Monthly Community Noob Challenge October 2014 (24)
polycounter lvl 7
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge for the month of October.
Welcome to the third installment of the Noob Challenge under new leadership. I've decided to fit this month's challenge to the match the holiday of Halloween that we celebrate this month!
Join our Skype group if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Me: noble.wulf
You don't have to join the Skype if you don't want to though, and you don't need to ask to participate in the challenge, just start working on it and post your progress in this thread!
Artist - RogierB
http://rogierb.deviantart.com/
For anyone wondering about the absence of the prop challenge this month, it wasn't including in order for more focus to be on the theme of the challenge this month. But feel free to make anything Halloween related, even though it's not officially a part of this month's challenge.
For this month's challenge in particular, the goal doesn't just pertain to the concept given above. While you guys will be trying to replicate the given concept, I would also like to ask you guys to add a sense of Halloween feel into your artwork as well. Whether that be the addition of various Jack-O-Lanterns, or even swarms of bats flying overhead. Let your creativity run free this time around, while still maintaining that eerie and ominous feel that we are trying to convey this month!
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, then feel free to go ahead and do it. This way you can gradually work on building up to a full scene before diving head-first into the whole ordeal.
Please read all the rules before starting.
When you are just starting out making a scene, it can seem complicated or imposing, so take the time to break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible and plan it out. A lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some reference images 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.
Here are some specifics.
- Try to post one critique for every post that you make. This will make for a better learning environment and help us all grow as artists.
- You must make your own textures, no stealing. We can't keep you from doing it, but the goal is to learn. You can use other textures and images to create your final texture, but please, no blatant copying of another artist's work.
- You must use a game engine to present your work. Unreal Engine and CryEngine are very common engines that can be used, but feel free to use any alternatives that you want.
- You must try your best and finish as much as you can in the timeframe provided.
- Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique. We don't need to have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
- 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 using Ddo. 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, so please don't complain.
- Well that's about it. If you think that any rules should be changed, or there should be new additions to the rules, please let us know.
Replies
Anyway, good luck everyone!
@sziada Cool, good start
I'm going to join in on this one, I'm still a total noob to the whole production so this should help me a ton!
@Sziada - Looking nice! Are you using BSPs or importing static meshes?
Here's some wood texture references and a great tutorial on hand painting wood textures by Philip K:
http://www.pinterest.com/rachelclark5205/painted-wood-textures/
http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/materials/woodrough/woodrough.html
A demonic black-eyed child regulaly screams and terrifies boozers.
Demonic phantom figure often spotted out side staring menacingly at the pub.
Piano playing by itself
Glasses flying, objects like candelabrum's falls over blocking people path.
Crying from the toilets when no one is there.
If you don't believe a word and that story does not put you off running a pub now's the time to buy it
Here is the full story - http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/402776/The-pub-everyone-s-scare-to-buy-Screaming-ghoul-terrifies-punters
All he wants is a pint!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHiHZPe4C4k#t=73
First challenge ever for me, glad to join in
Next to come : more blocking out !
@kadeschui : Thanks for the tuts mate, it's going to be very helpful in the near future !
Here is my blockout, this is my first environment so I'm learning all the processes as I go along.
New to polycount and decided to enter this little challenge.
Just blocked out the two major structures and did a test on the fabric as a proof of concept.
Rendered in unity3d
Learnt a few tricks through this challenge already which is pretty nifty!
anyho... Blockout start still fiddling with placement, pole heights and viewing angle. I'll do the final renders in UE4 Once I have proper assets.
Here's mine piece of work. My first environmental challenge.
Blobby shapes to the left are supposed to represent foliage placement.
Also here is some W.I.P.
I was thinking maybe create about 10 unique individual planks and essentially build the hut from them?
But I'm big noob at environment art, so perhaps I'm missing something.
Maybe some trickstery with alpha channel is more valid way to go.
How i'm going to tackle this is by taking my shed with the textures applied and then in your modelling program slowly chip pieces from the object based on the texture (line up cracks with edges of the planks)
Red: Unique props
Dark Blue: Tileable textures
Light Blue: Modular prop
Yellow: Reusable prop
I'm not sure what modular props are, so if y'all would be so kind to let me know what those are, and if i missed anything?
Thanks y'all!
Nice Blockouts everyone, i´m not finished with blocking out and planning yet, trying to get the feeling and the right composition of the concept.
I will take this chance to learn more about Unreal 4 / Material Editor.
Everything is just a placeholder, quickly made some trees and placed them around, have fun guys!
Maybe it's just that I grew up in the country, but the concept doesn't read as creepy to me and I'm not interested in pushing it towards that. I think it's mostly the chimneys. The building in the front could be creepy except that the gaps in the wall wouldn't make sense in a climate where you'd would need a fireplace for heat, so with the chimney and the tools out front, it seems more like a forge or some kind of workshop. Same with the one in the back, it's almost a creepy barn, but with the chimney it would have to be a dining hall or something along those lines. Also the warm lights. The blue channel on its own is a bit creepy, looks like it could be a ghost town, no lights in the buildings, just crows. Eh, just thinking out loud, I guess.
Anyways, here's another angle with more light:
It's pretty subtle, but I found that putting the closer building up on a hill about 1 meter higher than the other building helped with the sense of space.
Alrighttt. All of your block-outs are definitely looking great, I'm very excited to see how everything develops.
Most assets are place-holder, still need to take another go at the fog.
Im happy a lot of people are participating! Keep up the good work, everyone!
Anyway...I started working on the little shed in the front.
Decided to create 5 different planks and instance them to build the structure. Which probably resulted in way too many polys.
I have a question. I am little bit confused about the roof. What is it made of? Same kind of wooden planks as walls but simply bigger and wider?
I have some questions if anyone knows!
1. How do you prevent the light bleeding from the sides of your building where it shouldn't?
2. I'm a total noob when it comes to 3D workflow. I'm finding it difficult to know when to switch programmes? I'm working in 3dsmax for my models, when is it good to put them into Unreal?
3. Finally, as I'm using Unreal there seems to be these easy options to put materials onto your models. When is this method used and when should I be unwrapping the UVS in 3dsmax?
Thanks guys!
Retopologized the roof by hand. I am slowly getting better at it BUT it's still a pain to do even with a half baked plan
the material I shoved on it in unreal is really basic though. Normal map, ambient occlusion flat color and a number in the rough value... I am not going to do a full texture job on a third of a texture...
*reads around in previous posts*
@Holly Mellor: For the work flow I find that it doesn't really matter, but it's a good idea to export when the scale and rotation are final so you can reset it back to 100% scale and 0° rotation by appending the model to a neutral box on the same pivot. Last two scenes I did I only started exporting once I had all my walls, floors, ceiling and pillars down... no props ready at all.
It's also advisable especially with unreal to have an unwrap for non-primitives and since I've still seen it complain in 4 about overlapping UVs for lightbakes two decent-ish unwrap channels are best. One for materials and one without overlaps for lightbakes (sometimes I just go flatten mapping on the lightmap channel though... cus laziness).
As for the light bleeding foliage might help... never really managed to fix that myself and I only masked it with other lighting in other places =/
Hey yeah, that house is still the block out I am planning to do more with it I am just trying to make quick iterations, but I don't have a lot of time atm with high school.
you need to up the lightmap res on the landscape. You can do this under the lighting tab in the details tab. It uses texels per quad or somin like that which defaults at 1, try 2.
Uving and adding props to the scene going to do quite a bit more with this yet, I have a few plans for the shack, so stay posted for that.
Love your cloth inwar, and the lighting looks very nice. Do you have a normal on the cloth and cutouts in the alpha?
btw everyone else who use gloss textures you need to disable sRGB in the textures settings in UE4 for it to work like it should. something no one seems to mention
You can revert UE4 from the color metal rough normal to the older spec glos diff norm ways? Or am I getting this wrong?
Anyway, here's my attempt at generic grassy ground texture.
I'll see how it looks in the scene and maybe change few things. It's fully procedural so if needed I can tweak it till the world ends.
Everyone's works so far are coming out great!
Quick question, I did my tarp in zbrush and modelled it as a high poly. It's in the picture below. So then after watching a few guides it seemed the next steps were to retopologise and get the normal from the high poly for the low poly model. So i've done this but not sure it's turned out so great! What programmes do you guys use for your normals?
In the tutorial I watched they just produced it using the render to texture setting in 3dsmax. Is this viable? I know crazy bump creates much more higher res normals. Thanks guys!
Low poly on the left, high poly on the right.
i created base in max then hand sculpted folds and wrinkles in zbrush.
Ive started the environment Challenge for this month, this is my progress so far.
i'm also using modular pieces to make this project. here is a screen shot of them.
Every one is doing such a great job this month.
tannerhanss I love your render so far is is so close to the concept.
toxkillfraex Your material and normal map is looking awesome.
inwar your cloth is looking so good that's what i'm working on at the moment.
keep up all the good work everyone is looking great.