Mysterious Underground Facility

3DZeffer

Just finished this scene, here. It took 1 week, modeled in max.

Any advice or crits would be welcome, I'm calling it finished for now, but I'll use all the advice I can get before starting my next scene.

This is just a scene I came up with to try beefing up my portfolio (Because I'd really like a job! =D)

Anyway, this is my first work posted on this forum, too, so here goes!

PixelGoat

I like! But that fog or whatever it is on the ground looks a bit weird...maybe its not dense enough or something, it looks spotty atm.

cholden

The first thing I noticed is the concept itself is everything is a box. The ground is a box, the building is a box sitting on a box, the bridge is a box and the cave itself is probably an inverted box. I'm reminded of the Cardboard Box Factory in The Simpsons. The commentary explained how they want it to be boring by design, and thus every shape was designed as a box. If this was your intensions, then you nailed it. Otherwise, you might want to take these assets and put them towards a more interesting concept.

The cave walls are round rocks stuck on what appears to be a flat plain. While the rocks themselves appear to stick out, it has no depth. It actually looks like a very large cobblestone street as opposed to a cave wall. Some serious big shapes, cracks and depth is what it needs. Additionally, there's those double pipe to box things on the wall CLEARLY clipping through the rocks.

No shadows. Lots of dark shading, but nothing is casting a shadow on anything. This makes the crates appear to float, same with the handrails, etc. Speaking of the railing, why not have it on the bridge? Seems that'd be a specific place where people would want it.

I'm also not seeing an sense of scale. Not sure what to tell you there. Maybe some more human sized things that people would walk up to and interact with.

EDIT: btw, I hope I didn't come off too harsh. Overall, it actually looks ok. My aim was to say "hey, this is this guy's portfolio piece, make it 'wow' the audience and remember this guy."

3DZeffer

Nah, a crit is never too harsh. I really don't have any solid experience with building large environments behind me, this was my first real scene, so a lot of stuff I just didn't know how to do well enough. So after reading, I know -what- to do, could you offer some advice as to how you'd do it? Like, how would you have built the wall? And how would you hide the pipes clipping/ect?

Thanks for being harsh/honest, its what I need!

cholden

Take a look at the GoW cave level if you haven't already. This was by far one of the best looking cave levels I'd ever seen in a game. Here's a screenshot, but it doesn't really do the scene much justice. Nevertheless, there's a huge, factory-esque structure in it. You may notice when you play the game how it's constantly a monolithic centerpiece that draws the eye.
http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/744/744356/gears-of-war-20061107034946815-000.jpg

Here's another example, not really the best, but quick I found it quick. Again, you'll notice it's a large, omnious structure centerpiece. with big shapes, colorful lighting and atmosphere to define everything.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=132&t=552697

The walls around both are unimportant because of the scene composition. I'd keep the surrounding walls simple and dark with a large cliff/rock texture on them. To hide the clipping, either pull them off the walls or tediously align each section so it does not clip (they are modular in design, this shouldn't be a problem).

With that in mind, I REALLY crapped out this concept (more of a layout design) just to give an idea of how I'd rebuild the same scene. As far as the cave walls itself, I'd consider them far off to make the lake itself grand, tall and hidden by lighting and hazy green nastiness. Big, multitiered, huge exhaust pipes polluting the scene, good times.
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/7962/crapfactorypk2.jpg

Ryno

The objects need to be anchored to the environment a bit more. For instance, the rusty handrail is placed on the concrete bricks, but there is no rusty water runoff that stains the concrete? Pretty much any time one surface type meets another, there will be some type of transition piece in addition to staining from water runoff, etc.

In addition to that, the specular values for everything looks pretty much the same. I'm guessing that you're working on spec maps? This would really make things pop.

It looks like a good start. Ambient occlusion/grime pass as well as a spec maps would really take this along way.

HonkyPunch

Reminds me of a ps1 cinematic
Nice though

Octopus

One thing that I have noticed is that your image is appearing really flat. Maybe concentrate on a focal point of interest and adjust accordingly. More contrast and different specular highlights on your various objects will add alot.

Ryno

Need to tweak or change the rocks on the wall, too. Bit too round and evenly spaced. A craggier look would be nice.