nba street v3 environments ps2

malcolm

I've been meaning to post this junk for quite a while so here it is. These are some of the environments I did for nba street v3 on the ps2, the courts are all real places in America and we have one court from the UK. Photographs of the courts were supplied and we tried to model them as authentic as possible, sometimes right down to the particular trash that was there on the day of the photoshoot.

Sean McBride

Awesome stuff! Really love that last shot.

poopinmymouth

Wow! I don't normally get jazzed about environment stuff but this is great! Very nice feel, especially the last two.

Daz

Excellent stuff as usual malcolm. The only thing that stands out to me is the green for the trees looks a bit, well, green But really nice stuff. You've done a lot with not a lot of resources by the looks of things. The top one is Brighton, right?! What's up with the sky? Or is that because it's England? ;-p

malcolm

Thanks everyone for the nice feedback. Daz, the trees are actually supposed to be super green on that court, we tried to stylize the lighting and colour correction like a rap video would, or car commercial or csi miami, you may notice we even got prince of persia bloom and vignette around the screen to make it look like it is filmed through a handy cam. And yes the first one is brighton beach in the UK, the guys at EA UK were nice enough to go there and take some reference shots. We went with a gradient skybox on all the courts to save texture space and put it into the foreground, as well it makes the stylization a bit better and really pops the environment.

Daz

"were nice enough to go there and take some reference shots. "

meh, it's only 40 odd miles down the road, they probably welcomed the time off work

malcolm

I think they took the photos long before the court made it to the modeling list. Brighton is a really interesting environment, when we saw the ref we had to model it.

Daz

Brighton is a great town. I miss the place. Anyway, great work. You must have a really impressive and varied portfolio by now. There's one thing that can be said for working for EA. You're guaranteed to be shipping a lot of games ;-)

El_PIG

Really great stuff! The lighting and realism are fantastic. What was your poly limit for these levels just out of curiosity? This is some nice stuff and PS2 quality to boot!

MoP

Excellent work - the consistency is amazing, everything fits together so well ... something I always like to see
Keep it up!

DarthRevanII

PHOTOSOURCE!!! :P

Really great stuff, its almost impossible to see that they are models, and that its not real :P.
I only have two crits

#1, on the first environ, i dont like how you have the "key" to be a stretched Trapezoid...it should be a rectangle...creativity is cool, and i like how it looks, but it sorta edits how the game is suppose to be played. I mean yea its barely a change, but still

#2 The very last environ, its awesome, actually, its perfect. However your lighting is completely wrong. My highschool's (that i just graduated from, w00t!) gym had a total of about 8-12 lights in their gym. I dont know the last time u were in a gym, but they are VERY bright. The gym floor is also waxed, and that helps for reflection. The whole entire room should be light COMPLETELY, and not very specific like yours is. Also depending on what you can do, they usually give a SLIGHT greenish/yellowish hue to everything. But yea, i think the lighting should be a LOT brighter and more extensive.



Really great stuff though bro! looks sooo real

malcolm

El_PIG, the polygon count was between 15000-20000 depending on the court and the texture budget was 1.2 meg of 8bit or 4 bit textures. The Brighton court was running at 90fps though even with all the players running around.

Mop, thank you!

DarthRevanII, you are correct all the lighting is wrong on all the courts, the lighting is meant to be artistic not realistic, we spent a lot of time creating a mood for each court, if we just tried to emulate real life lighting we would lose the mood and colourful lighting that makes them look nice.

Joshua Stubbles

I think they all look amazing, malcolm. The drastic lighting certainly highlights the mood of each level. Only high res textures could make it look any better. Great stuff

X-Convict

Badass work, good stuff!

DarthRevanII

Good point Malcom...a realistic lighting would be kinda gay looking...kinda forgot this was for a game, haha. Still looks awesome bro...i swear its so realistic

Jeff Parrott

Dang, I need to get on more. Great stuff malcolm. Really like the levels in the game. They all came out pretty pimp especially with the limitations. Can't wait to start seeing next gen pimps in a few months.

Whargoul

You suck, get back to work. Do I have to beat you with the beating stick again?

malcolm

And here are some of the buildings I did for our court creator feature. You could interchange the buildings and other assets when you were building your court. I did the models and textures on these and my friend Mike lit them. There is a night version too which my friend Winston lit. And if you have a keen eye you may recognize a few of the photos used to make these textures, did anyone else notice the entire half life2 texture library was taken directly from Marlin Studios texture cd? I have that one at home it's great unfortunately as we go higher res with textures common texture libraries become more and more noticeable. I think one of my buildings can actually be seen in half life2 and gta san andreas, ha! I like my version the best though.

Kyle

i always enjoyed the courts in all the NBA Streets for PS2, but i just adore the amount of detail in NBA Street 3. Awsome job Malcolm =D

Enix

Not a big basketball fan, but damn dude, this is some nice stuff . I love the indoor court, very awsome .

gauss

i like basketball as much as the next guy, just don't really like videogames about it...but i could honestly see playing a game like this. very evocative choice of environments that have been realized beautifully, nice job!

ironbearxl

I'm a big basketball fan and i'll whoop anyone of you foo's in some nba live 95! Btw, these are awesome screens, and I'm a big fan of the EA BIG series.

PaK

I love the night shots and the indoor gym lighting is fab too. You got it goin' on malcolm. Nice work you should be proud

-R

Mishra

[ QUOTE ]
#2 The very last environ, its awesome, actually, its perfect. However your lighting is completely wrong. My highschool's (that i just graduated from, w00t!) gym had a total of about 8-12 lights in their gym. I dont know the last time u were in a gym, but they are VERY bright. The gym floor is also waxed, and that helps for reflection. The whole entire room should be light COMPLETELY, and not very specific like yours is. Also depending on what you can do, they usually give a SLIGHT greenish/yellowish hue to everything. But yea, i think the lighting should be a LOT brighter and more extensive.

[/ QUOTE ]

i definitely agree with that, my gym's got insane lights so that there are no shadows in there, and from other gyms i have seen its pretty much the same

gauss

but would that necessarily make for better, or more interesting lighting if it was completely blown out with light? it's got an older highschool gym feeling to it, and i think that's accentuated by the lighting. yes, even old high school gyms more often than not have very good, bright lighting... but is verisimilitude really the best choice here? they've made some pretty clear stylistic choices for how the environments and the lighting is handled and i think it's for the better.

malcolm

gauss is correct, the art direction for our game was "real life only better." By better than real life I mean, we used photos of the real courts for textures and modeled the environment with authenticity but totally exaggerated the texture detail, lighting and colours, like any big movie, car commercial, or tv show. The art direction behind the game was never supposed to be photoreal, it was supposed to be better than photoreal, the lighting in that gym in real life is super boring and lacks contrast as mentioned before it is really bright in those places. Without contrast the image would have lacked its appeal, it seems to be everybody's favourite shot but I doubt it would be if I turned up the ambient lights and flattened out all the detail.