Courtyard Environment
polycounter lvl 8
Latest progress
I have been working on a courtyard in UDK, which I was hoping to add to my portfolio.
This is what I have so far.
Aside from the ground textures, what I plan to add is:
- Vertex painted moss and other details
- Lanterns
- particle effects, such as leaves
- leaves to the ground
- something for scale, a bench perhaps
Otherwise I am still considering how to light the environment, what time of day and so on. Some textures still needs a final touch, the foliage for example does not have a proper transmission.
I am also wondering wether I should add something to the outside of the courtyard, to increase the sense of presence.
All feedback is appreciated
Replies
The planter texture looks a bit muddy, and I'm not certain that the style - natural stones - matches the feel of the rest of the scene. A more regular (i.e artificial) brick/stone might be better.
Consider changing the large plants around the tree. They don't really fit; low ground cover or flowers would be more typical. The dirt might look better if it were a darker, richer brown.
Tan is an odd color for the railings & walls; white is more common.
I am looking into the scales in the scene, it would seem you are right about the railings, and I will probably need to fix the mesh on them.
About the planter, I am trying to get the feel of a natural or exotic garden and so I prefer that look for the stones. But I am gonna try and change up the texture a bit.
Todays update:
So today I have set up the texture blending and made a quick moss-texture, it still needs work, as well as the grass texture that is fairly temporary.
I am concidering adding some larger bushy plant for use on the sides as well, though I do not know what. The tropical looking plants may need to go also, since I am unsure if they would be able to grow in the same biotope as the others.
This is what it looks like:
I will absolutley be doing some form of paved walkway around
I added some short grass and paving stones, they might be a bit rough.
Also added some Lilac. I will add flowers to the bushes later.
I am still messing around with the lighting, I have a hard time getting the global illumination to act like I want it, which is apparent with the strong reddish shine on the roof.
Thank you both
I will see if I can get that done today.
I created a lantern and started to try out some different lighting. I might return to a brighter mid-day lighting though.
I also added more foliage planes to the tree, but I am unsure if I like what it looks like at the moment.
The positioning of the lanterns are temporary.
Have you considered changing up the sky color? I think if you were to add a dusk setting to the sky to give the red on the tree some harmony it would work out great, it would work with your lights too but not so much the thick fog.
getting some more height on the ground texture would be a good addition too.
It might be a bit hard to see the objects with this lighting.
So here are some unflattering images of them from the model viewer, the materials are still unfinished.
There's something I could use some help with.
Those goblets and the pitcher have been giving me a lot of trouble. I have been trying to create a depth-based transperency shader for the glass and liquid. (it's supposed to be wine, not cranberry juice)
And I use an opacity-mask based material for the iron decorations on them. Right now it looks very rough, that can be fixed though, the biggest problem is the lightmaps.
When I create lightmaps for these objects it looks like this:
This doesn't seem to have to do with the lightmap uv's so I am expecting it has something to do with how I use the transparent materials. The issue seems to appear mostly when I use depth-based transperency instead of ordinary transperency.
I think I am also going to redo the models and make the liquid its own mesh, right now it's part of the texture of the glass. That will probably not fix the lightmapping problem though, I don't know what will.
I have kept working on the glass materials. Unfortunately the artifacts I get when lightmapping the objects seems to be related to the lightmap-size, increasing the size removed some of the artifacts. This is not a viable solution since the objects are only about a foot tall.
I will add a mask for the wine to distinguish it more from the glass.
your interior space is looking a little dark - I have my brightness pumped too. Place a few low intensity lights sampled with a mid tone color of your main light source as some faked bounce lighting with shadows disabled. It will make your cloth curtain stand out more too which seems to be very nice, you could even modify the material on the curtain with a subtle red specular to give it a silky look.
post your UV's for the lightmaps. Most likely some are inverted/flipped or orientated wrong
You might not want the blue, I think it helps with the glass and balance natural light.
I don't think the problem is in the lightmap Uv's, this is what they look like:
And thank you for the tips on the lighting I will try that out. I will see what I can do to balance the light.
Btw, I was thinking of using color correction later, though I am unsure how to prepare the lighting in the scene before I add the CC. I guess less contrast?
Thank you, yeah the moss looks a bit blotchy right now. I will see what I can do to make it a bit more modest.
Thank you. I will give the bloom some proper care when I finalize the light and add CC.
I think I am done with this glass right now, I have added a mask with an inverted fresnel to the translucency of the wine, giving it a feeling of depth. I don't really feel it looks like wine right now, but I need to move on.