The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | May - June (78)
Hey everyone and welcome to the 78th Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge for the months of May and June!
This challenge is a way for real-time 3D artists to test their skills and create a piece of work based on concepts provided. It's open to those of all skill levels and we do our best to provide meaningful feedback along the way so everyone can come away from the challenge with actionable points on which they can improve their craft!
Anyone is welcome in this challenge no matter your skill level! It's a test of your own ability not a competition between members. We're all here to improve as artists and learn from each other.
- ENVIRONMENTS -
HARD SURFACE ENVIRONMENT:
Flooded library by Tarmo Juhola
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/D5KgZ0
STYLIZED ENVIRONMENT:
The Lost Grove by Neil Richards
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oem14
- PROPS -
HARD SURFACE PROP:
Chicken Coop by Philipp Rademacher
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YKzJyV
STYLIZED PROP:
"Swale eaters": Fish chasers pathway by Mariia Tverdohleb
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4blYRk
- 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!
Good luck!
Replies
Getting my blockout started! Excited to be participating in my first art challenge here. Good luck everyone!
@Its0urFate Really nice progress so far! Also appreciate how you showed the various steps throughout the blockout, it's great reference for others to get an idea of how to build things up from a simple form to something more complex. 🙂
Exciting concepts! I started with the flooded library too and will try to keep the project short and simple. My main goal is to get more familiar with UE5, especially lighting/reflections. Any idea how to create the water in a way that the windows will shine through? 🤔
@Its0urFate Nice progress! I agree, the animated presentation is very cool 👍️ Are you going to use baked or fully dynamic lighting? Keep it up!
@Fabi_G I think I’m going to go for dynamic, but I’ll try both to see what looks good. Yours is looking awesome!
Thanks! Looking forward to updates!
It's very cool to see the GI update dynamically with Lumen, but it's demanding for my GTX 1060. I continued with the scene and of course the amount of tasks exploded! For the water I chose to try out the UE5 water plugin and faked light from underwater windows with some emissive planes.
A few more hours, then I will have to close the project.
Hi all,
First time participating! I'm loving the environments posted so far. Both are looking great. Looking forward to seeing the final results.
Found a bit of time today, thought I would have a go at the hard surface prop. Just a blockout for the time being.
I'm curious how people would approach texturing something like this. A few options come to mind:
Maybe I'm overthinking it :D
Cheers!
Hello! First blockout looks good. I'd note that the person in the concept looks like a child to me (for scale reference).
Sound like reasonable options! I'd say which one depends much on the rules you set yourself.
If it's a generic asset, option 1 seems a good way to go about it. This way one could build more assets from the same modules. One could also store masks in vertex colors if enough geo.
I'd say 3 seems like a good optimization measure. Can make sense to group modules by material. One could also start texturing with atlas/trimsheets and add additional meshes later for details.
Keep it up!
Have to stop on this project for now. In the end lost focus a bit and spent too much time with sequencer and animations :O certainly something I want to explore in the future projects to make environments more lively. Maybe I will find some time later this month to improve a few things. Greatly appreciate any suggestions.
Some aspects to improve: Better books, rework level mesh, polish boat and debris asset, expand debris library, improve trim sheet and create additional textures, improve foliage.
@Fabi_G Everything looks great! The grunge on the architecture really sticks out nicely and the dingy is really well done! Hope to see this project updated down the road!
@chummyship I wonder have you considered trim sheets? You might be able to use just one material for the prop. Looking good so far!
I managed to fix a few things scale-wise and threw it into UE5. I'm working on texturing right now (the wood on everything is temporary) through Substance Painter/Designer. I wanted to get texturing done earlier in the week but I kept tweaking scale and proportion to where I liked it. Trying to figure out water in UE5 as well, which is stumping me a bit.
@Its0urFate thanks! Certainly will improve it and potentially break off smaller tasks (book system?).
Like the proportions!
I'm curious how you will approach the water. It's something I didn't find a satisfying solution for yet. Using a water surface from the water plugin, I couldn't get the reflections work nicely with indoors and outdoors, like occlude the reflections with skylight. I hope the documentation and sample availably for this system will improve.
Small update: got the textures put in for everything and adjusted some lighting in the scene. Still working on getting that water looking right.
Hi everyone! So here's my final result. I got some of the dead trees from Quixel, along with the hanging vines and debris floating on the water. I'm really happy with how everything turned out and it was a lot of fun to work on. I hope you all like it too! I posted it on Artstation in case you want to view it there as well: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/G8VPvz
Heya! This is my first time participating in one of thsese as I've always just missed out on the previous ones, but I'm excited!
I decided to go for the stylized environment, as I've been wanting to practice my skills with similar artstyles for a long time, and it gives me a good reason to get better at UE.
This is the result of a few hours of basic blockout (and bashing my head against a wall trying to get Unreal Spline Meshes to work how I wanted). Really happy with how it's looking so far! While I'm terrified of having to work on vegetation materials (most notably the leaves and grass), I'm still just as impatient to reach that point since I'm really motivated to push myself to get them to look as good as I can!
I'm seriously impressed with how quickly the rest of you sped through your own projects, and they all look amazing!
Hey! Wow, people got really fast on this one !
@PeculiarSana, nice blockout! One thing I see on your work for now is that it doesn't feel like the tree roots are sitting on the ground as much as they do on the concept. I'd say you could make their point of contact with the ground much closer to the tree, a bit like that (I overdid it a bit though):
Getting those root shapes right at the blockout phase will really help with the final tree shape, as it'll really make it feel like the tree is invading/sitting on the shrine.
For me, I went for the hard surface prop:
I'm planning to combine a trim sheet (for the wood planks, sign, the grill) with some tileable textures (fabric, steel, mud, basic wood maybe). For the trim, I think I'll make a shader that'll allow tint variations and add baked AO to make a rust/moss mask. My goal is to try to make this asset with a good texel density but the least materials/large textures as possible (so I might even put the fabric on the trim, maybe also the steel, though the roof is big so I might not have enough space to put it there).
My initial blockout in Max. Next step's gonna be the lighting blockout in Unreal.
@simonBreumier That's overall fitting the reference well. Looks like that tarp may be 3D - may be easier to manage, if it was based off a plane.
Only worked on this for about 3 more hours before a headache hit me, but I think I'm mostly done with my blockout (which in my case tends to involve basic solid colours so I can get a feel for how everything works together). Interested in hearing any feedback before I go further with this.
Only thing I might change before moving on is switching the central bright blue light to some torch lights from a cave that descends below the tree, as I really like having the specular reflections right under the entrance.
@simonBreumier Really appreciate the pointer you gave regarding the roots! It lead me to notice that the terrain climbs higher than what I had in my version. Really like how your prop is looking, though I can't tell if the two-way sign on the side is a bit too thick in your model, or if that's just the normals messing with my perception.
Edit: Would anyone have any suggestions on how I could achieve surface water caustics in UE5? Not too sure how I could go about doing it other than maybe some lights with alpha masks to simulate caustics.
@Its0urFate The scene turned out nicely, congrats on finishing it 🍻
Very nice blockouts, I look forward to updates 👍️
@PeculiarSana Could also fake caustics by projecting them in the material or have some decal skirts.
I went back to the scene and swapped the ue5 water system with regular plane with simple shader, as I wasn't satisfied (especially reflections). Also created some simple additional assets and simulated falling books and newspaper/cloth (much fun!). Placed some decals and adjusted light (maybe too bright 🤪)