Enviroment Practice - Jason Lavoie

JasonLavoie

Hey all I haven't post in awhile, but I thought I could get the best feedback/ crits from here to strengthen my enviroment/ asset work skills.

I've been told countless times that it's best to focus more on environments when you're first starting to look for a job in the industry (I still have 3 years before job looking official starts) but I really want to get a head start.



Viewport Grab



I made this earlier today, and I actually really really enjoyed it. At this point I'm calling it done, but I want to do know what aspects I need to improve on. I haven't really touched enviroment work yet, so any and all crits will help a lot.

Thanks again all

joe gracey

I like it, but depending on what its going in to, you might want to put a little more grunge on it. Looks good though.

Joao Sapiro

looks ok , but why did you paint lightning on the metal panels on top in the diffuse texture ? it is making it look weird , same goes to the specular, the specular could be colored and you should study specular maps a bit more, since they make everything pop Also an AO bake wouldnt be bad eheh.

keep t up !

JasonLavoie

[ QUOTE ]
looks ok , but why did you paint lightning on the metal panels on top in the diffuse texture ? it is making it look weird , same goes to the specular, the specular could be colored and you should study specular maps a bit more, since they make everything pop Also an AO bake wouldnt be bad eheh.

keep t up !

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you mean paint on top (lighting) ?

Also with spec maps, I'm still not completely sure how they work (as of how colour affects spec maps) And AO = Light map right? I did render one off then... unless its something completely different.

Thanks for the crits.

vahl

yeah you have lighting information on the diffuse which 99% of the time is a big no-no, the last percent being the ambocc and the selfillum stuff, all your lighting info is carried ingame by your normalmap and specular, no need to paint highlights on the diffuse, avoid too saturated colors aswell on that since that too will be handled by your lighting and you may lose information if the diffuse conflicts with the normal map and spec.

Don't paint light info on the specmap either, as I said, your ingame engine will do it for you, the thing that is very useful, however is to multiply an AO map on top of your diffuse and spec to fake depth/light intensity loss due to the depth variations of the asset.

use color in your specmap, will add a lot

add a separate heightmap too to add smaller details like scratches, paint chipoffs, etc, most engine can compute an heightmap on top of a normal map so that will not take extra ressources ingame but the cool thing is that you can give a custom value to the heightmap, thus make the details stronger or not on the fly without affecting the source normalmap.

your panel doesn't tile !! that's a huge issue too, that tube is up on one side, down on the other, this tube is also worth extra polies to make it pop out, such a big thing, if rendered flat looks bad, I'd even say map it straight, on a side of your texture instead of on the top of your panel, that will let you easily make variations of panels with different looking/cut tubes, seems like nothing but that can add a lot.

the glow map can be half the size too, no need to waste ressources for something that looks better blurred anyways

AO is not a light map though, it's more like a dirt map or a global illumination bake from your high to your low, makes the whole texturing process a bit easier and adds a lot of information, can be used to fake global illumination too (that's the 1 percent left from the don't paint light on your diffuse thing)

hope that helps

NeoShroomish

Some engines don't have the option for coloured spec maps though (I'm looking at you VALVe) ;D

Good stuff there, just get rid of the painted lighting

JasonLavoie

Ha ha, whoops I've never imported anything into an engine before, and setting up lighting is beyond me at this point (In engines anyway). Maybe I should pick up Roboblitz and import some stuff into there and try it out.

As for colour on spec maps, I still don't know how it affects the overall spec, can someone please help me on that.

I did render out an AO map (the diffuse shows it the best i think) and just overlayed on top of the diffuse to help add more depth.

So the BIG NO NO is don't paint lights on diffuse, spec etc. and let the engine handle the lighting. Could I get the same affect if I setup lighting in 3d Max (tuts)?

Vahl, if I were to use Crazybump, could I render out a Height Map? And are Height maps because different from say a Displacement/ Normal map?

As for making stuff tileable, again... its all new to me so I have to figure that out as well. Like I said, I'm crazy new to this enviroment stuff.