New to modelling, want crit! Building my first scene

Zeozen

Hey everyone, I was a bit scared at first seeing as there are soo much amazing work here, but I'm never gonna get anywhere if I don't expose myself. I just started working on some props (done very very basic characters a bit) and figured this was a good time to poke my head out of my shell. Please endow me with your wisdom!

ZacD

They are a good start, the style varies a bit between each piece, try making a cohesive scene. 

Mathew O

Yeah I totally recommend getting yourself out there, the faster you learn to take critique and use it to better yourself the sooner you'll start churning out great art. You'll also get more experienced artists recommending workflows and programs which is priceless.

Zac is totally right here, It'd be fun to create a little diorama or basic scene that forces you to unify your style and also throws up it's own little modelling challenges that'll teach you to adjust as 3d is an iterative process.

Good luck bud

Daf57

Hey, nice props!  It's fun isn't it?

Zeozen

Thanks for the kinds words! That's actually a pretty good idea, making a scene.. yes I will try this!

Zeozen

After eating and thinking a bit, I decided on making a cornerpiece sorta thing of a wizards study, and I'll share my steps here in the hopes for critiques!

Initial sketches of some objects I want and a first pass on the color scheme and lighting. Not sure if I'll do the dragon head on top of the bookcase or not ehehe..

Sharur

I would recommend sticking with phototextures in the beginning. They are a little bit easier to do, rather than hand-painted ones. But that's up to you.

Zeozen

That's true Sharur, for the main project I'm working on ( a game my brother and I are creating) I'm going almost textureless. Here I want to do some handpainted because that's how I envisioned it. I very much feel that stylization is closer to my heart than photorealism, but maybe that just means I should do some photorealistic stuff soon to get out of my comfort zone. That will be next scene tho. Just ate dinner and did a basic block out, staying to the drawing for now.


I will start with the walls I think.

Zeozen

Further blocking out.. Is this how the workflow usually goes, or is it normal to finish one thing before starting on the next?

Mathew O

No this is great, blockout a scene and start getting a feeling for composition and what you need before committing to anything. Once you feel happy then you can mess with some basic lighting (this helps me with composition) and then move to floors, ceiling and walls. Then move on to your assets, wrap those up and then go through a final lighting and fx pass obviously some jumping backwards and forwards in the process is fine, you may want to re-work things from earlier on or you might just be excited to work on a specific piece. Sometimes this helps to motivate you and can stop you from getting bored and quitting. 

Zeozen

Nice then I'm on the right track. A question though, when it comes to rendering out for example a scene like this, should I do it in my 3d modelling program, or since I make stuff for ue4 usually should I render it there? I know that's a preference and style thing too, but I'm thinking that using ue4 would help me learn more about lighting etc etc there, but on the other hand, knowing how to do good renders in my 3d app probably wouldn't hurt either..

Mathew O

If you want to be a video game artist, the lessons you will learn from creating a nice scene in a game engine such as ue4 are invaluable. It's easier to create a great looking scene with typical renders as you don't have the same limitations. 

If you just want to practice modelling and have some fun though, feel free to just render in your software of choice.

Zeozen

That tipped my decision to doing it in ue4, thanks so far! Off to dive my nose into modelling some more o3o

Zeozen

Did a paintover and got some work in on the chest before bedtime

Earthyn

Hey looking good!

I do recommend studying some hand painted stuff before continuing onto the texturing

Just to get an idea on where you should be aiming 

They are not the best reference but still some solid colors and highlights used here!

I believe you can start on hand painted work no problem

Good Luck

Zeozen

Hi Earthyn, thanks! Those chests are very nice:o I believe I may have overdone the geo on my chest hehe >.<

That lock in the first one is pretty much flat, right?

Zeozen

Welp, on to UV unwrapping and smoothing groups I guess!

Zeozen

Phew! UV unwrapping takes time.. Managed to get the pieces into unreal and got a small start on the textures.
I'm gonna have to re-unwrap the arch because it wasn't aligned in a way nice for painting. Live and learn!
Also, I always saw gimp on recommendations for PS alternatives, but I could never handle gimp, felt bad to paint in. Luckily I found Krita, which also has normal painting brush! Pretty cool: o

RustySpannerz

I would check out Affinity Designer, I recently picked it up and I really like it as a photoshop alternative. The UI just makes sense. I'm not much of a painter, so maybe don't trust me, but I like it. 

Zeozen

Got the base pass finished for some more objects òωô


Bottle experiment was only slightly succesful..

Zeozen

After a bit of mucking about I decided to do this scene while getting practice on the visual style that I'll be using for the game I'm working on. The goal is to create something that is closer to for example donald pocket, or how I draw (see my concept sketch), so this is how far I've gotten shader and lighting wise.