Monthly Environment Art Challenge - January and February 2018 (52)

kadeschui

Welcome all and Happy New Year! It's time to kick off 2018 with the Monthly Environment & Prop Challenge #52!

Incredible work by all - as always special thanks to everyone who participated in the voting process this time. 

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 51!


HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:

artist: talros

HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:

artist: Krzysztof Maziarz



HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:

artist: unknown

HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:

artist: ancientfear

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. 

Well, that's about it. If you think that any rules should be changed, or there should be new additions to the rules, please let me know. As always, please feel free to provide feedback / suggestions in this thread or by messaging me directly.

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!

Nuna

When is the deadline for this?

KustomZero

End of february

jwsargent_me

These concepts are really good, can't wait to get to work on them

Klawd

Really great choices for this challenge!

AndySC

I'm going with the hand painted store. It seems to be a popular choice and I'm looking forward to the results.

At first glance there's a lot going on, with a lot of parts, but it's coming together nicely. Last months challenge was a great learning experience with the modelling for this going much faster than I could last time. This time I'm keeping the poly count under control and will pay more attention to the UV layout.

My progress so far

Quibees

nice concepts! by the way author of the prop hand paint is https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3kRE

Ashervisalis

Started the block out today. Having a bit of trouble figuring out the stairs on the right. Seems like the ladder goes up to the platform for the stairs, and then someone would take the stairs the rest of the way to the 3rd floor, however, there's not room for someone to get from the top of the ladder to the front of the stairs. I improvised a bit and gave a bit of room for someone to get around between the stairs and the building.

Dennis_Levi

Hey all,

this is my first time entering the polycount challenge

I will go for the hard surface knife. Below you can find a shot of my modeling so far.
Still a lot to do, but I'm exited to read your feedback and see the stuff from you guys.

jwsargent_me

@Ashervisalis Yeah, I am having the same issue. There are some critical flaws with the concept that we will have to work around.

Getting the larger shapes blocked in, will start adding blockouts of the assets on the ground as well soon. Then I can get onto the fun part of detailing and finishing the modeling.

 

kwagner

Decided to try the totems this time. Trying to get the proportions right is killing me I think...

wirrexx

kwagner said:

Decided to try the totems this time. Trying to get the proportions right is killing me I think...

not the best exp. but, try to plan it out this way. did it fast. But as the "sculpture" is the only thing that's unique. the Stone base it's sitting on, is the same on all directions. So measuring that way could maybe help you with the proportions? 

jake1210

First timer on the challenge, but going to attempt the first concept. Was a little confused on how the bottom front grass came down from the view so I did what I could for the block-out. I will worry about the spaceship later as I made sure scaling was correct in UE4. 

IDCrisis0

Hey all, I'm going to give the handpainted category a try. Here is what I've got so far.


@jake1210 - Digging the progress so far, I was torn between the handpainted and the hard surface this time. I may give it a try if I have time.

LowerclassRiot

Decided to go with the crazy 8os comic book like corner store. Right now im just  in process blocking everything out.

jake1210

@IDCrisis0 Thanks very much! Loving that build so far, you nailed the placement and shapes well.

kwagner

@wirrexx Oh yes that will help! I didn't think of breaking it down like that. Thank you!

LowerclassRiot

I decided to do the crazy eighties comic book corner store. Right now im just blocking things out.

MrBFox

Hello, decided to jump in  with hardsurface category, heres the blockout pass.

Derzo

Just a super quick blockout that I did

MrBFox

focusing on fleshing out the wall section, separating out and bevelling panels, using floaters for the panel with holes in it.

Derzo

I spent this day modeling and I'm quite happy with it. Next is UVing
@MrBFox Looking nice, maybe try making the big bevel on the barrier smaller to more match the reference, as well as copy the piece with those holes to the right side

MrBFox

took on board @Derzo's suggestions decreasing the size of the big bevel on the barrier, duplicated across the holed piece, and from there continued on with working on the lower part of the barrier and the road, going to work on the sign and hill behind the barrier next.

Ashervisalis

Almost finished the building blockout. I'll apply some lattice deformation to a lot of the objects after the blockout is complete. I wanted to make the back part of the building interesting. I threw in a garbage can, back door, and sewer.

MrBFox

did a pass on the sign, was a bit stumped initally with interpretting parts of the frame from the concept. 

MrBFox

Another pass on the frame and started on the little hover speeder. still a bit undecided about how to aproach the trees and grass on the hill but i think im about ready to start the lowpoly pass on the barrier and road.

Ashervisalis

@MrBFox Looking dope! Are you going to shrink the vehicle to match the concept more? A cool idea for the tree might be to have a single plane as the tree and have it always face the camera, and give it a slightly holographic look like in the reference. Dunno why the future would have holographic trees but it would be neat.

Started modeling some of the junk. I'll be leaving the wires until last.

Pinkfox

My slow start on blocking things out has mostly consisted of getting a scale that felt right. It still feels as though the sides should be a little closer to the waistline, but in testing it always felt too top heavy so I need to play around with it some more. The travel path seems to work well around three people wide and I'm happy with the width of the sides. Once I work out the height a bit more I'll size up a rendition of the sign and hopefully start focusing on more detail!

Derzo

I'll call the UVs good enough, didn't want to spend too much time on those. I also divided the scene into chunks and each one will have its own texture, so it'll be a bit easier to texture and manage it all 

MrBFox

did a few things today, did a low poly, unwrap and test bake on the barrier and road, and a little detail pass on the vehicle (since the concept seems to have left it vague likely as a scale reference). 

Tomsn

Hello Polycounters, I am from Munich / Germany and this is my first challenge. Pretty happy to be a part of it.

I chose the orange totem. 

First "Blockout".



In this render the head is a bit smaller. I think it looks a bit better.


The shouldershape made me a little headache.



@Derzo, really like your scene.

What do you think about my totem? Any Tips? Advices?

MrBFox

@Tomsn Bevels on the base of the statue is the main thing im noticing at the moment.

Pinkfox

MrBFox said:

did a few things today, did a low poly, unwrap and test bake on the barrier and road, and a little detail pass on the vehicle (since the concept seems to have left it vague likely as a scale reference). 

Looks like it's coming together quite nicely! Is that piece at the back right side of the barrier a connector piece for connecting two bits of the barrier together or is it meant to be an end cap? (Just curious no real critique in it.)

MrBFox

@Pinkfox
it could serve as either. I missed it in my initial blockout and highpoly passess, but eventually noticed it blending into the background of the concept.

kadeschui

@pinkfox looking good! no comments for you other than nice work on moving so quickly looking forward to seeing the finished piece.

@Tomsn Are you planning to zbrush at all? some variation in edge condition would look awesome! What are you rendering in, by the way? looks great!

Quick update from me:

Tomsn

@kadeschui yes i zbrush this totem. I have not mutch experience in zbrush so this is a got opportunity for me.  This rendering is from Modo.

Btw. Your Grenade looks cool! Iam curious how it goes on.

kwagner

Getting there slowly! I might actually finish this month. Hoping to get both totems done.

Derzo

Tomsn said:

@Derzo, really like your scene.

What do you think about my totem? Any Tips? Advices?

Thanks! As for the totem, I don't really know how detailed you want your blockout to be and how much details you will be sculpting/modeling so it's hard to say anything. The general shape is looking good, except you're missing the wings. I think the totem is supposed to have 2 wings mirrored, but the artist just drew one

I think you should just try to compare your reference to your model as musch as possible and model/sculpt every small detail possible while still focusing on keeping the mesh clean. I think that's how I managed to make my scene look somewhat good

MrBFox

low poly'd and unwrapped some more bits (after consulting the wiki for best practices regarding normal smoothness and UVs for baking) and brought them into Subtsance Painter. Up next the hill, trees and the holo ads.

Dustinmaertz

Hello Everyone, been slowly working on this in my off time. Here is what I have so far. I will be using Unity as my main renderer. 

First pass


A few tweaks here and there, playing with some lighting, materials and post processing . 


Playing with the holographic display shader using amplify. Not sure if I should post gifs here so I will just leave a screen and a link to imgur album.

https://i.imgur.com/Qw2vw6u.gif Fake parallax using stacked planes
https://i.imgur.com/QElNyyG.gif image swapping
https://i.imgur.com/W9JVuDB.gif uv distortion via flowmap

Always happy hear what you think and get feeback.

kadeschui

@Dustinmaertz Love it! thats going to look great reflecting off the surrounding geometry! Love the trees too...how did you get that transparent effect around the edges?

quick update to my grenade:

AndySC

I think I've finished unwrapping... Now to decide which objects are going on which texture set.
@Dustinmaertz I like the hologram effects. Looks like something to try when I've finished with this project.

jedenjenda23

Hey guys I didn't plan to join but changed my mind! Picked pistol from the last concept as I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and try some hard surface modelling (in which I suck). Here is 3h blockout and plan sheet.  Please feel free to be harsh  

Pinkfox

@Dustinmaertz The display looks awesome! Any chance you're planning to separate the RGB values between the panels so that they space out when looking from the side but come together to make the proper color from the front?

Dustinmaertz

@Pinkfox Thanks! I was playing with some parallax in the shader, but have not found the right set up yet. The gifs under my screens show my first attempt at color separation. Its a start, but I still have some things to figure out. 

@AndySC Thank you, I like your uv sheet. Its very colorful. its been pretty fun to play around with. I am using Aplify for unity, its pretty awesome. Highly recommend checking it out. 

@kadeschui For the trees I just traced the shape in photoshop and used the solid color fill with a grey stroke in the layer style, an plopped it onto a texture sheet. Then for the material I am using a unlit surface with an opacity clip mask. I did notice some of the screen space ao was adding a soft gradient, but they are just solid colors.

MrBFox

Got Textures done up in substance and photoshop, experimented a bit with greating a tiling grass ground texture for the banks, and a holo tree billboard, brought everything into UE4 and have been tinkering with the shaders, lighting and post processing (The trees are billboarded, forgot to simulate the Blueprint when taking the screens).

somePizzaBoy

Almost done with the low-poly.  I still need to adjust some shapes and add all the wires.  How do you guys plan on going about texturing? I think I will be using mostly unique space, except for a tiling texture for the red bricks.

@MrBFox  That looks incredible.  At first glace, I thought it was a painting.

MrBFox

@somePizzaBoy
thanks, for me one trick I used to maximise txture space for the unique assets was to  identify and delete any duplicate  assets, UV one, then duplicate and move it back into the positions of the duplicate meshes, I did this for elements of the sign and the wings of the hover vehicle.
for actual painting of the textures I used the masked fill layer worflow in Substance Painter to automate as much of the texturing as possible.

MrBFox

little animation put together with Sequencer.

IDCrisis0

Hey all, 

Slowly taking out block-in pieces and replacing with models. I still need to do all the stuff on the bottom floor.

@MrBFox Digging the sequence. You should take some of those pieces into your modeling package and bend them a bit so they don't appear to end in the distance and some height fog.

Zerogun

Okay, so I finally finished my hi poly for that knife on the weapons list. A few half hour lunches and then a nice weekend to get it done. Lo poly is done and finishing unwrapping. Should have some texture this week.
I think I'll finish unwrapping at work then jump onto that roadway scene. I think my workflow is a lot faster.