Very nice detail, but I really dont like that kind of smooth tech style. It is actually one of the reasons why I did not buy UT3. I feel the kind of detail and overal shape try so hard to look like something they end up looking more like abstract shapes with nonsensical detail all over it.
So much shit happening in those models it actually gives me a bit of a headache. Maybe that's because i'm imagining modeling that...
Too many lofts!!! I dub you the LoftOMatic!
BTW whats with the mudbox on the concrete? Why not just use a mask and do a normal map overlay on the normals of that detail? Not like anyone would notice the difference when you have five billion wires/cables drooping over it. Maybe its just my disinterest in making so many micro detail that peoples eyes explode apon viewing such detail.
BTW you must really hate your computer... slave driver! My work comp chugs/growns at a simple 2048x2 in PS and max running in the background. Then again the 50-100 layers in the PS file might not be helping much either.
TGZ: we have 16 gigs of ram gotta use it all up somehow!
awesome work Kevin! I like seeing your work hung up in the halls. the more I look at this thread, the more I realize that most of that stuff is yours:)
Wow!! Looks great. If anything there's too much detail!!! I just started modeling about a month ago, so even trying to think about how you made this confuses me... Hope to see more work from you soon!
TGZ, I cant speak for Kevin's decision to mudbox that piece specifically but it never hurts to fully detail a piece in 3d because you can use it elsewhere in another mesh.
You don't need meshtools anymore, all the functions are integrated in max now.
so how do you divide an edge in it's center? how do you spin edges? didn#t find alot of meshtools functions, i still install them, and to answer the inital question, they are scripts, they still work in max 2009
As Jordan mentioned, reuse is a big factor in choosing to zbrush or mudbox a piece.
There was only ever 1 256x96 units piece of concrete modelled and then deformed into
all the other shapes so that it tiles with itself and every other floor piece.
I did push too far with the detail on this set, but I didnt know what was too far to go
until this piece so it was worth it for that alone
They were pretty detailed for the floors, Kovacs has made sketches demonstrating how
parts of the floors could restract and animate to expose more detailed sections underneath.
It was really clear that he was driving at the notion of the Necris stuff overwriting and melding
with the turkish stuff that was originally there.
The backstory that we came up with for the Necris environment was that the warriors would
take over a hostile environment once they had pacified the resistence there by dropping
a nanoblack viral bomb which would act like an intelligent environmental virus that would
grow over what ever it found, mimicing its style and gradually sucking the life out of it so
it could harness more power for the Necris frontline and not require any 'capture and hold'
effort.
With that in mind, we went crazy with wires and detail, Giger meets Islam was the phrase
I was always throwing out there to justify what we were doing.
The thing about islamic art is that its as detail intensive as this stuff and if you read up on
the why's and wherefores of that you realize its all designed to make certain sections of
itself more readable and clear when seen from the correct distances.
I think we managed to pull a little of that off but there was certainly still room for improvement
and there were of course balancing mistakes made but it was exciting stuff to try.
I have a complete respect for the intensity and geometric form and opulent use of colour that
Islamic art is famous for, their stuff is just genius.
Thanks for the answer. I definitely feel the Giger influence in these peices; the last Necris peice especially reminds me of one of his biomechanical landscapes.
animatr, so that where you went... For the last few months i have been wondering where the hell you disappeared off to. You do realize you left me as the only polycounter here at lith?
16gigs of ram??!! Fuck, i need to be keeping a better track of the jones's... I was still thinking that 4gigs was alot...
Kevin, I didn't see/know that it was being reused, good call in that case. BTW what res are those normal map textures in game? Alot of the wire work look almost too small to get properly picked up when mipped down to a 1024x.
You can see here that the wire still read fine at 1024. I started my career making 32by32
and 64by64 textures on playstation1 and its surprising how much is still readable if you
balance colour and tone in a more photographic fashion.
The real problem is more to do with the balance of assets in the scene, a lot of the crazy
dark metal and wire crazy pieces were balanced out by the light creame coloured low specularity concrete pieces tha the dark stuff was placed on top of.
Oblast: What piece, tell me the image name and the area of if you are asking about and I
can explain, I ignored your last request because its so vague I couldn't really address it.
Sry the first Nercis block piece where is says "trims" on page 5. They're are strange curved deco writings on there. How did you bevel those writings, because i have a hard time beveling lettering or symbols. Also are those symbols or writings meshsmoothed?
Well I make a spline shaped like the shape I want, then use the bevel modifier
or the shell modifier then chamfer.
I'm guessing you are more concerned with edge flow, tidying up a shape like that so you
can then take it into zbrush when its all in nice quads to aid subdivision is the tougher
part as you need to gradually terminate your edge loops as you get closer to the thin
corners at the extremities of whatever the shape is.
This image should help show what I mean about thinning out your edge loops as you
get closer to the extremities of the shape. This grad is subdivided already as I was
prepping it for zbrush, it only had 1 subdivision though, so you can see what edge loops
I used still.
lmao... I just told a friend at "Big Studio Name" that I could model just about anything now.
I had to type that with one hand as the other is busy trying to pull my foot out of my mouth...
I use Zbrush, it can handle more polys, the wider array of tools let me do more, I don't have problems with the interface and I just have a reliable and familiar workflow with the thing now.
I tried mudbox for a few months when at the time Zbrush2.5 was out and didnt have all the new tools it got by 3.1 but there wasnt much between the 2 in order to pic a clear winner.
No idea, haven't really made time to put new html together, just been rendering stuff
when theres time and showing it here. As far as crunch goes, its more on the Coders
now, you know its always them that does the last of the heavy lifting.
It's a far far more impressive game this time though, its been worth the effort, we'll have to
get together and play some Hoarde in November
My pc at home is still out of order, when its fixed, i'll take a bunch of screengrabs of
the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.
I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
more easily how to make new forms.
you are the artist formerly known as rorshach are you not? if so your stuff has been an inspiration for a long time. if not... your stuff is now a great inspiration :poly108::poly108::poly108:
My pc at home is still out of order, when its fixed, i'll take a bunch of screengrabs of
the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.
I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
more easily how to make new forms.
+1
I for one would be very interested to see this as well.
My pc at home is still out of order, when its fixed, i'll take a bunch of screengrabs of
the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.
I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
more easily how to make new forms.
Can't wait.
This whole thread has insane amounts of win all over it.
Thanks for the great post and very detailed explainations. Its really insperational and very good of you to take the time out of your busy shedule to post all of this information, cant wait for more!
On a side note, you mentioned in one of your earlier posts that your wife was expecting a baby soon, so I just wanted to say congratulations to you both!
Just have to add my two cents to this thread.
Kevin's work is really inspirational! Thanks for posting it up here!
Its nice to read your processes, and the time spent on specific assest!
Thanks for the awesome thread!
~C
I've been putting this thread off for a while as I've been busy with my newest addition to
the family ...
Nuala Johnstone was born 8 pounds 7 ounces at 3.34pm on September 10th
and really, thats where the majority of my time has been spent lately
She's doing great, growing very fast, freakishly attentive to the world around her
and unusually quick to develop neck muscles and the ability to turn over within a month
when they aint supposed to until the 4month mark.
We're wondering what next frankly but its just a wonderful time right now at home and
at work now that Gears2 is out and doing well also so thats why I haven't updated in a while.
I'll see about knocking out some renders soon, but Fallout3 and Gears2 + family is eating
all my time right now
Replies
wtfzomgbbqthxlol, awesome attention to detail.
truly inspirational.
writings edges beveled like that with meshsmooth on?
How... the fuck, sir.
Impressive as always
In fact, it's only critic is that it's TOO complex for the eye to process and appreciate, especially at a quick glance in-game.
Too many lofts!!! I dub you the LoftOMatic!
BTW whats with the mudbox on the concrete? Why not just use a mask and do a normal map overlay on the normals of that detail? Not like anyone would notice the difference when you have five billion wires/cables drooping over it. Maybe its just my disinterest in making so many micro detail that peoples eyes explode apon viewing such detail.
BTW you must really hate your computer... slave driver! My work comp chugs/growns at a simple 2048x2 in PS and max running in the background. Then again the 50-100 layers in the PS file might not be helping much either.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
awesome work Kevin! I like seeing your work hung up in the halls. the more I look at this thread, the more I realize that most of that stuff is yours:)
so how do you divide an edge in it's center? how do you spin edges? didn#t find alot of meshtools functions, i still install them, and to answer the inital question, they are scripts, they still work in max 2009
There was only ever 1 256x96 units piece of concrete modelled and then deformed into
all the other shapes so that it tiles with itself and every other floor piece.
I did push too far with the detail on this set, but I didnt know what was too far to go
until this piece so it was worth it for that alone
Question.. how detailed were the concepts (if any) for those Necris walkways?
parts of the floors could restract and animate to expose more detailed sections underneath.
It was really clear that he was driving at the notion of the Necris stuff overwriting and melding
with the turkish stuff that was originally there.
The backstory that we came up with for the Necris environment was that the warriors would
take over a hostile environment once they had pacified the resistence there by dropping
a nanoblack viral bomb which would act like an intelligent environmental virus that would
grow over what ever it found, mimicing its style and gradually sucking the life out of it so
it could harness more power for the Necris frontline and not require any 'capture and hold'
effort.
With that in mind, we went crazy with wires and detail, Giger meets Islam was the phrase
I was always throwing out there to justify what we were doing.
The thing about islamic art is that its as detail intensive as this stuff and if you read up on
the why's and wherefores of that you realize its all designed to make certain sections of
itself more readable and clear when seen from the correct distances.
I think we managed to pull a little of that off but there was certainly still room for improvement
and there were of course balancing mistakes made but it was exciting stuff to try.
I have a complete respect for the intensity and geometric form and opulent use of colour that
Islamic art is famous for, their stuff is just genius.
Can't wait to see more!
writings edges beveled like that with meshsmooth on?
16gigs of ram??!! Fuck, i need to be keeping a better track of the jones's... I was still thinking that 4gigs was alot...
Kevin, I didn't see/know that it was being reused, good call in that case. BTW what res are those normal map textures in game? Alot of the wire work look almost too small to get properly picked up when mipped down to a 1024x.
You can see here that the wire still read fine at 1024. I started my career making 32by32
and 64by64 textures on playstation1 and its surprising how much is still readable if you
balance colour and tone in a more photographic fashion.
The real problem is more to do with the balance of assets in the scene, a lot of the crazy
dark metal and wire crazy pieces were balanced out by the light creame coloured low specularity concrete pieces tha the dark stuff was placed on top of.
Oblast: What piece, tell me the image name and the area of if you are asking about and I
can explain, I ignored your last request because its so vague I couldn't really address it.
or the shell modifier then chamfer.
I'm guessing you are more concerned with edge flow, tidying up a shape like that so you
can then take it into zbrush when its all in nice quads to aid subdivision is the tougher
part as you need to gradually terminate your edge loops as you get closer to the thin
corners at the extremities of whatever the shape is.
This image should help show what I mean about thinning out your edge loops as you
get closer to the extremities of the shape. This grad is subdivided already as I was
prepping it for zbrush, it only had 1 subdivision though, so you can see what edge loops
I used still.
Keep up the good work!
I had to type that with one hand as the other is busy trying to pull my foot out of my mouth...
I tried mudbox for a few months when at the time Zbrush2.5 was out and didnt have all the new tools it got by 3.1 but there wasnt much between the 2 in order to pic a clear winner.
when theres time and showing it here. As far as crunch goes, its more on the Coders
now, you know its always them that does the last of the heavy lifting.
It's a far far more impressive game this time though, its been worth the effort, we'll have to
get together and play some Hoarde in November
the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.
I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
more easily how to make new forms.
+1
I for one would be very interested to see this as well.
Can't wait.
This whole thread has insane amounts of win all over it.
On a side note, you mentioned in one of your earlier posts that your wife was expecting a baby soon, so I just wanted to say congratulations to you both!
eheh
touche
Kevin's work is really inspirational! Thanks for posting it up here!
Its nice to read your processes, and the time spent on specific assest!
Thanks for the awesome thread!
~C
I've been putting this thread off for a while as I've been busy with my newest addition to
the family ...
Nuala Johnstone was born 8 pounds 7 ounces at 3.34pm on September 10th
and really, thats where the majority of my time has been spent lately
She's doing great, growing very fast, freakishly attentive to the world around her
and unusually quick to develop neck muscles and the ability to turn over within a month
when they aint supposed to until the 4month mark.
We're wondering what next frankly but its just a wonderful time right now at home and
at work now that Gears2 is out and doing well also so thats why I haven't updated in a while.
I'll see about knocking out some renders soon, but Fallout3 and Gears2 + family is eating
all my time right now
wats the poly count on her?
naw j/ks
[belated] congrats on the baby!
good luck!
The second one reads - "What'd you say, punk?!?!"
so cute
Thanks so much for all the insight into your workflow, too, it's greatly appreciated