Update with new tree sculpt, retopo, bake and paint. I'm going to try and paint more texture realizing that I am using photos ineffectively in some cases.
My lighting idea. Sculpting the back wall next. Any critiques on my material definition is always welcome. Do you think this lighting is cool ... or too much? I'm still considering a fully enclosed room with interior lighting.
Updated lighting idea and tweaked the throne color to fit accordingly. Next I will redo the main wall colors and continue the ground. I'm edging toward taking out the streaming water at this point as I'm losing interest. I would need to seriously remake the ground to support such a stream and I've already given up on the waterfall machines by the walls. I am admittedly making this up as I go :poly142:.
Nice, looking at it now though maybe the steps could have slabs sticking out the sides and not just go up in a straight line, or add another rock/prop to the left side to breakup that line.
I'm at a point where I'm considering this the end of the project and asking for final critiques. Any comments at all are welcome at this time. The only tweak I see is the spec highlight over the moss on the left wall is too strong, and maybe the trees don't look as good from the side angle.
If you were a judge for this contest, what would you say? Thank you.
Water ripples, experiments with the rendering of the plants (masked and subsurface for most I believe), higher poly on the rocks in front, reduction of the normals of the wall moss (it was getting a strange highlight) and refining of the tree leaves/branches. Getting close to calling it done and submitting. I realize the deadline is still a ways away but I am not likely to tweak and tweak for another month only because I can. Any final thoughts? Thanks for looking and all comments.
Well, I think the final color palette is a bit monotone. The throne almost dissipates in the environment and lighting. Bloom is too strong. Vegetation could use more realistic albedo texture.
And I'd add some moisture on the walls. Or more pronounced moss. The room feels damp but walls don't show it.
Thanks. Today my upload is a progress shot of me making a bush/shrub of some sort. I have been in fact remaking, changing my mind, and learning as I have gone on throughout this project. One of the main reasons I chose this idea was to work on my skills with a more organic environment. I see myself as more of a hard surface modeler and have very little experience with vegetation and so forth. One main issue I have with the previous version of the scene is the plants in front are simply not good enough. I managed to get to a point early in March with time to improve the scene before the deadline.
I got a hold on a copy of The 2013 Tomb Raider the intent to see some reference for recent game art vegetation and I wasn't disappointed at all.
I think one of the main issues I'm still dealing with is simply discovering the limitations of game art and where the line is drawn. Coming from learning the "high res" way first and then learning the "low poly" way, you first start to post on a place like Polycount and then get hit hard with crits telling you to optimize the mesh, lower the tri count way down, etc. Then over time I slowly realize that I'm not using nearly enough! This is 2015 and I need to stop being afraid of that reaction and simply make the best scene I can in a real time game environment. SO ... having said that ... here I am modeling a dead looking shrub with actual polys instead of cards. This was the biggest thing I learned from putting Tomb Raider in my PS3. Vegetation doesn't have to looking bad because its game art.
One last thing ... now that I am in a refinement mode, I hope to have less quiet posts with an upload, and more sharing of my process.
I feel like this is a big improvement, if nothing else for my own moral on the piece. I added the shrub, refined the small red bush piece and re-placed it throughout the ground area, tweaked the grass color map and alpha (and placed a few more), created and placed the vines, added the lights in the metal objects to the sides, fixed the weeds in the water and re-placed them.
Its important to make sure there is purpose to what you place in the scene. This version of the vegetation follows my references a bit better so it looks more "correct" than before. I feel like the space overall is now better activated, and the symmetry is no longer making my eyes wish for more. I had to experiment with what needed to be explicitly shown and what could be implied. For example when I made the vines I originally had an obvious vine line going through it. The repetition of the asset however made it look very obviously fake, so I changed it to simply have leaves. The shrub and small red bush however didn't look right without stems. I originally had no ripples at all in the water. While I was happy with that, I received critiques to add some. I then placed a very light and subtle ripple, and I do believe it help just a bit.
Any questions, feel free to ask. This was a big stretch for me doing something with so much grass, tree, rock, vine, moss and so forth. I'm glad to have the experience now with such and hope that you may have been able to learn from this project of mine as well.
Replies
Update with new tree sculpt, retopo, bake and paint. I'm going to try and paint more texture realizing that I am using photos ineffectively in some cases.
My lighting idea. Sculpting the back wall next. Any critiques on my material definition is always welcome. Do you think this lighting is cool ... or too much? I'm still considering a fully enclosed room with interior lighting.
Thanks. Here's the new back wall.
Updated lighting idea and tweaked the throne color to fit accordingly. Next I will redo the main wall colors and continue the ground. I'm edging toward taking out the streaming water at this point as I'm losing interest. I would need to seriously remake the ground to support such a stream and I've already given up on the waterfall machines by the walls. I am admittedly making this up as I go :poly142:.
Thanks. Update with new side wall material, a whole bunch more to the ground vegetation, and more tree tweaks.
I'm at a point where I'm considering this the end of the project and asking for final critiques. Any comments at all are welcome at this time. The only tweak I see is the spec highlight over the moss on the left wall is too strong, and maybe the trees don't look as good from the side angle.
If you were a judge for this contest, what would you say? Thank you.
Water ripples, experiments with the rendering of the plants (masked and subsurface for most I believe), higher poly on the rocks in front, reduction of the normals of the wall moss (it was getting a strange highlight) and refining of the tree leaves/branches. Getting close to calling it done and submitting. I realize the deadline is still a ways away but I am not likely to tweak and tweak for another month only because I can. Any final thoughts? Thanks for looking and all comments.
And I'd add some moisture on the walls. Or more pronounced moss. The room feels damp but walls don't show it.
Overall it looks good, but can be better.
Thanks. Today my upload is a progress shot of me making a bush/shrub of some sort. I have been in fact remaking, changing my mind, and learning as I have gone on throughout this project. One of the main reasons I chose this idea was to work on my skills with a more organic environment. I see myself as more of a hard surface modeler and have very little experience with vegetation and so forth. One main issue I have with the previous version of the scene is the plants in front are simply not good enough. I managed to get to a point early in March with time to improve the scene before the deadline.
I got a hold on a copy of The 2013 Tomb Raider the intent to see some reference for recent game art vegetation and I wasn't disappointed at all.
Link
I think one of the main issues I'm still dealing with is simply discovering the limitations of game art and where the line is drawn. Coming from learning the "high res" way first and then learning the "low poly" way, you first start to post on a place like Polycount and then get hit hard with crits telling you to optimize the mesh, lower the tri count way down, etc. Then over time I slowly realize that I'm not using nearly enough! This is 2015 and I need to stop being afraid of that reaction and simply make the best scene I can in a real time game environment. SO ... having said that ... here I am modeling a dead looking shrub with actual polys instead of cards. This was the biggest thing I learned from putting Tomb Raider in my PS3. Vegetation doesn't have to looking bad because its game art.
One last thing ... now that I am in a refinement mode, I hope to have less quiet posts with an upload, and more sharing of my process.
I feel like this is a big improvement, if nothing else for my own moral on the piece. I added the shrub, refined the small red bush piece and re-placed it throughout the ground area, tweaked the grass color map and alpha (and placed a few more), created and placed the vines, added the lights in the metal objects to the sides, fixed the weeds in the water and re-placed them.
Its important to make sure there is purpose to what you place in the scene. This version of the vegetation follows my references a bit better so it looks more "correct" than before. I feel like the space overall is now better activated, and the symmetry is no longer making my eyes wish for more. I had to experiment with what needed to be explicitly shown and what could be implied. For example when I made the vines I originally had an obvious vine line going through it. The repetition of the asset however made it look very obviously fake, so I changed it to simply have leaves. The shrub and small red bush however didn't look right without stems. I originally had no ripples at all in the water. While I was happy with that, I received critiques to add some. I then placed a very light and subtle ripple, and I do believe it help just a bit.
Very close to finished.
Any questions, feel free to ask. This was a big stretch for me doing something with so much grass, tree, rock, vine, moss and so forth. I'm glad to have the experience now with such and hope that you may have been able to learn from this project of mine as well.
Thanks.