Buchanon & Elswood Terrestrial Storage Facility

beefaroni

So I need to start a new project. I can't be lazy!!

I'm going to title this one "B&E (Buchanon & Elswood) Terrestrial Storage Facility". A little back-story will be that this is a mining/storage facility that was abandoned when the planet ran out of resources. There is a dome around the facility.

I played around with a energy dome but I think a glass/metal dome works better with the heavy machinery. This is my first time doing foliage so there will be a lot of experimentation!!

Anyways, here's my "concept". It's based off two concepts I found and just mashed together and did some color shifting. I'm going with a split complementary scheme cause apparently it's hard for to screw up. Also, I wanted to keep a sci-fi/space theme going for the folio



as suggested, here is the original concept by Jorry Rosman

RogelioD

After how your last project came out, super excited to see how this turns out!! Sub'd for sure! Good luck!

sziada

getting keen for this one man!

beefaroni

I will have a fairly large update soon

beefaroni

I'm starting to understand foliage more. Not going to do a full update until it's perfected.

billymcguffin

Maybe it's just the .gif compression, but it looks really flat. It could be greatly improved if you made it darker near the base of the grass and a lighter color at the tips.

beefaroni

billymcguffin wrote: »

Maybe it's just the .gif compression, but it looks really flat. It could be greatly improved if you made it darker near the base of the grass and a lighter color at the tips.

Good call. Thank you. There is a ton left to do before I am remotely happy with this. Need more grass/weed variation, better ground texture, etc etc.

urgaffel

Looking forward to more updates on this

beefaroni

Hi all. It's been over a month since I've updated!

So.. I had an unexpected interview/art test and spent three weeks working my ass off. It was a bit frustrating to have to put this aside but the test was a great learning experience. Then with the holidays I did not have access to my desktop.

Anyways.. real updates are coming soon!! I'll finally have access to my desktop in a few hours. I'm excited to share some of my methods with you guys in the coming weeks.

I feel bad that it's been a month but there shouldn't be any more future delays. And with Unreal Engine 4.7's foliage updates hopefully I can get some great looking grass

beefaroni

Real update finally.

Using the G.I beta in UE4. Two sided foliage shader in 4.7 preview. Current grass wip. Still needs a lot adjusted and re-done.



Weeds (everything hand modeled and baked for dem normalz).

Dmellott

That in-engine grass render is coming along nicely. Gonna keep my eye on this one, can't wait to see how it turns out dude!

beefaroni

I have a few more varients done but I will upload later. Just wanted to link this program before I forget. Haven't got to use it too much yet but I think that anyone looking to do Ivy will benefit from it!

FREE!
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/

beefaroni

More foliage, I thought I would give a small preview of my maps.

Also, this is the first time I've done foliage so if anyone here has some more experience I would love feedback/advice!

beefaroni

A bit more progress. Very simple textures on the foliage right now. I think I need to re-do the lp patches. But I think I'm heading in the right direction?

C&C welcome!

visoutre

The modeling for the foliage looks great, but you should focus more attention on the lighting. Overall the grass feels too dark. It should be lighter at the tips and where the light hits so you get nice light/shadow shapes like how the concept image has it. Crysis 3 had nice grass so use it for inspiration. The background stuff is looking interesting thou.

KaffeineWolf

As everybody else said, the modeling looks awesome! The grass does seem a bit too uniform and undistinguished, are you using SSS on its material? Can't wait to see the bigger models textured, subscribed.

EDIT:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFvdK6ZPBN0[/ame]

I remembered I saw this some time ago, if you scroll through the comments there's a dropbox link where you can download the project files. Hope this helps!

mats effect

I think you have a lot of good variation in the grass its self with the weeds etc but the key now will be colour. I find with grass and I am far from an expert you need 2-3 different colour variations across the main patches you are using. This really helps break it up. Then personally I like to throw in a really yellow varation on the grass patch that won't be used nearly as often but really breaks things up and adds some extra interest.

I took a screenshot on Fry Cry 4 to help aid my point but will have to grap it tomorrow and upload it.

Posting this from my iPad so I hope it reads sort of ok

beefaroni

Thank you everyone. I have downloaded that scene and am going to take a look at it soon. The foliage definitely needs a real texture pass done to it. Also am running into some z-fighting so I have to adjust the foliage a bit.

Anyways, Time to make some changes! Should have a better variation finished in the next day or two!

Edit: Looking through this grass project right now. Very very nice. I see a lot I can improve.

beefaroni

Looked through the grass project. Couldn't quite understand all of the crazy shaders, but I was able to take away some stuff. Here's another attempt. I will probably have to re-do this all again. Weeds aren't added right now. I want to make sure the base grass looks good first.

Edit: I guess I really don't have to update this every day but meh..

beefaroni

Okay final update of this version. I think next time I'm going to focus on finding really good ref to have better placement of the foliage.

AkiRa

Foliage is looking pretty sweet so far! Really liking that your grass looks like one big mass of grass which makes it pretty realistic as well as the distribution of the larger/higher grown grass patches.

I'd really add some more color variation though, to echo what mats effect said (even though I'm maybe not the best person to take crits about foliage from...not that good at creating foliage myself so...^^)

Pretty cool high poly work on the other foliage as well! Really keen to see how this scene comes along!

Watchin you...!

Cheers!

beefaroni

AkiRa wrote: »

Watchin you...!

Watchin you too :poly121:

Oh and by the way congrats on the feature by Epic the other month.

mats effect

The overhead dome stuff reminds me a bit of a scene in the new call of duty if you have played it. There is a level that has a base below a fake forest and there is also sorts of cool structures and supports holding it up from what I remember might be a good place to look for inspiration.

beefaroni

Another update. Need to add in some larger white flowers. The grass may be too desaturated. I think I'm getting close to the point where I can work on the trees, and start getting some other models/materials worked on.

Any glaring issues I'm missing? I feel there could be something big but I've been looking at it too long to figure it out.

And thanks Matt, I should get around to playing that.

beefaroni

Small update. Just used this tut so the bottom of the grass doesn't move with the simplegrasswind node in UE4!! Took foevea to figure out cause I'm slow :poly141:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu70ANd8Vbk[/ame]

beefaroni

Arg. This keeps getting delayed! I had another art test and a few interviews. But anyways I'm back to it. I can share one of the art tests I did.

http://chrisstone3d.com/overwatch_test.html

And now I'm working on a fun method for the tree bark. I achieved this result in 45 minutes. First test, I really think I can get some high quality results next time!

Chase

Awesome Chris! Did you use an alpha in zbrush or a different method?

beefaroni

3d scanzzzz . Figured I'd should test them out. Working on a better one now (well hopefully better!)

synergy11

Bark doesn't look very realistic.

Bark is actually very tricky.

It has more overlapping forms and chunky deep lines. At least I think that 's the bark you are going for.

http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/66274/66274,1161802481,16/stock-photo-a-close-up-of-tree-bark-textures-background-2056514.jpg

http://freestocktextures.com/images/small/fst_231mjj2f4sx.jpg

pmiller001

Beefaroni I think that looks a little more like mud to be frank. I know its your first test so I wont tell your mother....this time...

beefaroni

Tried to fix it up a bit.

beefaroni

mats effect

Latest one is a massive improvement. Thought I think it could stand to be broken up a little more into those really distinct shapes you see on a lot of barks. Then again depends on the tree. For example http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/White_Oak_Quercus_alba_Tree_Bark_3264px.jpg


Also quick word of warning are you using Unreal 4.7 because of the foliage updates? If so don't update to preview 4 because it won't open any map that has foliage as I found out the hard way...

beefaroni

Ah yea, good call. This is based off of a silver maple for now. There may be some more changes that I need to do now.

And yea, I updated to Preview 4. Luckily i had an older version handy so I was able to copy it back over!!

Edit: Ground!

FULGORE

Sub'd
Just had a look at your portfolio - The consistent quality is really impressive

beefaroni

Ah awesome, thank you!!

Lee recommended I tile the wood (of course). It needs a bit of work to make the tile less noticeable but I think I'm headed in the right direction.

Sorry for spamming this thread btw. I'm a little excited about these textures.