Futuristic environment.
vertex
UPDATE-April 12-
UPDATE-April 11-
UPDATE 3
UPDATE 2
UPDATE 1
Texturing W.I.P
ORIGINAL POST
Hello everyone!
Another Sci-Fi environment on Polycount number #638376
I'm building my environment art portfolio and this is gonna be my starting piece, looking to get feedback from this great community and I hope I can learn and improve my skills along the way, and please guys don't hold your punches, so lets get this started.
here's the block-out of the entrance area.
concept and design are mine, I'm a bit free-styling and designing on the go.
UPDATE-April 11-
UPDATE 3
UPDATE 2
UPDATE 1
Texturing W.I.P
ORIGINAL POST
Hello everyone!
Another Sci-Fi environment on Polycount number #638376
I'm building my environment art portfolio and this is gonna be my starting piece, looking to get feedback from this great community and I hope I can learn and improve my skills along the way, and please guys don't hold your punches, so lets get this started.
here's the block-out of the entrance area.
concept and design are mine, I'm a bit free-styling and designing on the go.
Replies
Low poly of the gate with normals applied, normals were done in NDO2.
@KustomZero>> believe me, you wouldn't want to see my concept drawing, its very sloppy with messed-up perspective, and yeah, I will add more wear and tear to the surface as its just a work in progress.
@gsokol>> yes, you're right, I just had an urgent itch to texture the door, I guess that's what we call "putting the carriage ahead of the horse"
here's a blockout of what the scene should look like:
I made some normals over the weekend, no high poly were created, I only used NDO2, iteration time was very quick, took me around a couple of hours for each map.
here's a quick render I threw in marmoset.
I would love some input from you guys!
P.S: some mirrored elements have reversed typography, i will fix that later by flipping them in photoshop
I think the outside of the doorframe (where you see the "02") and the floor are the worst offenders. That frame, for instance, has sooo many panels on it, where that might actually be built with just a handful of panels.
yeah actually, I was gunning for the busy look, I wanted to exhibit minutia with this piece, I can understand from your perspective, less is more, but one of my main goals with this project is to show fine details.
low poly
low poly + normals
If you do end up going in that direction you should consider on varying the over all density and scale of the details. So far it looks like all of your normals details is done with in the same scale. There is no screws or weld marks anywhere. Also there is nothing indicating scale in there as well.
Hope this helps
Construction yellow :poly121:
more like a dis.:thumbup:
By using yellow as your accent color, you've lost your ability to use the typical construction yellow/caution striping as a separate element. You should consider making an accent color, and keeping the yellow for your decals/caution fixtures.
I guess you gotta think of it in a way that if you were to design something in real life that would work - like let's say a PC tower has openings for specific things like power supply motherboard, has panel lines which shows how it was put together, an has latches and doors to open up areas so you could get to the different parts
@KonstantinL >>> I don't know man, screws are so 20Th century, and they only use precise laser welding in this facility that don't leave weld marks, but seriously, in my opinion, screws would look archaic and wouldn't mesh with the general aesthetic I'm going for.
and I get what you mean by the lack of variety in the scale of details, I guess its something I should take into account going forward.
@ProjectEagleeye >>> yeah, that's the never ending struggle for us artists, we strive for the coolness factor and that eye popping detail first and foremost, but often times it comes at the expense of functionality, I guess a more accomplished artist would know how to strike the perfect balance between the two, I'm not there yet , but I'm working to get there eventually.
@skyline5gtr, @nastobi123 >>> yeah, i guess i need to make everything less busy now
@pixelpatron >>> the info about yellow types is completely new to me, thank you for the heads-up! and actually, I didn't want to limit myself to one accent and one decal colour, but wanted to use a plethora of schemes and sets of complementary colours (black and yellow, red and white, black and white), I guess it wouldn't make much sense in a real world context or even in a believable future context, but keep in mind , this project was meant to be over the top and not really grounded in reality.
@GhostBlades >>> echoing here my reply to ProjectEagleeye,I'll also add that when I started this project, I didn't want to shackle myself with a "form follows function" rule, because most times, I drift too far into "boring territory" before I realize it, I just wanted to run wild with the concept and infuse a bit of silliness into it.
anyhow, I'll try to scale back on the noisiness and see how it looks.
some great points of reference are:
Paul Pepera
Igor Sobolevsky
Kimmo Kaunela
@sziada>>> hey, thanks for the feedback.
I JJ abramed the scene for a more dramatic effect.
I will cover a few points that I think has room for improvement:
- Forms
- Colors
- Lighting
Forms:
You have some interesting large forms and good shapes throughout the scene. Where things are becoming problematic is you've gone overboard on the detail. There is way too many panels that have become noise and makes it very uncomfortable to view. A good rule of thumb you may of heard is the 70/30 rule of scifi design. This is where you have 30% detail 70% open space or vice versa. In This case I feel like a 30% detail would look great in this scene with 70% open space. With this open space you can do a lot more work on the roughness maps to add unique details such as hand prints, scuffs, abrasions, and other things to give context and history to the scene.
Color:
I feel like your current color scheme is very overpowering. Mostly red and yellow paint. Yellow lighting. It's very in your face which makes it difficult to look at. Personally I think 90% of your metals could just be unpainted or white. Then you can use yellow and red to highlight portions of the scene where you want people to look. The handles on the bottom left for example could remain yellow and will then become a focal point. You could also make one of the lights a red rotating "code red" light that could also act as a focal point for someone to look at. The most important thing to keep in mind is to use minority colors of a scene to draw your audiences eye where you want it to go. Alien Isolation for example uses yellow to signify interactive panels that lead to new areas. Uncharted is another example that uses (or used to use) yellow to signify areas that can be climbed.
Lighting:
Your lighting for the most part is very blown out with bloom, and covers every crevice of the wall making it appear very flat. This detracts from the overall appeal of the image (at the moment) and makes it very difficult to look at for any period of time. I think your lighting could benefit from a majority cool look (maybe a light shade of blue or something) to elicit feelings of outer space, isolation, and/or loneliness.
The lighting in your scene is pretty flat as well even though it appears you have some really nice depth in your modeling. Get your lighting set up in a way that recesses the portions that are occluded by other pieces. It will push the depth of your scene making it appear less flat.
Hope those suggestions help and I look forward to seeing how you proceed with these pieces.
So I got really busy with other stuff and had to put this project on stand-by for a few weeks.
Here's an update:
worked on some variations of the floor and the sides of the corridor.
here's some breakdowns.
Floor
first, I will try to address a crit that comes up quite frequently, I'm not trying to say that you guys are wrong, but I will attempt here to make a case in favour of busy detailing.
you guys may have heard of the circuit board paradigm,
I have always been fascinated by the amount of nano detail a circuit board can hold , it's something still hard for my mind to comprehend, I just find myself overwhelmed by it's complexity, for me it conveyed the future, and the future for me is intricate, elaborate and overwhelming.
actually, some of the most renowned Sci-Fi works spearheaded the use of this paradigm, such as the Alien saga for example.
so by dismissing this paradigm , aren't you guys also dismissing something that is an integral part of science fiction visual heritage?
///and yeah, the lighting is not final , I'm just capturing from substance viewport at the moment , besides the "IBL" there's not much lighting to control, I will set up the lighting after exporting the scene to a game engine.
So I wasn't really satisfied with how immaculate and clinical everything looked, so I started griming the scene in Substance painter adding wear, decay and such, mostly just playing with the roughness value to try to break up the monotony on the surfaces.
screens are directly captured from Substance painter viewport
would love to know what you guys think.
The only thing that bothers me is it looks a bit cluttery. Perhaps this is what you're going for as you mentioned you thought it looked too clinical before, but I figure it doesn't make much sense the 'AC07' has three different font styles. It'll probably look more uniform if all those symbols have a similar look to them. Just my two cents.
The grime and paint chips do make it look more used up...
As I said before, I didn't want to limit myself with the functionality/purpose rule with this project, also one of my main goals was to show how productive I can be in a game development environment, I'm trying to break into the industry and I thought showing minutia and fine detail would tip the balance in my favour and catch the eye of prospective employers.
anyway, I guess I'll just have to contain that detail itch from now-on, and go with the less is more mantra.
@GC_Vos>>> Thank you buddy for the uplifting comment.
yeah about Elysium, I didn't think much of the movie itself, but I bought the Blu-ray for the sole purpose of studying the set design and art style.
//actually, the "AC07" is not based on any font, I just made it up in Photoshop, and I purposely wanted to make it less uniform and more contrasted.
1. You are using NDO2 for all of your normals. Modeling out those details is vastly greater than ndo2. Now you can make a trim sheet with all of the objects youve used which would save time. The Door should be all modeled in.
2. You lack depth to your assets. What do I mean? The door feels flat, so does the wall. Try adding more depth to areas other than the pipe.
3. Everything is even. Even things look weird. Try placing objects/shapes that have different spacing between the others.
4. You have way too much noise going on in the entire scene. Tone the noise down by having the majority of your assets blank (can have depth tho) and other areas of your asset have detail. General rule is like a 70/30% = no-detail/detail
@joshschmitt>> about normals/depth/modelling.
-I never intended to use NDO for more than cutaneous, on-the-surface detailing "panel lines, holes and such", and believe me, I would have modelled everything to have more depth, but I don't have the luxury of offline rendering, these assets are intended for a game engine and keeping the tri count in check is of paramount importance.
-About everything looking even, I'll have to disagree with you on this, I'm not sure if your familiar with industrial settings, but things do tend to look even in such places.
-About the 70/30 rule.
I know about rules and things like that, but where's the fun if we're going to apply rules to everything, and quite frankly there's no rule in art.
anyways, you have the utmost right to not agree with my artistic choice, at the end of the day, everything in art is subjective.
@ScottMichaelH>> as i said above, polygon detail is nice if you can afford it.
the door as you can see has some depth modelled in, you may not deem it sufficient, but for me, keeping the tri count to a minimum takes priority here.
By modeling in more more details, I meant modeling a high poly mesh and baking the details onto a normal map. When using painted normals with ndo It's generally best to combine a high poly bake workflow with ndo normal details. By baking high poly modeled details you could get better contrast. By using ndo for so much ... the normal details are looking too even, especially by having a similar line weight to so many things.
it's all about compromise really, would that help make the the lines look more organic? yeah sure, but would it be wise going through the hurdle of modelling/baking the detail and spending time that otherwise could be better spent on improving something that has better visibility? I don't think so.
If you look closely, the chip around the lines already gives it that worn-out look.
sure, there's some drawbacks for using NDO exclusively, but for me, the benefits greatly outweigh the cons. using solely NDO proved to be an immense boon and allowed me to greatly speed up my workflow.
@ProjectEagleeye>>> This whole project is just a show-piece that will be included in my Portfolio.
I'm showing restraint when it comes to polygon detail because I don't want to overshoot the tri count, I'm planning on exporting the scene later to UE4 or CryEngine and would like it to run smoothly with minimum problems.
Can you provide some pictures of your "industrial" images that you are using for reference?
Triangle count does not matter anymore. In this day and age sections for a level have 30K or more.
There are 'rules' to art, don't neglect that fact.
If you want this to be the main focus and best pieces of art in your portfolio you need to make some changes which I already outlined to you and what everyone else has said numerous times.
You have random detail that doesnt make sense, lines or paneling going over places that shouldnt.
If you want your door/wall to stand out, making the object HP then baking is the best way to do it.