"Mod Facade" Challenge - indian_boy - Manor

indian_boy

Hey guys!
I'm back with some art, now that the 2nd semester of school is over, and summer break is here.
As my first 3d project in a while, i've decided to complete a very old one

i hadnt done much though, so its not like im at an advantage. maybe an hour or 2s worth of work [lol?]

but yea, the project was a Manor made in a medieval / romanesque style, but in the modern day

i scrapped the old concept and am only doing part of it for this competition.

Enough talk, more art:


the concept art as it stands so far

gonna add little more detail to this, then i'll divvy it up, and do slightly more detailed sketches of modules

not gonna spend too much time on that though. i'll try to jump into 3ds Max asap, seeing as my job is taking up 6am to 5pm every weekday, and its tiring as hell, and i wont be able to finish if i dont move extra fast

i HOPE i can finish this
it'll be a first in quite a while

this is also my first time doing modular environments [or environments in general] so i hope the skill and support from the polycount community that i usually see will be able to help me out here =D

lets get this going....

EDIT: random mind farts removed to prevent johny from killing babies

Joao Sapiro

fuck dude leave the [random mind farts] out of the shit you write it just makes me wanna kill a baby. [/rant]

les write and go for it, better get some references of real buildings, and post them here, be sure to check eq thread etc contains VALUABLE information

indian_boy

haha k sorry about that
i'll stop em

and thank for the tip. will go thru EQs stuff

till then:


a detail of a pillar, undamaged, perfectly standing

Kawe

top floor could use some windows.. maybe a balcony (re-use it for a fountain later. ooh..)? and maybe something rooflike.. overhang or whatever. just a suggestion

for some reason the image made me think of zorro.. lol.

indian_boy

hehe yea that wasn't done yet.
here's a closer-to-complete version:


balcony piece will be, as suggested, reused for the fountain.
wall pieces between each column is a seperate module
each column is a seperate module, and some damaged ones will be added as seperate modules too
each arch is a module, plus 2 damaged archs as modules aswell

a question i had about the floor:

should it be a plane with each face mapped to the same uvs, or a plane with its own texture and scaled to make it tile, or should i make blocks out of polygons, and place em side by side?
i think the last option makes it easier to make for damaged floor sections yes?

indian_boy

meh references
i'll work off of that for the 3d
i know wat i want the place to look like, i think i spent enough time on concepting


this was done a LONG time ago.
might use the planter, and the archway entrance thing.

time to get to work on the 3d
first time i've opened max in so long lol

indian_boy

30 minutes of work, coupled with chattin wit gf.
happy at my speed at gettin this done

any tips on getting rid of jaggies in normal maps?
they're botehring me alot!

EarthQuake

Render your texture larger, and then size it down, or increase the quality of AA when render, those are really your only options.

MoP

Or use a different pattern, since that one looks pretty weird. What's it meant to be, anyway? A giant trellis on a pillar?
If that's just a single modular pillar, try making it a bit more consistent. At the moment the seam from the edge and the front is really extreme.

Nistrum

yeh i see what mop is saying. you couldtry putting a border arround. either recessing it (probably weith a normal map. or embossing it... either way i think should make it look a little less extreme

indian_boy

m kay thanks for the tips and advice

but yea, the thing was embedded into the 'stone', the wireframe just hid that.
hopefully this is better:



i fail miserably at texturing things, unfortunately
so i'll kill myself trying to texture this pillar probably.
any tips right off the bat would be good, if you guys could give workflow / method advice etc?

will get back to it when i get home from work tomorrow.

okkun

Build a high res, chamfer the edges of your low res and bake it. You shouldn't need to do much in the way of texturing other than some overlays.

motives

i think you should look at some reference and get a bit more deliberate with what you do. Your stonepillar right now doesnt really look like a stone pillar. Its more a box with random normalmap gradients going on.

this is one pillar i found on google wich i think looks pretty neat and straightforward. Okkun gave some good advice on the modelling aspect that i would try follow aswell

indian_boy

hm kk thanks guys

1) well i've got a high res, thing is that when i bake it, the normals end up 'all over the place' eg: flat surfaces are shaded as if they were curved. Also, the parts down the middle which protrude aren't rendered out as straight verticals... i'll show the bake when i get back
2) as for chamfering the edges of the lowpoly, is that permanently a _part_ of the low res, or is that just for baking purposes? either way, what would be the purpose of doing this?
Just interested in knowing for knowledges' sake, so that i dont feel like im doing it just cuz im told to
3) thank you, motives, for the refs. i should learn to spend more time ref-hunting

will get back to work on this thing when i get home
now i must depart

thanks again guys!

indian_boy

high res to the left, normals + AO + AO shading used as diffuse map to the right

EarthQuake

Looks like you've got some pretty bad smoothing errors there, either split your lowpoly into smoothing groups and rebake, or go in and add in some more geometry to support those harsh angles.

Mark Dygert

Not that it matters much now since what you have is better then what you had. BUT the lattice in your ref had a boarder on the edges it didn't terminate on the edges of the model. I think it could work, but you need to pay attention to your own drawings...

Like EQ mentioned I think you're asking the low poly to do too much and the smoothing groups are not helping. It's like you baked the low poly smoothing errors into the material?

indian_boy

a) the suggestion to add more geometry has me wondering:
a environment in a game has a:
" 20,000 triangles maximum. Static meshes only. No BSP

2048x2048 Diffuse/Normals/Spec/Emissive/Parrallax You can cut these textures up any way you like, as long as they do not exceed 2048x2048 of overall texture space.

512xm512 Texture for lightmap"

limit

what exactly would be devoted to a pillar that is used like i show in the concept at the top of the thread?
just curious as to know, cuz ive got this at 124 tris, thinking its a bit much

b) the earlier one had a border, but i guess i shoulda kept it thicker. either way, i personally feel this is better too, so i won't go back to changing the old one




looking any better?

thanks for all the tips guys

EarthQuake

well think of it this way, if you had 10 of these, at 500 polies each, you'de be using 5000, and still ahve 15,000 for the rest. Its hard to answer that without knowing how many pillars you want to use, how much detail you want in the rest of the structure, etc etc. Anyway you should be able to do the math.

At 124 tris, you could have 50 of these things and only be using 6200 tris. So 124 is completely reasonable, you could even go for a bit more i think, but i dont really see anything in the shape that calls for it.

oobersli

You could go completely cheaper by how you build your low poly. The example is 28 tris. Basic and simple enough you could afford and go in to chamfer or add more detail and still have the current amount of polys you have now, but with a move interesting shape and easier to work with.

indian_boy

@ EQ: that makes sense. i was just wondering, cuz some pieces that i see in unreal ed for UT3 are like, 400 tris for a cylinderical pillar. felt it kinda' odd, but now i guess it makes sense thanks for the explanation

@oobersli: good point. will keep in mind for the future bits and pieces =D

once again, thanks guys!

here's sommin i've been cookin up over the past... 3 hours maybe?
its a mini support piece, that is used to decorate the fountain and the balcony, and i might use it randomly against the walls here and there.
it's probably around hip height, i'd estimate.
anyway, screen grab of normals and diffuse, with 1 omni light:

oobersli

looks like you're trying to project too much depth onto a flat surface. normal map can only do so much. maybe bevel in your lowpoly where it extrudes inward. Also, what's that made of? both the peices u have dont' seem to look like something I would imagine thats made out of stone. Do you have reference? Or is this just a concept out of your mind.

indian_boy

hmm. well i was told that if i exxagerate depth in my high res, its a highe chance that the normal map would detect it while baking. the depth i show in the high res isnt the actual depth i want. i just want it to be, say, a cenitmetre or so in?
but thanks for the reminder. i was about to screw up with my balcony, and that woulda be demotivational lol

as for material:

well as i said, this is in the future, and some of the broken pieces will have steel supports etc to show that this isnt from the medieval ages. as such, these pieces are supposed to be mass produced by machines etc so that u can really get any design in there.
but if they look _nothing_ like stone, then i guess i sould stick closer to my references. as for refs, i have a few, but i didnt stick to the refs. so i suppose you could say this is all off my head.

ill post up the refs when i get back from work
i'm just trying to keep the habit of checkin my thread once in the morning, and uploading at least once in the evening.

thnks once again!

LoTekK

Normal maps won't handle geometry that's perpendicular to your lowpoly surface, which is part of why your normal map is lacking the depth of your highpoly. Exaggerate the angle of your highpoly details so they're sloped instead of extruded straight out.

Look about halfway down the page

I'm no expert, but I'd advise you to stick to reference. Coming up with things from your head can be good, but they need to be grounded in some sort of reality to be believable. Saying "this is the future" is probably the easiest copout a person can use to explain why something doesn't look the way people expect it to.

indian_boy

woah thanks for the link. i'd lost it in a reformat, and forgot about it afterwards! it was a good reminder

as for ur comment about me trying to 'copout' ... i respond with a 'GAH i dont want that image'
and hence, a complete recreate of this piece's high poly:


i hope this is better?

thanks again!
cheers

Tumerboy

WAY BETTER! That's got a lot of style/character to it! Nice job!

Cody

Very nice! Huge improvement!

Kawe

that looks really nice.

a question though. how large is this piece cause it looks like the details might be huuuge or the pillar might be really tiny? the first pillars looked a little more proportional to what I'd expect from a regular pillar.

indian_boy

glad you guys like it!

as for the size of the piece, its approximately hip height. it goes around the fountain, and the balcony. this shot should help give a sense of scale:



thanks for the support guys!
i'll move on to the next piece, and come back to texturing later. i hate it so!

indian_boy

and:


its a piece of a curved balcony. 3 of these makes 1 balcony, and 6 make a fountain perimiter
took less time cuz:
a) i have a hang of it
b) the design was a lot of duplicating =D

good? bad? yes? no?

indian_boy

changed the scaling a little when things were put into perspective:


the completed balcony


the completed pond/fountain type thing [note: its _not_ a perfect circle, and that was intended]

Tumerboy

looks good, keep going!

Rick Stirling

Much better, and a nice reuse of the asset.

You probably still want to be bevelling the edges of some parts of that low pillar. The top section is detail free whereas the main body of it is intricate and I'm not sure such a strong contrast works.

Kawe

I like what you did with the fountain/balcony idea

RazorBladder

Looks like you're learning a lot from this project, keep pushing it!

indian_boy

hehe thanks guys!
as for the mini pillar things... i'll definately look into those.
a bit later though. i wanna work on another asset for a bit =D

but yea, last update for the balcony:


took a lot of my gfs advice into consideration. got rid of the feet, they looked like seperate parts. put a different block instead. added some cuts to the curved part, and softened the sharpness of the top part. also, i made the balcony a bit taller, to make the top of it and the top of the 'pillars' match up. it looks better to me as well.

i _think_ thats all the changes.

thanks for all the support, once again,
and yes, i'm happy at how much i'm gaining from this project. growing interest in environment art...

cheers!

indian_boy

man oh MAN am i having fun with this!
redid that pillar from scratch:



more than a million polies on this baby! it took quite a while, and i'm fairly proud of it.

what do you guys think?

indian_boy

bang!

last update today. well.. okay first one today technically but w/e

diffuse, normals, and a person to see scale =D
just so you know, the far / back of the pillar ends earlier than the model. i just extended the verts so that i have a little room to insert into the walls etc. so the texture 'ends' a bit sooner too, and u can see the end of the panelling a the side of the pillar.
aslso, the design is failry clear in the render. i figure that the camera is just pulled too far back to capture those details on viewport screengrab

lemme know what you think!
gnight!

Kawe

uhm.. the side of the pillar looks weird. I assume the normal map got less resolution there? I guess you probably won't see much of the side?

indian_boy

er actually no the maps rendered out weird. i photoshoped them to repair em.
i did a few more changes. added some shadin etc etc:


might get some more done today.

lemme know wat u think

cheers!

RazorBladder

looks like u have jazzed up smoothing groups, personally when doing normalmap work I tend to just shove the entire model with a single smoothinggroup and let the normalmap do all the work. I know EQ would probably suggest otherwise :P

Either that or your uvs are fugged.

indian_boy

when i put them all into 1 smoothing group, the flat parts are never entirley flat, unfortunately. they are shaded near the corners, even if my turbosmoothed high res mesh is sharp. that's why i seperate the low poly into smoothing groups.
as for uvs. they're working out fine. like, minimal strecthin, etc. unless theres some other type of issue?

another type of pillar, gf and i figured that the above one was:
1) too top heavy
2) too 'different' in terms of design [i might get rid of the indents above the arch in this version
3) had too many swirls in the middle. i've reduced them this time around, and it still looks good in my eyes

so yea:

indian_boy

first update of the day =D


messin around with flooring, cuz i didnt wanna do anything complex.
4 different types of floor. well 1 type, 4 subtypes:


anybody know how to get alpha working with normals and diffuse and spec in realtime display on 3ds?

indian_boy

tried a little trim:


prolly gonna reduce the tex res on this. it'd be far from the viewer, so it doesnt need this much res i guess.

indian_boy

was feelin a little burnt out, so i decided to do this:



light, easy, quick... and helped me check if things matched.. in terms of colour and style.
also helped me realize i need to make walls =D
think i'll take a break n then make an archway or something...

aesir

Its all looking really nice and clean so far.

Just one suggestion, as of now, you've made everything pretty much exactly the same color. Think about your final scene and try to get some color variation in there for your beauty render.

indian_boy

so i should add varioation in my textures you mean?
cuz it kinda reads like im doing well, but the beauty shot will need more colour change?



an update as i was watchin E3 live on gamespot
the walls.
i kinda like the wall tiles, but i dont know if they 'fit'

let me know what you guys think!
cheers!

oobersli

get more building reference. This is starting to look mished mashed together!!!!

aesir

what I said was more just a suggestion. Youre not doing anything wrong. Games like gears of war prove that a really limited pallete can work fine. I guess its more my preference that I like a lot of different subtle colors mixing together in a scene. For yours, maybe some blue and brown/yellow mosaic panels might fit in.

indian_boy

x x i did them in bricks first.
but they looked like they were filled in holes... they were like this:



would bricks be better?
i'll go look up some refs...

and thanks for the clearup aesir. i'll see what seems to fit in later down the line
i, for some stupid reason, like the limited pallette for this.. personal preference i guess

indian_boy

just some colour 'correction'..

more single pallette than before
gonna work on the wall tomorrow after work

and i added some dirt to the floor

lemme know what you guys think of a) the 'colours' ; b) the bricks vs. the tiles