6 Months of Work (RTS Textures)
polycounter lvl 18
Note: Can skip my needless rambling, pics below.
Its been a while since I've had anything to post up online for critique, however in the past 6 months I've probably done more game-art than I had in the entire 6 years prior.
Last spring I decided to talk my friend into having me create the mod 'MIDEAST CRISIS 2' for him, with my motivation being that it would force me to do a LOT of texturing, and game design (hopefully resulting in improvement). Now that we're close to release, I have to say that its helped me improve far more than I had hoped. I am still surprised that he let me take the original MEC, a fairly straightforward modern Israel vs Syria mod...and turn it into this part C&C:Generals 2, part neo-Crusade epic.
Art-wise, we've had 3-4 modelers submitting models, which I unwrap (or at least heavily update) and then texture*. I believe the final count is somewhere around 100 models, with 80 of them done (modeled/textured).
Most were textured at 512x512 (a few at 1024x512), then scaled down.
Since this is for Command and Conquer 3, we use spec and normal maps. The spec maps are typically red/black (with yellow, green and blue colors used for specific shaders). The normal maps are just made with the nvidia heightmap photoshop plugin.
On average, they've taken me 2-4 hours to unwrap and another 4-8 hours to texture. (it used to take me 12+ hours a texture, but over the course of the project I've managed to improve my speed).
I typically just use a hard-round brush, set with wet edges. I very rarely use any other brush, or stock textures.
The style goal was halfway between Dawn of War and Company of Heroes (imo, Relic makes the best RTS textures, by far).
The textures were also made with the map post effects in mind, which desaturate colors by roughly 50%.
The models below were done by team members, not myself (with the exception of the F15 and Oil Derrick, which I heavily modified).
Here are a few of my personal favorites (in order of oldest to newest);
ingame screenshot (note: have a smoothing issue on the rear wings)
F15: I actually textured this twice, once with a white scheme which didn't work at all...so a few months later I overhauled it.
ingame screenshot
MCBurger Kong: Yea, the hebrew is wrong...its on my todo list to fix.
ingame screenshot
Ford 021c: My favorite thing done so far for the project. This is also the first unit which I painted in the interior behind the windows, which ingame works really well at faking depth.
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
News Van: I actually really don't like the van's texture that much, but ingame the model + normal map really seem to compensate. The concept is actually adapted from a garbage truck in the 'Ghost in the Shell' manga.
ingame screenshot
Technical: Not shown, flamethrower, rocket pod and side-armor versions (which are in the texture sheet).
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
Medibot: The concept was from an unused design for C&C Generals.
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
The really nice thing that I've found, is that after doing so many textures (many of which made me pay a price in sleep)...I actually enjoy doing it more than before. I was worried that after doing so many I'd be put off.
More a painting technique than anything, but I try very very hard to not use black as any form of shadow...instead I try to use a darker version of the surrounding color.
I also have tried to have the units transition from one color to another, working as a gradient from the front of the vehicle to the rear. For me at least, this adds a bit more interest. Sometimes I make it just go from the top of the vehicle to the bottom.
The more reference I have for a texture (even if it is just random ideas), the better the texture ends up.
If you have any comments or suggestions on how I could improve I'd love to hear them! Please be brutal. :P
*Note: There are some units in our screenshots which were completely made (concepted/modeled/textured) by the talented spyVspy. He did the airships, drones and the bombers. You'd best know his work from the mods 'Halogen' and 'Asylum'.
Its been a while since I've had anything to post up online for critique, however in the past 6 months I've probably done more game-art than I had in the entire 6 years prior.
Last spring I decided to talk my friend into having me create the mod 'MIDEAST CRISIS 2' for him, with my motivation being that it would force me to do a LOT of texturing, and game design (hopefully resulting in improvement). Now that we're close to release, I have to say that its helped me improve far more than I had hoped. I am still surprised that he let me take the original MEC, a fairly straightforward modern Israel vs Syria mod...and turn it into this part C&C:Generals 2, part neo-Crusade epic.
Art-wise, we've had 3-4 modelers submitting models, which I unwrap (or at least heavily update) and then texture*. I believe the final count is somewhere around 100 models, with 80 of them done (modeled/textured).
Most were textured at 512x512 (a few at 1024x512), then scaled down.
Since this is for Command and Conquer 3, we use spec and normal maps. The spec maps are typically red/black (with yellow, green and blue colors used for specific shaders). The normal maps are just made with the nvidia heightmap photoshop plugin.
On average, they've taken me 2-4 hours to unwrap and another 4-8 hours to texture. (it used to take me 12+ hours a texture, but over the course of the project I've managed to improve my speed).
I typically just use a hard-round brush, set with wet edges. I very rarely use any other brush, or stock textures.
The style goal was halfway between Dawn of War and Company of Heroes (imo, Relic makes the best RTS textures, by far).
The textures were also made with the map post effects in mind, which desaturate colors by roughly 50%.
The models below were done by team members, not myself (with the exception of the F15 and Oil Derrick, which I heavily modified).
Here are a few of my personal favorites (in order of oldest to newest);
ingame screenshot (note: have a smoothing issue on the rear wings)
F15: I actually textured this twice, once with a white scheme which didn't work at all...so a few months later I overhauled it.
ingame screenshot
MCBurger Kong: Yea, the hebrew is wrong...its on my todo list to fix.
ingame screenshot
Ford 021c: My favorite thing done so far for the project. This is also the first unit which I painted in the interior behind the windows, which ingame works really well at faking depth.
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
News Van: I actually really don't like the van's texture that much, but ingame the model + normal map really seem to compensate. The concept is actually adapted from a garbage truck in the 'Ghost in the Shell' manga.
ingame screenshot
Technical: Not shown, flamethrower, rocket pod and side-armor versions (which are in the texture sheet).
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
Medibot: The concept was from an unused design for C&C Generals.
ingame screenshot
ingame screenshot
The really nice thing that I've found, is that after doing so many textures (many of which made me pay a price in sleep)...I actually enjoy doing it more than before. I was worried that after doing so many I'd be put off.
More a painting technique than anything, but I try very very hard to not use black as any form of shadow...instead I try to use a darker version of the surrounding color.
I also have tried to have the units transition from one color to another, working as a gradient from the front of the vehicle to the rear. For me at least, this adds a bit more interest. Sometimes I make it just go from the top of the vehicle to the bottom.
The more reference I have for a texture (even if it is just random ideas), the better the texture ends up.
If you have any comments or suggestions on how I could improve I'd love to hear them! Please be brutal. :P
*Note: There are some units in our screenshots which were completely made (concepted/modeled/textured) by the talented spyVspy. He did the airships, drones and the bombers. You'd best know his work from the mods 'Halogen' and 'Asylum'.
Replies
keep up!
p.s.
when is possible to download some demo or stuff?
Alex
- BoBo
Are they playable just yet?
dave
I just find Ford 021c looking strange. I guess it is because it's overall shape is kinda old-fashioned (reminds me about Fiat of 60ies-70ies ), but it has futuristic front/rear...stuff and wheels.
But that is just my impression. Overall it's a cool stuff u did!
Some of it is playable, we hope to have a beta started sometime in January (I'm taking a week or two off to play through some of the games I ignored this past fall).
@Matroskin,
You're in good company...I am pretty sure that I am the only person on the planet who likes that concept vehicle's design (yes its real). :P
It does kind of sum up the mod's overall art direction though. Yes its in the future, but at first glance it could easily be mistaken to be from even just a few decades ago.
The style goal was halfway between Dawn of War and Company of Heroes (imo, Relic makes the best RTS textures, by far).
[/ QUOTE ]
For me and the rest of the Relic team, I say:
Thanks!
I worked on both Company of Heroes (Environment objects) and on CoH: Opposing Fronts (Vehicles). Thanks a lot for the kind words!
That's some really great work you have there. As for the texture sizes, there's nothing wrong with the sizes you're using. For CoH, we used 1024s for many of the vehicles, and 512s for the smaller ones...
CoH:Opposing Fronts vehicles
@Clockwork, Thanks! It really made my day reading your reply.
(ok yea that and...as cool as the Sherman/Tiger/Me262 are...the 3rd time you are looking at making them...it gets old)
@katana, You can download the worldbuilder and mod SDK at the official cnc3 site. It isn't nearly as user friendly as Unreal editing, but if you read the documentation it isn't that hard to get ahold of.
About the civilian objects, no that stuff really isn't done that often...although we did it for 2 reasons. 1) players can actually capture and use them for different roles and 2) in the past, I've always had a huge wishlist of civilian objects to make for mods...but its always pushed off. For MEC2 we made them first.
This texture really didn't want to look nice. Most of the textures shown are ones that paint themselves, that I can sit down and bang out exactly as I envision them. The Hind didn't do that, infact after about a day of work...I painted over almost all of what I did and started over. I ended up just doing grey edges, and deep black for a few spots....and the normal/spec map carried it through.
For some reason, I have this weird obession with painting things construction-equipment yellow. Its just really fun to do. It didn't hurt to have a great model and concept to work off of either.
[ingame screenshot]
The render, and the ingame shot are slightly different versions...the newer one having the Magino Oil logo on the side. That'll actually be changed as well, since a graphic artist friend has been doing up some great fake-company logo's to use...including a new one for this.
On the texture itself, the red-orange, navy blue and white color was taken from something else that I saw...but I can't remember what it was. As I was texturing it, I couldn't remember what it was I was trying to mimic...and still don't. If you have an idea, please enlighten me since it still bothers me.
[concept art]
[ingame screenshot]
This is one of only a couple units which I concepted, and thus I just stayed faithful to it. It was fun since it was really quick to do, and let me do this grungy metal texture that I havn't been able to do on much else lately.
[concept art]
[ingame screenshot]
I actually really dislike this texture, and honestly if we didn't have so much else that needed done (and little time to do it)...I'd redo it. Luckily, ingame it looks quite well (due to the normal/spec maps doing the heavy lifting). My problem with the texture is the walls...I really did it with little reference, and thus it turned out very fake looking. Same goes for the roof, which in an RTS is the bane of my existance. Its the area of an object that is seen the most....yet also has the least reference photo's.
The concept was altered slightly, so the domes were more Arab looking...although it still is very much a work of fiction. It looks good ingame though, and is a nice reference to the C&C Generals GLA command center.
Right now the bulk of the art left is buildings, which should be interesting (tents and such for the IDF, then big concrete ones for the UN).
Anyway, please post any areas that you think could use improvement! In all honesty, my ideal reply to read would be one that tore my stuff to shreds (constructively).
MIDEAST CRISIS 2, a Command and Conquer 3 Total Conversion
Onto the pics;
IDF Merkava. Modeled by Thumper. This tank is actually the 2nd texture I did for MEC2 and was first completed a year ago, with several repaints since then. Its still one of my favorite textures (although I am thinking of redoing the normal map...it looks a bit odd at places ingame). Now some more on the making of it...the design of our Merkava is based mostly on Makoto Kobyashi's "future wars" Merkava, mixed with elements of the real version. This texture also was done prior to me realizing that I could just use a 512x256 texture....instead of having to have 2 256's. Another thing that I liked about this, was that instead of using a darker brown, or black for the shading...I used a dark green.
The Dome of the Rock (used on our Temple Mount map). Modeled by Silver Mobius. Again, was done prior to realizing I could just have 1 non-square texture. This was also done fairly early on in development, used probably the most phototexturing of any model in the mod (for the sides). The golden dome part was really fun to paint. I threw in the quick crow texture I did as well, since they circle the dome (and explode into clouds of red when shot down).
T-90, modeled by...Thumper (I think). This is actually a mixture of the T90 and past T-# tanks, meant to be your generic Russian exported mbt. The texture was originally intended to reuse much of the MEC1 T-72 texture, although I ended up repainting it all (the normals took some time). My favorite part of the final T90 texture has to be near the rear of the tank, where it has the kinda rusted overlay...that seemed to work real well.
Production Building, modeled by HKH. This was a recent addition to the mod, needed a tiny, grungy sort of production building to be placed near factories. I tend to usually do cleaner, more cartoony looking textures...so this was a nice stretch.
[ingame screenshot]
IDF Command Center, modeled by HKH, based on a really great concept by Michal Kus. I posted this one, mainly because I really like how it turned out and how it looks ingame. Admittedly, I did halfass the wall cloth texture parts...since those aren't really seen much ingame.
I'm somewhere around 80 textures or so done now for MEC2 (not counting damage states, spec mapping, etc.) and definitely have seen a huge improvement in both quality an speed. I should really change this topic's title to be..."a year's worth..." now though... :P
Awesome work, very inspirational!
Inspirational work man, keep it up... and PLEASE keep us updated.
There isn't a ton of new stuff to show, since for the past half year or so the majority of work done is doing unsexy things like; unit icons, damage states, map objects, UI art, etc. (I also do most of the team's management/game design)
Note: Models were done by MEC2 staff (although I do usually tweak them a bit prior to texturing). All uvmaps/textures were done by myself.
The first set of things are some of the unit icons, which instead of doing the method EA used for CNC3/RA3's icons (just taking viewport screens of units)...I decided to do full paintovers of all the units/buildings. In doing this I realized why EA did it the other way...they could knock out most of their icons in a few days, while it took me over a week to do ours. (and we had much less to do)
[finished ingame screenshot]
Some infantry, which were really fun to do...but I went overboard on the texture detail (they are really small ingame).
This is kind of interesting...for MEC1 I did the Humvee texture, and for a map unit we brought it back. The model was modified and I did a quick repaint of the texture. It definitely shows a lot of what I've learned in the 3-4 years since MEC1 (the biggest thing is the improved use of color).
Old texture is on top, updated is on bottom.
The final thing to show now is a unit that went through 3 pretty major iterations. Initially the idea was for the IDF to have an upgraded Apache as their helicopter...however it didn't fit with the more scifi themed IDF so it was cut and replaced with the 'Gideon' (which yes, is a pretty blatant 'Ghost in the Shell' rip).
Each of the texture iterations has a gap of about 6 months, looking at it now...the thing that stands out between the first and last iteration is how much quicker I did the Gideon texture. I know on the first Apache I had trouble figuring out exactly what I wanted...and had a oddly painted mess that looked more like a bad toy than an an Apache. With the first revision of the texture I locked the style in place...which I used for the final.
That's it for this update, as usual...comments/critiques are very welcome, especially any suggestions as to what areas of my texturing/uvmapping could use improvement.
I actually prefered your older jeep texture to your new one. Your new one (although added some colours) really looks muddy compared to some of the nice sharp edges on your older texture.
I think if anything, maybe tighten up your painting a bit more as time goes on, obviously you have the skill (i've bookmakred this thread so long ago... big inspiration) but if you get those nice sharp details down, nothing will stand in your way.
Great to see all this come together man, you must feel proud man, and you should!
It's good to see you're still at it. Your stuff was good back then, and it's even better now.
keep em comming:D they friggin rule