Crystal Environment - Old Noob Challenge

Sweetangel0467

Since I always miss doing those great noob challenges, I'll try to recreate this scene throughout my free time.

The scene I'm talking about here is:



Current status:

Sweetangel0467

Current WIP's:








I'm trying to keep it as close to the concept as possible.

Gazu

Cant wait to see it finished

Mr Significant

Look hoiw he recreated a crystal ! Its damn same!

Great handpainting skill, bro!

DWalker

The outer railing could use a few more side; it's rather blocky at the moment. (it's most noticeable on the left side.)

atomander

Lovely rendering so far. Subbed!

lotet

wow, great work so far, basically looks like the concept turned into 3D.
this will be interesting to watch, good luck!

Sweetangel0467

Mr Significant wrote: »

Look hoiw he recreated a crystal ! Its damn same!

Great handpainting skill, bro!

I'm a girl, haha thanks for the compliment :poly136:

DWalker wrote: »

The outer railing could use a few more side; it's rather blocky at the moment. (it's most noticeable on the left side.)

I have been noticing that too since I uploaded it :poly121: going to change it in the next update.

to all the rest:
Thanks a bunch Getting that crystal right was the toughest job of all.

Sweetangel0467

Forgot to post my breakdown..

Red: Unique props
Dark Blue: Tileable textures
Light Blue: Modular prop
Yellow: Reusable prop

LaurentiuN

awesomnesss!!! great drawing skills:>

slosh

So far, this is looking nice man. The crystal is almost identical to the concept...great work!

kmactastic

Wow great job so far. I like that you are painting in some of your lighting into the textures. Keep it up lady!

Wendy de Boer

Looking nice so far! The ceiling plants feel a bit flat at this point, though. I think it would look better with more planes, especially little ones sticking out at odd angles.

LaurentiuN

slosh wrote: »

So far, this is looking nice man. The crystal is almost identical to the concept...great work!

NO MAN, she`s a lady:)

Sweetangel0467

@s1dK: Haha! Thanks for correcting
I would like to point out the original concept was not done by me.
It was done by Masaki. Here's his DeviantArt

@DemonPrincess: Thanks for the feedback Wendy ^^ I also feel like they're not done yet.
Nothing on the latest screenshot is a finished mesh/texture yet. I'm slightly rushing the progress just to have something visual for myself to look at to keep up my motivation.

elementrix

I know what your feeling, it can be tough to keep up motivation for a long period of time. I think it would help if you'd block out the complete scene very roughly so you get a better idea of the whole space. Also it looks like your projecting the concept right on your geometry and work from there, now this is a good approach when you are in production and have much tighter deadlines and quickly have to pump out something but I'm afraid your not really learning that much about texture painting incase you don't have something to grab from(ussually the case).

Also, I'm not sure that keeping so close to a concept piece is a very good idea (looks like your intending to get almost the exact concept but in 3d. I wouldn't worry on getting it pixel perfect but just go with the flow and do it by eye and you'll see that the process is much more enjoyable and much quicker. Getting it really spot on takes a lot of tedious work which might be one of the reasons your loosing your motivation?

Sweetangel0467

elementrix wrote: »

I know what your feeling, it can be tough to keep up motivation for a long period of time. I think it would help if you'd block out the complete scene very roughly so you get a better idea of the whole space. Also it looks like your projecting the concept right on your geometry and work from there, now this is a good approach when you are in production and have much tighter deadlines and quickly have to pump out something but I'm afraid your not really learning that much about texture painting incase you don't have something to grab from(ussually the case).

Also, I'm not sure that keeping so close to a concept piece is a very good idea (looks like your intending to get almost the exact concept but in 3d. I wouldn't worry on getting it pixel perfect but just go with the flow and do it by eye and you'll see that the process is much more enjoyable and much quicker. Getting it really spot on takes a lot of tedious work which might be one of the reasons your loosing your motivation?

First up, thanks for the comment!
The crystal's front was indeed projected but I went over it again to clean it up. The other sides of the crystal are also there but were much harder to make since I had nothing to go by.
All the rest was just colorpicked and not projected

I feel like you really hit my weak spot :poly136:
It is true that I want to follow a concept as closely as possible just because I don't want to lose the shape/color that makes it have so much life.
Whenever I see deviations from original concepts they generally don't work out that well but that's just my opinion.

My motivation comes from seeing the whole piece come together as a whole. The sooner I have something to show myself/others, the better I feel about it. Also whenever I'm stuck but don't know what to do the motivation drops immensely.

I'll try my best to loosen up a bit

Dragonar

Really cool !! Continue like that !

Sweetangel0467

Hey everyone! I had some time to work on the scene again but I've come across this weird "bug" I've been having with 3ds max lately.



Why is the gradient in the standard viewport so much more different then when I'm in viewport canvas mode?

I understand that these things are probably optimization, but can't I change it?

My settings:
3ds max 2015
display driver: Nitrous (Direct3D 11.0 Feature Level 11 - NVIDIA Quadro K610M)
Tried changing to a different driver but my max always gives me rendering errors when I do.
I can't configure my driver either btw.

Is this something to do with gamma or whatever? Cuz so far it's enabled with all settings and on 2.2

Texelion

Ah shit I wanted to do that one some day, but you're already doing good ^^.

For the shading in Max I can't tell, I find the viewports really weird since 2014. Did you try to simply change the shading mode ?

CloDevious

I just tend to never trust the view ports in my modeling program and just go right to engine :P

Sweetangel0467

Been busy with my internship and such ^^
Got some time to spare so figured I'd take a second look at my scene and boy, have I learned a lot.

This is only one of the new optimizations I learned while working in the industry.
I don't think I can go on without vertex painting anymore

Sweetangel0467

Added some ornament on the bottom and changed the overall silhouette a bit
Time for optimizing all the other props as well.

Sweetangel0467

This thing has been such an oldie at this point it's embarrassing, ahaha.
A lot of life stuff happened to me including mental health issues whilst making this and I sort of abandoned it for the longest time.
I guess you could say I got imposter syndrome and worked on it in silence.

Here's what I didn't post:



Will this ever be finished? Not sure. My focus has shifted a bit and I've also learned so much more since then that this only shows outdated skills. If I'd continue it I'll probably start from scratch again. For now I'll leave this here to give some closure.

Avenger84

this looks great keep up the good work

Yedp

Hello Sweetangel0467, glad to see you are still around as well, this looks great, it doesn't matter how long it takes as long as you are having fun!
Keep up the good work, it looks great

Sweetangel0467

Recently I really got into gradient texturing and decided to get some redemption on this project.
It's cool to see that throughout the course of my 3D art career I've evolved my workflow. This will be my 3rd attempt at coming back to it.

Here is a visually satisfying gif of the texturing process I'm using: