Monthly Noob Challenge February 2016 (37)
polycounter lvl 9
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge for the month of February.Hey all ! I apologize for being late a bit. You guys rocked the previous challenge !! Great work everyone ! You can still work on the previous challenge and keep posting in that thread! I hope you finish your environment.
NOTE: This month and the next to come will include environment(exterior and interior) and prop. It's all up to you which you choose to do.
Join our Skype group if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Me: oli-graphics
You don't have to join the Skype if you don't want to, and you don't need to ask to participate in the challenge, just start working and post your progress in this thread!
Artist: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jordangrimmer
Artist: https://www.artstation.com/artist/phade01
Artist: https://www.artstation.com/artist/leeyongwoong
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, 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 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. (Marmoset Toolbag is allowed as well)
- You must try your best and finish as much as you can in the time frame 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.
All that matters is that you learn, while being able to effectively critique others, as well as accept critiques on your own work. Remember to have fun. Cheers!
Replies
That's how they call it the art of dedication and success.
@Allyalbon
Sure why not, show us what you got ! We are here to criticize each other's work and share feedback to improve our work and skills
Great Concepts, I look forward to see them brought to live by you.
Last month I´ve painfully learned that I don´t have any Texture painting Skills. The House looks like it would be a nice practise piece. I will give it a try and maybe simplify it a bit to get to the Texturing sooner (as Vonberg suggested last month - thank you for the Advice!).
Have fun all of you!
@Marto101
Building an asset like that should not be that hard. The reference is there to guide you through building it. So make sure to not spend a lot of time in the blockout, put in simple shapes(cubes, spheres, cylindars etc etc.), and from that build it up(connect, extrude, etc etc). I'm not going to show you how, it's up to you how you are going to model it and such(everyone has various approaches at things). But there are more detailed guides on the internet which I'd suggest you take a look. I am not an expert but I can help if you have specific questions.
Also, know that the references, the concepts you are working on, never have the exact proportion and perspective, it's all a lie !
I hope this month's going to be great, much better than the previous I suppose.
Actually I posted another thread for prolonging the Challenge to 2 months. So I'd like your opinion in this thread if possible in order for me to decide whether the challenge will last 1 or 2 months each.
http://polycount.com/discussion/164805/monthly-noob-challenge-extended-edition
My blockout so far:
Duplicated the shape of the gate (out of the camera view) to get the lighting working. I have to fix some scale issues with the gate/roof
@NBLM Great start! Are you using modo? Just curious.
@oqtopus Cool, I suggest to focus on the whole environment first, before going in to the details
@BradleyWascher Solid blockout!
@Oqtopus
Very quick checklist for Unreal Engine 4. I will promise to do a full breakdown later on!
Checklist:
Good workflow:
- Make sure your scale is correct. (Unreal uses cm, if the scale is wrong, the lighting will be wrong as well )
- Import individual assets. (I am currently using the plugin from Tom Shannon http://goo.gl/YV4JVi besides the plugin from Tom you can enable the auto re import function from Unreal. )
- Use the second UV channel (UV2) for a unique / non overlapping layout. (create in your modelling package)
- Uncheck the generate lightmap UV when you import a new asset.
** Do a quick preview build to make sure there are no UV2 errors. **
Lightmass settings
World settings > Lightmass > Lightmass > Lightmass settings
I normally increase the indirect Lighting bounces to a value around 50-100
Check out the other settings as well.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/Basics/index.html
Individual light settings:
Directional Light
Play around with the intensity.
GI (Global Illumination) setting / Indirect Lighting Intensity
More info about GI in UE4: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/index.html
Min. Roughness and Shadow Bias is usefull to fix some artifacts.
Check out the Lightmass settings per light.
Skylight
Soften the shadows. You can also use a cubemap.
Important: Post proces volume. (Very powerful)
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/PostProcessEffects/index.html
I hope this helps^^. I learned a lot from Koola and others.
Quick blockout, done in about 2 hours. The height of the door is not matching the concept, I'll correct this later.
I'll probably go with a more stylized texturing, something in the style of Firewatch.
Hey guys, Great start everyone! Really cool concepts of this month. So I choose the second one.
My blockout:
Blockout:
C&C appreciated
Started with some blocking out but focusing more on atmosphere before I move onto the models.
I wanted to make this on Cardboard, so here is how it looks so far.
The video is a bit laggy, but the demo runs at a pretty descent FPS (>60).
Due to the very limitations of the device, I'm baking most of the lighting in Blender.
@Shyralon - really nice so far indeed.
@shadematrix - looking good - to make your details match a little bit more, what about adding colour variations that complement each other - add a bit of blue into your bricks, add a bit of brown into your roof etc. Or you could add a top layer in photoshop at something like 3% transparency with a complementary colour, that can help pull everything together.
I started work on this concept in December as my first proper play around in Unreal, then abandoned it to do the Polycount Jan challenge - was most amused to see it as the February challenge. This is where I had left it, so I will do my best to wrap up in Feb. With fresh eyes, I am going to rework the doorway and the pillars - the bird statues also need to be finished. Hoping to use the scene to learn about blend shaders and lighting too.
Finding it difficult to capture all the proportions correctly, some perspective things that are a bit hard to create likeness in 3d.
Only blockput for the plants and the boxes left, after that I can get to the final assets
Add more edges to those round parts of the building. If its round, that it should have enough geo to look round.
I've made a trim sheet and some tileable wall and floor textures, but when I want to use my trim textures I get some
quite visible shading seams on one side of the mesh (red arrows) it looks fine for the other side (green arrows).
Is there anything I need to take care of when using only tileable textures ?
my tileable trim texture:
@vonBerg yes it's modo 902
What does the lowpoly shading look like in Modo without the normal map?
dude, that's so cool!
What did you use for rendering?
Love the way you did the window
IDK much about modo, but those errors usually mean one of these:
The very first thing you should do is try flipping the green channel of the normal map. For your sake I hope this is the solution..
Check if those faces are flipped, as this happens sometimes in max when I use boolean.If you baked the normals from a HighPoly, check your cage so that it doesn't have leaks, that your UVs have splits where you have hard edges (read: smoothing group changes), and that the lowpoly you're rendering is exactly the same as what you baked normals to.
If you generated the normals from a texture, any lighting will appear flipped if the body is flipped on the UVs.
If none of this helps, I'll take a look at it if you upload an obj with the normal map.
Now back to work, it's almost march
Here is a bit of block out!
everyone's progress is looking good