Monthly Environment Art Challenge - May & June 2017 (48)
greentooth
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Environment & Prop Challenge
I'm glad to see more finished pieces this past round than ever! Truly hard work and great breakdowns/critiques by all.
Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. There's always some good progress that falls off the radar - we want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!
Without further ado, here are our options for Challenge 48!
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: Nicolas-Ferrand
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: Ewreilyn
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: Alexandra Semushina
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: Remko Troost
I'm glad to see more finished pieces this past round than ever! Truly hard work and great breakdowns/critiques by all.
Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. There's always some good progress that falls off the radar - we want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!
Without further ado, here are our options for Challenge 48!
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: Nicolas-Ferrand
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: Ewreilyn
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
artist: Alexandra Semushina
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
artist: Remko Troost
If you want to change up either concept a bit, as some people wanted, then feel free. Interpret these concepts to your liking.
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
Damn I am so out of loop with these. Also will anyone tell why we changed name from MNC to what we have now?
Supposable Lion nice blockout! Maybe its just my perception balcony in concept looks a tiny bit offset towards right as in left part is not so aligned with left wall.
I think the side walls are a bit more separated but this is more to get the felling.
I'm having trouble with the detail on top of the rectangular windows. I tried to follow the concept exactly but it's looking pipey. If any one knows the style of frame I should be referencing please let me know!
@Supposable Lion - Good start! Right now it's looking a little too vertical to me - check out how much height there is between the doorway and the walls above it. Looks a little high to me on your block-in. It's hard because the concept's perspective isn't perfect, but checking the overall silhouette of the building against the ref should help!
@Tre Z - Nice block in! I'm feeling a little validated that you read the shape of the balcony the same way I did, lol. The foliage makes it a bit hard to tell. The windows on your roof read as maybe a little bit too big to me, but this is totally a solid start!
@melisac - Love the shapes you've built so far, but I see what you mean about the windows feeling too "pipey." I'd say maybe vary up the width of those pipes? They almost look like they're mimicking bunched cloth in the concept, if that makes sense. Try bulging out the middle parts and the end bits in the center. My tablet's put away for the night but I can do a quick sketch if what I'm saying isn't making sense
one question though, is it possible to post our finished creation to our portfolio? like artstation or personal website? or do I need to contact the concept artist and asks for permission first?
cheers!
@hasgan I've seen a few people use their finished environment challenges used in their portfolios. I think the general idea is if you do use it, drop the concept artist a message to see if its okay (they may not have time to respond or have a disclaimer for use of the art on their art pages) and credit the artist and link to their work as a common courtesy
The hand painted assets are looking good too! Cant wait to see how they turn out
Hello,
I finished yet another personal project in my free time and its theme are objects from my childhood, or basically things that every 90s child probably remembers.
Good luck everybody!
Progress is looking super from everyone, keep rockin!
@jnascimento I pretty much modeled a wave pattern, made the material a translucent plastic and put a light above it, seemed like it made the most sense and it perfectly replicated the concepts lighting which I was happy with
Umbrafoxus nice job! love the light fixture, and the scaling looks spot on.
Klawd looking good. the door mechanism does look tricky. I haven't gotten there yet, but my first thoughts are to move the door hinge and have it pivot when the piston pulls back.
here's my blockout so far, did anyone get the scene to look right using an average field of view, like say around 60? I'm asking because i had to crank mine up to 70 to get it closer to the concept.
this is silly, but I struggled longer than i'd like to admit with getting the middle holographic positioning just like in the concept, after looking closer at the concept it became clear that it's a little offset from the benches, not lined up in the middle like i was doing automatically.
I think the proportions need some work, also the bench placement seems too close to the wall!
@suspectlogic
Thanks!
For the doors, the only explanation I can make is having the big trapezoidal pieces slide on the door. Their size is conveniently equal to the door width. Then detach and retract the small pistons they have on top, and finally the door can pivot on its hidden hinges bringing with it the big trapezoidal pieces.
What do you guys think of this explanation? Do you have any valid alternatives?
Last thing, the problem you mentioned with the center holographic piece, might it not be just the distortion from the camera? Here you can see I overimposed two lines to show how much the visual is actually skewed.
@Gibby1995 Hey Gibby welcome
@suspectlogic Thanks suspect
As for the door my approach will be something along the lines of my terrible sketch below (cant find my Wacom lead so had to mouse draw it >.< )
There's a separation line between the piston end and the front tip which makes it look like they may potentially detach, in my mind it makes more sense for just the front bit to stay attached to the door as the weight of the whole piston sections seems absurd for what appears to be a waiting room door haha. Also you get some cool mechanical animations by doing it this way so I think this is how i'll approach it.
anyone have an Idea how to sculpt moss? I'm having trouble finding a stylized moss look that fits the concept.
@Zerogun Weapons are not my strong suit either, but with any hard surface model edge flow is a top priority. I'm looking forward to seeing the high poly version and all of the golden trimmings
@Poseiden My approach would be to make soft small circles with the clay buildup brush. Although, it may be a bit time consuming. It's looking fantastic btw.
I´m starting with hand-painted prop challenge. I love Alexandra Semushina´s magical world, so I´m happy to do this.
Here is my first WIP.
I also played around with creating a hand-painted texture for the roof procedurally with Substance Designer, but I'm not sure I'll go down that path. I really love the sculpted-to-painted look, and I could use some more time in ZBrush since I haven't played with it in a long while. But here's a shot of my SD test, anyway! It was a fun experiment just working with normal, height and diffuse.
@Poseiden - Love what you've done so far! Awesome sculpt. I had some trouble finding decent reference of what people have done as far as approaching sculpting some stylized moss - a lot of moss stuff out there in terms of resources is for realism and PBR. But I did find this photo that I think is a good ref for lumpy moss shapes, though you probably won't want as much microsurface with a sculpted/hand painted workflow
@Supposable Lion - Looking good! This will be fun to see in color, I like that tree branch sneaking under the railing on that first platform
I learned something cool already (!) when you mentioned modo camera matcher (I never used it before and it's awesome!). Also the edge shader you see in my experiment from few days ago is made in Substance, I simply played with the opacity channel, and a partial edge rendering on the emissive channel for the holographic ball.
I have had zero free time these last few days and couldn't work on my scene... I hope I don't fall too behind since it's already the 13th
PS: All you guys are going super great!
Hey @Klawd , those holographic-ball looks great! How do you textures those? did you hand paintetd it (I'm really curious about how can you make the edges glowings thingy).
I haven't done anything that big before but I'll try making the tea house : x
@wingaersheek Those tiles are niceee! Tea house looks a bit short and wide in my opinion compared to the concept.
@Klawd Yeah man camera matching is the one of the best tools i came across when you want to directly fit a scene to a concept! There's one in 3DS Max too for those inclined.
I've not done too much this weekend, just minor tweaks here and there and the start of the baking process.
Timelapse GIF for fun
Since the revolver doesn't really show any reload mechanism, I decided to go with an folding mechanism.
Here is my first blockout so far:
I started with Maya for the initial blockout, but after hearing all these great things about modo, I can't pass up this time to start learning it! Will hopefully have some updates up soon.
Just getting started, quick blockout in Maya.
I'm looking forward to seeing how people translate the foliage from the concept art to 3D!
Exported out the Skeletal Mesh and removed the skeleton. I keep it around for that very reason - it's a great scale reference if you work in Unreal a lot.
First of all, it's great to see your work, on all challenges.
I'm going on the Hand-painted house, if i can afford to finish it
Started yesterday for about 2-3h, bit late but heh..
Here's where i am for now after a morning trying to find measurements. (lunch break !
I don't know for you all, but i put a biped (3dMax) with a height of 1,70m. The house seemed a bit of measures. And looking at the concept, i find some things a bit weird like stairs width compared to the door. Maybe it's just that my house will need some modifications.
@slam_nine Nice work this far, really enjoyable ! One thing "troubles" me is the roof, i think it's a bit too curvy. I find on the concept that the main roof edges are a bit more straight.
The face is giving me a bit of trouble, and it's hard to get the right proportions in the one same angle but it's a start.
Fixed the face! Onto the rest of the parts.Lukitscherie said: SISTER BOOK CRAFTSMEN! UNITE!
Here's a screenshot of my WIP
Sorta figuring out the book's silhouette now. The lamb face and the book itself are in two different perspectives in the concept so im choosing to adhere to the perspective of the lamb.
Create a camera in your scene that matches up to the concept as best you can! It'll be so much easier to get things in.
Comparison gif of my progress so far:
@Caiterade sculpt is coming along nicely! looking forward to seeing how you approach your textures