First Building, Looking for Tough Love

super_villain

So I figured that if I want to get a job as an environmental artist, I should probably make a couple of buildings. So, I read through a few of the envir art threads, and here is my first attempt at one. It's simple, but I'm want to get the process down before I get carried away. It's a facade at this point (no back). It's 8870 tris. I used five maps big maps, and three small ones for repeating textures, as shown in the pic. I rendered the building with each of the maps as a solid color, so you can see what goes with what. No normal or spec maps, as I imagine I'm gonna get suggestions on how to make this better/more efficient.

So now I'm just looking for a beat down. What should be changed? Should I combine 4 for the big maps, maybe toss out the "additional balcony colors" map? Are some of the maps unnecessary? Looking for insight. Thanks in advance for your help.

AimBiZ

Looks like a good management to me. Depends how big the maps are though. Would the player (I assume this is gameart) be able to see the building up close like in a fps or does it lean more to rts?

Not very fond of the stripes on the top. I like the idea of having some kind of detail up there but something else rather. And the windows should be placed a bit away from the edge of the wall.

Otherwise, looks like a very good start. I'll be watching.

salman_fas

What does it mean by "big map" and "small map". Also why do you have same door twice in your texture map?

zerafian

That building looks a lot like what we do at the simulation company I work at. Only difference is we would put all those textures into one 512x512 :poly127:(it hurts to do it). Only thing I see that bothers me is the brick..it seems a bit flat. You should scale the bricks down so you see more in one swatch and add something as simple as a cloud to break up the flatness of just orange..

pliang

In addition...the balcony floors and the railings' textures seems awfully similar with the cement texture...you might as well save the space for other more unique details....its better to put that on one of the texture since there's lack of distinct details...

For the doors....it is better to just have one iteration instead of two identical ones...there's also a great deal of wasted space in the image.

super_villain

Thanks for the feedback.

AimBiZ: The big maps are 5 big maps are 1024x1024, the brick is 512, and the roof and wall base textures are 256. I was planning this for a fps. The lines on the top and windows are based from the building I saw. But for logical reasons they could be changed.

salman_fas: the reason the door is repeated is because I didn't like the other texture I made, so I just replaced it with the other one to hold the spot.

zerafian: i could try a few more brick patterns. I tried a couple to get to that one, so I'll play with it a little bit.

pliang: I could try dumping that extra texture and just mixing them across the other. Also, you say there is a great deal of space wasted in the image, do you mean in the textures, or the composition? I'm sure I could make the uv's more efficient if I combined four of the 1024's onto one sheet....

Once again, thanks for the feedback.

Murdoc

I'd add a decal texture and some decals to break up the repetativeness of it; also more dramatic lighting for the final image will help.

Looks good so far, pretty clean and good use of texture layouts.

bluekangaroo

I dont think its bad for your first building...I think the best way to improve this would just be to work on the textures. So far theres no spec, or normal....but more importantly add a little more age/dirt/wear n tear to your textures. So far your textures look like you just cropped n scaled some pics without any touching up or additional layers added to it. Try to find some dirt masks and overlay those on top for a little extra interest

super_villain

Had a little extra time to throw at this over the weekend, so here is what I came up with. Took the suggestions about dirt and went back over the textures for the window frames, doors, and balconies. I also changed the brick texture and the top of the building detailing. As far as modeling goes, I moved the windows over. I sill have to add some decals as well as normal/spec maps. I'm liking it a lot more, thanks for the suggestions.