First Delve into Environment Arts - Critique

oldmanboy

I am new to this community and would like to say hi and get your thoughts on a project I am currently working on through CGMA.

I am brand new to environment arts for games and would like to get as much critical feedback as possible as I work through the process and garner any tips & tricks along the way. 

So I will run through my process so far and if you have the time to comment, I would greatly appreciate it.

The brief is to create a simple Diorama of a ruined gate with some foliage / trees. The course is 10 weeks and I wanted to make sure I came up with something that would be manageable within that time-frame for a noobie

I played around with other ideas like a abandoned gas station, Japanese storefront, a giant severed robot foot and some other concepts but thought I would stick to the brief to get the most out of the course and push myself in quality not quantity.

Here are some sketches I put together for the project to get a feel for what I wanted to create. 
Please note, I don't paint so this is a first for me.


Chosen route. Sacred tree surrounded by Obelisks and ruined gateway


First pass at block done in Modo





Some material test for course assignment. First shot at Substance Designer / Marmoset. Left image is my creation while the one on the right is a walk-through by Daniel Thiger ( He has mad skills) mines not as good haha.


Second pass of block with some various compositions, basic lighting, paint-over and photo-bash to get a general look and feel.


What I want to achieve is Photoreal game quality assets / composition. I would like to make all stone structures feel hewn / carved from the surrounding rock rather than built brick-by-brick and contrasting with the black (dead-like) stone and a bright vibrant tree as a shrine.

Any thoughts are welcome. I am here to learn so give me the critique even if its harsh

Really appreciate it and thanks,
David

MBS320

So you initial workflow looks good. You're going about this well. Just a little concerned that your target is photo realism, but your concept and direction thus far seems to be leaning heavily towards hyper realism or semi-stylised. I like what you've drawn, but I hope you have plenty of reference and a good key/primary reference image.

oldmanboy

Thanks for the input. I do have a key image a loads of great reference for each material. So all good there.

X-One

Can you post some of your ref? I'm worried that if realism is your goal, you may need to correct some things at a modelling level, before you go further. Those two main pillars, at those angles would likely collapse. They would also probably have a less complex shape, and be of the same scale. 

I honestly like what you have so far, so unless you're dead set on realism, I'd say embrace the semi-stylized.

oldmanboy

Thanks for the comments guys. 

More dev on the texture for the walls. First stab at Substance Designer. Let me know your thoughts. There are a couple issues on the final texture which I will sort out but I think its a great start for now.

First go at Substance Designer / Had fun creating the Moss


Couple Renders in Marmoset


Master Material with exposed paras to control Moss Growth / Lichen Amount / Dirt (WIP)

oldmanboy

Here are a few more developments

Standing Stone sketches


Brick wall test


Composition


And lastly diorama shots

oldmanboy

Some more sketches of the standing stone options I will be going with.

oldmanboy

Thought I would add more bit and pieces. 

Sculpts using Mudbox. 


Broken standing stone with varying textures


Half of a standing stone with varying textures


Full standing stone with varying textures


And the next design step for the Stone with addition features (Quick comp)


And a set of assets to date

oldmanboy

And the Gate. Just finished modeling, sculpting and texturing today

Low Poly


Sculpt


Textured

Ashervisalis

It's looking good man. Keep it up.

oldmanboy

Thanks man. Appreciate it

oldmanboy

Another image for your viewing pleasure and hard critique

oldmanboy

Started to work on the vegetation. Here's an image with some Grass / weeds / Vines and improved ground textures.

oldmanboy

Here is a better image

aclund3

Looking really good!  For me, I might break the rectangular symbol above the gateway, and maybe also add a bit of rubble (that could've come from the upper right of the gate) to break the silhouette of the actual gate hole a little more. Could make for a more interesting negative shape.  And then maybe extend the ground plane through the gateway a bit more to help tie into the background.  Just some thoughts   I like what you've got going so far!

oldmanboy

Thanks for the feedback @aclund3. Really appreciate it. Still working on this as usual but thought I would share the latest image. Again

oldmanboy

Ok, I have made further adjustments and additions so thought I would share. 

FreneticPonies

Looking good! The tree branches and leaf planes are a bit noticeably lower detail than the rest of the environment. You spend a lot more polys on the arch and grass vs how much space each takes up, and it sticks out a bit.

Otherwise really nice overall, especially like the atmosphere and Hollywood kind of lighting.

oldmanboy

Thanks @FreneticPonies. Appreciate the comments. These are all Game ready assets. Nothing in here is high poly. The tree vs the rest I agree about but I'm not sure how to make a higher ploy / detailed tree asset that is game ready and can be reusable throughout. If you could give me some pointers that would be great!

D

oldmanboy

I guess I just make that one Hero assets higher poly and keep the rest low. Kinda obvious I will work on that soon.

FreneticPonies

Good LODs go a long way. Also a thing to note is it's more important how many polys an asset takes up compared to its worldspace size, rather than just how many it takes up all together.

IE polys are really expensive if they're smaller than a pixel onscreen, but really cheap if they're as large (or larger) than a square of 4 pixels on a screen. So for large assets, that take up more of your screen like a tree does (as compared to say, your grass or a small rock), you can afford more polys without a lot of worry. While smaller assets should use less polys.

For a few polys you could give your leaf cards a bend or two and make them less flat without adding a whole lot. It looks like you're using Opacity Mask (alpha test) for the foliage, which is better than just Opacity (alpha) as it ends up cheaper, but it can still add to pixel overdraw cost. In this case it can actually be cheaper, for very close LODs, to "cut" your models as close to the solid parts of your texture as possible. EG if you can get rid of empty texture area on your model by adding polys this can be an improvement in performance.

Here's a big ol in depth tutorial for trees and other stuff if you want to take a look.

Larry

You've done a gread job, @oldmanboy
I see you kept changing the lighting setup, be very careful of what the sky looks like compared to your overall brightness and sun position. Currently to me, it doesn't feel like the sky image precisely matches the sun direction and the light/shadow contrast, so it takes back a little bit of the realism. Not a directly noticeable thing, but it does have an impact. I really like the stuff you did and the mood you set though !

Doxturtle

On this piece:



It might help to have a bit of a highlight on the edges of the stone, at the moment the nice sculpted shapes get lost in the grungy material. 

Really nice progress so far though, its coming along great

oldmanboy

Hi everyone. Thanks so much for the comments. I really appreciate this. As this is my first Environment and one solely developed for games, I dont have all the info yet as to what are good practices. So these comments are invaluable to me.

@FreneticPonies Thanks for the explanation. I will definitely read that link you sent and dig in further. 

@Larry thanks for the spot. I will look into this and see where the error is. As this is and HDRi with one light source at the point of the sun I am not sure where this is happening so I will take a closer look. 

@Doxturtle Thanks for the comment. I know what you mean. I will need to pull back on some of the detail of the texture to get that sculpt to pop. I had the same issue on several other objects. Its an interesting balance of details.

D

Ashervisalis

The addition of the colour red really makes your environment. It looks great.

oldmanboy

Some different lighting setups

Larry

The second one looks best to me! The ambient lighting does a great job in showing your scene details! The brightness of the sky is on par with the lighting, the rays which light the objects have the same direction as the sun that falls on the clouds ! I'm jealous, this is a great portfolio piece!  I also really,really dig the idea of the first one as well, giving this "dark" vibe, as if the gate is about to be re-opened ! You have to do that one as well, truth is it needs more polishing but it will be a great example of what you can achieve with the same scene - different lighting setup!

oldmanboy

@Larry Man, those are some kind words. Thank you so much. And I agree on all you points. 

Here is a link to a little animation of the scene. Just wanted to see how long it would take to render and what it would look like in motion: