@dyceus the watertank looks really good though I think there's some shading issues with the jar encasement that may want checking.
Also the box trimsheet is awesome!
Here's my progress with the water tank project up to now. Not sure what to do with it from here so if anyone has any changes or suggestions let me know!
@dyceus the watertank looks really good though I think there's some shading issues with the jar encasement that may want checking.
Also the box trimsheet is awesome!
Here's my progress with the water tank project up to now. Not sure what to do with it from here so if anyone has any changes or suggestions let me know!
*snip*
Something you could try to push it the extra mile is working on usage-wear, as right now you have very uniform grunge and wear layers. Think about what areas of the machine would be touched and worn down over time, how each material responds to that wear and tear (brass becomes more polished as it wears down, while iron/steel becomes scuffed) and also how the imperfections of the machine internals would lead to more external wear, i.e. leaks at pipe joints, cracks in the rubber tubing, etc. Also consider changing not just the material to show this wear, but also the geometry; have the edges of the handle be a bit softer in places where people interact with it. Anything you can do to break up the uniformity of the prop and tell a story of how it gets used will translate very well into the final piece.
@alytlebird Thanks your comments, I agree with everything you've said. So much extra detail that I hadn't even considered. Texturings not my strongest area so definitely need to work on that!
@samA thanks for bringing the shading issue up. I have to clean up that piece of the water pump for sure, there are a few issues with it that I've noticed. I agree with adding some uneven wear to yours as well as some grime and drips to make it feel used.
Finished up my box trim sheet and modeled some box variants with it applied. Threw a few into my scene to quickly get a feel for them as well. I used the trim on the boxes in a way that gave them variation on each side for reusability when rotated. I think I need one small box and one that is open without the flaps attached to have a set that will fill the scene up with all the types I see.
Hi all, I wanted to try doing this challenge for the first time as well. It's really interesting seeing all the different ways everyone is tackling their projects!
I went with the lighthouse as I like the vibe of the concept piece and I've been wanting to try something larger than what I'm used to.
Finished up my personal project a couple days ago so I've been putting some time into this finally! Doing the wildcard one, it'd be kind of weird if I didn't being the one who suggested it...
I've been working on putting together how to do the tanks. The biggest thing I've been trying to work out is how to avoid a massive amount of overdraw from the translucency of all the tanks while still being able to have adjustable water levels. I used the method for generating a water level from the blog I posted early on in this thread as a starting point and then played around with how it could be applied to different geometry to achieve the effects I was hoping for.
So far I think it's good, though it definitely needs additional refinement and there are a few caveats I'm hoping to alleviate by the end like having to set the water level in two places since the bounding boxes they're based on are different.
It does avoid the overdraw issue I was concerned about and I managed to scrape back a bit of performance by using the unlit shading model where I could. I still need to test filling a space with them and see if this method tanks performance in any way but I'm hoping that avoiding the overdraw issue as much as possible offsets it enough to be viable.
1- Should I try to keep the number of UV islands as low as possible?
2- Should (almost) every <90º edge be a seam?
3- Should I organize the Uvs by making each part a block or should I prioritize occupying the most empty spaces of the map? Also, what should be the margin between the islands? I've seen that while some margins work with high res textures it breaks when zoomed out in engine, so I had to increase the margin.
4- When there is a curved UV island should I make it straight/retanguar? Like with the UV of the side part of a wheel cut in half. It makes the UVs look nicer and seems to save space but I start to get some stretching.
5- I am thinking about making a single UV map for the whole wagon, so in engine I will use a single material for it. Is that right?
This is my first challenge, I'm an amateur trying to go pro.I have a lot to learn to bridge that gap and Polycount has been a great place find those things. It is great to follow others progress and solutions for the challenge.
@FabioFrosaA If I were doing it I'd approach it using two materials and a few material instances. Though I do think you could probably get away with a single trim sheet for the whole thing if you planned it out really well.
The first material would be a tiling texture for the wood planks used on roof, the yellow wall, the red wall under the window, the space above the door, and the planks on the door.
The second material would be a trim sheet containing the metal for the smoke exhaust, wood beams (think like the 4 sides of a wood beam with the edges lightened, see the first picture here http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/ModularMountAndBlade for an example of what I mean), and the decals used (the flowery stencils and triangles used on it)
The material instances would just be used to tint the materials to the color you need them. If you use a texture for the base color of the wood planks I'd recommend using the alpha channel of it as a mask so you can direct your tint to allow for some paint cracks to show the original color like it has in the concept art.
Polygon Academy on YouTube has a great series on trim sheets if you've never used them. Should help answer some questions regarding the UVs if you choose to take this approach but I'd definitely love to hear what others think would be the best approach!
@Pinkfox Thanks a lot for all of this information. I did not know about Polygon Academy and from a quick look it really seems like its going to answer a bunch of other questions I have.
I'll do what you said and create two materials. I also didn't know you could use different instances of the same material, that's nice.
@FabioFrosaA Don't be afraid to experiment to find what works for you. There is no one solution that's perfect and there may be a better approach out there.
1- Should I try to keep the number of UV islands as low as possible?
2- Should (almost) every <90º edge be a seam?
3- Should I organize the Uvs by making each part a block or should I prioritize occupying the most empty spaces of the map? Also, what should be the margin between the islands? I've seen that while some margins work with high res textures it breaks when zoomed out in engine, so I had to increase the margin.
4- When there is a curved UV island should I make it straight/retanguar? Like with the UV of the side part of a wheel cut in half. It makes the UVs look nicer and seems to save space but I start to get some stretching.
5- I am thinking about making a single UV map for the whole wagon, so in engine I will use a single material for it. Is that right?
@Pinkfox already gave a lot of great advice, but I'll try to help as well. I'm also an amateur, so take my advice with a lump of salt.
1- In general, fewer islands is better, but don't force a low number of islands. Fewer islands are easier to work with and leave less UV seams, but if there's stretching then its better to make cuts. Sometimes, like with trim sheets, you need to make extra cuts to guide where the textures will go.
2- Seams don't need to be at certain angles, if there's lots of stretching then that can indicate a good place to make a cut. You can also consider the visibility of the seam and where your textures will go.
3- I try to fill in most of the map space with minimal margins if I'm doing a unique unwrap. I've never had any issues with textures breaking in engine, could it be an issue with the LODs?
4- It's better to straighten UV islands, but if there's a lot of stretching then sometimes you have to compromise or make more cuts.
5- I think using a trim sheet or two with material instances like @Pinkfox said is a good idea for your project. Whatever you chose, I would use at least two materials on your mesh to organize where your textures go.
For my scene I've been working on adding a lot of the smaller props. I added a new drawer chest variation, a table, some medicine jars, and a set of four cardboard boxes to mix with the ones from Quixel. I also made some more labels and used the foliage tool to scatter them across the floor.
That's looking sweet @b_beauchamp , love how wet and mouldy everything is looking.
Progress has been slow for me. Here's where I've gotten to this weekend:
I thought I'd try a basic rock and pavement texture to see how it looks. I think it will be okay for now until I get around to sculpting some rock assets to place.
I tried sculpting a wooden beam texture for all the wooden elements in the scene. It's a pretty ridiculous variation in texel density going from small details to large planks. I think I might need to make a more fully featured wood trim sheet to cover all the different surfaces:
Got the blockout done finally. Trying to stay close to the concept art but not freaking out if things don't quite line up perfectly.
Going to focus on getting the tanks and specimens done next since those are the obvious heavy lift of the scene. After that the rest of it should be pretty easy to fill out.
I haven't had a lot of time to make progress and i've just tried some different approach for the texture creation, from substance designer, blender nodes and quixel mixer. It is my first time trying Quixel Mixer and it looks awesome.
@Pinkfox I realized I didn't understand the part you tell me to use the decals for the wood on the second material. As I wouldn't have seperate UV maps, how to place the decals in a way that the rest of the mesh UV does not overlap with other parts? I am not sure if I can explain my doubt.
Just to show my progress, though these are more like experiments.
the first one is from blender nodes, the others from Mixer.
@FabioFrosaA You'd essentially be using geometry that floats just above the surface of the mesh. In Blender a simple way to do this can be to duplicate your mesh, use a displace modifier with something like 0.01 in strength (this fixes the Z fighting problem), apply that modifier, and then cut out the areas you want the decals to be. If you UV unwrap those floating geometry pieces you can then align the separate UV islands to whichever decal they should be.
That article has a great example of what I mean if you scroll down to the "Modeling" section of it. The second picture in that section shows the model with the normal decals on top. In addition, the "Materials" section of the article you can see what their decal material looks like to get an idea of how it works. Basically it's a bunch of shapes that have an alpha channel to cut them out so you can overlay them onto another piece and have them blend nicely.
This is my first time posting in PL and in general (trying to overcome the bubble effect of being afraid of showcasing your work ^^). You all did amazing work and i cant wait to see your final results. I chose the Siena concept cause i really wanted to learn modularity in both modeling and texturing and also because i really love that concept. The only change is that i decided to do have a more stylized approach. All the materials were made in Substance Designer (Tileables and trims).
For the plaster, i will probably use a height based shader with vertex paint. For the wood, i created a trim sheet with damage alphas in order to tint the color inside the engine because of all the variations i need. If anyone wants i can showcase the shader as well as the way i set up the substance designer nodes.
I will also try to make a better breakdown in my next update. I will also try to provide some feedback if i can
I've made some more progress and gone back to add some more wear and grunge to the model. Not sure if I'm a 100% happy with it yet but I think it looks better than before. I also put it into unreal to render it in realtime since I was using cycles which slowed progress down with rendering.
Ok, i'll try to be short. Basically, i did mostly work on materials; Bricks, Grout & plaster (all 3 in substance designer), and then looking for ways how to blend them via vertex color. Still some work to do on this master material, but i think it's slowly getting there....
Still to plan to add a bit more variation to plaster, and need to better paint this material on meshes.
Anyhow, to finally get to some other works here...
I'd maaybe suggest to look a bit into colors, i'd tone down saturation on all colors just a bit, and maybe try to get colors just a wee bit closer together, like on references, i feel like you have a bit too much contrast there. Also, not 100%, but there seems to be visual difference between boiler and pipes (grey area)..maybe it was implied there are different metallic materials there? Either way, good progress so far, looking forward to see more!
Like it so far, maybe you could just do something with bricks, add some sort of color or some other variation, via vertex color or so? But yeah, nice work, i'm really looking forward to see your progress,
For my scene I’ve filled in the walls, updated the lighting, and added a simple particle system for dust and bubble effects. The main “merman” creature mesh by @Tysiu is also now in place (the pose just needs to be adjusted a bit).
I’m having a bit of trouble trying to balance the lighting for my scene. I want to highlight the merman as the focal point but my lights fog up the vat way too much. Does anyone have any advice for how to get a nice silhouette effect like the concept art?
Also, the glass and water both have refraction inputs, but I’m worried that the effect is too strong. How do you all think it looks? If it needs to be fixed, should I just turn down the IOR or does something else need to be done?
b_beauchamp Maybe shortening the range of the hanging light and putting a light within the tank itself would help? Something that would provide a nice, sharp rim light on the figure.
I'm a bit behind but I've been working on this bit by bit. I started blocking out materials with some seamless textures I already had on hand. Planning on getting the basic look down and then going back into the textures to get details and adjustments done.
@Zocky Thanks a lot, you too have some awesome work, love your progress. I dont know if its a placeholder but you could check out the roof and the transition between the wooden elements to the wall. I really like the damage transition between the plaster and the bricks. Really looking forward to more progress
@Zorina Really like the progress so far. My only critique would be since its a stylized piece (if you are going with this approach) is that the wood grains etc seem a bit too much, maybe tryt a bit more softer approach. Also the materials seem a bit too metallic ? Maybe try having some wet spots instead. Nevertheless looking forwared to seeing more of your progress.
Theres so much more to do but i think i have made some good progress. The lighting is a bit much but i tried some early shots in order to capture a more general feeling of the atmosphere. Since this is my first environment i try to go a bit slow but i think im getting there. Most pieces are modular except for the staircase and the roofs. In my next update i will make a breakdown of the materials i made for this and would hopefully get some critique on those too ^^
The last image looks just a wee bit different compared to reference, but still looks really nice, lighting wise!
I feel like contrast you have between plaster/paint and bricks is a bit too strong, but that doesn't depend a bit on what kind of style you wanna go, it still does look nice!
And yeah, the roof thingy is still placeholder, right now , i'm mostly working on plaster material, but that's good call even so, i do usually get to "forget" on these transitions and what not, so i'm trying to pay a bit more attention to it with this scene.
NIce progress, i only feel like your roof materials a bit too reflective for that type of surface, maybe you could look a bit into real life counterpart and possibly increase the roughness /lower the smoothness. Other than that, solid progress!
@Zorina I agree with what was said above and think you should increase your roughness on your materials so that they don't look as shiny as they do currently. Good work on your diffuse and models.
@Zocky That plaster over brick effect is looking really good so far. Its really crisp.
Worked on some lighting and effects today and also created the splines for the wires. I created my own fog card to give the open areas a bit of extra texture. I also added a particle system for subtle dust and made some blood and fluid decals for the floor. Next on my list is the rectangular containers as well as the different lips for the vials. I also want to get to work on the paper scatter for the ground and some more work on the labels. Planning on sprinkling in some more sea creature sculpts in between.
@dyceus I love the colors you were able to achieve in the progress shots you posted!
Are you tinting the shadowed areas in a Post Process Volume by chance or is there a different method you're using for getting that sort of look that mimics the concept art really well? Lighting isn't my strong suit so I'd love to hear more.
@PatSaenzG I really like the quality you were able to get in your third shot. There is nice detail on the textures in that area and the tarnished metal seems like it would make sense for a machine that likely deals with temperature changes during operation. It does feel as though the rest of the model didn't get quite the same amount of treatment as that third shot however. If you're able I feel like giving a bit more detail in the other areas would take what you have from good to great!
@Pinkfox Thanks! Yeah, once I lit my scene with emissives, skylight, and volumetric fog and got it as close to the colors and levels that I wanted as I could I used a post process volume to push the colors the rest of the way. Specifically I lowered the overall saturation of my shadows and bumped up the blue offset in my midtones. I did keep my contrast higher than the concept art for some extra drama in the shot, but I may dial that back later if future me feels like it.
@Zocky Thanks! Glad you like my take on the concept. Your wall damage looks fantastic, are you using edge decals for the building corners? One point of feedback I have is maybe the damage is a little too evenly distributed across the surface of the structures as a whole. Maybe leave a bit of in-tact stucco for some negative space, potentially higher up on the building to get a bit of a "gradient" effect for the composition.
@Zorina Nice progress. One thing I can point out is that some of the textures seem out of scale. For instance the wood grain is very large. I'd suggest bringing in a human model for scale reference. Then you can quickly compare the scale of details in your textures to the human and see if things are too big or small. Very useful for wood and grass.
@samA Looking good. I think you've got a handle on the small details in the texture, but what about some larger macro details? Things like large stains or weathering over the larger structure as a whole? I think without these macro details the piece feels too uniform.
Okay so I've been pretty out of the zone the last week or so, mostly hung up on the daunting (for me) task of doing a full wood trimsheet. I've finally got that planned out and will be hitting that up as my next task.
In the mean time I realised I could break the cottage up into a modular kit, something I've not done before. This was extremely enjoyable to decompose into reuseable pieces. Here's how it turned out:
I really had to research and learn how thatch roofing actually works and is constructed. Learned quite a bit about it actually, its super cool.
I'm thinking the material breakdown for this will be using my wooden trimsheet for all the wooden framing, door and inset grates, then another sheet for thatch roofing strips and the wall plaster cells, as well as possible other small details to be added as finishing touches at the end of the project. I'm really going to focus on keeping a consistent texel density with clean, readable details.
I've been loving checking and seeing everyone's progress. One month to go... keep it up guys!
@FabioFrosaA You'd essentially be using geometry that floats just above the surface of the mesh. In Blender a simple way to do this can be to duplicate your mesh, use a displace modifier with something like 0.01 in strength (this fixes the Z fighting problem), apply that modifier, and then cut out the areas you want the decals to be. If you UV unwrap those floating geometry pieces you can then align the separate UV islands to whichever decal they should be.
That article has a great example of what I mean if you scroll down to the "Modeling" section of it. The second picture in that section shows the model with the normal decals on top. In addition, the "Materials" section of the article you can see what their decal material looks like to get an idea of how it works. Basically it's a bunch of shapes that have an alpha channel to cut them out so you can overlay them onto another piece and have them blend nicely.
Thanks a lot! I loved the article. A specific part of it called my attention, when he talked about weighted normals. It is an awesome way to make those smooth edges without worring about making a high res model to bake the normals from.
I applied it to a part of the model,: The left on is using normals baked from a higher res model, the right one is using beveled edges with weighted normals. I really prefer the right one, but the vertice count went up from 180 to 290. Is it worth it? Also, I really think that with the weighted normals aproach I'll save processing on smaller textures as I may also use a tileable texture for all the wooden parts, besides the trim sheet for the wood planks and another material for the decals and the remaining parts as the chimney, windows and the glass part of the door.
@jordank95 Have you something to share since you've made this post?
The
main info I got is that hard edges make the vertices count more than
once. So by using weghted normals you may have more visible vertices but
the same vertice count for the processing. So it would be better. It would not be a fit technique for a charaacter, as for that one it would be better to bake from a higher res model.
I'm
a blender user so some of these differ. Here is a video about the
process in blender, although there is more tools for that in blender the
video does not cover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqGFhiP-2mc&t=834s
The
only downside I've got is some light and shadow bleeding, more so than
what happens with baked normals. That happens only in some when there is
no weak influence faces between two strong influence face, so the
problem may be that I'm not doing this right.
@FabioFrosaA i think the above issue comes from the fact that you didnt bevel all the sharp corners, only 90 degrees ones. Regarding the disscusion about wether its worth the higher polycount, i think it depends in general, but in this case - for a portfolio piece with no real budget limitation - its definetly worth it.
I started work on the wood trimsheet, laying out a tileable beam section. I used it for all the wooden sections on the walls of the cottage. It also turned out to be useable as a set of flat planks for the door and roof capping - a nice bonus. I've still got wooden pillar sections to add to the sheet so I can properly texture things like the trusses on top of the roof.
I think the wood is missing something at the moment - maybe chunkier edge damage? I think I'll try that to push the style, what do you guys think?
I also tried my hand as sculpting the thatch roofing. I'm very much a newbie with sculpting so this was very much a case of "I have no idea what I'm doing" XD
I also baked AO into the vertex colours of the geometry. This helped a LOT to bring out the details on the walls (see the screenshot in my previous post for a comparison).
Overall I'm really happy with how it's coming along. Just a little more work on the trimsheets and the cottage will be ready for some colouring!
Tnx! Also, nice work there! Maybe you could add a bit of a variation in your blood albedo/base map, maybe as if some blood is already older and has a little different tone to it and such? Otherwise, nice progress so far!
Tnx man, and yeah, you are totally right, was actually starting to think something similar, i went a bit overboard with the damage, and kinda placed it to equally. So tnx for that!
Your latest update also looks dope! Maybe you could also make some alpha carts with of roof and put some of those at the edges in layers, so that it would have bits here and there of individual....hay strains (spelling?) ...visible at the edge of the roor? Otherwise, keep up a great work!
As for me, did a bit more progess on walls, tried to listen to gastrop0d advice and made less damage in the middle/upper area to have a bit of that gradient going on. Also added shutters and windows (curtains still need more work), and also played a bit with lighting.
Oh, and can't remember who was it, that asked if i used edge decals...that's good idea, but so far i haven't used it yet, so this is just vertex blending between 3 textures and just a wee bit more telesated mesh to allow me a bit more freedom with how i apply damage.
@gastrop0d That looks lovely so far! Maybe a bit more damage to the wood or a missing piece or two would help? I love the sculpting on the thatch though, makes me want to go back and but some more work into my own.
Thanks everyone for the advice on my materials, I adjusted the wood quite a lot and I think I'll be going back and pushing the roughness since I still have a lot of time.
I'm a bit "bleh" about my lighting, I'd like to push the shadows a lot more while still preserving that nice bright beachy light coming from the left side in the concept art...
Yeah, from what i can tell from this angle, wood looks nice indeed, maybe the whole scene just feels a bit too much like you have green layer over everything, if you check reference/concept, road still has very nice , strong orange colors and such. Other than that, nice progress!
@Zorina Thank you for the advice! I was already using a light in the tank, but I've been tweaking the lighting a bit more and I think it's looking better.
@Zocky Thank you for the compliment! Your scene is looking great so far. A critique I have is that the shutter positions look very uniform. I think the scene would look more realistic if some of the shutters were not flush with the wall or closed all the way, but the concept art has uniform shutters, so this is just my opinion.
I think I've finished all of the major models for my project. I've been filling in a lot of details everywhere, and have updated the lighting to better fit the concept art. Somehow my generic water material is causing some of the creatures to be masked out, so I'll need to fix that next. @tysiu has been making all of the amazing creatures, including a lizard, fish, and eel, and finished the merman pose as well.
And tnx for your critic, you are right of course; it did cross my mind, after looking at references, a lot of them just had either completely opened or closed, not a lot of shutters were in any other angle. But some did, and you are right, i'll try to make it slightly opened and not completely closed, it still feels more natural. Tnx!
@Zorina Are you using Unity? I'd suggest getting HDR set up and pushing your direct light intensity up to something like 5, then tone-mapping your scene's exposure down to a balanced level. This will give you nice bright direct light, but also deep shadows.
Thanks for your feedback, too. I agree with your idea about more exaggerated edge damage on the wood. I've incorporated it in this update.
@b_beauchamp Looking really great! Not much I can see to crit, except that it appears that your glass isn't casting any shadows, from what I can see in your second shot.
@Zocky Looking much more balanced with the damage distribution, nice work. Also thanks, glad you like my progress! I like your idea about having some stray hay strands to fill out the silhouette. I've got it on my list as a stretch goal.
Ok, here's an update from me...
I've gotten the cottage to a "good enough" stage to move on to the rest of the scene. This involved filling out the rest of my trimsheet, which I managed to pack everything I needed into the one 2k texture set:
There's still room in it for packing a 2 metre wooden pillar and some other small details if I have time to come back to it. I'm planning to use vertex painting to introduce some painterly colour variety into the plaster panels once in-engine.
Next on my list was getting a modular rock block in. This was a huge challenge for me, I was completely lost trying to sculpt a decent looking rock form. I tried looking around for a good explanation on general principles for sculpting rocks, but really couldn't turn up any material that was comprehensive. If anyone has any good guides I would really appreciate it!
I'm not particularly happy with my attempt, very blobby, but in the interest of pushing on with the project I called this sculpt "done" and moved onto texturing it.
I wanted to get a semi-realistic look with a balance of details and more open areas with some painterly touches. I followed a principle I read about in this environment art breakdown, but instead of using vertex painting to mask out texture detail I did it as part of the texturing process itself in Substance. The flatter areas turned out looking a little plastic-like in the test render, so I tweaked it once it was in-engine to get a rougher look.
Finally I brought everything into Unity and updated the scene:
I find lighting in Unity to be a real struggle. In this case baking causes all normal map details to disappear. I really wanted to get nice bright green bounced lighting coming off the grass, so I ended up placing a bunch of green point lights to get the effect. Hacky, but it does a decent enough job I think.
Ticking off a lot of things on the to-do list now. Next up will be the bushes, grass and flowers!
if i may suggest one thing, i think you could still make some of your edges a bit less straight on object, especially on wooden parts; it can be subtle, but i do think it would make it just a tad more natural. Otherwise, great work, really like both wood and roof materials!
A little progress on my part:
Currently working on the building on the right, as well as roof materials and meshes.
@gastrop0d Thank you for the feedback. No matter what I do, I can't seem to make my translucent materials cast shadows. It's a real problem that needs to be addressed, but every solution I've tried doesn't work (I'm using UE4). "Volumetric translucent shadow" in the mesh details panel does nothing, and "cast shadow as masked" in the materials panel makes the inside of my jars black, while still casting no exterior shadow. Besides this, I still don't like how my glass/water trim materials are looking, so if anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it!
Edit: I should mention that I found figured out how to get translucent shadows working. I had to enable the option "cast translucent shadows" on each individual light source. Performance took a real hit, but I think the effect is worth it for the scene. Hopefully this helps someone.
In regards to your rock sculpting, I have a few resources that may be helpful for you.
The Polygon Academy trim sheet tutorial teaches how to make a simple stone trim sheet. In addition to having a lot of great advice for making trim sheets, the tutorial also goes over how to sculpt and create rock details. (Albeit for a 2D texture). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DipfrjCgYW8
I highly recommend trying out these brushes by @paultosca. I believe you can download them for free at the link below. The Polygon Academy tutorial uses them and they are really useful for creating all kinds of rock details. http://www.paultosca.com/pillars/zBrushes_MarbleDamage.7z
This rock sculpting tutorial is a little old, but it goes over how to block out proper proportions and sculpting techniques for rocks in Zbrush. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gicTFXZ8SQI
@Zocky Your update looks great! You've done an amazing job with the scene blocking and textures so far.
1. I struggled to create the fish tank with one texture. a new technique for me and an exciting one. spent around to weeks until finding a satisfactory look: I will use it for the small tube
for anyone interested: I used xNormal for creating heightmap, and used it later for the parallax occlusion effect in UE4, the heightmap is also used in the substance painter. and from there I baked the rest of the texture (normals, AO, Roughness, metallic etc). the bad: the paralax effects creates some "cut"-lines where the edges of UV island (as you can see in the gif above).
from there I created 8 variants of things in the tube and baked it in one texture
I dont think I will use this technique for the big tubes. I plan to create a tube with a highpoly in it (using depth fade material)
2. finished created Blueprint that gives me random column, and on those random column gives me a randomized of small tubes.
--- now for the feedback:
@b_beauchamp : love it! you nail the mysterious looks. if I can squeeze feedback: it seems your floor has a noticeable repetition:
may I suggest that you use a macro variation technique like in here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De8DUod26Mg also papers seems shredded/ too small for me. is it intentional?
@Zocky : nice material!, did you make the assets modular? I don't have a feedback right now other than the right parts is a tad too dark for me but I guess you're not focused on lighting yet. looking at the reference, the small shop will be a challenge for you..
@gastrop0d : nice work! if you looking for paid tutorial for sclupting rocks may I suggest tutorial from levelup.digital (by Daniel Castillo). theyre great
@hasgan nice randomizer blueprint for the jars, I always enjoy making generators like that to do some of the effort for me (though in my case, for the time being, I've just made a single arrangement of small jars that I've duplicated and flipped to each shelf).
I've been working on filling in the rest of the composition and beginning to add in details to the scene. I added some tears to my cardboard box trim sheet to make the boxes older looking. I also made some paper meshes to use throughout the scene. I really like how the left clutter pile area of my composition is looking. My biggest problem area is the foreground in the center of the scene (the rectangular containers). I find that area distracting, so I'm going to work on figuring out a solution to that next before moving on to more fish sculpts. It may be an element from the concept that I just scrap entirely, it is my least favorite region of the painting. I also need to make more decals and work on my blood a bit.
@hasgan Thank you for the feedback! In the interest of time, I decided to break up the tiles with some decals. Hopefully the pattern isn't visible anymore. I also scaled up a some of the scattered papers.
All of the major details (except the final creatures) are finally in place for my scene. There are a few issues I am aware of but I haven't found good solutions for. I would appreciate any feedback you all may have!
1. My trim jars with water and glass still don't look that great. I've tried out a lot of different options but I haven't found anything that looks more convincing than my simple solution.
2. Sometimes the creatures get masked out by the water in the jars, creating a weird "gap" effect.
3. The merman is still pretty obscured by the lights/glass clouding. I haven't been able to create a silhouette effect like the concept art yet.
4. For the lighting, I've been trying to keep some contrast while also keeping the darker areas visible, but I haven't found a good balance.
5. I may have too much open space in the center of the room, I'm not sure if I should bring in the back wall to close in the space more, or if the scene looks fine as is.
@b_beauchamp I think your jars on the shelves look fantastic and sell the mood really well! They might not be perfect in your eyes but I think you've done them justice.
For point 2 look into the translucency sort priority, might be able to use it to fix that problem. Not certain what the issue looks like though so hard to say if that will work but it sounds like the issue where if you tilt the camera up or down far enough the translucency sorting will flip what it considers in front.
Also, in your second picture it looks like you have a shadow of a floating lid for one of the tanks. Turning on "Use Two Sided Lighting" in the lighting second for the tank mesh should allow it to bake proper shadows for the glass. (If you're using dynamic lighting I believe you'd have to check "Shadow Two Sided" instead further down.)
@Pinkfox Thank you for the feedback! I'm happy to hear you think my jars look good. I tried out your suggestion for the translucency sort priority and it didn't seem to change anything. I think this was because I imported all my trim jars with the water mesh built in, so there were two translucent meshes for each jar. To fix this I re-imported all of the trim jars without the water meshes. I think the result actually looks better than before, and the level performance improved as well. How do you think it looks? I feel like I'm at the point now where I can't tell if I am actually improving things or not.
I also tried to fix the floating tank lid shadow with no success. I'm now using a mix of both dynamic and baked lighting, but neither option worked. An idea I have is that it has something to do with two translucent meshes on top of each other, but It's still strange to me that "cast translucent shadows" is working for everything except a few meshes.
Great work man, really looking nice! And i really need to look more into how you guys made those fish tanks, really looks interesting!
And yeah, it's all modular, i posted how modules look in first page of this thread, but basically, i split them into 3m x 3m modules, that way it gave me enough freedom and allowed to use tilable textures easily.
Man, that looks dope as hell, it's also starting to remind me a lot of Deus Ex : Human Revolution a whole lot!
On my side, i didn't manage to do a lot this week...but did made a bit of progress still. Worked monstly on roofs and some other minor things + tried to update lighting just a bit. Hasgan was right, scene did feel too dark, does this look any better?
@b_beauchamp I believe the "Cast Translucent Shadows" setting requires the translucent material to be two sided, but if your material is two sided already then I'm totally out of ideas for the shadow problem. If it isn't two sided then the two settings I mentioned previously in the mesh details panel are supposed to allow it to cast shadows but it took me a little bit to get everything dialed in myself.
@Zocky yeah, I like the lighting in your updated version. The ambient light feels more natural.
All this transparency and liquid has certainly been a challenge. I've added some grime and blood from megascans, tweaked the lighting, and created some labels to line my shelves. I feel like I'm going around in circles at this point. I think I need to focus 100% on getting the fish and humanoid sorted out and then see where that leaves me.
Replies
Finished up my box trim sheet and modeled some box variants with it applied. Threw a few into my scene to quickly get a feel for them as well. I used the trim on the boxes in a way that gave them variation on each side for reusability when rotated. I think I need one small box and one that is open without the flaps attached to have a set that will fill the scene up with all the types I see.
love those duzctape too
I went with the lighthouse as I like the vibe of the concept piece and I've been wanting to try something larger than what I'm used to.
I've been working on putting together how to do the tanks. The biggest thing I've been trying to work out is how to avoid a massive amount of overdraw from the translucency of all the tanks while still being able to have adjustable water levels. I used the method for generating a water level from the blog I posted early on in this thread as a starting point and then played around with how it could be applied to different geometry to achieve the effects I was hoping for.
So far I think it's good, though it definitely needs additional refinement and there are a few caveats I'm hoping to alleviate by the end like having to set the water level in two places since the bounding boxes they're based on are different.
I have many doubts about UV unwrapping.
1- Should I try to keep the number of UV islands as low as possible?
4- When there is a curved UV island should I make it straight/retanguar? Like with the UV of the side part of a wheel cut in half. It makes the UVs look nicer and seems to save space but I start to get some stretching.
5- I am thinking about making a single UV map for the whole wagon, so in engine I will use a single material for it. Is that right?
This is my first challenge, I'm an amateur trying to go pro.I have a lot to learn to bridge that gap and Polycount has been a great place find those things. It is great to follow others progress and solutions for the challenge.
The material instances would just be used to tint the materials to the color you need them. If you use a texture for the base color of the wood planks I'd recommend using the alpha channel of it as a mask so you can direct your tint to allow for some paint cracks to show the original color like it has in the concept art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DipfrjCgYW8
I'll do what you said and create two materials. I also didn't know you could use different instances of the same material, that's nice.
@FabioFrosaA said: @Pinkfox already gave a lot of great advice, but I'll try to help as well.
1- In general, fewer islands is better, but don't force a low number of islands. Fewer islands are easier to work with and leave less UV seams, but if there's stretching then its better to make cuts. Sometimes, like with trim sheets, you need to make extra cuts to guide where the textures will go.
2- Seams don't need to be at certain angles, if there's lots of stretching then that can indicate a good place to make a cut. You can also consider the visibility of the seam and where your textures will go.
3- I try to fill in most of the map space with minimal margins if I'm doing a unique unwrap. I've never had any issues with textures breaking in engine, could it be an issue with the LODs?
4- It's better to straighten UV islands, but if there's a lot of stretching then sometimes you have to compromise or make more cuts.
5- I think using a trim sheet or two with material instances like @Pinkfox said is a good idea for your project. Whatever you chose, I would use at least two materials on your mesh to organize where your textures go.
For my scene I've been working on adding a lot of the smaller props. I added a new drawer chest variation, a table, some medicine jars, and a set of four cardboard boxes to mix with the ones from Quixel. I also made some more labels and used the foliage tool to scatter them across the floor.
Progress has been slow for me. Here's where I've gotten to this weekend:
I thought I'd try a basic rock and pavement texture to see how it looks. I think it will be okay for now until I get around to sculpting some rock assets to place.
I tried sculpting a wooden beam texture for all the wooden elements in the scene. It's a pretty ridiculous variation in texel density going from small details to large planks. I think I might need to make a more fully featured wood trim sheet to cover all the different surfaces:
I haven't had a lot of time to make progress and i've just tried some different approach for the texture creation, from substance designer, blender nodes and quixel mixer. It is my first time trying Quixel Mixer and it looks awesome.
@Pinkfox
I realized I didn't understand the part you tell me to use the decals for the wood on the second material. As I wouldn't have seperate UV maps, how to place the decals in a way that the rest of the mesh UV does not overlap with other parts? I am not sure if I can explain my doubt.
Just to show my progress, though these are more like experiments.
gastrop0d
For my scene I’ve filled in the walls, updated the lighting, and added a simple particle system for dust and bubble effects. The main “merman” creature mesh by @Tysiu is also now in place (the pose just needs to be adjusted a bit).
I’m having a bit of trouble trying to balance the lighting for my scene. I want to highlight the merman as the focal point but my lights fog up the vat way too much. Does anyone have any advice for how to get a nice silhouette effect like the concept art?
Also, the glass and water both have refraction inputs, but I’m worried that the effect is too strong. How do you all think it looks? If it needs to be fixed, should I just turn down the IOR or does something else need to be done?
I'm a bit behind but I've been working on this bit by bit. I started blocking out materials with some seamless textures I already had on hand. Planning on getting the basic look down and then going back into the textures to get details and adjustments done.
@Zorina Really like the progress so far. My only critique would be since its a stylized piece (if you are going with this approach) is that the wood grains etc seem a bit too much, maybe tryt a bit more softer approach. Also the materials seem a bit too metallic ? Maybe try having some wet spots instead. Nevertheless looking forwared to seeing more of your progress.
Theres so much more to do but i think i have made some good progress. The lighting is a bit much but i tried some early shots in order to capture a more general feeling of the atmosphere. Since this is my first environment i try to go a bit slow but i think im getting there. Most pieces are modular except for the staircase and the roofs. In my next update i will make a breakdown of the materials i made for this and would hopefully get some critique on those too ^^
@Zocky That plaster over brick effect is looking really good so far. Its really crisp.
Worked on some lighting and effects today and also created the splines for the wires. I created my own fog card to give the open areas a bit of extra texture. I also added a particle system for subtle dust and made some blood and fluid decals for the floor. Next on my list is the rectangular containers as well as the different lips for the vials. I also want to get to work on the paper scatter for the ground and some more work on the labels. Planning on sprinkling in some more sea creature sculpts in between.
Are you tinting the shadowed areas in a Post Process Volume by chance or is there a different method you're using for getting that sort of look that mimics the concept art really well? Lighting isn't my strong suit so I'd love to hear more.
@PatSaenzG I really like the quality you were able to get in your third shot. There is nice detail on the textures in that area and the tarnished metal seems like it would make sense for a machine that likely deals with temperature changes during operation. It does feel as though the rest of the model didn't get quite the same amount of treatment as that third shot however. If you're able I feel like giving a bit more detail in the other areas would take what you have from good to great!
@Zorina Nice progress. One thing I can point out is that some of the textures seem out of scale. For instance the wood grain is very large. I'd suggest bringing in a human model for scale reference. Then you can quickly compare the scale of details in your textures to the human and see if things are too big or small. Very useful for wood and grass.
@samA Looking good. I think you've got a handle on the small details in the texture, but what about some larger macro details? Things like large stains or weathering over the larger structure as a whole? I think without these macro details the piece feels too uniform.
Okay so I've been pretty out of the zone the last week or so, mostly hung up on the daunting (for me) task of doing a full wood trimsheet. I've finally got that planned out and will be hitting that up as my next task.
In the mean time I realised I could break the cottage up into a modular kit, something I've not done before. This was extremely enjoyable to decompose into reuseable pieces. Here's how it turned out:
I really had to research and learn how thatch roofing actually works and is constructed. Learned quite a bit about it actually, its super cool.
I'm thinking the material breakdown for this will be using my wooden trimsheet for all the wooden framing, door and inset grates, then another sheet for thatch roofing strips and the wall plaster cells, as well as possible other small details to be added as finishing touches at the end of the project. I'm really going to focus on keeping a consistent texel density with clean, readable details.
I've been loving checking and seeing everyone's progress. One month to go... keep it up guys!
Thanks a lot!
I loved the article. A specific part of it called my attention, when he talked about weighted normals. It is an awesome way to make those smooth edges without worring about making a high res model to bake the normals from.
I applied it to a part of the model,:
The left on is using normals baked from a higher res model, the right one is using beveled edges with weighted normals.
I really prefer the right one, but the vertice count went up from 180 to 290. Is it worth it? Also, I really think that with the weighted normals aproach I'll save processing on smaller textures as I may also use a tileable texture for all the wooden parts, besides the trim sheet for the wood planks and another material for the decals and the remaining parts as the chimney, windows and the glass part of the door.
edit:
found this:
https://polycount.com/discussion/213802/face-weighted-normals-question-and-methods
@jordank95
Have you something to share since you've made this post?
The main info I got is that hard edges make the vertices count more than once. So by using weghted normals you may have more visible vertices but the same vertice count for the processing. So it would be better.
It would not be a fit technique for a charaacter, as for that one it would be better to bake from a higher res model.
For reference:
video explaining the pros and cons and the process in 3D studio:
I'm a blender user so some of these differ. Here is a video about the process in blender, although there is more tools for that in blender the video does not cover.
The only downside I've got is some light and shadow bleeding, more so than what happens with baked normals. That happens only in some when there is no weak influence faces between two strong influence face, so the problem may be that I'm not doing this right.
Regarding the disscusion about wether its worth the higher polycount, i think it depends in general, but in this case - for a portfolio piece with no real budget limitation - its definetly worth it.
Thanks, that was it, I just had to bevel the other edges.
I am really enjoying the results from this method, I'll stick with it.
I started work on the wood trimsheet, laying out a tileable beam section. I used it for all the wooden sections on the walls of the cottage. It also turned out to be useable as a set of flat planks for the door and roof capping - a nice bonus. I've still got wooden pillar sections to add to the sheet so I can properly texture things like the trusses on top of the roof.
I think the wood is missing something at the moment - maybe chunkier edge damage? I think I'll try that to push the style, what do you guys think?
I also tried my hand as sculpting the thatch roofing. I'm very much a newbie with sculpting so this was very much a case of "I have no idea what I'm doing" XD
I also baked AO into the vertex colours of the geometry. This helped a LOT to bring out the details on the walls (see the screenshot in my previous post for a comparison).
Overall I'm really happy with how it's coming along. Just a little more work on the trimsheets and the cottage will be ready for some colouring!
Thanks everyone for the advice on my materials, I adjusted the wood quite a lot and I think I'll be going back and pushing the roughness since I still have a lot of time.
I'm a bit "bleh" about my lighting, I'd like to push the shadows a lot more while still preserving that nice bright beachy light coming from the left side in the concept art...
@Zocky Thank you for the compliment! Your scene is looking great so far. A critique I have is that the shutter positions look very uniform. I think the scene would look more realistic if some of the shutters were not flush with the wall or closed all the way, but the concept art has uniform shutters, so this is just my opinion.
I think I've finished all of the major models for my project. I've been filling in a lot of details everywhere, and have updated the lighting to better fit the concept art. Somehow my generic water material is causing some of the creatures to be masked out, so I'll need to fix that next. @tysiu has been making all of the amazing creatures, including a lizard, fish, and eel, and finished the merman pose as well.
Thanks for your feedback, too. I agree with your idea about more exaggerated edge damage on the wood. I've incorporated it in this update.
@b_beauchamp Looking really great! Not much I can see to crit, except that it appears that your glass isn't casting any shadows, from what I can see in your second shot.
@Zocky Looking much more balanced with the damage distribution, nice work. Also thanks, glad you like my progress! I like your idea about having some stray hay strands to fill out the silhouette. I've got it on my list as a stretch goal.
Ok, here's an update from me...
I've gotten the cottage to a "good enough" stage to move on to the rest of the scene. This involved filling out the rest of my trimsheet, which I managed to pack everything I needed into the one 2k texture set:
There's still room in it for packing a 2 metre wooden pillar and some other small details if I have time to come back to it. I'm planning to use vertex painting to introduce some painterly colour variety into the plaster panels once in-engine.
Next on my list was getting a modular rock block in. This was a huge challenge for me, I was completely lost trying to sculpt a decent looking rock form. I tried looking around for a good explanation on general principles for sculpting rocks, but really couldn't turn up any material that was comprehensive. If anyone has any good guides I would really appreciate it!
I'm not particularly happy with my attempt, very blobby, but in the interest of pushing on with the project I called this sculpt "done" and moved onto texturing it.
I wanted to get a semi-realistic look with a balance of details and more open areas with some painterly touches. I followed a principle I read about in this environment art breakdown, but instead of using vertex painting to mask out texture detail I did it as part of the texturing process itself in Substance. The flatter areas turned out looking a little plastic-like in the test render, so I tweaked it once it was in-engine to get a rougher look.
Finally I brought everything into Unity and updated the scene:
I find lighting in Unity to be a real struggle. In this case baking causes all normal map details to disappear. I really wanted to get nice bright green bounced lighting coming off the grass, so I ended up placing a bunch of green point lights to get the effect. Hacky, but it does a decent enough job I think.
Ticking off a lot of things on the to-do list now. Next up will be the bushes, grass and flowers!
Edit: I should mention that I found figured out how to get translucent shadows working. I had to enable the option "cast translucent shadows" on each individual light source. Performance took a real hit, but I think the effect is worth it for the scene. Hopefully this helps someone.
In regards to your rock sculpting, I have a few resources that may be helpful for you.
The Polygon Academy trim sheet tutorial teaches how to make a simple stone trim sheet. In addition to having a lot of great advice for making trim sheets, the tutorial also goes over how to sculpt and create rock details. (Albeit for a 2D texture).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DipfrjCgYW8
I highly recommend trying out these brushes by @paultosca. I believe you can download them for free at the link below. The Polygon Academy tutorial uses them and they are really useful for creating all kinds of rock details.
http://www.paultosca.com/pillars/zBrushes_MarbleDamage.7z
This rock sculpting tutorial is a little old, but it goes over how to block out proper proportions and sculpting techniques for rocks in Zbrush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gicTFXZ8SQI
@Zocky Your update looks great! You've done an amazing job with the scene blocking and textures so far.
1. I struggled to create the fish tank with one texture. a new technique for me and an exciting one. spent around to weeks until finding a satisfactory look: I will use it for the small tube
for anyone interested: I used xNormal for creating heightmap, and used it later for the parallax occlusion effect in UE4, the heightmap is also used in the substance painter. and from there I baked the rest of the texture (normals, AO, Roughness, metallic etc). the bad: the paralax effects creates some "cut"-lines where the edges of UV island (as you can see in the gif above).
from there I created 8 variants of things in the tube and baked it in one texture
I dont think I will use this technique for the big tubes. I plan to create a tube with a highpoly in it (using depth fade material)
---
now for the feedback:
@b_beauchamp : love it! you nail the mysterious looks. if I can squeeze feedback: it seems your floor has a noticeable repetition:
may I suggest that you use a macro variation technique like in here :
also papers seems shredded/ too small for me. is it intentional?
@Zocky : nice material!, did you make the assets modular? I don't have a feedback right now other than the right parts is a tad too dark for me
@gastrop0d : nice work! if you looking for paid tutorial for sclupting rocks may I suggest tutorial from levelup.digital (by Daniel Castillo). theyre great
I've been working on filling in the rest of the composition and beginning to add in details to the scene. I added some tears to my cardboard box trim sheet to make the boxes older looking. I also made some paper meshes to use throughout the scene. I really like how the left clutter pile area of my composition is looking. My biggest problem area is the foreground in the center of the scene (the rectangular containers). I find that area distracting, so I'm going to work on figuring out a solution to that next before moving on to more fish sculpts. It may be an element from the concept that I just scrap entirely, it is my least favorite region of the painting. I also need to make more decals and work on my blood a bit.
Here's my WIP
Still have to finish the texturing before doing last mesh deformations.
All of the major details (except the final creatures) are finally in place for my scene. There are a few issues I am aware of but I haven't found good solutions for. I would appreciate any feedback you all may have!
1. My trim jars with water and glass still don't look that great. I've tried out a lot of different options but I haven't found anything that looks more convincing than my simple solution.
2. Sometimes the creatures get masked out by the water in the jars, creating a weird "gap" effect.
3. The merman is still pretty obscured by the lights/glass clouding. I haven't been able to create a silhouette effect like the concept art yet.
4. For the lighting, I've been trying to keep some contrast while also keeping the darker areas visible, but I haven't found a good balance.
5. I may have too much open space in the center of the room, I'm not sure if I should bring in the back wall to close in the space more, or if the scene looks fine as is.
I also tried to fix the floating tank lid shadow with no success. I'm now using a mix of both dynamic and baked lighting, but neither option worked. An idea I have is that it has something to do with two translucent meshes on top of each other, but It's still strange to me that "cast translucent shadows" is working for everything except a few meshes.
All this transparency and liquid has certainly been a challenge. I've added some grime and blood from megascans, tweaked the lighting, and created some labels to line my shelves. I feel like I'm going around in circles at this point. I think I need to focus 100% on getting the fish and humanoid sorted out and then see where that leaves me.