[WIP] Industrial Neighbourhood - (Final Major Project)
polycounter lvl 6
Hi guys!
For my final project at uni, I decided to make an industrial environment using modular assets as much as possible. It's an area I've always wanted to get better at and I'm hoping to learn a lot during the few months I'll be working on this scene.
I'm going to use this thread to post my work in progress. The scene is still in a semi block-out stage at the moment, and I'll be developing it further.
My inspirations for this scene has come from games like GTA V and Need For Speed.
Any thoughts and critiques regarding my scene would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to everyone for the advice and feedback I got while working on this project. Here are some final images of my environment. More images can be seen on my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3gE5J
For my final project at uni, I decided to make an industrial environment using modular assets as much as possible. It's an area I've always wanted to get better at and I'm hoping to learn a lot during the few months I'll be working on this scene.
I'm going to use this thread to post my work in progress. The scene is still in a semi block-out stage at the moment, and I'll be developing it further.
My inspirations for this scene has come from games like GTA V and Need For Speed.
Any thoughts and critiques regarding my scene would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to everyone for the advice and feedback I got while working on this project. Here are some final images of my environment. More images can be seen on my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3gE5J
Replies
Testing out props in the engine.
It's very clean and each asset is very much a separate isolated object that doesn't really look like they've aged together in the scene.
The grungy awning next to a bright white wall, the bright turquoise door, those elements stand out instead of blending in.
The albedo of each object seems to be made up of one primary color.
The reflective properties of the materials seem to be missing.
The tile textures have distinct repeating elements, the bricks and the asphalt are the worse offenders.
There are a lot of prefect right angles and ultra sharp corners. You can round out details and noise up their silhouette. Trim really helps, not just with detail but it helps put a bookend on normal maps like the brick walls, that can't contribute to the silhouette when it goes around a corner, trim it and you don't have to worry about it.
The overall layout is not typical to what you would see in a game level, it's the opposite actually. Game levels are not so obvious bowls you can't climb out of, you've made a dome you can fall off of. As a diorama it sort of works, but it fails to demonstrate some fundamentals of level layout so that is worrying, especially in what could be a centerpiece for your portfolio.
Most of the alleyways going straight through the entire map. This leads to gameplay issues as well as forces the engine to draw things way off in the distance. If you put bends or kinks in an alleyway, it blocks line of sight and lessens what the engine draws.
I'm curious how you are constructing the buildings, they don't seem to be very modular but maybe you've gotten good at hiding it
I plan on adding more ageing to the entire scene as soon as I'm happy with the layout of the alleyway and buildings. I'll be using vertex painting and decals to break up my tiling textures soon.
Most of my materials in the scene don't have any reflective properties at the moment, but I'll be adding them in at a later stage.
In regards to the overall layout I have at the moment, my initial plan was to make a city block and duplicate it a few times.
I'll fix all these issues and post updates soon. And yes the buildings are made from modular pieces
Adding some ageing to the scene
Some rooftop details
More props!!!
Right now your building textures seem to be suffering from a case of a bit too obvious tiling in certain spots, especially the roof and brick pattern on the wall with the graffiti on it. Either increase the texture size to double the variation with more brick patterns/grim, or perhaps better yet add in a vertex-blending material so you can paint the meshes vertices on the larger buildings to mix between two textures that match up. (One could be more grimier/destroyed than the other, have bricks a bit different but still tile on the edges to match up with the first texture, etc) Even just by having a second blend where the texture is darker would give off the appearance of stains and help mitigate the tiling.
I like what you did so far with the dirt/grime, but I feel like it currently is a bit too "tight." The grime seems to be a very thin boarder compared to the cleanliness level of the rest of the texture. I'd make it so its a bit more of a smoother dirt/grime sort of gradient. E.g. with that level of grime on the edges the whole texture should have a subtle dirtiness/grime overlay to it in addition to the edge grime.
Also a nice simple thing for the buildings when you're all done is to make a few of the borders/pillers/roof trim have a couple of edges that you push up/down slightly to give off the appearance of slight distortion/not having a perfect CG-ish edge. Another trick is to make the edges of walls have a slight bevel to them, since perfect 90 degree cuts are actually very uncommon in real-life, though I like how you broke up the edge with the brick model.
Keep it up! Excellent prop work
@Deathstick Thanks for the in-depth feedback, I agree with everything you said especially about the obvious tiling of my brick and roof textures. I will be vertex painting them soon to add more variation.
It feels like this is a shipping yard or something, maybe a port or trainyard so I'd maybe swap out some of your current debris for stuff like old oil barrels/wooden crates/cable drums/bricks/rope etc. stuff you'd be more likely to see being used in this kind of area.
I feel like there should be some build up of dirt/grim where the brickwall meets the asphalt.
https://www.google.com/search?q=dirty+alley&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFkdX_yuvVAhVIOCYKHXjuC08Q_AUICigB&biw=1918&bih=956#imgrc=gvEFoN4RrGv0KM:
Also put your artstation in your signature for your posts. Makes it easier to see your work.