@cremuss youre right! I chose to use blender a bit out of frustration. Some things in ue really bug me: the lighting keeps changing(the brightness changes), I have to turn on srgb for the textures, a lack of customizability when it comes to landscapes. Things that, Im sure can be fixed. But they bugged me.
Theres no real point to pbr in my case, but the lighting, bakig lightmaps and stuff like that ia easier in ue.
Making and exporting my own lanscape is a really good idea! Although making changes would be a bit of a pain. Ill just keep my node setup in blender, so I cn see wat itll look likr in ue. Thanks for the tips!
About the lighting, it's called auto-exposure I think. There's plenty ways to get rid of it. Personally, I usually create a post-process volume big enough to contain my camera and my scene, and in the details set min brightness to 1 and max to 1 and voilà. Concerning srgb for textures, that's weird, srgb is supposed to be turned on by default. Do you use 16 bits textures by any chances or a specific color profile? Landscapes are surely a bit tedious to work with in UE4 but to render relatively small scenes like yours, exporting a custom mesh for landscape just work well enough I think Hope it helps! Can't wait for the next update
I'm really liking that image even if it's just a test. Very nice color choices! I love how the purple mountain silhouettes contrast with the blue-green sky, and the red plants really provide a nice little pop. Looking forward to see more!
@Cremuss yeah I google it, someone mentioned you can turn it off in the camera settings too. I'll have to see. But why on erath is the change in brightness so much by default XD. yeah the srgb stuff is weard but whatever. Thanks for the tips!
@Wendy de Boer thanks! Yeah the purple and green is from the original. For some reason it looks really old-school, but that's what I like about it . It's also quite recognizable I guess.
Here's a little update. I felt like the bark texture looked a bit boring (just rectangular shapes). So I tried something a little more organic, and "spooky". I like the shapes a lot more, but the texture needs more work. what do you guys reckon?
@lotet yeah a little bit. I tried to break up the wavy pattern in some places, need to do some more. I think the other one was a bit too purple, so I changed that. also did a lot more painting work. I'm not a really big fan of the texture so far, but at least it's better than the previous one. I'll wait with the fallen trees and stuff like that once the texture is completely finished.
Here's another update! fortget about the bark texture, it looks pretty sh*t. So I decided to work something else for a little bit (the last bark texture was the 5th attempt). I decided to do something a little more formiliar to boost my moral a little, so I made some rcosk, since I need those anyway. I wanted ones that are slightly slanted, and kinda stick out of the grond at an angle (which I guess is slanted, but whatever). I decided to use zbrush for this one, to try and make some faf style rocks, using my flatten brush, and some trsuty alphas (I made). so far I only have two alphas to work with (I find making good ones really hard), soa little repetiion is present, but I'll be making more variations in the future! The large rock is a combination of 3 of the other rocks, but stretched, I will be sculpting that one a little bit more to make the strectching less obvious. hope you like 'm!
Imho I think the last bark texture is a pretty strong base. I really like the flow going on and the knots. It may be a bit too curvy to really read like wood but it's definitely stylized! I would keep pushing in this direction.
Rocks are looking cool. I don't know what size they are supposed to be so I'm not sure but I'd break the silhouette a bit more. Actually it's a bit too plain and smooth. I'm not a fan of the larger one though I always found it extremely difficult to make a believable rock by mixing smaller ones. Anyway, maybe place them quickly in your scene to better give an idea of the size ?
@cremuss nahh the colors of the final texture, and the lighting are a complete mess. I might try making the same texture with zbrush.
Sizes on the screenshot are not the right scale. I have some smaller and some bigger ones. I dont think it looks plain, and it has quite a bit of surface detail. I dont want them to look too noisy. Especially smaller rocks dont have all kinds of cracks amd details.
The big rock I was not sure on either. So I havent been working om that one, just the other 5 rocks.
Been following this thread since the start, awesome work and really inspiring. With all the lately handpainted threads (I might open one myself for my horrible learning start xD) I hope there was any Handpainted Monthly Challenge or something like that!.
@Soldeus awesome, thanks! just start painting dude! I have a lot to learn too, best way is to practice, be critical to your own work, and learn from pro's textures.
Here's some WIP for the rocks. Always a bit of a hassle to start, but getting there. I wanted dark rocks (just like on the concept I did), because they'll contrast well, and I think they match the undead vibe. Anyway, I have a couple more hours of rock painting to do, my favourite! (not even kidding).
Hey tomenjerry. Nice to see all the updates you've done to your project. Looking awesome so far. Looking forward to see you start putting it into a scene. What's your process and end goal in that sense? Doing first all the props then assembly?
About the lighting, it's called auto-exposure I think. There's plenty ways to get rid of it. Personally, I usually create a post-process volume big enough to contain my camera and my scene, and in the details set min brightness to 1 and max to 1 and voilà. Concerning srgb for textures, that's weird, srgb is supposed to be turned on by default. Do you use 16 bits textures by any chances or a specific color profile? Landscapes are surely a bit tedious to work with in UE4 but to render relatively small scenes like yours, exporting a custom mesh for landscape just work well enough I think Hope it helps! Can't wait for the next update
That's crazy. All you have to do is go into project settings > render > uncheck "Auto Exposure". Also, I really like the blue gradient on the branches. Very clever.
@KurtR thanks! yep, me too. I'll have to set everything up in unreal first. And I'll have to figure out a way to "copy" some of the landmarks from the original. gonna be interesting.
Really loving this project. Any chance you could do a quick breakdown of how you take the information from the sculpt and use it for the base of your diffuse texture?? Im trying to nail down this workflow for my own projects but having some trouble. Thank you!
@Enexus thanks! Not kidding, I was just about to do that. I'm working one some mushrooms atm, and I will make a breakdown for this one. Probably today, but maybe later. I'll have to see.
Hey! I've been working on some wood textures. I want to start making some buildings, so I figured I would need wood anyway. I need to make them tilable, and they are still in a really rought state. Waht do you guys think?
@Enexus Hey man I will make a tutorial of sorts, the prop I was going to use for it failed. And I didnt use a sculpt for this one. But maybe an explanation will do to get you on your way. I looked at your arttation, the sculpts look good!! You might need to change some of he details you sculpt in to make them work for handpainted textures, but just give it a go! Description:
I start by making a "base texture", I use a couple bakes, and overlay them in photoshop in the followwing manner: -top layers- bent normal map (20%, multiply or overlay) AO (60%, multiply) curvature (10-20% overlay) cavity map (15-25% overlay) solid gray (128r,128g,128b) -bottom layer-
then I add color using gradient maps, just make sure you have nice heu shifting in the darks, mids and lights. I may add additional layers, or adjustment layers to finetune the colors, and contrast. (such as a layer set to lighten, to get rid of shadows that are too dark).
after that you can paint over it. The main thing that'lacking is color variation, so add in some colors. Also touch up on highlights, and shadows, and just keep painting to make it look more painterly.
that's it! Hope this helps, tell me if you have any questions! I'm currently into doing textures by hand again, haha so I might not use a lot of sculpts atm.
super dope thread, awesome progress. Wish I got this kinda feedback on my stuff from these bad-asses. I'm super jelly! Looking forward to the final results
@Aluvay thanks! yeah, I'm not sure yet. I saw them on one of fafs textures she did for ogrimmar, and I assumed they were used as alpha planes to add some additional details in some places, but I'm not sure if that's the case tbh. Maybe I'll use them, maybe I wont.
@Gannon thanks, glad you like it! I'm sure they would help you too! Maybe if you sent a private message asking for help to someone? Yeah you can take notes (I do so too with other artists), but remember I'm not a pro or anything, so I'm probably doing things wrong. Look at people like faf, shem dawsen (aka pixelatedkiwi), antonio neves, their work is superb.
This is another update on the wood, I didnt have a whole lot of time today, so its still rough. I might work on it some more, but I may just keep it rough for now, just to see everything come together ones the model is made, might be easier to adjust things that way. Anyway, C&C is welcome!
Looking great! I definitely think you should start piecing things together and se how it looks.and I think we all wanna see how some of this stuff looks together =P right now your mostly posting small random bits and pieces.
@tomenjerry Thanks so much for the breakdown, very much appreciate it. Ill use it on my own work and let you know how it goes! The progress on the wood is looking amazing! Really nice style coming through.
@lotet true! Yeah I'll start modelling a house, and apply some of these textures. I try to not just reply to people (anymore), cause that kinda bumps my thread to the top with no reason. So I usually try to include something I'm curently working on. Not as an excuse, but just so that there is something there to look at.
@Aluvay thanks! Are you working on seomething handpainted atm (that you can talk about :P)?
@Enexus np! I was planning on making a tutorial on a brick texture once again, but now with zbrush. I will make the brick texture later though, once I get to the church like building.
tomenjerry Man, each asset is awesome! Really outstanding stuff. But when I'm looking at the whole scene concept (July 25) it's really starting to look flat and kinda boring. I guess every object should look attractively both from close range and from afar. Maybe it's a good idea to bake some light in textures or to start the scene-blocking process. And then to look at entire value balance.
@ilya Sinyavtsev thanks! yeah I agree. I'm trying to add more difference in value, so objects stand out a little bit.
I've been away for a couple days, and I had a bit of an "art block". So I'm making stuff that is a little easier. So some things might not make sense to make at this stage, but it's just to get over the hurdle a little bit. I guess what does make sense is the house I've been working on. I made a quick mockup in blender with some of the textures I made, and made a paintover. The shingle textures is one of those textures that had gone to sh*t, but it gives a good indication for how it will look like. What do you guys think about the "brass" on the chimney?
Hey! Nice work so far. I think the brass is cool because it adds a new material to your kit. But it shouldn't just be on the chimney. Maybe you could add it elsewhere too, like at the bases of the beams or something. Your overall values are a little samey. The walls are the same as the tiles are the same as the woodbeams and the stone base xD Try to push some much lighter or darker or maybe keep an overall gradient in mind as well. Adding light direction or other colored light sources to your concept could help greatly with variation and values, too. Keep it up this is coool
@Jessica Dinh Hey! thanks a lot! Your work has, like fafs, inspired a lot of my work, so... thanks! is there gonna be more legion stuff coming on your blogspot? Yeah I added a bracket to the base of every beam, including those on the door, But I stepped away from the brass, it looks too brown/warm next to the wood, so I just went with regular (cold) steel because it has more color contrast:
I've also tried to figure out the values. I do see what you mean. I tried to come up with something. The wooden beams should be darker than the planks, so that stayed the same. I made the roof a little darker as well as the rock base. I wanted to make the roof lighter, for the gradient to work, but that didnt look good. Here's a really quick and dirty revision I did of the concept. Yeah lighting would have been a lot better, I'll work with this for now, but I'll defenetely think about it next time. Here's the concept:
*EDIT*:
Here's the version with a lighter rock base. I actually like this one better, although this goes against the "principle" of having a dark to light gradient running from the base to the top. But By the looks of this I'll probably go with this. Again lighting would have probably helped big time, and some bigger AO painted into the texture might help the shapes to read too. The other one:
The mirroring on the wooden beam in this image is very obvious, it creates a strange Rorschach blot effect. I would suggest tiling the texture around the beam instead of mirroring like this.
Not digging the brass chimney at all to be honest, but the house in itself looks awesome! as for the stone base, I think the dark one is a tad to dark but the light one a bit too light =P
@lotet No me neither! I'll just use steel because it has more color contrast that way. Yeah you were right about stone.
The previous concept was really bad, so I decided to use the advice I had from jessica, and make a new, nice peace of concept art. I have really tried to work on the values a lot, I think I have something that works/reads now. I guess you can only push the values so far before it doesn't look like what I had in mind. I dont want the beams to be much darker, and I dont want the planks to be even lighter. I think I struck a nice balance here, but let me know waht ou think! Pretty happy with this new concept, it feels a lot better:
and the desat for the values (desat using a black layer set to saturation, just sayin):
@tomenjerry That house is looking great! Super fun seeing the textures getting applied to some meshes. Seems like it's also helping to make some adjustments to get everything working well together. Can't wait to see more!
man, this is really good, I love this house. I have just one thing to say... the wood on the concept looks good because you did to work in this proper distance, the wood texture for the beams has a lot of small details, looking close it's awesome, but looking from far like the distance of the concept, I dont know if would be readable enough. Its just a thought!
@Bolovorix thanks! yeah I adjusted every texture indiviually beforehand, and then painted over the screenshot. Now its a matter of matching the rreal textures and model with the concept. I'm nut quite sure about the shingles yet, I think I'll make them square instead, so I can actualy ake them 3d! I was wondering did you work on tuebor? I just looked up the studio, seems like a cool project to work on!
@AntonioNeves thanks! Youre right man! In the concept I added some stronger lines, as well as some more wear on the edges. I was working on that yesterday, this is my progress so far: needs dome more work, but I think you can allready read the shapes a little better.
I need your guys opinion on this: In the concept I made some rock base under the house, and it looks pretty good there. I started working on it in 3d, but I think it looks a little too cluttered, and distracting. The texture is far from finished btw, because I realized it might not look very good. So I think I'm going to make stone bigger rock blocks, that are a little more square. What do you guys think?:
I don't think the rock base looks cluttered, but I think it would read better if you made the top-facing planes a bit lighter, and the side-facing planes a bit darker.
wow dude...that is looking amazing. I think the rocks should be a tad bigger too, or some size variation. some big and some smaller, shape looks good though.
@Wendy de Boer for sure! thanks for the tip, I'll do that on the next revision.
@lotet thanks dude, Yeah defenetely bigger, that's what I was thinking too. I would need to redo the high poly then, hmm I think I'll just make a new one.
Here's another little update. Quite busy atm, so not much time to work on stuff. But here's a couple textures I worked on. I made some rocks to go on the ends of the rocky base. Used a sculpt for that one. Also finished up the "damaged wooden boards"-texture, although I might refine it a little more. Also just started on the roof, I decided to make sheets of shingles, rather than individual ones, or just a texture, this way they have a little more depth (a technique I learned from a course, I think works pretty well). I'll be working on the roof for now, making one or two variations on the texture.
This is starting to really come together! Love those broken up walls. I think you could maybe push the depth a bit more just by darkening the spots where the planks are destroyed. Just a thought. Excited to see more!
@Bolovorix Thanks! yeah agreed, need to darken it more, the contrast is kinda all over the place now, that's because the light is washing out the textures a little bit. I was thinking obout how to fix it. I can either increase contrast in the texture itself, or maybe use post processing in UE4, to increase contrast and to add some color grading. I think I'll go for the last one, which means Ill keep my contrast this low, and then increase it using post processing.
Replies
Theres no real point to pbr in my case, but the lighting, bakig lightmaps and stuff like that ia easier in ue.
Making and exporting my own lanscape is a really good idea! Although making changes would be a bit of a pain. Ill just keep my node setup in blender, so I cn see wat itll look likr in ue. Thanks for the tips!
Concerning srgb for textures, that's weird, srgb is supposed to be turned on by default. Do you use 16 bits textures by any chances or a specific color profile?
Landscapes are surely a bit tedious to work with in UE4 but to render relatively small scenes like yours, exporting a custom mesh for landscape just work well enough I think
Hope it helps! Can't wait for the next update
@Wendy de Boer thanks! Yeah the purple and green is from the original. For some reason it looks really old-school, but that's what I like about it
Here's a little update. I felt like the bark texture looked a bit boring (just rectangular shapes). So I tried something a little more organic, and "spooky". I like the shapes a lot more, but the texture needs more work. what do you guys reckon?
Rocks are looking cool. I don't know what size they are supposed to be so I'm not sure but I'd break the silhouette a bit more. Actually it's a bit too plain and smooth. I'm not a fan of the larger one though
Keep it up!
Sizes on the screenshot are not the right scale. I have some smaller and some bigger ones. I dont think it looks plain, and it has quite a bit of surface detail. I dont want them to look too noisy. Especially smaller rocks dont have all kinds of cracks amd details.
The big rock I was not sure on either. So I havent been working om that one, just the other 5 rocks.
Here's some WIP for the rocks. Always a bit of a hassle to start, but getting there. I wanted dark rocks (just like on the concept I did), because they'll contrast well, and I think they match the undead vibe. Anyway, I have a couple more hours of rock painting to do, my favourite! (not even kidding).
Also, I really like the blue gradient on the branches. Very clever.
@Grimwolf thanks! yep that's easier, I'll try that.
@Aluvay nice to see you here! Did you do a namechange on artstation or something? (Maybe I just cant remember). But thanks!
thanks for the great replies guys! There's a little update coming, some time soon!
Especially the trees are looking gorgeous!
@Enexus Hey man I will make a tutorial of sorts, the prop I was going to use for it failed. And I didnt use a sculpt for this one. But maybe an explanation will do to get you on your way. I looked at your arttation, the sculpts look good!! You might need to change some of he details you sculpt in to make them work for handpainted textures, but just give it a go! Description:
I start by making a "base texture", I use a couple bakes, and overlay them in photoshop in the followwing manner:
-top layers-
bent normal map (20%, multiply or overlay)
AO (60%, multiply)
curvature (10-20% overlay)
cavity map (15-25% overlay)
solid gray (128r,128g,128b)
-bottom layer-
then I add color using gradient maps, just make sure you have nice heu shifting in the darks, mids and lights. I may add additional layers, or adjustment layers to finetune the colors, and contrast. (such as a layer set to lighten, to get rid of shadows that are too dark).
after that you can paint over it. The main thing that'lacking is color variation, so add in some colors. Also touch up on highlights, and shadows, and just keep painting to make it look more painterly.
that's it! Hope this helps, tell me if you have any questions! I'm currently into doing textures by hand again, haha so I might not use a lot of sculpts atm.
I'll definitely be taking some notes!
@Gannon thanks, glad you like it! I'm sure they would help you too! Maybe if you sent a private message asking for help to someone? Yeah you can take notes (I do so too with other artists), but remember I'm not a pro or anything, so I'm probably doing things wrong. Look at people like faf, shem dawsen (aka pixelatedkiwi), antonio neves, their work is superb.
This is another update on the wood, I didnt have a whole lot of time today, so its still rough. I might work on it some more, but I may just keep it rough for now, just to see everything come together ones the model is made, might be easier to adjust things that way. Anyway, C&C is welcome!
@Aluvay thanks! Are you working on seomething handpainted atm (that you can talk about :P)?
@Enexus np! I was planning on making a tutorial on a brick texture once again, but now with zbrush. I will make the brick texture later though, once I get to the church like building.
Nooby question, how are you tiling texture like bark on the trees?
@Cremuss thanks! yeah the low contrast is inspired by faf s textures.
@Asura I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I made the bark texture tileable, and I unwrapped the stem of the tree in a square like this:
@gabrielluis88 thanks!
@ilya Sinyavtsev thanks! yeah I agree. I'm trying to add more difference in value, so objects stand out a little bit.
I've been away for a couple days, and I had a bit of an "art block". So I'm making stuff that is a little easier. So some things might not make sense to make at this stage, but it's just to get over the hurdle a little bit. I guess what does make sense is the house I've been working on. I made a quick mockup in blender with some of the textures I made, and made a paintover. The shingle textures is one of those textures that had gone to sh*t, but it gives a good indication for how it will look like. What do you guys think about the "brass" on the chimney?
Yeah I added a bracket to the base of every beam, including those on the door, But I stepped away from the brass, it looks too brown/warm next to the wood, so I just went with regular (cold) steel because it has more color contrast:
I've also tried to figure out the values. I do see what you mean. I tried to come up with something. The wooden beams should be darker than the planks, so that stayed the same. I made the roof a little darker as well as the rock base. I wanted to make the roof lighter, for the gradient to work, but that didnt look good. Here's a really quick and dirty revision I did of the concept. Yeah lighting would have been a lot better, I'll work with this for now, but I'll defenetely think about it next time. Here's the concept:
*EDIT*:
Here's the version with a lighter rock base. I actually like this one better, although this goes against the "principle" of having a dark to light gradient running from the base to the top. But By the looks of this I'll probably go with this. Again lighting would have probably helped big time, and some bigger AO painted into the texture might help the shapes to read too. The other one:
as for the stone base, I think the dark one is a tad to dark but the light one a bit too light =P
The previous concept was really bad, so I decided to use the advice I had from jessica, and make a new, nice peace of concept art. I have really tried to work on the values a lot, I think I have something that works/reads now. I guess you can only push the values so far before it doesn't look like what I had in mind. I dont want the beams to be much darker, and I dont want the planks to be even lighter. I think I struck a nice balance here, but let me know waht ou think!
Pretty happy with this new concept, it feels a lot better:
and the desat for the values (desat using a black layer set to saturation, just sayin):
keep updating, I'm loving to see this
@Gannon thanks!
@AntonioNeves thanks! Youre right man! In the concept I added some stronger lines, as well as some more wear on the edges. I was working on that yesterday, this is my progress so far:
needs dome more work, but I think you can allready read the shapes a little better.
I need your guys opinion on this: In the concept I made some rock base under the house, and it looks pretty good there. I started working on it in 3d, but I think it looks a little too cluttered, and distracting. The texture is far from finished btw, because I realized it might not look very good. So I think I'm going to make stone bigger rock blocks, that are a little more square. What do you guys think?:
@lotet thanks dude, Yeah defenetely bigger, that's what I was thinking too. I would need to redo the high poly then, hmm I think I'll just make a new one.
thanks for the advice !