The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | March - April (89)
ngon master
Hey all! Want to welcome
you all to the 89th edition of the Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge for the
months of March and April!
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:
Concept art works for a sci-fi movie project last year by Wang Jie
STYLIZED ENVIRONMENT:
《石屋部落》by G xy
- PROPS -
HARD SURFACE PROP:
CLA Box by Gin Z.
STYLIZED PROP:
PROPS #2 - HEIMR project by Geraud Soulie (2D) / Roger Trootman (3D)
- 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 something like 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 everyone!
Replies
Probably will try to keep it simple (as always), maybe just geometry and diffuse, roughness, metallic maps.
Looking forward to see what people are making.
Edit: Started painting a texture atlas. Previewed on Sketchfab.
Edit2:
Continued with the texture atlas and tweaked some geometry. Used Blender and Sketchfab to preview.
model
The original texture atlas is 1k.
Ended up hand painting some normal map, which makes for an interesting, exaggerated look imo. Maybe I'll experiment with that some more in the future.
- Texture atlas could be refined/optimized.
- Unique AO on UV1 could be added.
1st pass done.
Made a quick mock up in blender to get a feel for scale and lighting.
Now off to start working on the props!
@Convergent31 Nice start. How are you planning to create the soft/fabric casing?
Keep it up!
Edit: Toolbag render of updated chest model:
If I had to think of something for critique, perhaps adding some subtle surface wear to the front handle to break up those highlights. Even just a subtle tweak in the roughness map, however that's just a nitpick as it is it looks great, and a good translation from the concept art.
I'm looking forward to seeing how all of these turn out.
Took a jab at the sci-fi crate too, being particularly interested in how to create the fabric part.
model
Initially I thought about adding folds by putting a floating strip along the edges with fold texture. Sort of a generic solution, that would make it easy to quickly create similar containers, reusing the same textures. But my results were not convincing, maybe I quit this approach too soon.
In the end, I settled on doing a unique case, using Blenders cloth simulation for the highpoly meshes. To get them into shape, I ended up creating collision meshes for lid and body:
Finding the settings that give ok results was trial and error and I still don't quite know what some parameters mean. I think using a higher resolution meshes would have yielded better results, but the time simulating would probably increase quite a bit. Using Marvelous Designer for this task would be more convenient.
@Fabi_G Looks good mate . Not sure how I'm gonna do the cloth part of the box myself. Might take the high into Zbrush and hand sculpt some of the folds
So this is the model in Fusion360, i made a rough cage of the shape of the cloth, to use it as a guide in CLO.
I should decide now how low poly i want to make it, part of me wants to make it as low poly as i can but i also really want to capture as much of the detail i can.
I hope you found the workflow interesting! I'm loving using weirder or more niche software for this kind of stuff.
Some aspects I think can be improved:
- It looks to me like there are some hard edges breaking up the shading in some places (prominently along the wide beveled corners and the look mechanism). I'd keep in mind that while UVs need splitting along hard edges, edges at split UVs can be shaded smooth.
- The shape of the metal/hard surface parts gets too irregular in some places (lock mechanism). I would make sure that hard-surface/ rigid elements are clean and even. This will also make them contrast nicely against soft/organic elements. I would not hold back with geometry on curved surfaces, to make sure the silhouette holds up and doesn't look too lowpoly.
- The materials currently don't hit quite the mark imo. To help with that, you could use scanned materials or presets either as a base to build on top and/or to take notes on the PBR values. To get a fitting amount and width of edge wear, I would look for reference images.
Keep it up!
@SimãoSilva Very cool, thanks for sharing the process. I'd agree, exaggerating/ detailing some folds to be more distinct/ memorable, would probably help selling the material. Looking forward to see it textured!
@creepyhooman That's a nice selection of props and a cool looking shot. Hope you're were/are able to continue on this.
My critique would be that the roughness/glossiness seems out of hand, particularly on the exterior. To me this makes it look like everything has a coating. I would recommend looking at real world reference image and potentially use scanned materials, either as a base or reference when texturing. Another critique I have, is that some props have a bit of a lowpoly look to them, due to sharp edges (handgun) and facetted rounded elements (radio).
Keep it up
yeah i think it got a bit stylized from me, should have start from scanned textures, but i just put the baked maps and tried to built the rest on them, like the crate outside i felt from the reference its like leather that's on top of metal, but overall half the time i was searching and learning new stuff, will try to keep that in mind for next project