(WIP) Stylized Town Gaigai Island - Looking for feedback
I'm currently working on an environment based on a concept art I found on ArtStation to add to my portfolio.
My goal is to achieve a similar stylized look to games like Overwatch.
I came here looking for feedback since none of my friends who work in the industry are willing to give me brutaly honest criticism.
Here's the original concept art by 阿 久
Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress.
I try to stick as much as possible to the concept art. Like, if it was up to me, I would've added a lot more to the scene; but I still deviated from the concept art trying to translate into 3D objects that are way to crude/simplistic or just straight up don't make any sense (like the hotel sign pointing away from the building) and I don't know if I'm making myself less employable because of that.
My goal is to achieve a similar stylized look to games like Overwatch.
I came here looking for feedback since none of my friends who work in the industry are willing to give me brutaly honest criticism.
Here's the original concept art by 阿 久
Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress.
I try to stick as much as possible to the concept art. Like, if it was up to me, I would've added a lot more to the scene; but I still deviated from the concept art trying to translate into 3D objects that are way to crude/simplistic or just straight up don't make any sense (like the hotel sign pointing away from the building) and I don't know if I'm making myself less employable because of that.
Replies
Thanks for your feedback! @pxgeek @ThisisVictoriaZ.
I made some adjustments to the scene and tried to exaggerate some elements without breaking the layout. This is a problem because remaking the buildings with the exaggerated angles of the concept art made them start clipping into each other and it was very noticeable and looked very off, so I had to make some sacrifices there even though I don’t know if it is to my detriment.
However, I made some advancements. I redid a bunch of textures and added lots of props, decals and foliage to the scene.
Even though I feel like it is all finally coming together, I still think something is off, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it. So any piece of advice or feedback, especially regarding my lighting, is absolutely welcome, no matter how harsh it is.
I think currently the lighting looks a bit cold/white. How does it work, is it baked? Would be interesting to see how it looks with some more colored bounce light reflected from the painted buildings. Some elements could use some sort of AO to ground them, for example pots and window frames.
On a second look, some textures look a bit blurry/low res, like the entrance on the right in the second last image. How are you going about texturing buildings, to what extend do you use tiling textures/trims?
Overall, this looks like a fairly large project. If you feel like you're spreading too thin, you could consider breaking out individual buildings into their own sub-projects.
If I'm honest, I would not associate this with Overwatch, as stylistically, it looks a tad simpler and more cartoony. Shading wise, most materials look fairly matte. Just my opinion of course, not meant it in a bad way, maybe it fits better into another stylized world - or stands on its own.
Good luck with the project!
The lighting is all baked with lightmass. I've seen that fairly exaggerated bounce lighting is the key to stylized lighting, but in my project I had to tone it down a little because the bounced lighting would be very aggressive in some parts of the map.
Regarding your comments about blurry textures. I've received feedback before about my scene appearing blurry, but I'm unsure how to address it. I tried disabling Temporal Anti Aliasing, but everything would start losing detail, especially the background. I also tried increasing the tone mapper sharpness with r.Tonemapper.Sharpen, which the previous renders actually had; maybe I need to increase it.
Also yes, I used tiling textures and trim sheets all over the map.