The Bi-Monthly ENVIRONMENT ART Challenge | September - October (74)
ngon master
Hey everyone, I'm excited to bring you the Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge for the months of September and October!
An opportunity for those who enjoy creating real-time 3D art to test their skills and craft a piece from the provided concepts below. The challenge is open to anyone interested and at any skill level. Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. We want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!
- ENVIRONMENTS -
HARD SURFACE:The Lab by Wang Jie
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKLO1v (Alternative scene angle available in link)
STYLIZED:
Ponds by Ruslana Gus (Thanks to @engelmanna for the suggestion!)
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lVwkeO
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lVwkeO
- PROPS -
HARD SURFACE:G.A.M Missile Prop Design - Missile [Grand Space Opera – Light Age] by Himesh Anand
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nY8yyK
- WILDCARD ENVIRONMENT -
電脳九龍城 Kawasaki WAREHOUSE by tomotubby (Thanks to @demigodssw for the suggestion!)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomotubby/9280111627/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomotubby/9280111627/
- RULES -
Please read all the rules before starting:
- Try to post at least one critique for every post that you make. This will make for a better learning environment and help us all grow as artists.
- Try
your best to finish as much as you can in the time frame provided, but
remember even if you don't finish by the end of the challenge we
encourage you to keep pushing and finish your piece!
- Post
what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more
centralized place for advice and critique. Please avoid creating a new thread as we don't want to spam out the forums.
- It is recommended to use a game engine to present your work. Unreal Engine, Unity, and CryEngine are very common engines that can be used but feel free to use any alternatives that you want. (Marmoset Toolbag for example.)
- Feel free to change up your chosen concept a bit if you want! Interpret these concepts to your liking, especially if your aim is to add storytelling elements.
- If you finish your project and decide to post it to Artstation, make sure you give credit to the concept artist in the form of a link to their profile. Additionally, it is recommended to ask a concept artist for their permission to post a 3D piece based on their work before doing so.
- RECOMMENDATIONS -
- When you are just starting out making a scene, it can seem complicated or imposing. Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.
- 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, don't be afraid to make it your own.
- We 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.
The
goal is to learn and grow both artistically and in your ability to both
give and receive critique, but don't stress about it and remember to
have
fun!
Replies
.
My questions:
- I suppose this prop in-game would be on just one texture map (along with roughness and normal), how big would the map for something like this usually be? 2k?
- I wanna make stars and alphas on a black BG and reuse them. In Blender I can turn the black parts transparent, and use a different UV map to place them. Would this be the way to go for a game engine?
- If I bake the modular parts separately then add them to the mesh, the connection with the other parts won't have any bevels but will just penetrate each other. is that ok or are there ways to get around that?
- What's a good approach to glass? I know before it was just a texture, but maybe now it's a new material made in engine and no texture is necesarry?
Here's my train of thought for now:
Finished the head sculpt and temporarily baked it just to see how it's working. I feel like I might have to go and simplify the head to fit in with the rest of the style. I was going for a mischievous deal-with-the-devil look. I think I'm finally getting the hang of Blender's sculpting tools.
Right now I'm fearing that I won't be able to fit all the normals on one map without loosing significant resolution. Maybe the diffuse can make up for a low res normal?
As for the resolution definitely make sure to do testing before committing anywhere. There is the option of splitting the character out onto it's own textures or using a non-square texture size like 2048x4096 as possible considerations.
- Did some basic block out in Maya and exported it to unreal, also did some basic lighting. Picking up unreal after a long time and have forgotten a lot of basic stuff.
- All the pivots and orientations are messed up.
- My plan atm is to finalize the proportions, prop requirements and decent lighting in block out phase and then maybe move to wall materials.
It is supposed to be translucent and I don't know if I should face it as a subdivided mesh or a flat plane with a material on it.
I will start adding some Bridge materials on the walls to get a feel of the mood and I will try to solve this glass issue.
Any feedback is super welcome
Edit: Aaah I made him a moustache but I forgot to bake it onto a lowpoly model!
@rohom3Des I think the left and right wall are the same material in the reference. it's just that the angle makes it so one looks more transparent plus there is a red light behind it. Keep it up
My options:
-redo the uv set so there is only one and rebake
-paint everything in Blender (but then i don't have smart materials and I have to rely on my poor handpainting skills)
Is using multiple uv sets in games bad? Did I do this wrong?
I think the best option will be to only have a single UV set.
It's been far too long since I've modeled significantly in something that's not CAD; feels nice to get back to it. I'll be going for the Ponds concept by Ruslana Gus; blocked this out to get a rough feel for it. Unsure how far I'll get with this challenge, but I'd really like to finish it.
I've blocked out the basic shapes in Blender and refined the modelling of the center piece. I've added subtle changes to the shape to give a more stylized feel.
More progress. I'm pretty pleased with how it looks so far, particularly the roof tiles here - I had fun making them:
But, I've reached a bit of a stumbling point. I don't really like how the rocks/stepping stones here are turning out, and after fiddling with them for a while, I just can't seem to get them to look decent. I wanted to put them on a thick slab since I felt having them go the entire height of the pond would make them too skinny, but the geometry I've chosen for the outer wall (a beveled slab) stops them from going flush with the top edge of it, which doesn't make it look too good. Plus, the rocks themselves just look "wrong". Too pillowy, too sharp, too rounded, too flat, it's all of them at the same time, somehow.
Any suggestions on what I could try to improve them, or maybe something similar I could look at to see how it's done there?
the one part that isn't modeled yet is the roof. I had a hard tme visualizing what it looked like. After seeing how other users tackled it, I have a better idea on how to build it though.
For the stepping stones, I think you should be able to curve them a bit, like what @FruityCupid has done.
- Got the lighting to look decent after a lot of trial and errors.
- Added material blend on walls and simple material on floor and ceiling. Quixel bridge made it really easy to create material blends.
- Wall and floor looks like they are intersecting. Maybe I will need to create a decal that goes along the edge to hide it. If somebody else knows a better way, please share it with me.
- Had some problems exporting weighted normals from maya to ue4, spent a couple of hrs trying to fix that.
- Did some R&D on edge decals for wall edges. Not sure whether I will add it though
- Since lighting and materials look decent now, will be focusing on improving the blocking and prop creation next.
The gate feels pretty finished right now. Not crazy about the stone tiles but they're not the centerpiece so maybe it's not a super big deal if they're not perfect.
been playing around with shading through photoshop but nothing i'm confident enough to show just yet
i didn't get as much as i wanted done today, but i did have a chance to mess with the Geometry Node Editor to get some nice random lillypads out on the water. Just have to figure out how to make them not clip into one another, and for the placement to be less random and more focused near the stone steps
I did the highpoly version of a few assets:
I got few props done for the enviroment(light, table and walls.). Also set up some simple lighting and working on the glass material.
Glass material needs a lot more work. I never worked on material as complex as this one. Will see if i am able to make the material look good.
Next step in the scene is to create models for the "fish tanks" and the ceiling lights above the operating table. Also might add detail to Op table.
Handpainting textures has been a lot of fun so far.
i'm not sure how to progress with the water. part of me wants to give it a transparent effect. maybe a sss pass? it would be nice to have something in the scene move too. like ripples in the water or something
Here's my blockout so far, hopefully I'll be able to persevere and finish it:
- Had to take the file to 3ds max for wires. I looked into Maya and blender spline modelling, but wasn't feeling confident about it. Planning to complete all the remaining wire work in the next week.
- Also got to know while looking for references that this place is actually a "kowloon wall city" themed arcade in Japan. I Wouldn't have guessed it in 100 years
-Also learned that the lower the min light map resolution in UE 4 the better the shadows look. I have changed the resolution from 64 to 8.
Blocking out some materials and lighting. This one's pretty fun! I've never mixed a parallax occlusion material with translucency.
I pretty much know how I'm going to approach this, except that I have no idea how to do the particle effect coming from the thrusters.
The first mistake I made was cleaning up faces and doing the UVs for the low poly assuming that the final product would more or less correlate. This has worked out for me in the past for some more simple stuff, like a pair of sunglasses or a wooden chest, but I see now why this should be avoided.
The next mistake I made was thinking I would be able to just sculpt the details in ZBrush and somehow, I dunno, polish it out. I realized after a couple hours of this that I was never going to get good results and I actually had to do myself some learning.
Now I am using booleans! Which seems obvious, in retrospect, but I've never had a good excuse to use them before. I'm going to finish it like this, but if I did something like this in the future I think I would want to try a CAD program like Shapr.
Hadn't sculpted in a while but once I got into it it's been a fun practice project!
The wires were giving me some issues in light bake, so had to increase its light bake resolution to 2k. I feel like that's too much for a game, but it should be ok as a quick fix I think.
Moving to poster decals now, hopefully everything will be done by the end of this week.
I've been able to work on this a lot recently, and now I'm gonna call it done!
It's been great to practice more sculpting, fabric is definitely not my forte though
I feel like The gold metal engraving details on the body will look better with some normal thickness, also adding a skylight or something similar will lighten up some of the back areas which I feel are a bit dark atm.
btw The tiny spider webs are also looking cool!
I uploaded a video on my artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Pozz1B
https://polycount.com/discussion/228350/the-bi-monthly-environment-art-challenge-concept-thread-november-december-75/
Already hyped for next challenge!
The Chinese poster and text are all from random internet images and I have no clue what they say.
Since one day is remaining I will check it once again tomorrow for any small improvements or If I get some feedbacks, I can address those. Overall, learned a lot while doing this challenge, and had a lot of fun!!