Monthly Environment Art Challenge - July & August 2019 (61)

kadeschui

Welcome, all! Time to kick off the next Monthly Environment & Prop Challenge for 2019!

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 60:

- ENVIRONMENTS -

HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:

artist: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6Kgr0

HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:

artist: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/PmExA4

- PROPS -

HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:

artist: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L2e64w

HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:

artist: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/a3yBz



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!

Łukasz

Modelling the props:) Main shapes done, probably everything should be thicker, gotta figure it out,
Feedback would be appreciated:)

kadeschui

@lukasz looking great so far! I think your right about thickening things up just a touch. The handle should probably be more like a hatchet or hammer - almost round or diamond shaped in this case.

K0une

I started blockout props. Try to make good silhouette.

Łukasz

kadeschui said:

@lukasz looking great so far! I think your right about thickening things up just a touch. The handle should probably be more like a hatchet or hammer - almost round or diamond shaped in this case.

Thanks!
update:

momomoonscar

@K0une
Thats looking really nice and crisp!

@lukasz
I love how clean your model is. Looking forward to seeing it textured!

I'm thinking of doing the hand painted scene. I'll post when I have a block-in done.

Łukasz

Sketchfab

https://skfb.ly/6LUNo

Renders from Substance Iray, will make real-time later

K0une

momomoonscar said:

@K0une
Thats looking really nice and crisp!

@lukasz
I love how clean your model is. Looking forward to seeing it textured!

I'm thinking of doing the hand painted scene. I'll post when I have a block-in done.

Thanks. so i almost finish sculpt. We are waiting your screenshots.

jeffry

every challenge always looks better than the other wow i feel like i am going to make a couple of them this time

jeffry

Placing all the main part in the scene after blocking it

Łukasz

some progress on the second blade:

Łukasz

Started working on materials

jeffry

what is that? any idea?

Joseph_A_Gagnon

jeffry said:

what is that? any idea?

Hello Jeffry, I think that's a old fashion cassette player.



not accurate, but you get the idea.

jeffry

i guess ye, kinda rushed compared to everything else in the scene that it's really clear

Łukasz

I think I'm done with this one:) sketchfab and more shots: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/RY6d3E

jeffry

slowly getting there

momomoonscar

@jeffry Hey! I'm doing that scene too. Here's the image I used for my cassette player if you haven't made it already.

momomoonscar

Here is my scene so far! 
I've discovered my greatest art adversary: not making yellow pillows look like ravioli.

jeffry

momomoonscar said:

@jeffry Hey! I'm doing that scene too. Here's the image I used for my cassette player if you haven't made it already.

i did something but i kept the original design, i will probably change it a little bit now, but now that i think about it will totally not be the centre of attention in the scene, i should not even be worrying  

jeffry

momomoonscar said:

Here is my scene so far! 
I've discovered my greatest art adversary: not making yellow pillows look like ravioli.

are you going for a more cartoonish style? 

momomoonscar

@jeffry
Yeah, I've been trying to figure out just how much detail I should be putting into the smaller props. Cassettes looking good though! 

Not particularly, I'm mostly trying to match the feel of the concept art


Quick update

Nasser

Also working on the panda hut. Modelling is done, just want to take some things into zbrush to give them more detail. Unwrapping everything else now to start painting.

Zlivingston

here is my block-out, i am planing on relying more on the hand painted aspect for detail rather than the Normal maps. 

Pinkfox

I've been working on the hard surface option. I put a red arrow in the smaller shots to show where the initial shot is taken from.

Decided to take it in a mid 1900s look based on the silhouette in the doorway and the look of the props spread about. This is the moodboard I'm using to determine the look of things.

I want to flesh out the whole building overall but in an effort to get something together by the end of the challenge I'm just going to focus on the covered area from the concept for now.

Pinkfox

@Zlivingston It feels like some things are a bit stretched width wise. Like the floor being too long and the fridge being too wide. Aside from that though it looks really solid so far and I can't wait to see where it goes!

PastyPict

Was meant to upload the screenshot of my blockout, but missed. So here is my blockout AND the planks for the floor added in.

momomoonscar

@PastyPict
Those plank textures are gorgeous!!! Keep going

A_rsene07

I've been working on this scene as well. Trying to get it as 1 to 1. After i'm done i'll be importing to substance painter, then Unreal. Good Luck Guys!

Pinkfox

@A_rsene07 That looks awesome! Yours is definitely staying much closer to the original vision than I had, that's for sure. Can't wait to see what's next!

AnimaJota

I have been working in both environment, here is the Panda Hud, still working on it of course.

jeffry

Nasser said:

Also working on the panda hut. Modelling is done, just want to take some things into zbrush to give them more detail. Unwrapping everything else now to start painting.

for a moment i thought "hey this guy just stole my model haha", but than i realized that they just are really similar XD 

Mixsup

I've been trying to get into environment art and after making the mistake of setting up personal projects that are far too big in scope for my experience, I really needed something more clearly defined and manageable to work towards. I stumbled across this thread and really wanted to get stuck into that Panda Hut concept.

I spent a fair amount of time puzzling out the proportions and scale of the scene and the rough dimensions of the props, and here's how the blockout looks so far:

From here, I'll go through and elaborate on each asset, take them into ZBrush, through to Substance Painter and into UE4.

@momomoonscar - Thanks for pointing out that Fisher Price cassette player, I found some great reference images through Ebay to work from!

jaitee

@Mixsup Great job on the perspective! This looks really solid even without the textures

Nasser

jeffry said:

Nasser said:

Also working on the panda hut. Modelling is done, just want to take some things into zbrush to give them more detail. Unwrapping everything else now to start painting.

for a moment i thought "hey this guy just stole my model haha", but than i realized that they just are really similar XD 

Haha, yeah I think we both stuck to the concept pretty well, nice work. I managed to put it all in unreal, I need to work on the textures, I just did quick base colors and a normal map on the planks from zbrush. I wanna get the text and the Great Wave artwork on the back done today. Then maybe I can find a ready made tree asset to plop in behind the hut. 

I don't work with unreal engine a lot but what's up with the weird shading on my floor plank (it's the black triangle of shadow), did I mess up my smoothing groups or something when exporting the mesh? 


EDIT:

Think I'm done for now. I'd like to put it into Toolbag to get some nice renders. I wanted to put the tree in the back but I couldn't find a good free asset that matches the style so I'll leave it.

So, when is the next challenge up?

Nasser

Shit sorry, double post. Was editing my prior post.

Patronich

I think its over to now 

Zlivingston

hey guys rookie question. I've been starting to mess with Arnold render and i have my aisurface shader for the pillows. Everything looks good until i use the render Arnold. then this happens (one is with sky light the other is directional light) the black and white only happens when i have skylight. Any other type of light and the render screen is black.

kadeschui

Strong work this Challenge all!!

The new Voting Thread is up!

https://polycount.com/discussion/213915/monthly-environment-art-challenge-concept-thread-september-october-2019/p1?new=1

So head on over and vote on your favorite concept or post your own suggestions!

kade

PastyPict

Dang. I didn't get to finish in time. Sorry I guys, things took priority. I'm enjoying this project though. I'll have to keep doing working on it on the side.
I'll be focusing more on the next one though.

And nice work everyone.

Mixsup

@jaitee Thanks! I hope the finished product lives up to the blockout, lol.

@Nasser That looks fantastic! I really like how those planks turned out, the splits in the wood and the subtle patches of de-saturated paint add a lot to them.

I'm nowhere near done with mine and this has already been a huge learning experience for me. I'll be back in college soon, so progress will slow down just as it was picking up in the past few days. Regardless, I'm seeing this concept through to the end.

I've been trying to wrap my head around building the scene at a consistent texel density, when to use bespoke textures vs. tiling textures, setting up lightmaps and developing a workflow that allows me to iterate on assets with no stress involved.

A big stumbling block right out of the gate was how to approach the many planks in the scene. Initially, my instinct was to sculpt several planks at varying sizes but I ended up with three 2k textures that the planks couldn't fit into at the desired texel density, and far too many large planks to run a TrimDynamic brush on (good lord it was tedious). I switched over to using a tiling texture made in Substance Designer for every plank in the scene, relying on material instances in UE for colour variance instead, which turned out to be a much easier way for me to work.

I also hit a few issues when it came to AO baking in Substance Painter, by trying to re-use one leg for each leg of the TV stand - all fixed now though. The hope is I've gotten all my stupid out of the way early in the project. Enough waffling, this is what I've got so far:

The materials are still a WIP, I'm just trying to get a rough estimate to work with and iterate on them later on in the project.

Nasser

@Mixsup Thanks! Yeah I think I spent the longest time on the planks. I too was puzzling over how to create the planks, obviously modelling, unwrapping, sculpting and baking each one would be too tedious. What I ended up doing was making just three floor planks that I could duplicate, rotating and scaling them slightly so I get a bit of variance. Each one had it's own 1k texture map which is probably terribly inefficient lol, I guess I could've placed them all on a single map... a lesson for next time.

But the wall planks all had to be uniquely unwrapped with their own UV islands so I could have the Great Wave painting and be able to paint the writing on there. Maybe I could've had that on a plane slightly in front of the planks? I don't know, I'll try something else next time. 

Looks really good so far btw, I love the texture and detail on the bamboo shafts! I wanted to add more detail there but ran out of time. Keep at it!

kadeschui

Hi all, I will be posting the new Challenge Thread tomorrow. Last chance to vote over on the concept thread for next 2 months challenge!

https://polycount.com/discussion/213915/monthly-environment-art-challenge-concept-thread-september-october-2019#latest

kade

kadeschui

Hi all! the new Challenge 62 Thread is up! Head on over and check out our new concepts for September & October!

https://polycount.com/discussion/214075/monthly-environment-art-challenge-september-october-62/p1?new=1

kade

Lalalay

jeffry said:

slowly getting there

greedyfreddy

sculpt of alien in mudbox.

greedyfreddy

3d model in 3dsmax

jeffry

I know is late but, i still want to be able to finish this project even if i passed the deadline XD, almost done with the texture, i did the tree separately, i need to create some nice looking foliage for the tree and i will render the all scene in unreal even tho i have never done it before haha
till wa

jeffry

scene complete rendered in UE4 

Pinkfox

Nice work, @jeffry! It looks fantastic.

I wonder if there would be a way to tweak the shadows hitting those planks on the underside in the daylight scene. It's the only thing I can see that seems out of place given the lighting while the rest looks phenomenal.

jeffry

@Pinkfox Thanks, i think that's caused by the curvature map while i was painting, a problem i had in substance painter, caused by the UV map haha now thanks to this project i know how to avoid this in the future, thanks for the comment