BSP Like Lighting
polycounter lvl 17
My portfolio is kinda skimpy. I have recently been playing URU Online. Myst is what inspired me to get into gaming and be an environmental artist. You couldn't tell that's what I want to do from the body of work I have up so far.
So I have concepted an 'Age'. I will model and texture the whole thing, and in the end show a fly though (that seems like a first person walk through)and moving parts/puzzles.
The problem is I want it to look like In Game Graphics (not rendered). I want to show diffuse, normal, and specular, but also preserve the lighting solution. I envision that this would make renter-time much faster, I could just shut off all the lights and they would be shown on the textures.
To the best of my knowledge I can't 'Bake' in the lights. Because I use tiling textures on some of my larger environmental pieces, as well as have multiples of the same prop (Like columns) where different lights will hit different iterations of the same, Instanced, Object.
Any solutions? I think Vertex color is the way to go, but I can't find a work flow that is helpful, can't make it stick when the lights go out.
Thank you for your help, in advance, if you know of some esoteric tutorial for this sort of thing it is appreciated.
So I have concepted an 'Age'. I will model and texture the whole thing, and in the end show a fly though (that seems like a first person walk through)and moving parts/puzzles.
The problem is I want it to look like In Game Graphics (not rendered). I want to show diffuse, normal, and specular, but also preserve the lighting solution. I envision that this would make renter-time much faster, I could just shut off all the lights and they would be shown on the textures.
To the best of my knowledge I can't 'Bake' in the lights. Because I use tiling textures on some of my larger environmental pieces, as well as have multiples of the same prop (Like columns) where different lights will hit different iterations of the same, Instanced, Object.
Any solutions? I think Vertex color is the way to go, but I can't find a work flow that is helpful, can't make it stick when the lights go out.
Thank you for your help, in advance, if you know of some esoteric tutorial for this sort of thing it is appreciated.
Replies
in 3dsmax, use a new unwrap uvw modifier and change the map channel to 2. create a new set of uvs that don't have any overlapping or tiling. create a lightmap using render to texture and tell it to use map channel 2. when you want to apply the texture to a model, make sure the material has its map channel set to 2 and it will use your new uv set.
Laying out a level is best done in-game, you learn so many things that way. Totally worth your time if you want to do enviro art. Actually I'd say it's essential.
Unless you want to be an enviro artist for cinematics. Totally different ball of wax. If so, (and if using Max) look into Reference copies instead of Instances... a Reference is an Instance when copied, and on top of the Instance base you can add its own unique modifiers (like UV2 lightmap unwraps).
However I took at look at your work, and was amazed. I don't want to degrade your style but it is VERY Myst like, and similar to what I am shooting for.
Rendering this as a MOV will allow people to scrub through it at enjoy the details.
Thank you all.
If you don't impress them with a few very highly detailed stills, then don't expect anyone to download your demo real. Its either going to take too long for anyone to care, or too low res to look good.
If you seriously want to be an environment artist, build a handful of environments with some badass textures, render it in your software package of choice, and go from there.
If you are serious about looking for work, look at the portfolio of some of the better environment artists out there, and realize that unless your portfolio looks as good as what they have or better, or looks as good as environments in games RIGHT NOW or better, you are going to be hard pressed to get picked up but a current-gen studio.
And no art director has time to sit around downloading .mov demo reels all day and scrub through giving you a detailed crit. You either got it or you don't, and they will make that decision in seconds.
However, I was not talking about people giving me a job scrubbing through it. I was mores talking about Myst fans who stumble across my site.
I intend to have a video fly through AND some sexy stills.
Thank you again, your portfolio is a great example of what to aspire to as well.
((On your shack it says you have an AO sheet. How do you use this? I now what AO is, but don't you use this on your diffuse map as a multiply for shadows/dirt? How do you employ it when it has it's own sheet?))