Critique wanted! Stylized Sheriff's office

M u r t t i

Hi!

This is my second asset to my Wild West environment. Any critique and comments are highly appreciated! Modeled in Max, Zbrush and textured is SD and SP. Rendered in Marmoset toolbag.

Thanks!

Eric Chadwick

This is great, love it so far!

I think it would help to add some dirt along the edges of the walls where they meet the vertical beams. You have a bit of this on the stucco wall in the back, at least on the wagon wheel side. More of this, all around, would help soften the abrupt transitions. 

Also where walls touch the roof line, both log walls and stucco. 

Some variation in color along the large wood beams would help too. Maybe mix in some of the gray value from the roofing. Vertex color would help for these touches.

Sheriff text seems low on the sign, why the empty space above it?

Stucco corners are quite straight and even. Some width differences along the vertical bevel might help.

Is the hanging lamp illuminated enough?

Also I'd suggest cropping in tighter on the sides in your shots, eliminate the dead space. Will also make them larger on the page.

M u r t t i

Thanks a lot for your comments @Eric Chadwick ! You are right. Maybe I should add some dirt and color variations to the beams. Will check that tomorrow

Empty space on the sign was supposed to be filled with some kind of star icon, but now I noticed that I actually forgot to add it, haha. Good point! sometimes it happens that something gets missed.

Maybe stucco needs a bit of variation too, good point there as well. Hanging lamp isn't actually illuminated at all. This was supposed to be daylight render but maybe I should put some light in it too as some light is already coming out from the windows.

I rendered this in 1920x1080 and used safe frames to make sure that everything fits in. Maybe these kind of props can be rendered with different aspect ratio to eliminate that dead space as you said?

Eric Chadwick

Yeah I would just crop it. No need to do cinema aspect ratio if the art isn't wide enough to fill it.

M u r t t i

Did some modifications:
-added some dirt on the edges
-remade text on the sign
-added light to the lamp
-added some color variation to the logs.

comments? Thanks!

CrackRockSteady

I'd play that game.

Nice work

Gannon

Looking good! I second Eric in adding some dirt transitions on the vertical beams. It'll really help break up those 90 intersections. The wobble in the walls are great. Any plans for accent colors, maybe a cactus here or there could be really cool!

EricElwell

I like it. The overall effect is coming across well.  A couple of things I would point to for improvement is the wood panel texture for the main walls. Though it's good to have color variation, the lighter yellows on the siding are a bit garish. I think you could address that by distributing you color variation more analytically, either by weathering or by the plank (if it is the plank's local color, then it will not bleed over).

It may be the clarity of the texture, but it feels a bit like it doesn't know what type of siding it wants to be. I get the sense of log veneer, based on the fasteners (bolts, nails, whatever) at the ends of the boards, but the sealing between the boards throws that off. 

Googled a few different styles of siding:


Again, I think it is working overall. Some fine tuning could put really go a long way at this point. Keep it up!

artrynk

Nice work,hmmm,quick view

M u r t t i

Wow! Thanks a lot for the supportive comments and critique!

@CrackRockSteady Thanks a lot! 

@Gannon I agree that more dirt could work but my problem with that is that I don't actually know how I should do it. Parts of the cabin are more or less "modular" and they are taken from my other house I created earlier. There are many parts that have exact same UV map, so I guess I would need to create separate UV maps for all the parts so I could add dirt all over the corners and on the seam where walls are touching the roof.

Maybe I just create new albedo maps for window frames and corner beams and add dirt that way. My goal is to create small village and I will add cactuses, rocks, bushes etc. there with other houses. I still need to create more props as well for that eg. wagon, chests...etc.

@EricElwell You kind of pointed out the problem I've had when I've been creating this log material. I wasn't sure what kind of siding I'd like to create and maybe thats the reason why it has characteristics of plank and log at the same time. I think I will need to squeeze those logs tighter together so it would look more like a wall made out of logs. I've modified the material along the way and it seems It still needs some tuning

I guess I added a bit too much yellow there when I started to create variation to the color. Good point about the color bleeding, need to fix that!

@artrynk Great point! and hopefully easy to fix too. Thanks!

Gannon

A separate texture, unless you're on a limited budget, would work fine. Small modular rocks as a separate asset from the beams would work imo. Combine several of them in small clusters that would look nice at the base. Then just rearrange them and use them as ground break up or as transitions near other assets.

M u r t t i

Gannon said:

A separate texture, unless you're on a limited budget, would work fine. Small modular rocks as a separate asset from the beams would work imo. Combine several of them in small clusters that would look nice at the base. Then just rearrange them and use them as ground break up or as transitions near other assets.

So you would even add  real geometry into those corners to hide those seams where logs meet vertical beams? I thought that I would only paint dirt into albedo.. 

Elod.H

Hi Murtti,

Looking goood , I'm liking what I'm seeing . Very well done. I'd tweak the color map a little bit to add more aesthetic interest and depth to this asset. I feel you could add a bit more color variation to it, meaning: some of the individual beams here and there have the exact same hue / saturation / brightness values as the neighboring one, which "flattens" the look a little bit. The wood on your walls or the little supports on the bottom could all use a little bit of hue / saturation shift... just select some and push the values in + and - a wee bit.. I think that'd help.

Keep up the good work!

M u r t t i

Hi @Elod.H !

Thanks a lot for your comments! The walls have been the most tricky part of this asset. Thanks for the valuable tip. I will try this out and see if it adds depth to the image

btw, very nice pieces in your portfolio! Like your style a lot!

Markmars

You can greatly improve the model and texture.

Although this is not so simple.

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/chinatown-market-building-3d-model/785377

Good luck!

Gannon

M u r t t i said:

So you would even add  real geometry into those corners to hide those seams where logs meet vertical beams? I thought that I would only paint dirt into albedo.. 

Yep. You could paint dirt into the corners if you'd like but it'll be noticeable when you flip it around and what not, which might look strange. It depends on how the asset is being re-used.

Quick 2 second mock up using cubes for how the rocks could be arranged for the base.


Geometry is cheap to render. The # of assets, material counts, and texture size is the expensive bit when used in excess but that's something I could rant about another time.

M u r t t i

Thanks @Gannon for demonstrating what you meant Not sure if I understood at first. With ideas I received from this thread I wanted to update my other Wild West asset. You can find it here.

http://polycount.com/discussion/194101/stylized-saloon#latest

 I will do some modifications to the sheriff's office as well and will upload new renders when ready 

M u r t t i

Hi,

Did some adjustments. Tweaked wall, roof and floor materials and added some props. Also opened the door. Comments?

Eisenhorn

Hi !

First of all I would say this is a super cool piece. I'd 100% play a game in that universe
There is one thing that I found weird: the wind vane. To me wind vane are on top or farms, barns and elevated storage tanks but not on a saloon or a sheriff office. So in my opinion the vane is a bit out of place but I agree that removing it would also remove a bit of details, disturbing the balance of the building. 

Maybe you can try to put something else ? (or just leave it as it is because that's the way you likes it ^^)

M u r t t i

Thanks @Eisenhorn !

Haha, I just wanted to add something "interesting" or "funny" to this scene so I thought windvane would work. I also thought that in stylized scene this would be ok. But yea, I think your are right that those are usually placed on top of barns, farms etc. Maybe I wanted to just break the rules a bit Not sure if I want to remove it or not or replace it with something else. Need to think and come back to this later.

Thanks for your critique!

Eisenhorn

Maybe you can try a woodturning decoration like this:

http://www.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.daz3d.com%2Fmedia%2Fcatalog%2Fproduct%2Fcache%2F1%2Fimage%2F960x1248%2F17f82f742ffe127f42dca9de82fb58b1%2F0%2F0%2F00-main-western-town-daz3d.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.daz3d.com%2Fwestern-town&docid=MXjwX6TGcWYVhM&tbnid=-QMyirpMH3FvtM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwj315u7zYXZAhURJ-wKHbFFAGIQMwg3KAIwAg..i&w=960&h=1248&client=firefox-b&bih=727&biw=1536&q=western%20town&ved=0ahUKEwj315u7zYXZAhURJ-wKHbFFAGIQMwg3KAIwAg&iact=mrc&uact=8#h=1248&imgdii=-QMyirpMH3FvtM:&vet=10ahUKEwj315u7zYXZAhURJ-wKHbFFAGIQMwg3KAIwAg..i&w=960

pixelpatron

Just needs badge.

jenna_dean

Hi! This is looking great! It feels nice and grounded after adding the dirt pass. The only thing that is sticking out to me is the added/darker tiles on the roof. They seem like they don't go with the flow of the rest of the tiles. It's nice that it breaks up the silhouette, but maybe scaling them up and placing them directly over existing ones to hide the ones underneath would help. Overall great project!

M u r t t i

jenna_dean said:

Hi! This is looking great! It feels nice and grounded after adding the dirt pass. The only thing that is sticking out to me is the added/darker tiles on the roof. They seem like they don't go with the flow of the rest of the tiles. It's nice that it breaks up the silhouette, but maybe scaling them up and placing them directly over existing ones to hide the ones underneath would help. Overall great project!

Hi @jenna_dean I fixed those tiles a bit but didn't upload fixed version here. Instead it can be seen from my artstation site:

https://www.artstation.com/anttiarvola

@Eisenhorn thanks for the tip! That might work, maybe I should try this out.

@pixelpatron I was going to add badge like that there but then I just wanted to keep it simple and add that sign. For me it feels like there's too much going on if I add badge there next to sign thanks for the tip anyways!

MarKiesewetter

I love it!
But I'd recommend to make the shape of the ground less polygonal and give it some height.
The scene endes abrupt.

you can blur it like here:
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/111/611/large/nick-duarte-land-diorama001-final.jpg?1403494839

or break the shape abit like here:
http://www.vickypetrequin.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Petrequin-diorama-final.jpg

but just a personal preference

M u r t t i

Thanks @MarKiesewetter ! I actually tried this before but had problems with alpha map. Now I got it work.