up. I see the foliage as giving me the most trouble but that will be at the end.
This is the concept art and color scheme I like:
And this is my current UDK breakdown to get a sense of spacing. I am going with a more river walk/side walk between the buildings and the canal.
Just make what you see.
Make most of it then refine time permitting.
Here is another quick update on my progress of the block out.
I'm pretty happy with the progress so far, and I think that I will be able to start to model some of the parts properly next time I have some free time (hopefully a couple of hours tomorrow)
Catch you soon
A few pieces of geometry need rescaling and have to me moved, the scaffolding isn't very visible.
Looking good so far. The geometry is very true to the concept. I'd think about reducing the size of the plastic sheet though. It takes up quite a bit of the screen!
I've never done one of these noob challenges before. It seems like a great way to gain some skills so I'm gonna give it a try.
Here's some quick and basic color grabs that I intend to use while texturing. I'm planning on hand painting everything.
Concept colours.
Reference images (from google street view and image search).
Rough blocking out of obvious texture/models.
Normally in Max, I'd Rail Clone this thing heavily. Does UDK do any sort of array along a spline? I thought I saw a post a while back about someone doing roads in a similar fashion. Or would it just be best to make a few modular sections of the canal?
I spent ages in google maps trying to find the exact location to get the river geometry right but couldn't find it!
The PathDeform modifier in Max seems to work well for the river banks.
i started today to model these Scene.
Here is my progress. (The textures are only place holder).
I use Autodesk Maya 2014 and Unity3D 4.3.3
i started modeling yesterday for a short time.
I use Maya 2014 and Unity3D 4.3
Here is my progress. The textures are only place holders.
The wall is not round enough for this moment. I use the wall for the other side inverted, so i save memory.
The netting wire is only a transparent texture with a normalmap and spec.
As for the spline, VelvetElvis, There is an actor called SplineLoftActor, which does as intended.
But from what I remember it is kind of tricky to use, and doesn't receive shadows, or something like that.
For my update, I've blocked out the scene in maya, and brought it in to UDK.
Just a quick update.
I figured I would show you guys the final block out before I start to break it up into modular segments and refine the models.
Render in Maya:
Screenshot in UDK:
For example... most of the base stuff is there. The orange beams could be changed to a red, and the cloth overhang could be changed to a bright orange. That combined with cleaning up some of the leaky stuff in the waterway would make an excellent Mirrors Edge environment.
My only concern here is those changes might severely compromise the composition. If anyone has some input, I would like to hear it.
BTW great work everyone.
@Mache - you have a great eye for perspective and I adopted your the sphere blockout for foliage. It does a really good job simulating where it will be really quickly.
Anyways here it is:
Jasper Hope- I think your grabbing to many colors for the basic color scheme. Also, what's the polys on both sides combined?
Mache- Going to enjoy seeing yours, is it going to be a stylized version?
Yellowmice- Good start but horizon looks to wide, also I believe one of your polys is flipped on the left side.
Vmadmax- Looks like your being a little to conservative with the polys.
As for how I would go about modularity; I would make 2 separate pieces for the peak and trough, as well as a Master Texture for the cement that I could vertex paint to get the dirt/grime/runoff/slime feel to it.
Based off of this there is almost equal space of walkway if not less on the left hand side due to the fence.
Just another quick update.
I've not been able to do much because Maya kept crashing for some unknown reason, but after a couple of days of research and testing, I have fixed it ^_^
I decided that my scaffolding under the bridge was wrong, so I changed it based on this reference photo:
And here is what I have in Maya (rough version):
And here it is in UDK with extremely rough placeholder textures for testing the vertex painting:
I have created it in 3 modular pieces.
I am hoping to be able to make quicker progress on this scene now that Maya appears to be behaving itself, but I will be away this weekend so I will not be working on it until Monday.
It looks like everyone is doing a great job so far! Keep it up ^_^
Aside from that, I have school work to deal with and some bits of thesis (and it shames me to admit it, that I might have shaved some time off playing video games rather than being productive).
But every now and then I still check this page for updates, when I can, and if I can muster the courage to see other people's works that I am yet to "reach", in terms of skill and capability (though I keep telling myself to "not be afraid" of viewing other people's works).
My apologies if that came out... "weird"?
Assassinaded It will be tilting towards a more realistic look, but still not too realistic to break out from the concept itself.
Looking at the reference pictures, the area is very dirty, and overgrown. As for the concept, it looks very clean, with some pretty concentrated areas of dirt.
robochrish very good reference for the scaffolding, I did my scaffold following your reference, cheers!