Evironment #2 new lighting attempts
polycounter lvl 11
So, after the great learning experience with lighting and mood in the last/first environment I did I decided to try to do something with a little bit more interesting lighting with it. I'm still running with the whole cave theme as I kinda like it.
What I came up with is some sort of Crystal Mines scene where we see some caves/mines with giant rough crystals punching through the rock.
In the scene I set up some secondary interest with a lift/elevator shaft off to one side and some tracks that lead the eye/player through the caves. I'm thinking of adding some mine carts on the tracks in the distance a bit but that might be too distracting.
I blocked things out and have started to texture. At this point I wanted to set up some ambient lights ala learning from the last scene and see what it would look like.
A few things I can't figure out: How to really make the crystals POP. Emissive textures in Unreal seem much more intuative than self-illumination in max. Currently I set up the ambient/fill lights as the turquois crystal lights. I would assume that my ambient comes from the crystals and my keys will come from the running lights I will put on doors and archways.
Also, I'm going to want to add some key lights on every brace, as well as the lights coming from the elevator shaft. I added a spotlight and brought it out a bit but it looks too bright and too obvious. Also the small "running" lights on each side of the door aren't anywhere near where I want them to be. Every time I turn the light on in front I get an obnoxious circle around the whole area. Using attunements and decays..
Anyways, comments and help welcome as always! I'm worrying a little less about model detail here and trying to really work on setting up some atmosphere and effect.
What I came up with is some sort of Crystal Mines scene where we see some caves/mines with giant rough crystals punching through the rock.
In the scene I set up some secondary interest with a lift/elevator shaft off to one side and some tracks that lead the eye/player through the caves. I'm thinking of adding some mine carts on the tracks in the distance a bit but that might be too distracting.
I blocked things out and have started to texture. At this point I wanted to set up some ambient lights ala learning from the last scene and see what it would look like.
A few things I can't figure out: How to really make the crystals POP. Emissive textures in Unreal seem much more intuative than self-illumination in max. Currently I set up the ambient/fill lights as the turquois crystal lights. I would assume that my ambient comes from the crystals and my keys will come from the running lights I will put on doors and archways.
Also, I'm going to want to add some key lights on every brace, as well as the lights coming from the elevator shaft. I added a spotlight and brought it out a bit but it looks too bright and too obvious. Also the small "running" lights on each side of the door aren't anywhere near where I want them to be. Every time I turn the light on in front I get an obnoxious circle around the whole area. Using attunements and decays..
Anyways, comments and help welcome as always! I'm worrying a little less about model detail here and trying to really work on setting up some atmosphere and effect.
Replies
What's the focus? The lift? Whats at the end of the tunnel?
Set up your material for the stone surface the cave is made out of. Is it dry? Is it wet? Both? Either options will yield different results when hit by lighting.
For the crystals - think about they're materials. They're glowing/emitting light so they should have some fantasy element to them. Perhaps there's a dust within them that makes them glow? IF so, you may want to consider having one close-up, in the foreground, framing the entire scene. Give the viewer the information needed to show why they're glowing and the interest will be there to explore the rest of the picture. Simply making crystal-like geometry that glows light, while it may look neat, will be just that.. neat. Go for awesome, amazing, and wonderful.
Keep setting up your scene and really focus on composition. This is YOUR scene, you're the creator. You can decide where and how these things are growing.
From there, tell a story. One II thought of right away was a mining cart that is there with a load of crushed crystal ready to be brought to the sifting & purifying machines. This will also be a good opportunity to create a focus: The cart, the tools, the glowing contents, and so on. Why is the cart left there? What happened?
You can maybe try an attempt with vertex color? or this is a next-gen background? ...
*.psd file
http://webzoom.freewebs.com/mysticallinks/AMethyst%20Geode.jpg
I'll see what I can come up with.
other than that id say a good floor texture to offset fade into the walls would be really important, the tunnel floor would be ideal for a long texture with smaller stones and debris at the sides
are you using material blends?
I'm using vertex painting to blend a sand texture and a rock texture. Both of them have blue-ish tints as this isn't exactly earth we're talking about here.
I carved out some coves into the side of the rock and then proceeded to add geode type crystals. Small and numerous.
I also got rid of the idea of having the lift. In a larger setting I think it would be good, but I want to convey the mineshaft directly. Also, one thing to think about is that generally mineshafts aren't exciting to look at so I do want to make the crystals and the glow a bit of the focus here.
Don't worry about lighting at this point, it was just a bit of a test. I'm not sure how I'm going to achieve this because I can't tell if my fill is my key. I plan on having 2 major light sources. Ones coming from man-made lights on the archways and then the glow from the crystals.
I'm purely looking for comments on composition here. I've added temp rail cars which I plan on filling with material (crystal or rock or both). And then I will be adding some rudimentary equipment. I'd like to keep this fantasy based to some degree so no crazy sci-fi drilling equipment. But some pick axes and shovels will defintely be there.
Thoughs?
Try and not depend on the normal map so much for rock geometry and see about cutting some larger, chunkier, shapes in to the rock. Also, if you're going to go with a normal map, take the bump/noise out of it and just use the deeper shapes. You may want to paint your own in zBrush/mudbox and use that rather than running a photo through a filter.
Keep it up :P
I'm liking the direction you're taking it. Some good crits so far too.
Look people, this is what polycount does best its one of the only reasons I still come here. Its not the lawls Catz thread and asshat posts I can get that anywhere. But this right here, helping people hone their skills and watching it pay off. I only wish there where more threads like these.
Is this a dug mine shaft natural cave or mix of the two? Looks like a mix to me.
The parts that are dug out of the rock, crystals wouldn't grow as it was solid rock previously. Unless the crystals grow fast, in which case you would farm them not mine for them. Doing some research on crystal growth might help inspire new ideas for detail.
For those stretches of tunnel that are bored out of solid rock and wouldn't have crystals lining their walls, I would suggest loading up a mine cart or two full of crystals. Or maybe placing piles of harvested crystals in little areas like they are waiting to be picked up, maybe next to some harvesting equipment (scene history). Or place artificial lights either tacked to the ceiling/walls connected by wires (wires go where? to generators, now you have a prop to build).
I really like the smaller crystals but it might be cool to mix the two. It kind of makes sense they would take the big and leave the smaller (for now). But I think sporadic big crystals would make for some nice touches, but only in clusters in areas that would make sense. Using this harvesting idea you can make an interesting area at the end where they bored into a pocket of crystals and some are harvested. It could give you a major light source to place at the end of a long dark bored tunnel... wink wink
Since you're doing a tunnel scene, it will pay to work modularly and it might even pay off even more if you use those pieces to do a small level, not just a single shot scene. Think about what kind of pieces you'll need and how you can modify them for specialty pieces, such as aid stations, air vent shafts and other mining related paraphernalia. Again some mining research will help.
When mixing the artificial lighting with the crystal lights be careful what colors you pick. My gut says stick with white-ish artificial lighting like halogen lights, so you don't wreak the nice blue techno hues you have going. The blue is providing mood and atmosphere you might not want to compete with that with non complementary colors. If you throw in other colors it might just rainbow and end up looking odd. Since you have teal techno lighting you might want to think about what kind of equipment you'll have and stick with a theme that matches. My gut says heavily used sci-fi equipment that doesn't look brand new might work.
If it all sounds like hog wash (its 5:30am give me a break), at least revisit the support beam and think about how it got there, it needed to be transported, assembled and maybe even shimmed into place to fit. You might be able to dream up a nice sci-fi support beam that has hydraulic pistons instead of shims, it could break down into two or four pieces (those pieces could be piled up in a way station awaiting use, details at no extra cost, cha-ching). That way it can be raised to fit whatever type of bored tunnel exists. Giving you more freedom to make different tunnel heights and using the same support beam props. You'll have made one prop and whored it out like a proper pimp on a Friday night. (If it doesn't make sense I can knock up a quick concept).
For now, I've gone back to the modeling drawing board and thought more about the story. It seems thats sometimes where I lack. I know there should be archways and stuff that holds the mines up, but I didn't even think about the story behind how they got there in the first place. I would like this to be a natural and man-made split cave type thing. I think these types of tools still keep that rudimentary type feel, perhaps this part of the cave is still newly constructed.
So I thought about some of the tools that I've seen construction workers use to keep shafts open and I came up with those expandable brace things you see when they dig trenches. I also combined that with a modular I-Beam that houses the lamp and some air ducts (which I completely forgot about). And added a generator that currently goes no where, but I'll add wires to either equipment and/or the lights later.
I also improved the model on the tracks and the rail cars. And I experimented with a few larger crystals. I think the tracks really show the shape of the cave. And I do intend on filling up the mining cars. Also adding tools and perhaps some piles of material.
The cave itself I still have yet to refine. I think I backed myself into a corner here as refinements are difficult without redoing. But I will find a sollution (even if it means a re-do).
I've taken the lighting out of this. Progress comments welcome as always.
You'll need a different texture for the walls that are natural/unblemished and a texture for those that have been cut into. You need to think about what cut into the rock, gnomes using hand tools, a giant drill that left a smooth round bore hole, giant drill that was chiseled into a square tunnel, TNT? That will help shape the overall scene and provide ideas for props.
Personally I would start with an inverted cylinder or rounded box, to indicate the smooth boring tunnel, then cut some holes and add in this organic looking tunnel you just did.
For the crystal textures, try putting "fall off" in the defuse map slot, also play around with the "thin wall refraction" in the refraction or reflection map slot.
You might want to make the wires thinner and tack them to the walls. Having them disappear into the support beams seems kind of cheesy as the beams don't have much other then the piston mechanism. Unless you change up the support beams? I like the general idea behind the support beams and these might just be blocked out place holders but I think you should flesh them out more, what drives the pistons? Do they have a thick base that has enclosed machinery?
Going back to the building modularly, if you take the cylinder/box approch you can you use one section that tiles and use the support beams to hide the seams if there are any. Once you have a few pieces lined up, you can select them all and apply a "bend" modifier to put some twists and turns in there. So instead of having to model the whole thing you actually make one tiny bit of the tunnel and copy it a few times, changing it when you need to so the tile isn't easily recognized.
For the tracks you can do the same trick, OR you can create a spline that follows the ground, (turn on 3D snap and set it to vert snap when click/creating the spline) then apply a Spline IK solver to the tracks and have the tracks follow the spline. The tracks follow the ground without clipping into it. I can explain more if that wasn't clear.
Here are some examples from the games I've worked on that I use those tricks.
http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/HerInt_ICE/
I went back to the drawing board again on this but I still think I need a kick in the ass somewhere. It's definitely the rock texture I'm no longer happy at all with it, I've tried to improve the normal map, and I used a free-trial of MudBox to try to create a sculpt of the larger shapes and it just didn't work. So I'm having serious problems figuring out what else to use. I've let this sit for too long and now coming back to it I just can't seem to figure out whats wrong and what to do.
However, I do like my new and improved props. Even though they are less inventive they tie together a bit more, and the basics seem to keep me motivated and fast (for portfoli purposes). I also have better rails and some things that aren't in this scene (industrial mesh to hold back a wall/rock pile and a stopper for the rails).
I'm determined to try to do something with this but I'm losing motivation fast.
I took the lighting out of this because with lighting it takes away the texture (too dark) of the arches. I think may be I went too real on the arches and it no longer mixes with the blue of the cave walls and/or the fantasy of the crystal. But surely I can find a mix of natural and fantasy.
Also the texture on the rocks is just the current crappy half tile half seamed texture with bad mapping.
Edit: I should say that I'm not trying to go for 100% look of a classic mine shaft (with the square supports) but after numerous ideas to think outside the box I kept coming back to that square shape. And then seeing the clean lines in Vigs mines it reaffirmed I should go with my gut.
Vig's mine is very cool, you could go with something like that and get a nice results. I'd also like to share with you a low spec mine I did a couple years ago to share some ideas. My goals were much more cartoony, but that shouldn't make the point less meaningful.
http://chrisholden.net/gallery/images/adv_mine1.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/gallery/images/adv_mine2.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/gallery/images/adv_mine3.jpg
http://chrisholden.net/gallery/images/adv_minelayout1.jpg
Not sure your plan, but try playing with 3-4 different textures for the mine surfaces. Such as, smoothed ground with more dirt/small stones scattered about, a main rocky wall, and a transition between those two to blend the floor and walls. Possibly even a ceiling variation, it's up to you. Slight color/brightness variations between these will really help the surfaces pop.
Anyway, keep it up, just wanted to pop in with whats on my mind.
to me id think the mine would have been carved out of the rock then the supports slotted in, finally the builders would have filled in the gaps with off cut rock to make it a tight fit. something like that.
just wanted to make sure you think about that
cholden- do i reckognise that mine from somewhere? challenge or sommit?
The tunnel/shaft is coming along nicely, but you're right that texture is killing it, bring back that sandy blended texture you had in the shots above the ground really misses its old friend =. A little more attention around where the beams meet the rock like shep suggested and it'll help them blend.
Keep at it you're making good progress.
I went back to the drawing board AGAIN on the cave shape. I went a little more square and manually smoothed and modeled some of the indents etc. Using meshsmooth etc just was giving me too much headaches.
I also went back to the drawing board on the rock texture. I scoured all the sites I know to find something better. Thinking more along the lines of the bigger picture rather than intricate details on the texture. (learned from making stairs). So I came up with this texture. Keep in mind these renders are not lit and theres no specific mapping yet so its a little stretched in places. I also really went deep into photoshop to clean up glaring seams and this new texture should be virtually seamless.
I think overall its looking cleaner which is nice. It's also more subtle which will allow for more focus for props.
I also thought about what Shep said. I will model small rocks and place them as wedges. In preperation for that I added some mesh guards around SOME of the archways. As if the miners were placing rocks and then had to drill in some mesh to keep them steady and tight. More progress to come!
I've made 3 sections of the cave, I'll work on the others once I get this working.
I did a quick ambient pass for the lights to see how its coming. I also tweaked the material settings for the crystals to give them a bit more glow and reflection.
I think the above image was too dark to post for feedback, so I brightened the ambients up a bit. Still not sure how to light the lights properly. To get it so the light coming from the lamp is bright but doesn't affect anything else around it.
Suggestions:
You have a great handle on direct lights and thats exactly what you want when you go to do lighting for games, 75% of lighting for games is direct lighting hardly. BUT for this scene, and for CG renders you can open up max and really automate some of the more mundane tasks you'll have to do by hand.
What the hell am I talking about? Making the crystal material glow and having that light your scene instead of placing lights and faking it. There are a few ways I can think of to do this, maybe more. This stuff falls under the next monster post I am going to write up about Mental Ray, Light Tracer and Radiosity so I won't get too deep.
1) Mental Ray + Arch/Design Material
- Change your render engine to Mental Ray F10 > Common > Assign Renderer > Change Scanline to Mental Ray
- Under Indirect Illumination turn on Final Gather (default settings should be ok for now)
- Create a new material switch it from standard to Arch & Design Material
- There is a lot to these materials but what you are concerned about is down under Self Illumination (Glow) > check on Illuminates the Scene.
- Set the color to Cool White and adjust the filter color or use your crystal material as a map. Don't bother with kelvin's its a scale that measures the color and intensity that carbon rods burn at. Which can be handy for doing very accurate lighting scenarios where you know exactly what kind of real world lights are being used. For this tho, its just going to be a pain in the ass to guess the right color so forget about Kelvin and his magical burning rods.
- Now I should mention that the grid/unit setup of your scene can be factored in by checking on "physical Units" in Luminance. If your unsure what set up your using, switch it to unitless. To the right is the magical number box that controls how bright your light is, depending on your scene's scale you might need it as high as 900 or as low as .25 it all depends.
- Apply this material to your crystals if you haven't already, render and see what you get
- You might need at least one light in your scene somewhere even if it is set to a really low setting or off. Otherwise FG might try to work with the default viewport lighting and you might not get a dark scene. I think turning your initial ambient light pass down just a hair would work fine.
- The example above has "dent" placed in the luminance map color slot
- Lastly you can go in and adjust some of Final Gathers settings to really bring out the bounce lighting from the crystals. Don't let Mental Ray be a mental CF, there are a lot of settings and its easy to get lost in there so be mindful of what you tweak. Get it working, save it and then go play with all the fancy do-dads =P
2) Radiosity,
Max has a tutorial about neon glow using radiosity
3) Video post,
Max has some really well documented material on using video post to create glow effects, its pretty self explanatory also so I won't bother going into it unless you have questions.
Personally option #1 gives me the greatest flexibility and closely resembles what you're trying to achieve, But the other two might work also and they might be slightly more flexible, it depends.
EDIT: EEK where did all the shadows go? I think the first ambient light pass was a really good base to spring off of. Now its almost full bright, the light it burns mine eyes! heh
also i find the style of the supports also i find the style of the crstals and the supports at odds with one another. make the crystal more realistic (again use some ref) or stylise the supports
EDIT: EEK where did all the shadows go? I think the first ambient light pass was a really good base to spring off of. Now its almost full bright, the light it burns mine eyes! heh
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Looks like you were typing as I was editing! Thankfully changing that second pass is just a matter of deleting a group of lights. Since they are all named. I figured that the ambient was just too dark to pass off any detail. And there actually weren't any shadows at all, it was just the lights with attunements.
I love the idea of using mental ray to punch up the crystals. Mental-Ray scares me but I will look into these steps! Updates after dinner.
I modeled some other details into the cave walls, some ledges and extra formations cropping in and out. With the low lighting I feel that any more detail will get lost in the atmosphere, however I like these new tweaks as they add a little extra life to the rock.
Vig, I've tried to follow these steps for mental ray and I am totally lost. I've never used a mental ray renderer or material so I don't know where these options are. My Arch & Design material doesn't seem to have any "self illumination (glow)" tab on it. And I don't know where to adjust the colour and/or the luminance. There just doesn't seem to be the options for it.
However I did turn on the final gather in mental ray and rendered it with a standard material with self illumination.
I'm also a little lost as to how I am going to properly light the lights coming from the top of the archways. Every time I try to light via spots and omni's I get unwanted light on the top of the archway. (the light only points downward).
I also updated the look of the crystals a bit. Doing some quick research there are double sided crystals that look a lot like what I had, they are tiny whereas mine are a bit fantastical. However I did bevel some extra edges and create new shapes.
Comments welcome!
I also started to add in the main light coming from the arches. But I can't seem to get it right. I have the light bulp lit via the texture, and I have the ground lit, but theres nothing in between that can create that light-like illusion. I'm used to unreal where I can add in a little corona sprite and then a couple of omni's gradually moving outward. But obviously thats not going to work here.
I've turned the ambient lights very low. The emissive crystal texture has taken over most of that light generation.
I also added a little volume effect for some dust particles but again the top of the main light still bothers me.
I'm going to move on to another piece so I'm not going to worry about mega props here. I've got other sections of this cave which I will fill with other sections at another time. I want to get the feel right for this via the lighting at this point.
Comments/crits welcome!
Big improvements from the start. I know you want to move on, but there are a couple simple things that will greatly enhance this piece.
1) Coronas on light and crystals. A small (128), subtle blurred circle (one blue for crystal and one yellow for light). Since you've got a set camera angle, these can quickly be face just in front of each light source, angled to face the camera and scaled accordingly. Don't go too crazy with it, but again, this would add a ton to the scene.
2) Redo the track (tbh, I thought all your previous stuff was a placeholder so I didn't mention it). I'll be right out with it, this is an eyesore. It appears floating and under-detailed. I'd recreate it, more detailed and centered. Regardless of realism, centering will balance the scene.
Again, easy, quick fixes that'll help make it a much more desirable portfolio piece.
also lots of little rocks around the tracks would help sell it.
I'll add some more dirt/rocks etc to around the tracks, and they aren't textured yet. But the tracks are definitely beefier. And putting them in the center does seam to fit better in the center even though it may not be practical in reality.
And I think I'm still not 100% happy with the lighting yet.
I actually quite like the lighting at the moment (is it going to cast shadows?) I think the crystals now and again look like they're floating at first glance, and some detail mesh/texture around them with some baked lighting info might help sell it
Or failing that just make their bases a little darker than the rest of them as they just look full-bright
Theres not much more I could say about lighting, I just think that when or if they cast shadows it'll be that much more believable and atmospheric.
If you were planning on showing off some texturing skills this wouldn't be the kind of lighting you'd want to go with as it overtakes the scene but does create some interest.
I think with this lighting, if the focus of the picture (mine cart?) was directly under the orange light it'd look pretty awesome.
-2cents
To explain a few things, no, I'm not looking for massive texture information here. One of the things that the original picture was suffering from was me too focused on trying to show off some sort of rock texture. If I want to show off some sort of awesome mine-shaft texturing detail then I will craft and render those pieces individually for my portfolio.
I had a look in mind which I think you've accomplished somewhat in this paint-over (at least in the later versions). I really want to show off this light coming down from the arches but at the same time show that the crystals are glowing. I really dig your orange/blue scheme. The problem is I can't seem to find the right settings or technique to show it off in a render.
I tried playing with the volume light effect and it was either too obnoxious or too subtle (as in the current render). My original goal of this scene was to be able to show off a setting that was familiar but with a twist to it. Mine shafts are normal, but ones with giant glowing crystals might present both interest to the viewer and a challenge to me as a designer. To show off what it is (a mine shaft mining some sort of fantastical crystals that I originally had in mind) and not necessarily the individual details of the mine.
I definitely think that adding props might be the way to go, but dropping in a mine cart full of things still won't get the atmosphere I was originally looking to create in the environment. I WANTED the mood/lighting to be a focus here, but I think I'm missing something in the technique of creating these crystals and corona's and mood of the final piece.
One thing your paintover has showed is that I don't think I need 2 major sources of light in the image. In the above, I have an arch-light in the foreground and then I have one in the middle-ground, with the ambient light bringing in the background as the cave turns. But I think I can easily get away with just the major light right in front, and then have another major casting information on the background as the turn happens. And then let the crystals and the mine itself do the talking in between.
I will be texturing the tracks and then from there take another look at the overall environment. I think though I will need some advice on how to get these types of effects out of a 3d render.
Making just some rocks, crystals, cart tracks, and a lightbuild with some good lighting won't be a very compelling environment. The paintover was to show some supportive lighting to the props that - should - be in there.
Keep going'
Still not sure how I'm going to render some of those effects yet. I'm trying to play with the volume light but its just not coming out the way I want to.
In order for the Crystals to "light the scene" I'm using Mental Ray for rendering. But Mental Ray can only use Ray-traced shadows so I'm getting results like the following. I've tried to add further ambient lights around the mine cart.
The track texture is still temp and the simple pick-axe and shovel to the side are untextured.
The lighting is starting to fall apart and I think that might be because I steered you in the wrong direction by suggesting using FG and MR. The method I suggested for the crystals was a slightly different approach to make them glow, it would have produced more dramatic lighting. The self illum fix you have going now technically makes them cast some light into the environment but its more like over active color bleeding instead of luminescence.
You've found one of the pitfalls of starting to use advanced lighting, proper shadow generation starts to become difficult and costly. To soften the shadows you can switch the lights to "advanced ray trace" which has spread settings for shadows which will soften the hard edge and give you a more natural shadow. This is going to increase your render times.
So you find yourself at a crossroads, do you go back to direct Illumination and fake the glowing crystals and their bounce lighting, or do you push on with advanced lighting. If you choose advanced lighting you will need to choose between sticking with FG/MR or going back to Scanline/Radiosity. If this was my scene, I would switch to Scanline/radiosity for speed, and greater flexibility and because your copy of max doesn't have the proper advanced glow effect in arch/design material found in the latest version (Max 2008). Since you can get a similar glowing effect with radiosity and you can use the standard direct lighting techniques you used on the last scene. Radiosity will also allow you to touch up the lighting by "painting" shadows and light, but thats jumping the gun and I bet you won't even need to go that far to get your scene humming along.
FG/MR Suggestions:
- Click on your self illumination map, go to the output rollout and turn up the output amount, try it at 5-10.
- Set your material type to Architectural (not the MR material) and adjust the Luminance, careful it will start to burn white the higher you adjust it.
Radiosity Suggestions: (at least try it out)
- Change back to scan line, switch advance lighting to radiosity, create a new material set to "Advanced lighting overide" and put your crystal material in the base slot, and turn the luminance up to 2000 to start. Back on the advanced lighting tab of the render dialog go to radiosity and set it to 50% and click start. This will give you pretty quick results if you set it to 80% (default) that will give you a better preview but will take longer as it refines the solution to 80% of the total energy being bounced around the scene. Don't worry that it subdivides your mesh, that is a special radiosity copy of your mesh, if you don't want to see it uncheck "Display Radiosity in VIewport".
- Something to keep in mind, you might need to "reset" the radiosity solution before starting it again after you make changes, this way it won't just add the changes to the current solution.
Keep at it you're doing good!