Mythic Tomb - Michael R.

mikecool41

www.michaelremy.com

Thanks for checking out my post because this is my first time posting anything on a forum ever.

Well recently I applied at EA Mythic but the portfolio I submitted lacked fantasy genre art. So I decided to make a Tomb from Mythic's Warhammer game to show my versatility, and I wanted to get some creative criticism on it. Can you guys help me out?

I'm trying to keep it under 3,000 triangles and right now the model is currently at 2,705, but I still need to model the door trim and knob, and make the roof look staggered from the tiles. I'm also gonna make some planes for the Ivy.

For the texture's I plan on using four 512 x 512.(Brick, Roof and Rocks, Ivy, and Details) All will be hand painted in photoshop.

This is where I'm at right now, what do you guys think so far?

The Umbrella Man

So far you have stuck pretty close to the concept which is good, but the brick texture is way too clean and is not tiling too well along the edges, you might want to look at that. Aside from that the modeling looks pretty good.

Also it looks like you mirrored the door in the flaty, if you plan on modeling the door knobs that fine, but not so much if you plan on texturing them on, I wouldn't mirror that if I were you.

Mansir

Pretty cool looking so far!

First off, put some tongues in them thar gargoyles! Nothing says warhammer like a good tongue..

Second, with the skulls in the alcoves, the ones in the back that are receded, I think are pushed a bit too far back. It loses the illusion of being a pile. Bring that puppy out a little more (not so dark) , and hopefully it'll look a little better.

Also, I like the skulls you modeled and plopped atop for a little more random look.

Cubik

You are now in a struggle to death against Birdmans tomb:
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=198587&an=0&page=0#Post198587

First thing I would do is look over your polydistribution and redistribute some of them to match the style of the concept better. Take another look at the concept, much of what makes this Warhammer for me (from the limited knowledge I have of it) is the lack of perfectly straight angles and the general random organic feel to the building.

What I would do is the following:
-Redo the spikes on the roof using alpha planes, should save you a couple of hundred tris.
-Remove the ears on the gargoyles on the walls, and maybe take out a segment from inside their mouths.
-Do the sitting gargoyles wings with alphas instead of tris, should save you a bit. Also try to shave some tris of the gargoyles themselves, there seems to be a lot tris in there that are conveing detail that you can do with shadow and details in the texture.
-I like the skulls poking out of the piles, but you are losing a lot of tris there for such a small detail, either consider optimizing them or removing them all together.

So where to put this sudden treasurehorde of tris to use? I would say that the most critical areas are the rooftiles (which I see that you are already aware of) and the stone makeing up the foundation. There is some awesome chunky organic curves going on here that you really need to capture in your model. Another area which is slightly less important (but it would looks nice on your model) is the profile of the stone blocks in the corners of building, the blocks slight shift in height, position and size to each other gives the building a much more organic look.


Right, on to the textures.

-One thing that suprises me it that neither you or Birdman has stuck to the colours in the concept, you have used a flat grey colour while the concepts base colours clearly are grey, white, purple and green. I really don't know why you have done this.

-I would begin with your base rock texture. Make it more irregular (of course without introducing too much tiling), put some of the height differences into the texture with suble shadows from the blocks overshadowing eachother. Also try to make the highlights running along the edges of a few of the blocks a bit thicker. I would remove the highlight (or scratch) line running along the bottom of each block, it just looks confusing Look at the concept. Your texture is too perfect and too rigid with almost perfect straight lines everywhere.

-I really, really, wish that you are allowed to use a second UV layer to put in all the suble grime, moss, shadow, rot and general wear and tear that is covering this tomb. But failing that, you could leave some space on one of your texture maps, cut in some extra tris and bake whatever areas of the model that you chose with some local detail such as moss. You can also use this to break up tiling in your base textures, just bake an area and push the highlight and shadow there to get some random looking parts.

-Try to incorporate what is written in the concept:
Rust on the iron spikes stains adjacent roof parts.
Grime everywhere
Dying ivy
Moss in the cracks

It's probably written there for clarfication and/or suggestions from the AD, so I would definatly use it in your textures.

Ok, this is it for now, lets us see some progress .

mikecool41

Thanks for the help Umbrella Man, Mansir, and Cubik. I'm currently working on the model right now, and I'm gonna apply a lot of what you guys suggested into this piece.

I've been working on the tomb since I posted it, so some suggestions have been met. The door knob is a separate object, and the gargoyles do have tongues now. Lol

Cubik, thanks for the poly redistribute tip. I plan on making a lot of those changes to save some tris for that roof and foundation like you said. With the shadows I believe Mythic renders them in there game engine. As for the textures I'm definitely gonna add more color to the brick, and add the rust, grime, moss, and dying ivy in there too.

mikecool41

The finally product.