Monthly Community Noob Challenge December 2014 (26)
polycounter lvl 7
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge for the month of December.
Now that we are back from Thanksgiving, it's time to fill our stomachs with art! Let's celebrate the last month of 2014 with a fresh new challenge.
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 and post your progress in this thread!
Artist - Vanja Todoric
http://www.artstation.com/artist/nja3d
Feel free to approach either of the concepts however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized. It's really up to you, and as long as you are learning then it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up either concept a bit, as some people wanted, then feel free. Interpret these concepts to your liking.
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
So far I've spent almost exactly and hour and a half blocking out the scene and planning where everything is supposed to go.
I started by dissecting the reference image and outlining large shapes the needed to be modeled. Then I proceeded to draw a quick birds eye view in order to get the layout of the kitchen to help set up the perspective. Next I quickly went over the various textures that will need to be created in the future. Following this I jumped into 3ds Max and modeled everything out using large shapes and basic editable poly objects.
Finally I added some quick lights to get a bit closer to the mood I was looking to create and called the blocking out a success.
I'll be recording my entire process from start to finish and periodically uploading the videos to YouTube for any who wish to follow along, see various techniques in action, or generally like to hear my soothing voice and swift mouse clicks.
You can find the first two sections below
Section 1 - Concept Breakdown
Section 2 - Blocking Out
Nice blockout
I need to get UE4
I spent the last hour or so creating the large wood bin by the fireplace. I used Z-Brush for the sculpting, exported the normal maps back into max and did a quick texture for the all the wood and metal pieces. If I didn't run into so many problems it probably could have gone a lot faster. It just goes to show that even what I thought was going to be a quick model can take a lot longer if I use techniques I'm not familiar with.
You can view the accompanying tutorial below.
Concept to Creation Section 3 - Wood Bin
Let me know if you see anything that can be improved on!
Night#1. I'm really trying to work on my efficiency/speed at the moment. This is my first time starting in Mudbox without doing a base mesh in Max/Maya first.
I have a feeling my middle table is a bit thin so I'll be thickening that out. The pipe is too obvious so I'll make that go into the wall some place lower down.
Hey guys,
I haven't have been really busy lately so haven't jumped on one of these challenges for a while so I thought I would finally throw myself in to another one now that I have a bit more time.
Here is my first blocking of the kitchen environment. The artwork is lovely I hope I can even vaguely do it justice.
I misunderstood the concept, I thought the red pot on the table was in the background below the window
When im working on this kind of scene, should I make this cupboard, table and worktops as separate assets with unique texture or just reuse one tileable wood texture?
that's my blockout so far
any Critics and comment is welcomed
Do you mind if I join you for this month ?
I haven't participated in anything in a while (almost ten years since my last post!), and I really need to get up to speed with a lot of things.
PBR, modularity of assets and textures, hard surface sculpting, UE4 and probably a bit of Substance Painter/Designer too.
Here is my rough breakdown so far:
It's a bit of a mix of texture and assets breakdown. I still need to figure some of it, like how I'll combine all the wooden parts, including the "tabletop".
Also, I'm not too sure if the pieces around the fireplace are all made of wood, or also stone... And is the center of the top left cabinet door made of wood or glass ? It looks like wood, but with the waves on it, and since everything is blueish because of the lighting...
Same thing for the center piece on the ceiling. Are the borders made of wood, or metal ? And is it hollow ? I don't think it could be used as an exhaust hood...
Anyway... The perspective seems a bit skewed, so I'll try to match that in 3ds max with perspective match, to figure out the proportions.
Nice start everyone, overall
eternal3lade, I find that your plank doesn't look like wood too much yet (at least in the sculpt), it looks more like stone to me. It's less obvious on your low poly. The grooves are a bit too even. Maybe try to pinch here and there to vary their width.
ScottMichaelH, it seems you're sculpting everything in one piece (maybe just for a blockout). I don't know Mudbox very well, but I think it would help your efficiency/speed if you could break that in different pieces
Also, are there any customizable primitives in Mudbox ? It could be useful for the cylindrical base, at least, I guess. You could also try to use some sort of flatten brush to establish some planes.
calen, like I said, I think you will have an easier time if you separate what you can in different subtools. You can still merge copies of them later on to make it look like if it was sculpted in one piece, and make a subtle noise pass, for instance (on a layer, and localized with the morph brush).
Holly, it may just be the camera, but the whole room looks a bit too narrow. But it may just be because you're showing more of the ceiling and the table isn't wide enough
CatalystFire, nice blockout. On the opposite of Holly, I think everything could be scaled vertically just a tad. Well maybe just everything between the floor and the tabletop (lower furniture, oven, fireplace, maybe a taller window).
I also think that the pipe is coming from the back of the oven, and not the wall
Youngy798, I think you can extrude the right furniture towards the camera a bit, parallel to the wall (like the countertop is zig zagging). And this is minor, but the shelf above the fireplace is larger than the fireplace, and a bit thicker, and the plates a little smaller, I think.
The wooden bin next to the oven is the right height, but needs to be a bit wider. I guess it's just copy/paste for now
Darkimage, nice Mickey idol!
Sorry for the long post, I hope my crits are useful, don't hesitate to tell me I'm wrong, so I learn too!
OK, I'm going to prepare some food, and I'll try to have a blockout later.
Oh, by the way, who is the "Fish sacrificial altar" from ?
And the link to Vanja Todoric's artstation page is wrong
EDIT: This is where I am so far. I'm not too sure about certain shapes
See you tomorrow!
Spent a couple of hours blocking out and it took a long time to get the perspective right-ish.
And from the camera angle:
@Suule I'm not sure what everyone else is doing, but I'm guessing that a mix of tilable textures (stone floor, wood, wall cement?) and unique objects would be the way to go. I'm going to try to do mostly unique objects as I need the sculpting practice!
@Bentic Nice blockout, the perspective looks spot on! I only have Max 2013 so I am envious of the 2014 perspective match tool
Here is my update for today. Just fleshing out the scene with the large number of objects dotted around.
Bentic cheers for the crit. I have made the counters taller now. Also good spot of the pipe, makes more sense it coming out of the oven
I have also change my camera to a 28mm camera to get a more dramatic angle. It is not matching perfectly but since I am using a 1920x1080 camera I will never be able to match it perfectly.
Great progress guys, keep it up!
I'd like to show you what I ended up with the Fish Altar at this time. It's basic blockout made in Maya. Next I switch to ZBrush and try to sculpt asymmetrical details on it.
I'm looking forward to seeing your progress guys. Especialy with environment 'coz it's a lot of work to do. Good luck everyone.
CatalystFire, that looks good
krztyczekpstryczek, nice blockout! The only thing I would do is scale the two lower thirds (the stone part) up just a tad. The altar seems a bit taller in the concept. Other than that, it looks like you're good to go on the sculpting pass
This is my update on the blockout:
I had to take some liberties, and I'm sure I'll have to again, because of the perspective and for the sake of modularity. I had a hard time figuring out the depth of all the elements around the fireplace, and I'm not too sure what to do with the beam on the right...
I was thinking about making a texture atlas to be able to reuse the wood around, but I'm wondering how to go about it and have bevels, since most of the pieces have different sizes...
Also, how do you use the Skype group ? Is it only text group chat, or are you having conference calls with screen sharing ?
OK, back to work
P.S.: Is it me or we're logged out of the forum super fast ? I always have to copy my message, refresh the page, log back in, paste it and send it :P
Current progress on the prop. Started with a very basic mesh from max then took it into zbrush to try and learn how to get clean transitions between the different pieces. Not quite there yet, but it definitely seems cleaner than other things I have done.
@Youngy798 The camera angle took me absolutely ages, in the end I gave up and just manipulated the furniture to look right. Probably not the best thing to do if this was going to be an actual playable environment though
@monkeymintaka looks great, the only things I'd say would be the middle table looks a little long, coming too close to the barrel with logs in next to the oven (I'm having trouble getting this right too)
regards
looking good
Still the knife and the fish need to be sculpted but 1st pass is done. I hope I have time to second pass:) However I start to retopologizing it. How many tris should the altar has when I target to current gen? What do you think guys?
Do any of you guys use Unreal Engine 4? My imported textures look so washed out when applied to a material, I turned off sRGB etc but still the same effect. Any ideas?
I've managed to work out how to hand paint a stone floor texture through trial and error, created the spice jars, plates and bowls, the box thing on the ceiling and did some sculpting / texturing on the table legs.
The floor texture came out great in my opinion however the table legs could still use a little more work since they seem a bit too....darkish.
For those of you interested you can find all of the new updates in tutorial form on YouTube at the following links.
Concept to Creation Section 3 - Table Legs
Concept to Creation Section 3 - Plates and Bowls
Concept to Creation Section 3 - Ceiling Box
Concept to Creation Section 3 - Spice Container
Concept to Creation Section 3 - Stone Floor
Still working on this, currently on the unwrapping stage
@krztyczekpstryczek WOW!! it look awesome!!
this is what i've got so far it is just and early sculpt where i've layed out only the major form, i'm going now to start the detail fase
any advise and comments are very appreciated
PS:sorry the poor size of the image when i render it i didn't figure out the size was that small
https://sketchfab.com/models/bbebfcdf48b0447a8313e4b1013684ca
Anyone know where the monthly noob challenge is for January?
Nice! Well done, very clean and beautiful
just finished the altar sculpt still the knife and fish to do so i still have a lot of work to do!!!
but for now this is the altar done
I would love to receive some criticism from you, since it's the first time I participate in this challenge and post my models here on polycount!!!
regards luca!!
Stone part of the altar is also looking good. The only thing which isn't resonate with me is wooden table. It's too smooth and inflated, it should be more chopped/planar.
I'm looking forward to see your next stages of this prop:) Keep it going!!!