Necromundan Environment

hobodactyl

Hey everyone, I'm working on getting some environment pieces together, but I wanted to get some critiques before I go much further with this one. Also any help as far as lighting the scene would be appreciated; I didn't put any light sources actually in this scene because I want to make it just lit from above, but I'm not sure how to make that look the best.

AsylumSeaker

Word. I've been wanting to build a hive city environment forever.
Looks like you've based yours largely on the old click together card buildings... It can be hard to track down the old artwork from the game but if you have the rulebooks or anything like that, check out some of the sketches. They're generally a lot more interesting than those cardboard buildings which are simplified to make gaming on them and assembling them easier. They don't look that cool though in my opinion..
Heres a cool pic I found;

pliang

Well...the metal is a little too noisy for what it is...though the diffuse is pretty good...

Ditto on the concept.

Asherr

do you really all that micro detail on the walls or everything really? it's a peeve of mine about normal maps/next gen art.

ask yourself:
*if you stand 10 feet from a wall in your home do you see all the minute texture of the paint/wood/brick/drywall?
*how close do you have to get to the wall to see that texture?
*is that the average view distance a player will be seeing your textures from?
*if that was a real wall/girder how deep would those dents/cracks be?
*how large would those bumps be?

i don't think people have gotten past the 'just because you can put all that detail into a normal map doesn't mean you should' phase of the new technology.

pangarang

Agreed with the comments posted above.

I also notice that the textures don't match 100%. If the metal is that beat up and worn out, why isn't the paint on the walls? The saturation levels are a little high. And the wall texture seems to be scaled a little too large. Stretch out those UVs just a little bit more perhaps.

Just my two cents.

Holi

Necromunda was my favourite game for years, and I agree with AsylumSeaker: the basic card buildings where just too simple to make something really immersiv.
You should download the lastest official necromunda and inquisitor rulebook at the "specialist games website" for more env. referencies.

http://www.specialist-games.com/

Try to keep in mind that the world of Necromunda is verry typic, so you really can't make something as generic.

Keep it up!

hobodactyl

Hey guys, thanks for all the input. I was purposely not wanting to do the big fantastic-looking buildings because I've always like the idea of the cramped fighting spaces of Necromunda, and these are supposed to be the most squalid areas of the hive where there is no grandeur.



Don't worry, next I'm planning some of the bigger environments Cool to hear there are other people who played Necromunda here.

Thanks for the crits on the detail of the maps, that was something I wasn't really sure about, so I'll be sure to tone them down and play around with them some more.

Ninjas

If I was doing this, I would push the painted look a little. A lot of AO to get that drybrushed look. The bump is out of control. You need to fine tune the spec and colors to get really convincing material surfaces

ScoobyDoofus

Holy cow thats an awesome idea. I really enjoyed Necromunda myself. I even still have a bunch of figures & a few enviro bits.

hobodactyl

Hey Ninjas, thanks for the advice!

ScoobyDoofus: I've still got my original models

I tweaked the textures some, but here's where I think I'll leave this stuff for now; I'll definitely work on all the crits you guys gave me for my next environments.

AsylumSeaker

hobodactyl wrote: »

Hey guys, thanks for all the input. I was purposely not wanting to do the big fantastic-looking buildings because I've always like the idea of the cramped fighting spaces of Necromunda, and these are supposed to be the most squalid areas of the hive where there is no grandeur.

I wasn't talking so much about open spaces, simply more interesting shapes. Have walkways and girders connect on something other than right angles. I find yours too square right now, like the old card and bulkhead buildings.

TheSplash

Think about what you want the focal points of the environment to be and also what the scale everything is. At the moment those hatches look really tiny because of the scale of the textures around them, this needs to be balanced out by the size of the detail in the textures and the amount they tile.

Everything looks like it is made of a similar material, really think about the roughness of the surfaces, concrete isn't normally very specular unless its really smooth or painted and even then it has a low gloss.

Also, it kinda looks like you ran all your textures through crazybump, this isn't a bad thing to do but try not to go overboard, the caution strips don't need bump for example.

hobodactyl

AsylumSeaker: Cool man, I see what you mean! I was trying to keep that in mind, thanks for bringing it up.

TheSplash: Yeah, I finally caught the scaling issues, I'm fixing that now. I'll work on balancing the textures out to make the materials read better.

I've already made some changes but I'll wait until tomorrow when I've got some more stuff done. Thanks everyone!

AsylumSeaker

Pictures somewhat related:

I found these, they're from india. Soon as I saw them I thought "hive city"