Enviornment with a Wood Fence

Cody

UPDATE:


Just getting started, but thought I'd see if anyone had some pointers. Same texture on all the planks, just moved the uvs around for each on the texture I painted. Each plank is a four sided box, if you are wondering.

EmAr

Some more color variation among individual planks would be nice. The texture could use some more detail like cutter blade marks and some smaller stuff like the ones you see here etc. Also if this is an environment piece to be used in a game, building in a modular way would make building levels easier: Like building three types of plank groups named 1,2,3 and placing them in a randomly order like 1,1,2,3,1,3,1,2... so they'll look random but consist of only 3 models. Finally, the pictures are a bit blurry. Direct screenshots from the 3d application would do the job.

Cody

I realized the scene this is going to be in is more run down, old and weathered. So I changed the texture to fit.

oobersli

any reason your trying to paint the wood texture and not just use photo ref?

Cody

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any reason your trying to paint the wood texture and not just use photo ref?

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I don't know, don't game studios want you to be able to paint your own textures?

Armanguy

I think painting your own textures is good for practice but for level artists do not really need to paint that much of there own textures if you think about it. one of the sites i use all the timre for my photosourced textures is this one right here check it out.

http://mayang.com/textures/

Cody

sweet. thanks man.

Cody

OK, so here is the scene I've been working on to go with that fence. I am still planning on putting more variation in that fence, and the trunk of the tree is a placeholder.









This is the texture I used for the tree.

Ott

#1. Stop hand painting your textures. Unless you are specifically working at a studio that requires it depending on art style, the majority of your time will be photo-sourcing.

#2. Instead of making 1 single board texture, make a 1024x1024 or a 512x1024 texture and have something like 5 or 6 different board lengths on it. This way you can vary the boards up considerably. Just run several boards horizontally and re-align the UV's accordingly.

#3. Variation is good - don't be afraid to do more with the wood planks than just squares. Take some corners and nicks out of the wood as well.

#4. Float geometry - Don't make everything asshole / water tight unless your employer specifically asks for it. You will model much faster floating geometry and will spend less time making sure everything is perfectly attached. Engines nowadays are requiring air-tight geometry less and less.

#5. Chamfer your building. Step away from "Fakey-3d" and move away from boxes and squares. Use chamfers, rounded edges, small details, piping, wires, dirt, debris, etc. Look at a reference of your building (or a building like it) and look at all the small details. Go ahead and add those in.

#6. Your wire fence / alpha planes needs work. If you can show me a picture of a real life fence that looks like that, i'll believe it. Otherwise, give it more character. Vary the holes up a little...change the color closer to real life. I understand why you did it, people use alpha fence all the time, but they are MUCH more intricate than a box and a plane. Give it some character.

#7. Your tree isn't horrible, and foliage is one of the tougher things to model out there. But look at a real life tree and look at how the branches move and gnarl. Same goes for the roots. Try to match that silhouette and give the main tree trunk more depth. Again, use photo-sourcing for the wood and not something you hand painted.

Keep at it!

Jeremy Wright

I really like the way the wooden fence looks, but the chainlink fence is all wrong. If you really just stapled a fence like that to posts that far apart it would sag like a bitch. Google chain link fence and you'll see that they usually have a top support metal tube.

Sage

I suggest you read the tutorials on this site. Enjoy.

http://www.cgtextures.com/

Alex

Flewda

http://www.3dpowers.net/refs/metal_fence_chain.jpg

The link is a large picture of a fence I took a few months ago. I have donated to www.cgtextures.com actually, (it's in line to go up). But it might be of some help for you right now before it gets uploaded. Grab as large of a section as you can off of the image, make it tile a few times onto a 512x512 sized texture (that way you have several links within the 512x512, to add variation, like dirt, and rust).

Hopefully it will help. Anyone is free to use it however they wish. I will take the image down off my site once it is uploaded on CGTextures.com but I'll let you know where it is on cgtextures.

Regards,

Josh

Cody

OK, went a different direction with the building with critiques in mind. Obviously the windows and window frames, and door aren't textured yet. Had a really hard time getting the bricks to match up. Also, Re-worked the tree that will be in the scene.

-DN-

I guess the thing that bugs me the most is the general scale of objects. Even if you put very believable textures on those pieces atm I still wouldnt get a sense of reality because they are so far off in scale. If you make a box thats roughly the proportions of an adult human and move it around the scene, does it feel like the scene around him make sense?

I have seen very tall wire fences at prisons and such, I have never seen a three story tall wooden fence like yours. If the wooden fence is proper scale then that means your wire fence would go up to about my knee if that.

stick a prop humanoid in the scene, scale it to match the buildings doorway and ground (steps, curbs etc) then rescale all the other scene object to fit the humanoid.

This may even help you get a better idea on how much UV space your objects will be taking up in relation to how much screen space the viewer will be see'n.

hopefuly fixing the scaling wont make you backtrack to much.

Cody

Here is a screen grab with bipeds for scale. The biped is 6 feet tall. Im pretty sure everything is scaled correctly, I think just the angle was throwing you off. Thanks for crit though, now that I think about it, I might change the wood fence from 8 feet to 6 feet. (I work in feet/inches.) I'm going to have to put this project on hold for a while because I've joined a team making an rts game for the 360. It's gonna be fun!

Jeremy Wright

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Im pretty sure everything is scaled correctly...

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nah, but that's something that can easily be fixed. You're chainlink fence is to short, your wood fence is to tall.
I'll repeat the points I made earlier about the chain-link fence. The stiffness of the chainlink contrasts the worn down look of the woodenfence. Chainlink would sag and buckle over that distance without a toprail, so it looks unrealistic. If it's meant to be newly installed chainlink, why would they take the time to do that and not fix up the adjacent wooden fence? Do what you want, but I think you need to take another look at some fence references.

When you get time take a look at this: chain link fence installation

pliang

Hmmm, I'd definitely change the wooden fence, plus that size will prolly make your wood texture grow tremendously overscale and it will not look good.

Also your chain link fence is now too low, why bother building a fence that short if the guy can just jump/fall over?

Lots of foundation to change.

Ape.of.Gods

Depending on the engine, I'd be really concerned with how that tree will handle lighting. Yeah I saw that tutorial too and tried it and let me say if anyone has done the same thing in Unreal 3 I need your help on how you got it to light properly without a billion lights, lol.

Rhinokey

photosourcing is important, but also is being able to paint, i would work on both equaly, i would never advise a artist to stop handpainting.

when you do photosource, you should rarely use a photo without at least working over it in photoshop to make it fit what you need. if you just find a photo and slap it on, you are leting what photos are handy determine the look of your art. you should make the photos match what you want. not the other way around.