You occasionally get odd things like that happening in Maya when some nodes get messed up. Try exporting the mesh into a new file and see if that fixes things.
ya, the UVs aren't actually messed up, selecting faces, welding points, various other things all fix the viewport temporarily, but when I then change my perspective view at all, they go back to being funky. I tried the box trick to no avail, but just now, detached a few things, and that seemed to fix it.
Bizarre. I have no idea what it was doing, but I think I got rid of it at least.
Nick, I hope you don't mind me posting this here but this was along the lines of what I was thinking, sans the signs shadow, when we talked on MSN earlier today:
Things I did which can also be done in a game editor / for this contest:
-Hue/Sat adjustment
-SLIGHT dof, focusing on the background
-bloom/hdr
-skybox
-letterbox
Tried to make it look hot, like its abandoned out in the desert
Hey guys, thanks for the kind words. My router at home has been on the fritz, and I haven't actually had any time to work on anything, hence the lack of updates.
Sage, Prof420 was correct on the mesh caching (WTF!?) but Thanks a ton Prof!
I did relight the scene more similarly to Adam's paintover, but I have the sun coming from behind the left side of the motel, so most of it is in shadow. Anyway, I'll post when I can actually get online at home.
Adam, I relaid out the curtains like we talked about, and I think it worked pretty well. Each window can have a relatively unique set of curtains without using many more polys or texture space.
Hey Tumer, would it be asking a lot to ask how you did your 'corner grime'? How did you manage to get the tileable stucco texture to get dirt on all sides of your windows and doors? I think I'm still at quite a loss as to how to go from my model to the stage you are at hah.
Also, if you take this into an engine are you going to just take the modular pieces and assemble in there? Or the entire building?
It looks great man, I can't wait to see the final shots.
Thats brilliant man, so my quick follow would be is this technique for having pretty much all your 'grime' using decals suitable in an engine as well? To me it makes perfect sense to have 2 or 4-way tileable textures (like your stucco for example) and then the dirt pass be done with decals. Rather than making the stucco texture less tileable by adding the dirt detail directly to it.
I'm not sure if you've ever seen the mini series 'The Lost Room' but your motel reminds me of it! It looks fantastic man.
Never seen the series Saidin, but it's cool that I reminded you of something LOL
As for the approach. . . I don't see why it's not valid. I've only ever worked on MMO's professionally, so our stuff HAS to reuse textures, and use modular pieces as much as possible. I used grime decals in similar situations all over City of Villains, though I can't say I got into as fine of details as around each doorway or anything. I would be leary of using decals in this kind of abundance in an FPS, as each decal actually floats over the geo by .25-.5" which is barely noticable in an MMO camera, but could stick out in FPS mode.
Another thing to consider is that each of these is using soft alpha. I can't speak to other engines, but in ours, alpha cutout is always cheaper than soft alpha. So this would be more costly than not having alpha planes all over the place, or using alpha cut out. Having said that, these decals aren't terribly big, and have solid surfaces directly behind them. So they aren't going to be super expensive with fillrate and overdraw, like a bunch of blades of grass in a row would be.
So, is it valid in engine? Sure. Is it something you'd want to do in every game. . . maybe not.
Awesome, thanks for the help again! I think I'm gonna unwrap some of my stuff like a pillar or two and a window header can add grime in directly on the texture and then use some decals to break up the tile on my back-wall brick and concrete textures.
Well, I've reached my poly limit (haven't jammed all my textures together, but probably getting close there too. . .)
But. . . there's still a week and change left. . . I'm thinking of pulling out the fire extinguishers and ice maker (which you can barely see in that shot) and use those polys for something more . . . impactful.
We'll see. Either way, I will be finishing this up after the comp (when I can throw more polys and texture space on it :P)
Why not change the ice maker to a pop machine. Pop machines are lit and that would make it stand out. And no motel would be complete without a pop machine!
My amateur eyes says the seam on the far right wall kinda sticks out for me. I mean I'm sure these old boards have dirt in between them and stuff, but it just seems obvious that its a modular piece. But again, I'm not sure whether I'm qualified to make such assessments on an awesome piece.
oh yeah....only thing that bothers me tho and im surprised no1 else has mentioned this (maybe they have and im blind and or crazy) but the seem on the ground is really sticking out . But im sure you already know that and are going to fix it anyways
Ya, the Sign was honestly what I wanted to use those polys for. . . old Motel Signs were pretty much the inspiration for the piece, so, it seems like I HAVE to have one, even if it's not "modular."
I'll play around and see what I can pull, and how many polys I actually need for the sign I want to do.
Eric, ya, I'm not happy with the parking lot right now either, so that will probably be one thing I go back and redo by next week. That's why I didn't bother working too hard on the seams.
Alright, well that whole review/artistic doubt thing kind of took the wind out of my sails on this one. Sorry.
I wouldn't say I'm Done, but I'm as done as I will be by the deadline. I'm going to be gone for the rest of the day, so hopefully this can count as my submission? I doubt I'll be back in time to post in the Official thread. . . anyway, here it is:
Wires
Final Tri Count: 16324, I could have added another section or two. . . but I didn't really see the point.
edit: Oops, almost forgot the textures. I worked with them all as separate files, but here they are all crammed together so you can see they fit on one map. (I shrunk it to 1024 to fit the formatting standards so Adam doesn't give me an infraction!)
Ya, I want to keep going with it, but I may scrap a lot of the texturing, and start over with higher limits. I definitely want to make the whole motel (office, pool, etc.)
I apologize if this is a dumb question - what did the shader for your wireframe shots look like? I really like the combination of the wireframe with the lighting.
Root, it was more out of lazyness that I didn't ditch the lighting for the wireframe, but ya. . . I kinda like it.
Anyway, in Max, duplicated the mesh. Apply a uniform grey texture (untextured material) to that.
Apply a white wire texture to the duplicate, and used a push modifier to shove it out .25" over the grey mesh.
I found a mental ray shader on highend3d by David Lanier that'll do the job, and will even work in max if the docs aren't lying. Being a mental ray shader introduces the temptation to use all the fancy final gatherings and global illuminations, though, but there you have it.
I'm sure there's a relatively easy way to cook something like this up in the hypershade with expressions and vector math but I don't have the requisite amount of science installed in my head to do that on my own. I seem to remember there being something about it in Lanier's book on maya rendering but I don't know where my copy of it is at the moment.
Replies
Bizarre. I have no idea what it was doing, but I think I got rid of it at least.
-Hue/Sat adjustment
-SLIGHT dof, focusing on the background
-bloom/hdr
-skybox
-letterbox
Tried to make it look hot, like its abandoned out in the desert
Not sure why but I like the image this render made.
Sage, Prof420 was correct on the mesh caching (WTF!?) but Thanks a ton Prof!
I did relight the scene more similarly to Adam's paintover, but I have the sun coming from behind the left side of the motel, so most of it is in shadow. Anyway, I'll post when I can actually get online at home.
Adam, I relaid out the curtains like we talked about, and I think it worked pretty well. Each window can have a relatively unique set of curtains without using many more polys or texture space.
Also, if you take this into an engine are you going to just take the modular pieces and assemble in there? Or the entire building?
It looks great man, I can't wait to see the final shots.
My parking lot cracks are looking spongy. . . gotta work on that.
As for you Saidin. Help the competition!? HA!
. . . don't look at me like that. . .
fine.
Trust me, it's nothing fancy. . . they're just decals that follow those forms, around the edges:
and are all mapped to a texture with an alpha that fades out:
Each decal just has the edge that's in the corner, mapped to the bottom edge of that image.
I'm not sure if you've ever seen the mini series 'The Lost Room' but your motel reminds me of it! It looks fantastic man.
As for the approach. . . I don't see why it's not valid. I've only ever worked on MMO's professionally, so our stuff HAS to reuse textures, and use modular pieces as much as possible. I used grime decals in similar situations all over City of Villains, though I can't say I got into as fine of details as around each doorway or anything. I would be leary of using decals in this kind of abundance in an FPS, as each decal actually floats over the geo by .25-.5" which is barely noticable in an MMO camera, but could stick out in FPS mode.
Another thing to consider is that each of these is using soft alpha. I can't speak to other engines, but in ours, alpha cutout is always cheaper than soft alpha. So this would be more costly than not having alpha planes all over the place, or using alpha cut out. Having said that, these decals aren't terribly big, and have solid surfaces directly behind them. So they aren't going to be super expensive with fillrate and overdraw, like a bunch of blades of grass in a row would be.
So, is it valid in engine? Sure. Is it something you'd want to do in every game. . . maybe not.
Hope that makes sense.
But. . . there's still a week and change left. . . I'm thinking of pulling out the fire extinguishers and ice maker (which you can barely see in that shot) and use those polys for something more . . . impactful.
We'll see. Either way, I will be finishing this up after the comp (when I can throw more polys and texture space on it :P)
Thanks for the positive responses guys.
My amateur eyes says the seam on the far right wall kinda sticks out for me. I mean I'm sure these old boards have dirt in between them and stuff, but it just seems obvious that its a modular piece. But again, I'm not sure whether I'm qualified to make such assessments on an awesome piece.
I'll play around and see what I can pull, and how many polys I actually need for the sign I want to do.
Eric, ya, I'm not happy with the parking lot right now either, so that will probably be one thing I go back and redo by next week. That's why I didn't bother working too hard on the seams.
Cut a couple rooms and add that sign dude. Looking good. Some of the best notel motel's only have a few rooms.
Whatever you do don't stay at the Blue Sky in Bozemen.
I wouldn't say I'm Done, but I'm as done as I will be by the deadline. I'm going to be gone for the rest of the day, so hopefully this can count as my submission? I doubt I'll be back in time to post in the Official thread. . . anyway, here it is:
Wires
Final Tri Count: 16324, I could have added another section or two. . . but I didn't really see the point.
edit: Oops, almost forgot the textures. I worked with them all as separate files, but here they are all crammed together so you can see they fit on one map. (I shrunk it to 1024 to fit the formatting standards so Adam doesn't give me an infraction!)
This was fun, thanks for all the support guys.
Alex
Root, it was more out of lazyness that I didn't ditch the lighting for the wireframe, but ya. . . I kinda like it.
Anyway, in Max, duplicated the mesh. Apply a uniform grey texture (untextured material) to that.
Apply a white wire texture to the duplicate, and used a push modifier to shove it out .25" over the grey mesh.
I'm sure there's a relatively easy way to cook something like this up in the hypershade with expressions and vector math but I don't have the requisite amount of science installed in my head to do that on my own. I seem to remember there being something about it in Lanier's book on maya rendering but I don't know where my copy of it is at the moment.