Desmond Man - Hand-painted Cottage Level
Hey guys,
It's been a really long time since I've actually brought myself to get back to extra curricular portfolio work... but I've been posting and looking at threads across polycount for a while and inspiration is always flowing because of the talented artists on here
I'm working full time now and I've been forced to start learning hand painted artwork on my current project so I'm doing this as a way to get better at it faster (practice makes perfect no?) haha
Alright so lets get this started...
The concept is not mine and I couldn't find the name of the original artist since I came across it as a second hand upload on pinterest... if anyone knows the artist please tell me, I'd love to drop them an email
Although I like this concept I do intend to mix it up a bit with other styles I've been looking up recently... although my reference bin is actually on my PC at work haha... I'll post them up later on
so...
I've began a block out...
I'll be placing this into UE4, I thought about giving PBR Shading a go but I'm unsure whether i'd need to do such a thing with a style like this... since PBR is probably better aimed at realistic artwork no? If i'm wrong someone please tell me or point me in the correct direction to learn about this pipeline, thank you!
The larger shapes are blocked out however I am starting to go into closer detailing now e.g. windows/doorways and I'll be starting up my tiling textures soon too
It's been a really long time since I've actually brought myself to get back to extra curricular portfolio work... but I've been posting and looking at threads across polycount for a while and inspiration is always flowing because of the talented artists on here
I'm working full time now and I've been forced to start learning hand painted artwork on my current project so I'm doing this as a way to get better at it faster (practice makes perfect no?) haha
Alright so lets get this started...
The concept is not mine and I couldn't find the name of the original artist since I came across it as a second hand upload on pinterest... if anyone knows the artist please tell me, I'd love to drop them an email
Although I like this concept I do intend to mix it up a bit with other styles I've been looking up recently... although my reference bin is actually on my PC at work haha... I'll post them up later on
so...
I've began a block out...
I'll be placing this into UE4, I thought about giving PBR Shading a go but I'm unsure whether i'd need to do such a thing with a style like this... since PBR is probably better aimed at realistic artwork no? If i'm wrong someone please tell me or point me in the correct direction to learn about this pipeline, thank you!
The larger shapes are blocked out however I am starting to go into closer detailing now e.g. windows/doorways and I'll be starting up my tiling textures soon too
Replies
This is all I can do for tonight sadly, but hopefully I can get a good half a day or so on this again tomorrow
Any crits about this so far even though I know it's not much would be of great help to me
Even any suggestions on how I should tackle some parts in the concept are welcome too. I'm always very open to ideas
I think the original artist is called Jeremy Vickery - http://jermilex.deviantart.com/art/The-Charm-Maker-s-cottage-115710873
here's an update... I've just fixed the alphas and painted a basic grass texture for the time being... at this point I've started considering the environment that surrounds the house but haven't got any models meshed out yet... I'm planning to probably run through the base textures for the floor first so that way I can roughly paint out the path and such.
C&C Very welcome.
Ciao!
but all in all I think the house is coming close to the end stages... So i've began making the assets that surrounds it...
The next major asset I'll be moving onto will most probably be either the trees or grass alphas / plants...
I reckon it will most likely be the grass foliage models first since they make a big chunk of this scene... and then the trees will be right afterwards
C&C Very welcome.
Ciao!
But I guess my main concern is how to achieve that look in UE4 through material setup... Like, I'm able to hand paint and gen normal maps, specs etc... but while trying to compose a material in UE4... all the end results I'm obtaining are quite plastic like... I read on an article and also heard from another artist almost at the same time actually that UE4 doesn't support coloured specular maps... so it often gives back quite a weird white specular... Is there a way around it? or is there a way other people who are currently doing the same kind of pipeline that has any advice on how I should be setting up my materials for it?
I'm curious because I've almost always just flat diffuse painted my hand-painted models... so when it comes to working with normal maps with this style of work is a little bit of a grey area with me haha. Knowledge is power no? n___n
Thanks a bunch for the info so far though guys
I can think of two things you can try:
-get rid of specular entirely and just use the normal maps to darken your shadows. You lose the plastic look but everything ends up kind of dry, not unlike what you have now (I assume nothing’s normal-mapped yet.)
-keep the specular and try to compensate with really colorful IBL, probably with lots of indirect lighting to boot. You’ll also want some solid AO textures to mask out specular reflections in occluded areas.
Personally I lean towards the second option. Embrace the plastic-y look. Make everything a little shinier than it would be in real-life and dampen the strength of the specular a touch. You could also try using a post-process volume with custom LUT to boost the brightness of your colors, but I can’t say how well that will work.
So far the only things with normal maps and speculars in my previous post are the grass floor and brick path... but they're turned down pretty low... I tried the 1 constant vector with a value of 0 yesterday and it removed the highlight... it looks okay for now but I'll definitely give what you suggested a try once I've got all my assets done and in... preparation is key haha...
but again, thank you for your input... definitely given me new things to think about while approaching this (Y)
I'll have an update on this piece over the weekend hopefully
Ciao
This tree will be widely used around my UE4 level... so right now this sculpt has 3 subtools...
1 x tree base
2 x branches
I'll be reusing the branches to build 3 or 4 variations to place around my scene... since in the concept some of these trees look pretty tall in the distance I think I'll attempt that same kind of look but if it turns out to look really weird then I'll probably just play around and improvise with what I have.
C&C Very Welcome, I'll get getting onto retopology tomorrow if I haven't gotten any feedback about this by then.
Ciao!
I've been incredibly busy this week so haven't had as much time to progress on this... I also had an absolute nightmare baking this tree down... pretty sure I made a noob mistake by actually sculpting every root into the mesh... I think the next time I approach this tree I'll have like a maximum of 2 or 3 roots coming from the base and everything else will just be intercepting geometry... I had to cut up my high poly sculpt into a good 20-30 pieces just to get the bakes down correctly. but any-hoo here it is so far...
There's still a lot to correct e.g. lighting / placement of assets / shaders etc... but most of it is here already... I'll be adding more props in soon... like plants in front of the house, a few custom ferns here and there and a few rock pieces to break up the empty areas of open grass areas...
Eventually I'll get onto a matte paint for the furthest areas and any additional models / features that may come along the way...
essentially I think from this point onwards I'll be breaking away from the concept a bit and adding a few things that could aid in building the composition of it all... also I've started divising a small back story just to make prop decisions a little easier... I'll post that up later on once I've decided how it will go
C&C very welcome!
And I'm pretty sure Megacorpse means perpendicular to the viewing angle.
As it happens his portfolio has an example : http://vianney3d.tumblr.com/image/118203183957
he has a lot of the leaf cards facing the camera which counters the flat look and also breaks up the tree's silhouette
Alright, I'll have a go at changing the way I've built the leaves today
@polynator
Ah I get what you mean. I'll give that a try right now (Y) and yeah you're right the atmosphere is missing atm. I was planning on correcting it all together in one big go once everything was there but I might just do it sooner than later...
I'll see
C&C very welcome... for the time being I'll move onto making some pretty flowers and such n___n
Ciao!
So I've been spending a lot of time just building and placing foliage this week... I've come to a point where I feel foliage isn't going to be enough to break up that open grass area in front of the house so some helpful feedback from some artists have told me to perhaps build a well or something for the open grass area... so I've gone ahead and started building it but there's nothing worth showing just yet (just blocked out meshes atm).
So here's the update for the time being... I've actually got a question for people who have the answer to this... How should I go about building my shader for tree leaves? I've managed to basically cheat my way into something usable... but my trees seem to get patchy black areas in parts of the map that I'd love to very much learn how to solve? could be an incredibly noob thing that I haven't learnt yet haha...
Here's also an asset list of what I've been planning on putting into this scene still...
- Smoke coming from he chimney
- Some leaves subtly blowing off from the trees and across the level (very little of it though)
- A post box on the front next to the fence
- A few rocks to break up some grass sections
- A lantern on the front porch
LUXURY: Maybe a sleeping corgi just laying on the floor just in front of the front step.
At least this is what I'm planning, but we'll see... some things may not make it in because the scene might start looking too noisy or what not but I'll see where I can go with these
C&C is very welcome (Y)
For the time being I'll be starting on the well... hopefully I'll have something worth showing over the weekend
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/File:SlideNormalThief.jpg
nooo I haven't, what is this though? o_o... haven't ever heard of normal thief, what does it do specifically? slightly adjust all the leaves to point outwards more?
Normal thief looks for the nearest normal on a source mesh, and copies it to the target mesh. You can use it to “steal” the normals from a nearby sphere to get spherical lighting on your clump of planes. It’s a good idea, you should do it.
Thank you for your kind words
@pixelb
Thanks haha, lighting this made my head rattle a bit at first but think I found a way that worked in the end... still could do with some more refining later on though n___n... I'll have a look into normal thief, sounds interesting hehe. Also, yeah the fog bleached out the sky but I did that intentionally for the time being because the skybox looks a little weird with this piece for some reason... later on I'll be placing a matte painting in the distance with icy mountains like the concept has
but anyhoo, UPDATOU!
I've been extremely lazy and distracted this weekend so I'm a little disappointed in what I've achieved so far from 2 days of free time.
The water well is done and ready (model wise)... however I'm still painting the textures on it... I don't have any close ups on it for this update since it's literally like a baked model with flat block colours and very little painting done on it... so for the time being I've just put it in for the layout/composition of the level. After placing it in I realized that I think the layout of the grass floor could benefit with a small stone path leading from the main path up to the well, just to help break up the floor a bit too
I also rotated the house a bit since it was sitting dead forward at the path it looked a little dull... I've added more variations of flowers etc... I'm wondering if I'm getting a bit too carried away with plants because I don't want to end up making the scene far too busy... but I'm also really driven to add a sunflower in there but I think it may be overkill sadly xD
C&C Very welcome.
turned out awesome!
have you thought about puttng some mountain pic or whatever in the far back to get rid of the "white spots" where the trees stop? in the big render you can see the sky shining below the tree tops, they somehow catch my eye and i look there, if there would be some far back darker amtosphere/hill/mountain/darkness i wouldnt be dragged there so much
Yep, That's one of the things I still have to add in
So in this update I've actually re-did the trees again... I felt that they were just too shuffled and poorly constructed so I had an evening and really sat down and constructed the leaves on the branches better... hopefully this looks a bit better? if not no worries I always have the old trees backed up anyways (Y) haha
I've also added the stone path to the scene now annnnd given a small glimpse at the water well as well... the next asset I'll be doing is a wooden sign and possibly post box... this is where I'm going to probably incorporate the back story behind this piece... I've been thinking quite deep into it and I believe I'm going to go with the story that this dream house was built for a girl that a soldier loved very much but did her wrong... but he basically built the dream house they had talked about before everything went south... I'll explain it in more detail later on
C&C Very welcome!
I didn't have much time to do anything today however I did make some major tweaks to the overall atmosphere of this piece.
- I replaced some trees and moved them around to match the concept more
- I adjusted the lighting/post effects/fog to slowly match the lighting & feel in the concept
- I added in some boulders/rocks to break up the floor in the distance a bit (I will probably blend it in with the grass later on when I get around to it.
There isn't much else I've done so far I think besides moving things around but hopefully this atmosphere feels more powerful in atmosphere
C&C Very Welcome!
-EDIT-
Having a second look at those dandelion seeds scattered across the grass area surrounding the well seems a bit noisy to me so I think I'll remove that tomorrow when I'm back from work. If anyone think that's a bad call please tell me
Naw, it's a good call. You could keep some clumps of them grouped around the trees if you wanted, but the random ones in the yard aren't adding anything.
Looking really good, it just bugs me that the fog looks like white fake game fog and not the atmospheric haze in the concept. Some depth of field blurring the outline of the distant trees would probably go a long ways.
Yeah the fog I haven't thought much of it's main purpose right at this moment is just to kind of kill out the horizon for me... I don't think I can do much about it atm until I add that matte paint... I might get around to doing the matte paint background earlier than I thought because I've had a lot of comments about the fog/sky dome. Once that back plate's in there I can start adjusting the fog and DoF afterwards hehe
Quite a lot done on this weekend so far... I've tried to match the concept in lighting as much as I can atm... it's still off but I think this will do for now... if the lighting absolutely sucks tell me please LOL
So here's what I've done to for this update...
- Re-lit / post process adjusted the entire scene.
- The house was originally unlit flat diffuse, I've generated normal maps and speculars for the entire house now and lit it to match the scene better.
- Most props in the scene have had a specular map added now and some which were missing normal maps.
- I've added a matte painting for the background now.
- Moved trees and things all over the level to match the concept's horizon transition better
- Added a smoke particle system for the chimney
- Generally tweaked most of the shaders for the foliage to match the lighting better.
I've still got to add the wooden sign leading in/possibly a post box, lamp for the front of the house & leaf particle emitter for the trees and then depending on how I'm feeling at the time probably a cute little sleeping corgi for the front door step n___n
C&C Very Welcome
So I've decided I'm coming quite close to finishing this project up... Collectively I've gotten some good feedback across several forum sources to help me bring this environment together...
The only two things I've got left to deal with at this point is just finishing up the texture on the house door lamp and then the sleeping corgi on the front doorstep.
C&C Very welcome.
Also, could anyone recommend me a good image upload service that doesn't compress my images so badly? I'm using imgur atm and regardless of how grateful I am of their free service the down res on the images I share seem so blurry to me now
tried tinypic yet?
The lamps are on the sides of the front middle section of the house haha...
The house corner is blooming quite a bit yeah xD but I've tried match it with the concept's lighting and it's lighting kind of glooms that much as well haha... if it's a poor choice I can always dial it back a bit xD
and i haven'tttt... I'll give that a try for my next upload (Y) cheers buddy
Edit: Your current lighting also doesn't make much sense anyway, the concept is clearly being lit by the sun where as your scene is being lit by some random omni light.
I guess that's true... looking at the concept again I always thought it was a bit of a God ray spotlight, I'll take some time to redo the lighting then (Y) Thanks!
@Deathstick
Haha thank you xD on the texture side any way (Y) The lighting will be redone buuuut it will be BETTER! BETTER I TELL YOU haha
Updates soon!
I would love to explore the environment
Thank you for the kind words
that would be a great experience
I think I'm going to call this done for the time being unless there's any ground breaking major problems with this atm... but I'm quite eager to take a break from this or generally move onto my next environment... I'm still taking on feedback and criticism so please by all means drop the input here and I'll drop it down on a notepad for when I come back to this... but as of now I'm pretty drained staring at this and my eyes could use a breath of something new
I tried uploading this onto tinypic but it downsized my high res quite harshly so I'm just gonna stick with imgur for the time being...
C&C Very welcome!
It might seem like a confusing task but it is well worth the effort to learn how to do it, as it's really one of the best ways to fix most shading problems in non-photorealistic rendering, not just for trees.
Edit: Also those black areas of your tree trunks you may want to try to lighten up with some low intensity carefully placed omni lights. Be very subtle about it, you aren't trying to create a new dominant light source, you're just trying to keep your shadows from getting too dark.
This really shows that the lighting is a major part of any scene.
Well done :thumbup:
good luck.