The Bi-Monthly ENVIRONMENT ART Challenge | November - December (63)
greentooth
Welcome, all! Time to kick off the LAST Monthly Environment & Prop Challenge for 2019!
Shout out to @alytlebird @Dreyzie @jeffryfor your participation in the Voting Thread! +5 internet pts to each of you
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 63:
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/blakerottinger
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xZZbY
- PROPS -
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
(weapons only / armor suit)
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oO9e2z
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/o822J
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.
Shout out to @alytlebird @Dreyzie @jeffryfor your participation in the Voting Thread! +5 internet pts to each of you
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 63:
- ENVIRONMENTS -
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:Artist:https://www.artstation.com/blakerottinger
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xZZbY
- PROPS -
HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:(weapons only / armor suit)
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oO9e2z
HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:
Artist:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/o822J
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.
Replies
For anyone who might be on the fence and considering participating this time around, I'd strongly urge you to do so.
Alright, here's a question: what does this section of the concept read as? I've been looking at it for a while now and I'm still not sure. The presence of the motorcycle nearby implies we're near the entrance/door to outside, but the gray box in the back looks like a fireplace, which wouldn't make much sense being close to a door to the outside. Thoughts?
Still working on my blockout, being really fiddly with the size of the room and spacing of everything. Gonna be taking some liberties here and there, but I'm getting close to a good starting point.
However it's up to you to adjust your scene to how you feel like it should be, creative interpretation.
Regarding the Prop concept of the Charge Conductor, I think I'm going to work on that one, however gotta redo some of the functionality, as currently as it is, there is no way it can function mechanically as it's setup now. Anyone else trying a hand on this one?
There's a great tutorial by @PixelMasher where he goes over using emissive materials in a scene and then baking lighting so they are used as light sources. Leaned on that a bit for this first iteration, with some neat results! Thinking about doing another quick pass at the blockout to get all of the neon signs in place and seeing how that affects lighting.
Got a blockout update, much happier with the lighting now, except for the harsh shadow on the floor. But the signs in the back help a lot.
I think I'm happy with the proportions of this since it's modular. I might give it a go blocking the entire thing in max with perspective match. I just realized that the guy smoking organizing the cue balls has no legs in the concept!
EDIT: Whoops the lighting was a bit weird last shot. Uploaded a new pic of it, also decided to expand the room horizontally another 2m because it didn't seem like enough room for the motorcycle to relax.
I decided to go with the conductors. So far i got this. still have to see if something's missing, and maybe use this prop to learn trim textures. also i have 0 idea on putting it on unreal ha.
Regarding your model, I know you have the same 'problem' as I, a lot of extra lines from after you split it up into separate parts, might want to clean it up. Don't know if you are keeping it like that (artistic freedom), but the top and bottom corners of the front part looks to be rounded on the concept, as well the front part is following the shape, and is not inset into it. The parts inside doesn't seem to be in the middle of the shell, needs to be a bit higher, as the rest is very symmetrical. But against, you don't mention what parts you being a bit free with.
Overall your model feels a bit too tall, but might just be the angle of images, the concept is a bit more long, the middle parts should be a bit longer I think.
for the "on/off" part, i imagined something more like, there will be a handle that you can pull and rotate, and that will trigger the mechanism to reduce the overheat or something like that.
the top and bottom i separated it 'cause there seems to be some cable inside and i wanted to model it, so the separated piece would be like a crystal, but idk if it looks correct.
I am also struggling a lot with the middle part because the energy cells don't reach the top part as in the concept, but with the feedback you said, i think i understand a little bit what's my problem. I'll try to fix it, and post later the changes.
Also good luck with the prop! i want to see your interpretation!
Progress update for me:
Got the floor and ceiling mostly sorted out. I'm happy with the carpet material, got a nice vertex-paint setup in Unreal that I'm using so I can blend between normal and worn-out carpet, plus a tiling grunge on top of that.
Did the beams and worn wood material as well, and I'm decently happy with it, but I think it still needs work. Thinking I may add knots, depending on how tough that winds up being in Substance Designer. Any suggestions there are appreciated!
Good point on the empty area thanks! I did decide to move the back wall in closer to the scene and it helped a fair bit. I think your area is coming along quite well, can't really crit anything yet.
Got the billiard table and couch done so far, just blocking the macro details. Materials aren't final, I don't want to spend too much time nitpicking this stuff right now, which is something I usually do. I noticed in the concept there is a long wooden shelf/plank directly above the couches. I seem to be picking something new up in the concept as I go along which means I need to improve my observation skills
My plan is to get to the 80% point before I start really finalizing anything, the Pareto principle is a must-read for anyone that procrastinates with their perfectionism. There are times when I stare so long at my artwork I can't figure out what's wrong with it unless I have fresh eyes. Plus the 80/20 rule is more enjoyable to work through!
And some more bricks
Yeah, best to get all the elements in scene in relative state and size, because it's not until you get it together you notice that, "oh the size is not working" or "This doesn't fit in as in the concept". But especially the scale is important, it's a pain in the arse to having to fix afterwards if you already make textures and unwrapped it all. If you want it to match the concept more, remember to set up a camera with the same FOV, also helps with scale.
Here's a mockup of the primary shapes using Substance Designer
You work on whatever your heart desires, don't feel intimidated by a popular concept.
I think it definitely could be run on one shader, just might be tricky getting all the wood grain to line up correctly without stretching along the areas where there's more displacement. Best of luck to you tho if you decided to give it a try!
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Update for me: got most of my wall kit done, along with the wood siding material. I did also wind up adding knots to the overhead beams, as well as vertex painting to paint in some chipped surfaces along said beams. Gonna get the exterior of the bar section done next, closing in on finishing up most of the structure pieces.
I'm joining in by ALSO doing the handpainted cistern. I'm planning on making just the one concept, to make it as polished as possible and to have extra time since I've only ever done a handful of sculpting and painting, so I'm quite open to any advice here.
The slabs look real nice especially with the moss, have you applied it in the scene yet? I figured I'd try to sculpt the individual blocks and then just copy and modify them enough so they don't look the same.
Also, what's the best way to set up a material for the billiard light glass? Setting it to translucent is okay, but the moment you double side it either through the material or geometry it doesn't work with backface clipping.
cheers!
kade
Hopefully this will help new-comers and alleviate some confusion about the regularity of the Challenge
kade
Excited to be moving on to the hero assets next! I would also love any feedback or critique from what I've shown so far, if there's something that looks funky or sticks out, definitely lemme know!
Yes you use the subsurf modifier in blender to preview your high poly.
The method you describe of removing geo from the high poly is called manual retopology. You don't do that in most cases.
The most efficient and least time wasting method is first model what we call a blockout or mid poly base mesh. You don't model this with subsurf modifier on. The blockout mesh basically has all the majority of details and forms established including and large curves (don't rely on subsurf to curve geometry because then you have to manual cleanup for low).
From there you save that and hide it, and you can make your high poly and low poly mesh from the blockout much faster. All that's required on the high poly is support edge loops and the subsurf modifier, any micro details like screws and bolts etc. The low poly is just a simple cleanup of the blockout geometry.
Oh and if you have large bevels, then establish that in the blockout.
A good tip is that you can keep these all in the same scene file. Just duplicate finished blockout to each high and low layers. i would just hide them in layers:
Raw - blockout
High - high poly
Low - low poly and then UV map this.
Out - low poly mesh merged into parts required for ingame/ plus any like vertex colouring or sorting.
I'd Google hard surface modelling basics. Should find plenty of material.
Keep up the pace, you're doing really well! There really is quite a bit of work on this environment to do, keen to see you get some props in!
Today I had the dumb thought to put the roof, the alternative wood plank wall texture, and plaster texture all into one trim. That turned out to be more of a headache than expected with sorting out the UVs. Probably wasted a good 4-5 hours figuring things out. Although I suppose at least than a majority of the scene can be batched into a single draw call.
So here is where I am right now:
Roughed out the bar, still got a lot to do. I'm not sure it's even worth making the beer tap a unique prop with bake down since the Player wouldn't even see this in a proper game scenario.
The Chair was pretty relaxing to model, not a single hard geo edit, just did the entire thing with splines and modifiers.
Got the doors done to an alpha level for now. Will be putting decals I guess when I atlas an entire sheet of them.
It's starting to feel like a game space now. I still need to define my materials. I'm working on the Jukebox next, the rest of the bar props, more detailed chesterfield couches. Just tons to do still! It's a bit of a grind, but writing down a list of tasks helps immensely and prevents doodling/procrastinating.
Yeah, it's a good thing we are not doing the model the same way, makes it more interesting. You might want to either slow down the animation or add more frames, it's a bit too fast to see properly what happens. I did the reverse mistake and made WAAAAY to high quality and many frames, doubt anyone is interested in a 400mb gif.
@danr looking good, I see your inner section is more compact/bulky then the way I have done, I assume you are still working on it? Or are you only working on the closed version of the model? Since I don't see the parts being able to move up and down.
@rtos Looking good, glad someone trying the other model as well, I kinda forgot about it. Not much to say that @tynew hasn't already mentioned. I'm bad at my own advise, and have to fight my highpoly all the time because I didn't block out properly first. Learn from my mistake
Haven't had time to do much on it so far, did a bit today and need to work on scale as well, feel like my model is a bit too thick, which is easy seen with the front when I started to add the corners. So need to redo some of that as well, I'm have done some of the insets into the model, but gonna use texture for others, mainly used the cuts to divide the model so I could easier work with loops for each part, because of holes ect. Still on the highpoly version, can't wait to be done with it and get some lowpoly and start texturing.
Need to do some cleaning in the house and shopping today, but might have enough time to work a bit on it and post something again.
Also looked up where the concept came from, and discovered that there was another version of it as well, the box version, which could have been fun to play with as well:
I also like how everyone made their own charger. very interesting ideas.
@teodar23
the way it opens, and the internal pieces
@McGreed
i liked a lot your separated pieces, and the pieces that move the upper and lower cases!
@dan-r
nice beginning, i feel like it looks a little bulky, but i like it XD and maybe like i was, a little too short, maybe make it larger.
@rtos
i see you made the other charger. man i cannot wait to see how you make it. it already looks smooth.
I also still don't know like, where's the middle spot, for example, with this model, i extruded on all the pieces that i wanted to have more volume like they have real volume, instead of baked volume, and the screws and small stuff i placed some floating geo (so then i don't have to burn my brain trying to fit geo on weird places, though idk if it's a correct way) on a "high poly" (made a duplicate and then added bevels and such on the places i though it needed to be rounded, and then used it as a High Poly) and use it to bake the high poly onto the low poly.
I did the textures in painter and the animation in maya. then all go to marmoset. I still don't have any idea on how to make it go red to green color. And i also wanted to add like some lighting like in the concept, and some gas going out, but it's something that i also don't know how to make.
Also watching videos of unreal but still very early, so i don't even know which tutos to watch on the learn unreal page haha.
But overall i like there this is going. BTW this is now a bi-monthly challenge? ._.
https://i.imgur.com/acTJtyZ.mp4 (animated