Environment WIP.... 'swamp house'
polycounter lvl 19
Yes I know I title my scenes very well.
This is a WIP I did this afternoon. Created a quick sketch at a friends house for this then rushed home to get my idea down in Max.
Couple shots..
The plan is to use spec mask's and height maps on this one. I may do normals for the rocks ala HL2.
I'll post as I update.
This is a WIP I did this afternoon. Created a quick sketch at a friends house for this then rushed home to get my idea down in Max.
Couple shots..
The plan is to use spec mask's and height maps on this one. I may do normals for the rocks ala HL2.
I'll post as I update.
Replies
This scene would be cool if you had tons of branches/ vines hanging down from the top of the frame, that way it sorta dwarfs the house and makes it look like its sheltered by a much larger entity.
A lot of the rest seems formless, as in, I can make out that there is a path going over the bridge, but it appears to just go into a wall.
Those tree things do not add to the look of your scene, maybe if they added to the canopy of your scene, and were somehow connnected with the green top of the back wall.
Don't worry so much about your lighting and texturing until you get this model solid, because, especially in this newest render, I can't making out anything in your scene, it's too dark. I mean honestly, at least wait until you have something on all those alpha sheets before posting this level of render, they look bad.
Your wireframe render looks the best of these images.
Any ideas on what I could for the area where the path meets the door? The way I did the path was create a square plane and UV it out. I dropped the UV into photoshop and painted up a path texture that repeats nicely. Then I copy/pasted that plane and deformed it to fit the shape of the path I layed out prior to creating the square plane. Any thoughts on how to fix that area up so it doesn't seem to just 'go into a wall'?
The tree-things are basically place holders until I sketch something out for them. I may go with the design and throw some more appendages (sp) onto the shapes to give them something more design.
I got a little eager with the lighting as its still something new to me, but good idea on holding off. And you're right on posting too early without having all of the alpha's completed. I'm really post-a-WIP friendly and generally wanna show whatever render I've done to see how it looks. S'pose I should hold off until I have something more solid to show. (I'm working the alphas now).
Thanks again Chris - any other help you'd be willing to share would rock!
just a thought but why not have a light coming from the house window? might put a nice touch.
might have to get myself into doing some more env work!
nicely done so far B
Adam, I did a little paintover to illustrate some stuff.
I think some fireflys would go a long way. A little quick & dirty painted background helps as well.
You could use some longer creeper vines (alpha planes, like youve got, only longer) coming over the front of the rock-house.
More Reeds & Lillys in the water. A must have for any swamp house. Add some grass planes at the transition of the path-lawn. This will not only disguise the transition, but will also add focus, and help to guide the eye/player.
Some view-aligned planes for corona's coming off the lanterns.
Sectaurs has a good point about light emanating from the windows. I took that a step further and cracked the wood in the door to make for more dramatic volumetrics.
Sorry its so messy, but I like the look of this, and think you can take it all the way.
I'd also seriously consider revising the whole model in terms of the design of the house and cliff. At the moment, it's immeasurably boring. Perfectly straight cliff; lumpy, formless house; seemingly no thought to the design or location of things, and the rock/cliff/thing that the house is emerging from is very boring. Doesn't look like a natural formation really. Needs some height variation at the very least, maybe some shrubbery growing on it, and some trickles of water or mini-waterfalls coming down it. It could be so much more atmospheric there, cliffs vanishing up into the mist, sort of thing (could make for very interesting camera angles too).
At the moment it's just pretty boring, to me. Did you ever see the mushroom house that Dabu did recently? Now that was a kickass design. Everything flowed together and seemed to have a purpose and design. Your environment here seems a little "thrown together" without much thought for placement or design. Spend a little more time on that before going in with the textures and lighting, I'd say.
MoP