For university I was given 3 weeks to create a WoW-style diorama (I've played WoW for like an hour lol)... basically the brief for the Blizzard student environment art contest, except we can't enter because we're in the UK!
3 weeks wasn't a great amount of time for something that I'd have liked to spend ages on and make super lovely, but it was a good period of time to really get into hand-painting textures (I didn't use Zbrush though) and realise what I suck at.
As a result of the time-constraints, there are a few bits and bobs that are unfinished (such as the grass tile, dirt tile, moss, foliage bits and bobs), a few seams and weirdly intersecting meshes currently unfixed, and I wanted to put a camp-fire on the empty patch of grass in the foreground to make it more interesting and lived-in. Basically the initial idea was someone had set up camp in the shelter of some ruins. This piece is rendered in UE4.
Please give me feedback! I have my university final major project coming up soon, for which I'll be creating a series of environment dioramas based on Robin Hobb's Fitz/Fool books (she has given me permission yay!). I'd like to know what you guys think I can improve and do differently, and I'll carry this advice over into my FMP dioramas. Thanks!
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Replies
I like the texture work though, a lot.
The textures are nice and also the geo is WoWish (no straight lines etc.)
Yeah I get what you mean. My initial concept actually had it around the trunk... but I don't know. I guess I thought it looked more interesting where it is now.
The river is a little too faint and the riverbed fooled me for a stone road at first glance. For a riverbed texture I would probably go for something that's more like 25% rock 75% muddy blurry soil. Or you can try your hand at hand painted water, which I've seen people use to great effect.
The tree leaves could use a little bit of color variety as well. Maybe just vary up the individual leaves by a small amounts whilst staying in the red/orange range.
Overall, great work. Good composition and colorful pieces are always welcome. Keep posting more!
In answer to your question, I guess it's because I shied away from trying to paint 'normal' looking dirt, because I feel like I'd suck at painting something that doesn't have more form to it... So I made it... scaley... to detract from my currently sub-par texturing abilities, it that makes sense. My tutor picked up on that as well- he didn't like it. But deadline is tomorrow and I'm fixing a different project, so I won't have time to deal with it.
Ok, thanks for that! I was actually well under the tri budget for this as well, so yeah I can fix that.
Actually, Bedrock, I've always been interested to know how you made the water in your hand-painted diorama? And all the splashy bits? I was following your thread at the time, and the diorama is in my inspiration board for environment art, I love it! Got a little excited when I took a look at your portfolio and saw it.
World of Warcraft-style diorama by anyaelvidge on Sketchfab
If you unified your color palette and adjusted the lighting across your textures I think that would tie those areas together a lot nicer. the hard clipping lines where the alpha planes pass through the ground are really harsh also. you might try reshaping your grass planes to break that up a little combined with some slight opacity shifting on the base of the texture to help it fade as it meets the ground. my two cents