Well you should include something to sit everything on if it normally would sit on something. I'm not saying it is a must but I am pretty sure everyone will be making what looks like either a small scene (Tumorboys hotel, Adams enviro) but your scene is totally up to you. If you do some crazy space station then thats your choice.
I'm not arguing what to stick it on, it's just most modular content I've done has never had to have built in ground, so was just wondering if it's a requirement, that if it has ground it needs to conform to the context of the challanged(included within the poly and texture limits)
Its really a matter of what you want to show in your render, you could crop it so you wouldn't need any ground plane or anything. I'm not sure how much i'll even show the street in mine, cause i dont plan to model much of it, just a small segment so its not hogging lots of uv space.
There are no use of BSP, Terrain, or anything besides static meshes.
Now that being said if you want to show your scene sitting on a black void that is your choice but it will be compared to the final results of everyone else.
As for how to attack the ground. I'm not trying to give the write answers but you could easily do sidewalk segments that are modular in design that can easily snap together and share the same texture space. It doesn't have to take up tons of UV space and you can break up what seams like a default ground texture with decals or any other way you see fit.
This contest is about what you want to build and what you see fit as part of the modular design process and environment. If you don't want to include ground so be it. If you do see that it is part of your design then include it.
We are trying to get you to think of creative ways to use the specs provided to create some type of environment, facade, display that you see to be interesting.
Maybe I am looking at it the wrong way, but I understood that the contest is to make a facade ala: http://www.edgesize.com/pics/env.jpg and not arrange stuff into an entire environment.
It would then be displayed like any prop or character is displayed, with a pedestal or ground plane that didn't have to conform to contest specs, because, again, this isn't about arranging an environment.
Again guess I was looking at it wrong, just wanted to be clear for pre planning.
Ok, it's not that it's hard to understand it's just the point of view it's coming from.
In character competitions what a model stands on isn't included in the triangle/texture count of the contest, so the question was if the facade is sitting on a base is it considered part of the environment or just for display purposes(like a character comp)
The answer was yes, unless you want your building floating, though I might just stick mine on a cube with no textures, I'm not trying to make a complete scene, but prop peices.
Murdoc totally get what you are saying but unlike a character model this is an environment and the ground is part of the environment no matter what. So it will count if you want it in there.
If you want to just model a ton of modular assets then that is your option. We left this comp wide open for a reason to inspire creativity so let's just run with what we have.
HAHA! Getting a bit hostile in here.
I've had a few people ask me how to the whole lightmap thing works and how the materials are applied. I'm about half way through writing up a mini Maya tute to bake out lightmaps and how to get them to display in your scene (for those of you that use Maya - though I'll try find a Max equivalent as well). I'll post it in here when its done. Its not the most perfect method as it has some alpha issues (which I'm trying to nut out), but it will give you a realtime representation of your scene with lightmaps applied.
Awesome Casey, I think that will be very helpful and will encourage people to try out the comp without the unwarranted fear of the LIGHTMAP. . . dun, dun DUNNNNNNN!!!!!!
IronHawk, you can do it if you divide your polys up.
I mean, if I have a plane that is 15'x5', and I want a square texture to take up 5x5' and tile 3 times on that sheet, it either has to be it's own texture in one axis or another (so your UVs go off of the 0-1 grid,) or you need to cut up your geometry into 3, 5x5' sections, and pile them ontop of each other in the UVs. Then you can place that texture whereever you want on your sheet, and it doesn't matter if it's surrounded or not.
What im doing is simply spliting my textures up, i'll likely end up with a 1024x2048 and 2 1024x1024s. Alternatively you can jsut split up your geometry, which you'll likely be doing anyway if you're making a modular section, but this is a little more limiting.
Do you guys usually model out the sections in sub d as well and then rtt?
Seems like that would give the best shading but not give as many options for tiling where just adding edge loops to get decent shading and not doing a rtt would give better options for breaking up the surface with cuts/insets ect using a tiling texture.
EQ, that's pretty much the setup that I'm looking at too. I'll have a 1024x2048 that tiles along the short axis, and I'll just through all my unidirectional tiling stuff stacked up on that. Then have the other two for random bits that don't need to tile.
IronHawk, nope, I just model in polys from the start.
I make highpoly(sub-d, some sculpt, whatever is needed) for that parts that need it, usually trims and high detail parts, windows, doors, props etc. An then a combination of crazybump stuff too.
hey i was just wondering.
i'm really interested in joining this competition, as possible motivation for finishing an old project
thing is, this old project is alreay well into conception stage, and ive already made like... 3 props for it [ones that i was sure i'll be using]. sure, thats not even 5% of the project, but i dunno if thats against any rules?
can i try making that enviro for this competition?
summer vaca is on, and even thogh i already have another project in the works, and a job, i figure this'd be a good thing to take on. hopefully i can finish this =DD
well you need to create a modular facade, which means that by duplicating the modules and placing them in a beliveable way, you can easily create a full building from 5/10 modular pieces
Quick question concerning the ref were using.
Do we have to follow exactly what we've chosen as ref, or can we alter some things like window styles, color scheme ect..
I don't think anyone is building EXACTLY what they have for referrence. That's usually fairly limiting.
Reference and Concept to me are more like guildines. Things to inspire you, and when you get lost, look at to get back on track. But I had when I have to build the exact thing in the picture.
When you guys cut the holes in your walls for the windows do you cut them with the grid? If you didn't (as in cut them by proportion and eye instead) how would you place that window piece on the wall in engine?
Saidin, can't speak for everyone, but usually when you build modularly like this, the window is cut into a wall segment. So in Engine, instead of trying to line a window up to a whole, you just replace one flat wall segement, with one that has the window already in it.
Is that what you were asking? or did I miss the point?
No, I got the idea. Except for the fact that I also said whole when I meant hole when talking about windows haha.
So the modular ends up being the whole section of the wall then. I mean I understand that, it just seems as though that reduces options?
The noobish followup to that is how do I bake in normal mapped sections of wall (say ribbing detail ala motives ground-floor sections) while still using a blanket regular uv mapped texture? My newbish self seems to not be able to wrap my head around "unwrapping" a wall section to "bake down" and combining that with a regular "uvwmap" for a tiled brick texture.
Alright, I'm still confused as to what you're asking.
I don't see how a wall segment with a window reduces options. Are you asking if you could make a wall segment with a HOLE for the window, and then also make a Window that fits that hole, in that segment? Sure, but why would you? What would that accomplish? If you're thinking window variations, you could just as easily make 3 wall segments, including teh same window geo mapped to different UV coords, for different window textures, as you could make 1 wall segment with a hole, and then 3 separate windows. But again, why would you? Unless there's some magic you're doing that just makes it harder to place (2 objects to line up rather than 1), doesn't save you anything on texture fetches (unless you have your 3 windows on 3 separate textures, and are only calling one of those on the building, but that would defeat the purpose.)
As for baking high to low, you just make sure your high res is tilable, and bake it down to the mapping of the low poly wall segment. I'm not sure what you mean by baking down, and then having a "regular unwrap" as well?
And in reality it explains the texturing question. See I understand how to make the segment of the wall tileable and with a normal. But it goes back to my thoughts of having holes with windows. My original thought would be; wouldn't it be better to have a window 'prop' that you could use on any building (say whether that building was brick or concrete). Rather than having a section of wall with window with bricks that can only be used on brick buildings. (brick buildings that work with the brick texture of the wall segment).
And in that type of thinking I would have originally thought, lets have a blanket concrete texture that I can use on this building, and maybe on a wall over there, and then on some pillar over in another area. And then use decals for decay/dirt where needed. And then thats where I was wondering how I include a different normal here, and a different normal on that second building.
But it all gets answered by just making a unique section of a wall texture it (tile it where needed) and place it up next to another section. But to me that says then I really can only use that section on that building. Whereas if I was making a larger scene I may not be able to use that section because it doesn't fit look wise. But that thought is what got me into trouble in the first place.
Thanks for sticking with me as I try to wrap (pun?) my head around modularity.
You're still not really limiting yourself THAT much. I can still use my tiling brick texture both behind THIS window on THIS wall segment for THIS building, as well as behind THAT window on THAT wall segment on THAT building.
Both the wall geo, and the texture are tilable, but that doesn't mean they ALWAYS have to go together (depends on how detailed your geo is I guess)
If I have a wall that's a flat plane, even with a hole cut in it for my window, I can put textures of bricks, wood siding, or monkeys on there, and they should all work equally well. (well maybe not the monkeys)
So hey, quick question as I am seeing this alot in other entries... 20k is for all the pieces on one building, but what if in the beauty render there is some background stuff to make it feel liek a complete scene... does it have to fit within the 20k budget or is it just considered free for all for background stuff in the beauty render only?
Everything in your scene counts against the 20k, so if you plan to have background stuff make sure you have the polys and texture space to do it. Only thing you get free is a sky
Does anyone have a solution to get lightmaps working in either the max viewport or a scanline render? I have the map rendered out and the UV's all set to channel 2 but I haven't had any luck getting it to be used correctly.
edit
looks like this got hashed over in this thread that I found after a bit more searching.
Ok so I'm not sure how far along people are at this point but I don't see too many people that are close to done. So I am going to extend the contest one more week and end it on the 2nd of August. So please guys lets get some finished art for this.
Replies
Personally, I'll be doing some ground level geometry.
There are no use of BSP, Terrain, or anything besides static meshes.
Now that being said if you want to show your scene sitting on a black void that is your choice but it will be compared to the final results of everyone else.
As for how to attack the ground. I'm not trying to give the write answers but you could easily do sidewalk segments that are modular in design that can easily snap together and share the same texture space. It doesn't have to take up tons of UV space and you can break up what seams like a default ground texture with decals or any other way you see fit.
This contest is about what you want to build and what you see fit as part of the modular design process and environment. If you don't want to include ground so be it. If you do see that it is part of your design then include it.
We are trying to get you to think of creative ways to use the specs provided to create some type of environment, facade, display that you see to be interesting.
It would then be displayed like any prop or character is displayed, with a pedestal or ground plane that didn't have to conform to contest specs, because, again, this isn't about arranging an environment.
Again guess I was looking at it wrong, just wanted to be clear for pre planning.
It's not required that you do a base.
This really shouldn't be this complicated to understand.
nice challenge tho, just got my new computer up n running so maybe i should give it a shot (and then never finish
THE GIST:Do the ground/street/base whatever only if you'd like to. It is not a requirement.
Anythign you show in your scene (besides the sky) counts towards your polycount/texture usage.
So, include whatever the fuck you want, but make sure you stick to 20K tris or less, and 2048^2 or less!
In character competitions what a model stands on isn't included in the triangle/texture count of the contest, so the question was if the facade is sitting on a base is it considered part of the environment or just for display purposes(like a character comp)
The answer was yes, unless you want your building floating, though I might just stick mine on a cube with no textures, I'm not trying to make a complete scene, but prop peices.
If you want to just model a ton of modular assets then that is your option. We left this comp wide open for a reason to inspire creativity so let's just run with what we have.
Good luck everyone
Some really amazing buildings listed here, great for getting ideas.
I've had a few people ask me how to the whole lightmap thing works and how the materials are applied. I'm about half way through writing up a mini Maya tute to bake out lightmaps and how to get them to display in your scene (for those of you that use Maya - though I'll try find a Max equivalent as well). I'll post it in here when its done. Its not the most perfect method as it has some alpha issues (which I'm trying to nut out), but it will give you a realtime representation of your scene with lightmaps applied.
-caseyjones
I remember visiting that site a lot a while back, but lost the link shortly after. A big help for starting places.
After checking out the stuff from Diablo3, I'm pumped and want to get started on something for this.
I mean, if I have a plane that is 15'x5', and I want a square texture to take up 5x5' and tile 3 times on that sheet, it either has to be it's own texture in one axis or another (so your UVs go off of the 0-1 grid,) or you need to cut up your geometry into 3, 5x5' sections, and pile them ontop of each other in the UVs. Then you can place that texture whereever you want on your sheet, and it doesn't matter if it's surrounded or not.
Do you guys usually model out the sections in sub d as well and then rtt?
Seems like that would give the best shading but not give as many options for tiling where just adding edge loops to get decent shading and not doing a rtt would give better options for breaking up the surface with cuts/insets ect using a tiling texture.
IronHawk, nope, I just model in polys from the start.
i'm really interested in joining this competition, as possible motivation for finishing an old project
thing is, this old project is alreay well into conception stage, and ive already made like... 3 props for it [ones that i was sure i'll be using]. sure, thats not even 5% of the project, but i dunno if thats against any rules?
can i try making that enviro for this competition?
summer vaca is on, and even thogh i already have another project in the works, and a job, i figure this'd be a good thing to take on. hopefully i can finish this =DD
http://artbyjessemoody.com/challenges/ModularLevelDesign.pdf
Just right click and save as.
Do we have to follow exactly what we've chosen as ref, or can we alter some things like window styles, color scheme ect..
Reference and Concept to me are more like guildines. Things to inspire you, and when you get lost, look at to get back on track. But I had when I have to build the exact thing in the picture.
When you guys cut the holes in your walls for the windows do you cut them with the grid? If you didn't (as in cut them by proportion and eye instead) how would you place that window piece on the wall in engine?
Is that what you were asking? or did I miss the point?
So the modular ends up being the whole section of the wall then. I mean I understand that, it just seems as though that reduces options?
The noobish followup to that is how do I bake in normal mapped sections of wall (say ribbing detail ala motives ground-floor sections) while still using a blanket regular uv mapped texture? My newbish self seems to not be able to wrap my head around "unwrapping" a wall section to "bake down" and combining that with a regular "uvwmap" for a tiled brick texture.
(thanks for helping btw)
I don't see how a wall segment with a window reduces options. Are you asking if you could make a wall segment with a HOLE for the window, and then also make a Window that fits that hole, in that segment? Sure, but why would you? What would that accomplish? If you're thinking window variations, you could just as easily make 3 wall segments, including teh same window geo mapped to different UV coords, for different window textures, as you could make 1 wall segment with a hole, and then 3 separate windows. But again, why would you? Unless there's some magic you're doing that just makes it harder to place (2 objects to line up rather than 1), doesn't save you anything on texture fetches (unless you have your 3 windows on 3 separate textures, and are only calling one of those on the building, but that would defeat the purpose.)
As for baking high to low, you just make sure your high res is tilable, and bake it down to the mapping of the low poly wall segment. I'm not sure what you mean by baking down, and then having a "regular unwrap" as well?
Am I still missing something in your question?
And in reality it explains the texturing question. See I understand how to make the segment of the wall tileable and with a normal. But it goes back to my thoughts of having holes with windows. My original thought would be; wouldn't it be better to have a window 'prop' that you could use on any building (say whether that building was brick or concrete). Rather than having a section of wall with window with bricks that can only be used on brick buildings. (brick buildings that work with the brick texture of the wall segment).
And in that type of thinking I would have originally thought, lets have a blanket concrete texture that I can use on this building, and maybe on a wall over there, and then on some pillar over in another area. And then use decals for decay/dirt where needed. And then thats where I was wondering how I include a different normal here, and a different normal on that second building.
But it all gets answered by just making a unique section of a wall texture it (tile it where needed) and place it up next to another section. But to me that says then I really can only use that section on that building. Whereas if I was making a larger scene I may not be able to use that section because it doesn't fit look wise. But that thought is what got me into trouble in the first place.
Thanks for sticking with me as I try to wrap (pun?) my head around modularity.
You're still not really limiting yourself THAT much. I can still use my tiling brick texture both behind THIS window on THIS wall segment for THIS building, as well as behind THAT window on THAT wall segment on THAT building.
Both the wall geo, and the texture are tilable, but that doesn't mean they ALWAYS have to go together (depends on how detailed your geo is I guess)
If I have a wall that's a flat plane, even with a hole cut in it for my window, I can put textures of bricks, wood siding, or monkeys on there, and they should all work equally well. (well maybe not the monkeys)
edit
looks like this got hashed over in this thread that I found after a bit more searching.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=54238&highlight=lightmap+max
Hrmm, invalid thread.