Sketchbook: AdamBrome
polycounter lvl 20
Going to post the props I make for my scenes here. Likely untextured and gray, but seeing as how I don't post them specifically in my P&P posts this seems like a good place for them. As highpoly versions get made I'll update this with those as well.
On top of just showing the work I'd like to talk a bit about what I was/am thinking for each and how they'll help the overall scene, the process I am hoping to use, and any other information I think might be helpful to others.
I'll start with a few things I'm doing for a home project I am currently on that I'll talk about more of later.
Here's some shots of what I have in Max right now. This'll show how the props are being used to dress the scene. The idea here is London, England along the Thames circa the late 1800's.
And here's some of the props:
1. Dock support posts. Nothin' amazing here. I'll likely blend two wood textures from top to bottom (light to dark) so I can fade them off in to the water.
2. Dock piece. This is duped a bunch in the shots above and each is altered slightly. Once I have the texture done for this (dirty old planks) I'll likely cut more geo info in there to show some of the planks rising higher than others.
3. Some fruit. Yup
4. 3D paper for the wind. I think for the game we have in mind that this paper would blow around otherwise they'd just be created using a decal.
5. Rope storage. I think. Either way it's a good excuse to have some wood & metal together.
6. Vendor's fruit cart. I'll pull the wheels off and use them to decorate some areas as well.
7. Billboard. This is located just off the docks. The idea here being those who arrive to the dock know the latest happenings for that area, prices of merch, etc.
8. Stair set. Nothing fancy here. Only reason its pulled off and added to the 'props' originals is because I am planning on doing a highpoly & texture bake with this one.
9. Rope spool. There's actually 2 variations of this already with the rope being wound differently for each.
10. The chimney set. I use these 3 chimneys to decorate the roofs of the 5 buildings. I'll probably do more once I have some textures done.
11. Rope tie. For the boats, you see. The magical boats that are invisible...
And the rest:
1. Basket. Nothing special here. The player can get close to things so the edges are modeled rather than use double-sided faces.
2. Store sign. I still need to do more of these. I did this one early on and I -think- it was to see if I wanted to do the wrought iron for things like this with a mesh or if I'd use a plane for it. I'm going w/ 3D.
3. Merchant's wagon. Like the fruit wagon the wheels will be used separate as another prop (they're larger and will be textured using metal as well).
4. Vendors station: I pictured this area being a place of business so there's a lot of vendor specific props. Being this close to a dock I figure that's a good route to go.
5. Street lamp. Gas/candle lit. I'll likely do another.
6. Road barrier. Those horses can get crazy, these barriers keep them in check.
7. Barrel. Yup, its a barrel. I modeled the ribs separately so that they can be skewed, rotated, or moved in some way so that at closer inspection they're not all quite the same.
8. Fruit basket. Simple. No planes here. All wood is 3D.
9. Small shipping crate. Will likely have a bunch of texture variants.
10. Bench Simple.
11. Wood. Yup, its wood. Or to be more specific: 6 sides of awesome. They're very simple but help fill a scene. Their shapes will be added too once a texture is done. It's always easier to texture things in theirs simplest form than it is once their details are added (in this case simple bends, different sizes in ends, etc.)
12. Dock barrier. The chain links are a bunch of little hedra's. I figure the cost in triangles will be substantially lower than the coast in overdraw if each link were an alpha plane.
13. Town kiosk. I've a really interesting idea for this that I'd like to attempt once I get to it. Basically, a small group of pieces of paper are modeled flat and unwrapped (in this picture you can see them behind the fruit wagon). They're textured with some leaflet designs and what-not. From there the kiosk is dressed with these papers, much like it is here in the shot. From there, the entire thing is unwrapped to a localized unwrap (rather than using repeating textures). The idea here being I can do an occlusion AND texture bake to the new UV's and get some nice shadows and such baked right in to the texture of it. Hopefully that made some sense.
14. Statue. One of the scene's focus points and one of the only one-off props I've done. I referenced a statue I found that is located in Battery park.
15. A box! And not just your typical box, THIS ONE HOLDS THINGS!
Here's some quickie examples of a naturalistic approach to placement using the very simple props shown above:
I know I missed a few things so I will do those later, once I've done a few more props. I'm in the middle of getting the buildings ready for texturing so once that's done I'll update with some detailed shots on the creation & thought process for each building.
On top of just showing the work I'd like to talk a bit about what I was/am thinking for each and how they'll help the overall scene, the process I am hoping to use, and any other information I think might be helpful to others.
I'll start with a few things I'm doing for a home project I am currently on that I'll talk about more of later.
Here's some shots of what I have in Max right now. This'll show how the props are being used to dress the scene. The idea here is London, England along the Thames circa the late 1800's.
And here's some of the props:
1. Dock support posts. Nothin' amazing here. I'll likely blend two wood textures from top to bottom (light to dark) so I can fade them off in to the water.
2. Dock piece. This is duped a bunch in the shots above and each is altered slightly. Once I have the texture done for this (dirty old planks) I'll likely cut more geo info in there to show some of the planks rising higher than others.
3. Some fruit. Yup
4. 3D paper for the wind. I think for the game we have in mind that this paper would blow around otherwise they'd just be created using a decal.
5. Rope storage. I think. Either way it's a good excuse to have some wood & metal together.
6. Vendor's fruit cart. I'll pull the wheels off and use them to decorate some areas as well.
7. Billboard. This is located just off the docks. The idea here being those who arrive to the dock know the latest happenings for that area, prices of merch, etc.
8. Stair set. Nothing fancy here. Only reason its pulled off and added to the 'props' originals is because I am planning on doing a highpoly & texture bake with this one.
9. Rope spool. There's actually 2 variations of this already with the rope being wound differently for each.
10. The chimney set. I use these 3 chimneys to decorate the roofs of the 5 buildings. I'll probably do more once I have some textures done.
11. Rope tie. For the boats, you see. The magical boats that are invisible...
And the rest:
1. Basket. Nothing special here. The player can get close to things so the edges are modeled rather than use double-sided faces.
2. Store sign. I still need to do more of these. I did this one early on and I -think- it was to see if I wanted to do the wrought iron for things like this with a mesh or if I'd use a plane for it. I'm going w/ 3D.
3. Merchant's wagon. Like the fruit wagon the wheels will be used separate as another prop (they're larger and will be textured using metal as well).
4. Vendors station: I pictured this area being a place of business so there's a lot of vendor specific props. Being this close to a dock I figure that's a good route to go.
5. Street lamp. Gas/candle lit. I'll likely do another.
6. Road barrier. Those horses can get crazy, these barriers keep them in check.
7. Barrel. Yup, its a barrel. I modeled the ribs separately so that they can be skewed, rotated, or moved in some way so that at closer inspection they're not all quite the same.
8. Fruit basket. Simple. No planes here. All wood is 3D.
9. Small shipping crate. Will likely have a bunch of texture variants.
10. Bench Simple.
11. Wood. Yup, its wood. Or to be more specific: 6 sides of awesome. They're very simple but help fill a scene. Their shapes will be added too once a texture is done. It's always easier to texture things in theirs simplest form than it is once their details are added (in this case simple bends, different sizes in ends, etc.)
12. Dock barrier. The chain links are a bunch of little hedra's. I figure the cost in triangles will be substantially lower than the coast in overdraw if each link were an alpha plane.
13. Town kiosk. I've a really interesting idea for this that I'd like to attempt once I get to it. Basically, a small group of pieces of paper are modeled flat and unwrapped (in this picture you can see them behind the fruit wagon). They're textured with some leaflet designs and what-not. From there the kiosk is dressed with these papers, much like it is here in the shot. From there, the entire thing is unwrapped to a localized unwrap (rather than using repeating textures). The idea here being I can do an occlusion AND texture bake to the new UV's and get some nice shadows and such baked right in to the texture of it. Hopefully that made some sense.
14. Statue. One of the scene's focus points and one of the only one-off props I've done. I referenced a statue I found that is located in Battery park.
15. A box! And not just your typical box, THIS ONE HOLDS THINGS!
Here's some quickie examples of a naturalistic approach to placement using the very simple props shown above:
I know I missed a few things so I will do those later, once I've done a few more props. I'm in the middle of getting the buildings ready for texturing so once that's done I'll update with some detailed shots on the creation & thought process for each building.
Replies
get to uv that stuff already, you've been working on this for like forever
I hope you go over some of your texturing workflow when you get to it! I can't wait to see more updates.
Scenes are tight man, good work. I think the tri distribution is a little odd in places, but nothing I'd call a problem by any means. Can't wait to see the stuff get finished.
Here's the set as a whole. Everything else in the screenshots seen so far have been copied and manipulated from here.
An overall shot of my max file, explaining my jibberish mentioned for the above image. One thing I like to do while working on a project is set the scene up as quickly as possible so I can visualize the end result a lot better. I find this helps with creativity and motivation.
The ground level. There's 1 shot planned in this area that'll involve a horse & carriage:
A lot of the gameplay for this game happens on rooftops. As you can see I've forgotten to dress that one roof that's looking rather boring!
And lastly, the docks. We're not sure if we'll use this for any shots at the end but it was something I wanted to build for the scene and hopefully pull an idea out of it. Needs boats...
Well, first pass on all the props is finally done. Each of the two rendered shot's were done in Max, which won't be the rendering tool we use for the final frames but I wanted to do something to show them lit.
The way the pictures are divided, is each picture contains all the props that were using the same texture sheet. Each group uses a single 1024x texture sheet. The only exception is the flier kiosk and the monument, both of those have their own sheets. The chimney's and dock wood that can be seen in the viewport shots use some world textures mostly so I didn't include them in the rendered shots.
Most props had a quick highpoly pass so that their corners would be rendered with a soft edge and things like bolts and crevices would render nicely. Because there's a lot of props for this project (~30!) and I would like to have it finished sometime this millennium I didn't spend an enormous amount of time on each of the highpoly meshes.
Improvement Pass:
A few things I'll be going back to do on the second pass, are:
- Work on the chain link more, its not very convincing
- Work on the monument more, it needs more high poly love and I need to test the copper material in the engine we're using
- Work on the material for the rope that's wrapped around the spool, it sucks
- The rocks on the ground look like little pyramids so I will likely flatten them down or clip the tops off so they are more round looking
- Do 'b' variations of each texture sheet, so that some props can have coloured variations of themselves (re: the vendor stand should have different coloured cloth)
- I may go through and actually have most of my bolts be 5 sided cylinders rather than just baked info in the texture(s). The reason for this is I quite like those little details when their highlights are exaggerated as I think doing it this way will help.
- Really work the brick materials so they pop out well
Texture sheet #1:Texture sheet #2:
What's next?
Well, first thing I am going to do is get all of these props packages together and in the engine we're using then make material adjustments as they're needed.
Then I'll likely move on to doing more world textures like trims, decals, details, etc. etc. so that I can then move on to texturing the buildings.
When the texturing is done I will go through the geometry of the buildings and add in more details that'll help highlight the textures they have applied.
Once that's done the buildings themselves will be made in to props that'll be packaged within the engine and we will begin to rebuild our scene inside of the engine tools.
As always, I look forward to questions, concerns, comments, or critiques.
Unlit viewport screenshots:
I'd like to see how you have the first sheet layed out for those props if you dont mind.
The reason is I find if I'm trying to get the same texture density on something that is really long and short at the same time (the lamp post and the sign board) I find that I end up with distorted textures, or that I have to resize things in proportions that don't fit the object.
So I'm hoping maybe to learn a little by example to see some of the flats and how you laid things out.
Looks amazing though thats for sure! I'm glad you got time to start texturing!
Also if I can follow this up with a little workflow question. In your original designs you created each link for the chains and each poster for the boards. On your textures you have them repeated (overlapping uv's obviously). In your workflow do you find its best to lay the entire object out, or just model the pole with one link, knowing that in the future you will repeat that link to get the desired shape/object you were looking for.
Did you manually overlap all the uv's for those repeating objects, or just delete all but one when it came time to lay out the uv's and then re-copy them for the object? Or am I going about that in a totally wrong way?
Great environment you must have a lot of free time. I have a question in regards to you modeling for your environment, I noticed that all your cylinder shapes have only one face on the top but multiple faces on the side. How id this topology allowed? from what I've learned that is a no no in modeling rules. Item number 14 the statue base is what I'm referring to in you modeling. It also shows up in the barrel tops and pretty much anything that is a cylinder shape. Just curious, I've been modeling for a few years now and didn't think that was acceptable topology. Great work either way I can't wait to see this finished completely.
-nurbslife
i was wondering wut ur process was creating the rope on the rope spool. did u use the helix tool or u drew the spline manually. Itd be great if use can show the mesh of it.
thanks
Jaco - thanks!
IronHawk - I'll put up the texture sheets when I'm all finished. Thanks for the kind words!
aesir - woo!
Saidin311 - Like IronHawk's request, I'll put the sheets up whenever this badboy is through. As for workflow - I tend to model out everything as it will be in the final version first. This helps me gauge my triangle budget and visualize the end result. From there, I deconstruct everything down to the very core and unwrap those, then I rebuild the scene again. Some people use xref's, but I prefer this way. As for overlapping UV's, I do not quite follow you. Most things are laid out once on the UV sheet then their geometry is multipled. I hope that helps.
nurbslife - Thanks man. I don't know about a lot of free time, but I do find it relaxing to model when its late @ night. About the ngon's (the > 4 edged faces): I really don't care about them when that particular poly has a single flat silhouette. If / when a poly's silhouette has definition, then I will add in the edges needed to properly create a clean silhouette. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. The edges are there, you just can't see them. Sometimes I have > 4 sided faces, sometimes I don't. These days, there's no 'rule' to what you can & cannot do specifically, it just depends on the engine & tools you are working with.
hobodactyl - awesome name
onionhead_o - the spool's rope is actually a bunch of hoops, it isn't 1 continuous spline. From there the hoops are moved & rotated to resemble looped rope. While it isn't accurate, the final result is convincing enough. A lot of time was saved on my end doing it this way as I only had to unwrap 1 hoop and manipulate it as I saw fit.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/17188/ac1888_props2.jpg
Anyway, this this my first real crack @ highpoly that isn't just wood beams and concrete squares I'd love some C&C.
Concept:
"ROBERTA"
Comparably, this character would be as interacted with as Big Daddy was in Bioshock. I wouldn't say she is a boss type character, but a main element to the games story.
Roberta weighs in @ around 7,000 triangles and i'll do her texture @ 1024x1024 with hopes of it staying strong at half that resolution. I wanted her sihouette to be strong, especially on the main areas of her body (main sphere, main cylinders, etc) so thats why those areas are more dense than the rest. As well, I opted to use geometry for the bolts so that when she self's shadows herself (going to toss her in Unreal) they create some nice shadows. The addition to her silhouette is a bonus.
For her material treatment I'm planning on going with some brass & steel. Lots of wear & tear, dents, scratches, that sort of thing. Roberta's been doing whatever it is she does for awhile and I hope to show that off.
The wear & tear I'll try and do in Mudbox. I'll paint random damage elements on to a flat plane and overlay that in Photoshop on the area's I'd like those details to appear.
I'm going to brain storm with jouste @ work about ways I could make her design more feminine as I'd like that idea to come through more rather than me just constantly referring to it as a "her".
Here's the in-game render mesh the highpoly baked to it:
And the wires:
Maybe I'm crazy, though :P
Brass, underwater, comes out every so ofter for repairs and such. THe spec is broken as I didn't update for new parts I worked on this morning.
did you ever finish up and post a version of the first scene in this sb? it looked real nice and I liked the prop sets alot
secondly, are the bits on that drone interchangeable/modular? so it could be spliced/frankensteined together to make variations? Just curious - I know it'd stray pretty much from the concept if it did. Might be nice to see some LOD's for it as well (I like the geometry bolts having read about it).
No crits on the high poly, it looks real nice, smooth and clean. great stuff!
Thirdly, about faces/human stuff. How do you tackle this stuff, and is it really a crucial part of an environment monkeys job? I recently had to tackle a putti face (which I failed at, gonna be just winging it later) but I wondered, is it worth taking some time out of environmental stuff - even if thats what you plan to stick to - and do character faces etc, just so the knowledge is there? I just seem to find other things to do.
I'm worrying about the day when a cast iron statue concept is plonked on my desk, and I'd be interested to hear about what type of role it plays with you.
The bits on the drone weren't designed to be interchangeable on my end,although I am sure I could mash things together and create something new from them. I didn't bother with LOD's because I wasn't being paid for this and its something i was doing for fun (re: LOD's aren't fun).
This will be the first face I've done in nearly 4 years. And it's not even a real face, its a face made of granite/rock/etc. so the lines & edges will fair a bit different than a human. It'd definitely be wise to practice a statue of sorts as typically they'll look a lot different than an actual humanoid/character model.
Here's the concept by Feng Zhu I got from his site:
So, for the bridge head, are you planning on modelling or sculpting?
I'll finish this and the Beholder piece after the UC challenge.
Dekard - not yet, no.
Excellent work. Did you give up on the London scene? I am currently working on creating a similar street scene modeled after Prague and have taken an interest to this thread. I would love to talk to you about your high poly to low poly workflow. Currently I am struggling with generating accurate normal maps between my high poly and low poly meshes.