Note to Self - Sajeet's Improvement thread (Environment & assets)

Sajeet

Latest progress:

Hi Polypeople!

The plan is to use this thread to document my honest workprocess of the things i do.
My dream and ofcourse ultimate goal is to land a job at gamingstudio here in Sweden.
So thinking nothing is impossible with some really hard work i will make my journey public with the hopes of some comments and critique.

Here are some stuff i made earlier.

Robot based from Simon Stålehaags wonderful painting:



Will probably go back on most of these as they are showing my lack of presentationskills and other flaws in my workflow so c&c on these are welcomed aswell.

I will not use this thread only for props and environment modelling, it will probably involve everything from Photoscanning to Substance designer and everything inbetween hoping to evolve as an artist.

Cheers

Sajeet

So atm im working on a toaster
Fairly simple modelling but what draws me to model it is that im eager to texture it as i want to recreate all the dust and burned parts of it using Substance painter as main texturing tool. Strickly forbidden my better half to wipe it clean

mmmm toaster

Sajeet

Getting there slowly..
Done a first material pass on the toaster and now im trying to figure out how to continue with the grime, dust and burned parts. Have some seams on the metal casing that i thought triplanar projection would solve, but nooo.
Anyone having a suggestion?
Also need to place the lamps on the buttons and small metal parts on the contact but i guess i do that in SP.

Sajeet

Slooow progress.. Mainly because my computer probably doesnt like working with so many layers in SP. Cant even uprez the texture to 4k anymore without my computer gives me the finger and need to restart.
Anyone have any tips if its possible to optimize the layers stack so it doesnt hate me?

Starkist

It seems to me that you are cramming a lot of polys into the toaster cable, while the body itself could use more polys instead, as you can clearly see the huge edges... try to balance it a bit more.

However, I'm no pro, so I might be wrong

Sajeet

@Starkist you are right i will look over how i distributed the polys. thx

Sajeet

Looked over the mesh... smoothed out the shell with some more geo and reduced the amount of geo on the cable.
Also going to start over with the texturing as i need to be more clever with the amount of layers im using, because my old computer doesnt handle to many layers in SP well.

Elithenia

When you are working with substance... make sure you put things in folders, and then collapse the folders you aren't currently working on. It helps the program being a bit nicer to the computer... and definitely helps when saving/exporting/up Or Down Rez'ing

Sajeet

@Elithenia thx i didnt know that will try that. My progress has halted on the toaster because of the crashes i had

Sajeet

Well the toaster is still on hold, but planning on making a push on it soon. In the meanwhile im have started on a environment as im really want to be better at doing them.. and the only way to get better is to f%&#ing do them. :P

so this is my ref. artist: skrezy

this is my progress so far, still very early in dev. Trying to make heavy use of modular pieces to save me a buttload of work. but need to make some variations. My plan is to involve substance designer and heavy use of tiling textures as i need training in that. Planning on bending the tunnel after everything is placed as im not sure if there is any better way doing it..

Wires


CC is vey welcomed as im not to confident making environments.

Sajeet

Well life...
Started importing and test stuff in unreal. Im rather noobish using UE4 so i have alot to read up on

Eric Chadwick

This is looking great so far!

Pro tip: you can usually find the source for any image if you use Google's reverse image search. A quick way is to right-click an image in the Chrome browser and choose "Search Google for image".

The photo you posted is from Skrezy, who has a great Instagram with more stuff like this. Worth a look!

Also you might be interested in this thread, Environment : HalfLife : Black Mesa Tunnel

Sajeet

Ah thx @Eric Chadwick I will update the post to credit him. Trying to find whats under the stairs but to no avail, so i just have to come up with something. Already drooled over that thread

Sajeet

Slowly chipping away on this.
Not totally sure how i would go about the grids between the rails, but experimenting with POM,s so i get rid of the alisaing.
The textures are still placeholders for the time being.
And for the tunnelbend i havnt tried out different methods yet but slowly getting there.
c&c always welcomed

sltrOlsson

Looks like it's coming along nicely! I think you should stay away from adding to much detail early on. Try to block things out to get a good sense for the whole scene first. It's way easier to move things around when there's not a bunch of tiny polygons everywhere.. 

Sajeet

@sltrOlsson thx! Yeah its easy to go ahead fiddling with the small stuff i will have that in mind

Sajeet

Small update. pipes, pipes, pipes

Sajeet

Placeholder tunnel but getting there, soon on to uv and other fun stuffs

Sajeet

Still chipping away on this one.. Think i have done every mistake in the textbook on this. The tunnel has to be honest a real pain think i had to redo it 3 or 4times because i missed something important(messed up UV´s, Lightmap issues etc.) Cant promise i wont redo it more times because that seems to be what im doing But hell im learning alot, cant say i have fun all the time though
But hopefully the "shell" is finished soon so that i can start to go in to smaller details and try to convey a story.

Im really open for Feedback or critism so dont hold back

Sajeet

The machine standing under the stair


and some more process.. working on dirtying it down and make it more post apocalyptish. need to work more on the textures as the tunnel and some areas now are to clean.
Atm im not touching the lightning but ofcourse i will try to give that some love aswell



And as always C&C are welcomed

Sajeet

Little update:
Finally i planted a story behind the environment... Really hard to proceed without one

hauntedmadness

Why aren't more people commenting on this? It looks incredible. I'm not the best with critiques as I'm still trying to get better myself but what I see of the subway tunnel just looks outstanding. I think there could be a bit more grime along the tunnel to keep it from feeling so modular and array-esque.

Minor critique, but still stunning to say the least!

Sajeet

Thank you for your kind words
Yeah trying to improve is really a challenge. And yes i havent looken at the tunnel for a while... it rally needs som love aswell

Sajeet

Another small update.. starting to se the end on this now. But Still have some assets left to build, and some to fix up.   fiddling alot with the light atm. And as usual c&c i very welcomed even if its nitty picky

Yura_Vorobiev

Amazing work, can't wait to see it finished!) Dont know about you plans with other props, but usualy there is one more rail for electricity. Maybe it would be cool to add those. Good luck with further progress!

Sajeet

Thank you @Yura_Vorobiev I took my inpiration from a photo higer up in this thread somewhere And on that one there are no electric rails as you show. Not sure to be honest what kind of subway station it is as the platform is rather low aswell from what i am accustomed to..

shaya

This is stunning. It's really cool getting to see the progression. Keep it up!

Sajeet

Thank you @shaya

Sajeet

Another small update.. added a subtle ground mist, boxes, fixed the straight edges on the newspaper and some emissive map tinkering

Sajeet

Small update. adding decals, working with the light and so forth dont have alot of spare time atm

Sajeet

Finally done... Im really glad i pushed through to the end. Been a major learning process and eager to start on something new.

Maxilator

Your environments looks pretty good, but since you are doing the hero asset approach on the toaster you should bake normals from a high poly mesh.

Sajeet

Thank you Max. And yes i thought of revising the whole toaster to get it where i want it...