Hello ! I wanted to share with you the work that I did for Legion I had the task to create the legion buildings and the tomb of Sargeras. (modeling, texturing and lighting)
I also worked on the night elves in Azsuna, and my task was to do an overall final art pass to make everything looks cohesive (modeling, texturing and lighting).
ohohoho, You're outta control. I really like the scenes with more light in them. (the day time ones). You really put your back into this fanny, great stuff!
@Faf Finally ! Man I love these textures. Haha when I saw the starting zone for the first time, there were textures where I though: "I bet faf made these", and it turns out to be true. I'm going to inspect these textures further for inspiration!
Not that I'm to judge, but I think this is your best work on WoW up to date! ^^ Really suits your style, especially when you look at your earlier work the theme is awesome!
I don't know but it seems you did alot of modelling instead of texturing in WoD, so Legion must've been more fun to work on? Maybe?
Hi ! Thank you for the nice comments I really would like to do more tutorials and I even started a gumroad but it's extremely time cosuming ! I really wonder how people can manage to do that with full time jobs at the same time ! #respect ! @JakobGavelli : well I guess that means I'm improving ! But this kit was for sure really fitting for me and I'm so glad I was able to work on it :pleased: But yeah on WOD I mostly did modelling, which to be honest I really enjoy too ! My ideal would be to do both all the times but it's not always possible unfortunately. Just the idea of creating a entire environment that you can share with players is extremely appealing to me, and I'm glad I can experience that on Wow. If I was working on a game with a more demanding technology, I probably wouldn't be able to do that !
Legion is by far the best looking expansion and this is an amazing and inspiring collection of work! World building in the exterior world, dungeons, textures, lighting and atmosphere all are in top form. Congratz to you and the team
Amazing stuff all around. There's some serious Joe Madureira inspiration channeled in these and I love them all.
I had a quick question on how you go about blending your pieces together, especially on the two I quoted above. Do you blend them with a separate 3rd overlay texture that blends into each texture piece, or do you just blend between the 2 textures' ends once you have them together in the scene?
Thanks for showing this stuff off once again, it's great inspiration!
@heyeye : you guessed well, I love Joe Mad's work For these pieces, I actually did a quick retopology on each part in order to have modeling and texturing matching together. In our pipeline, at the moment, it's impossible to blend more than 2 textures at once on buildings, so I basically use a third texture (ground one) to make the transition between the two sculpted ones. I could have blend these two textures simply together but I figured that my third ground texture could help doing the transition with all the textures around. I made a quick paintover to show where I used the third texture :
@heyeye : you guessed well, I love Joe Mad's work For these pieces, I actually did a quick retopology on each part in order to have modeling and texturing matching together. In our pipeline, at the moment, it's impossible to blend more than 2 textures at once on buildings, so I basically use a third texture (ground one) to make the transition between the two sculpted ones. I could have blend these two textures simply together but I figured that my third ground texture could help doing the transition with all the textures around. I made a quick paintover to show where I used the third texture :
Wow, that ground blend works fantastic. I barely notice even with the Penn and Teller reveal. Congrats on the release and really great work all around
Hey Thank you again for your kind messages ! @Gannon : I usually use one of the channel of the normal map that I generated ( green or red, depends of the direction) to create my bounce light. I just put it as a mask for a single color layer in photoshop and twick the levels of it to have the level of contrast that I want to obtain for my bounce light. I also usually play with the blending mode of that layer regarding which material or effect I want to have for my bounce light Hope it's understandable, it's hard to explain like that ^^
@Faf Your work is amazing! I'm a student and I recently started sculpting in zBrush and I fell in love with Blizzard's style. I was wondering if I could ask you a question of technique: What techniques do you like to use to polish up your sculpt to get rid of any residual brush strokes, noise, etc. etc? I've noticed in my recent endeavors to sculpt, I sometimes find left over brush strokes in areas and I can't quite polish them out all the time. But yours look amazing and amazingly polished .
@Devon M : Sometimes brush noises can create a nice random effect (I think about the stone especially) but usually I'm using the flatten or hpolish brushes
Beautiful work Faf ! I didn't managed to check the new expansion yet but it's clear that with Legion you guys pushes Wow visuals further again. Thanks for sharing your art and the small tips & tricks !
Amazing work Fanny! I have a few practical questions if you would. Are any complimentary maps are used in WoW or sculpting is only for creating diffuse textures? I can see that textures contain rather large tileable (and not) pieces of surface, what about differences in texture quality across meshes on the level? Could you please elaborate a bit how are those textures are applied to meshes, cause those meshes look rather complex and there seem to be only a handful of textures used.
Thank you for your answers and this infinite source of inspiration!
@SergeyA : Hi ! So currently in Wow we are still mostly using diffuse maps. We are trying the past expansions to add more maps more often like emissive maps and "specular" maps ( which is actually more a B/W mask for an environment map). So my sculpts are principally made for diffuse textures but I'm actually using normal maps and heightmaps to create my base. For example a heightmap can be extremely useful for the emissive ( ex : coals where you can use it to make the warmth under the coals)
So right now we are using a combination of trims/tileable textures and specific ones. Usually the trims/tileable textures are carrying a lot of the work and we are using the specific ones to make a point of interest in the structure. All the textures are principally 256 or 512. Some could be 1024 but it's actually kinda rare and only for specific point of interests or larger scale. We are simply trying to have a regular texel ratio among all the textures we are using to not have too much resolution difference. This combination allows us to deliver a lot of content and be able to focus only on some areas where we know for example that the player is gonna spend some time etc .... I hope that it's helpful
Thank you very much Fanny for your answer. It's very helpful I am closely studying your work and tutorials and there is always ton of information and inspiration.
Replies
I am actually doing some Legion Inspired art right now
And keep going ! You make a EXCELLENT job !
Your work is very inspiring. I'm definitely bookmarking this thread.
Really suits your style, especially when you look at your earlier work the theme is awesome!
I don't know but it seems you did alot of modelling instead of texturing in WoD, so Legion must've been more fun to work on? Maybe?
I really would like to do more tutorials and I even started a gumroad but it's extremely time cosuming !
I really wonder how people can manage to do that with full time jobs at the same time ! #respect !
@JakobGavelli : well I guess that means I'm improving ! But this kit was for sure really fitting for me and I'm so glad I was able to work on it :pleased:
But yeah on WOD I mostly did modelling, which to be honest I really enjoy too ! My ideal would be to do both all the times but it's not always possible unfortunately. Just the idea of creating a entire environment that you can share with players is extremely appealing to me, and I'm glad I can experience that on Wow. If I was working on a game with a more demanding technology, I probably wouldn't be able to do that !
Awesome job as usual, I'm jealous.
I had a quick question on how you go about blending your pieces together, especially on the two I quoted above. Do you blend them with a separate 3rd overlay texture that blends into each texture piece, or do you just blend between the 2 textures' ends once you have them together in the scene?
Thanks for showing this stuff off once again, it's great inspiration!
For these pieces, I actually did a quick retopology on each part in order to have modeling and texturing matching together.
In our pipeline, at the moment, it's impossible to blend more than 2 textures at once on buildings, so I basically use a third texture (ground one) to make the transition between the two sculpted ones. I could have blend these two textures simply together but I figured that my third ground texture could help doing the transition with all the textures around.
I made a quick paintover to show where I used the third texture :
People like you are huge inspirations and your works are infinite sources of motivation.
Cheers.
How do you get the blue to orange highlights in some of the stonework? It's so smooth!
Thank you again for your kind messages !
@Gannon : I usually use one of the channel of the normal map that I generated ( green or red, depends of the direction) to create my bounce light.
I just put it as a mask for a single color layer in photoshop and twick the levels of it to have the level of contrast that I want to obtain for my bounce light.
I also usually play with the blending mode of that layer regarding which material or effect I want to have for my bounce light
Hope it's understandable, it's hard to explain like that ^^
I didn't managed to check the new expansion yet but it's clear that with Legion you guys pushes Wow visuals further again.
Thanks for sharing your art and the small tips & tricks !
I have a few practical questions if you would.
Are any complimentary maps are used in WoW or sculpting is only for creating diffuse textures?
I can see that textures contain rather large tileable (and not) pieces of surface, what about differences in texture quality across meshes on the level?
Could you please elaborate a bit how are those textures are applied to meshes, cause those meshes look rather complex and there seem to be only a handful of textures used.
Thank you for your answers and this infinite source of inspiration!
So currently in Wow we are still mostly using diffuse maps. We are trying the past expansions to add more maps more often like emissive maps and "specular" maps ( which is actually more a B/W mask for an environment map). So my sculpts are principally made for diffuse textures but I'm actually using normal maps and heightmaps to create my base. For example a heightmap can be extremely useful for the emissive ( ex : coals where you can use it to make the warmth under the coals)
So right now we are using a combination of trims/tileable textures and specific ones. Usually the trims/tileable textures are carrying a lot of the work and we are using the specific ones to make a point of interest in the structure. All the textures are principally 256 or 512. Some could be 1024 but it's actually kinda rare and only for specific point of interests or larger scale. We are simply trying to have a regular texel ratio among all the textures we are using to not have too much resolution difference.
This combination allows us to deliver a lot of content and be able to focus only on some areas where we know for example that the player is gonna spend some time etc ....
I hope that it's helpful
https://blizzcon.com/en-us/schedule#sat-nov-5
Please swing by and ask questions if you are interested
I will be with the talented artists Cole Eastburn ( http://thecolehole.blogspot.com/) and Eric Braddock (http://ericbraddock.blogspot.com/)
Thanks !
Many thanks in advance for letting us know.