Sketchbook: Incomitatum: Andrew Chason
polycounter lvl 17
Comments and Crits Welcome on all posts.
The inspiration for this project began after returning from GDC ‘08. While there I was given expert instruction on my art and style, and told by many that: while the industry does focus on photo real environments, I would benefit from adding some whimsical and painterly pieces as well.
What follows is the from a game I had been designing some time ago. The backstory is a mix of Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Survival. Hundreds of years ago, having crashed on a barren planet in a ship containing all their heritage a rage of proto-humans made their way underground with the salvageable parts of the wreckage, as to avoid the Violet star that saturates the planet in harmful UV radiation.
The race, known as the Cimmerians, are fairly Utopian and knowledge driven. Having carved large spaces in the subterranean rock; the scene is that of the main chamber of their Library known as the Omnieon.
My first task was to garner the feel I wanted to produce. Not gritty Sci-fi, but not fantasy with dragons and such, my goal is a more abstract focus on lighting and design not impossible in our world, but not common. A mixture of carved stone, stained glass, wrought iron and large architecture, I want to give a vertical feel to the environment drawing the observer upwards.
They are a civilization used to low light, or light schemes focused on cold colors. With an abundance of stone and metal at their disposal. Most importantly is the display of a seemingly out of place artifact known as ‘The Mother’ a long dormant computer and the AI of their ship that crash landed hundreds of years ago.
In the next phase, I being to explore the pallet I might use. In considering this, I must also keep in mind what the materials might be made from. I image this vault to be housed underground rather stony. Many images of Greek structures fill my mind. Also, I want the edges to be metallic but still simple. The metals here are cold and rough, more like wrought iron, a very basic metal-forging process. Lastly, lights are going to feel ominous and alien; pouring through colorful chucks of stained glass while not betraying their means of luminance.
I won't contain the slew of reference pictures I have obtained, but I have done some sketching and painting prior to all this.
The First picture was a mockup I did a few years ago. It shows the lighting I am going for. I though the enormous book cases were cool, but now I don't think they are practical. This was originally just to give me perspective lines and colors so I could do a paint-over.
Now I am considering a more realistic sense of scale, all the while trying to keep the scene visually interesting. Where the purple light is coming from, I need to have giant doors. I am also exploring a tiered approach having steps that go down if you want to get closer to the museum piece on display.
The think in the middle is the computer that their forefathers used to pilot the ship. Dinged and scratched they have no idea that it is in low power mode, watching and learning all about this fledgling civilization. I am having trouble designing it, though I know I want to to be round and sleek and look out of place. I am going to have to practice some hard edge modeling to pull that one off correctly. For the sake of practice most things will be normal mapped.
I want to walk a line between cartoon and photo inspired; much like Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction has. They still use Normals and the lighting sells you on that the objects/materials are realistically represented, but they are not all gritty and photo-real.
Below are the concept pieces I have done. Included are some miscellaneous objects, as I want the place to be clean, but not barren, having that lived in look.
The inspiration for this project began after returning from GDC ‘08. While there I was given expert instruction on my art and style, and told by many that: while the industry does focus on photo real environments, I would benefit from adding some whimsical and painterly pieces as well.
What follows is the from a game I had been designing some time ago. The backstory is a mix of Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Survival. Hundreds of years ago, having crashed on a barren planet in a ship containing all their heritage a rage of proto-humans made their way underground with the salvageable parts of the wreckage, as to avoid the Violet star that saturates the planet in harmful UV radiation.
The race, known as the Cimmerians, are fairly Utopian and knowledge driven. Having carved large spaces in the subterranean rock; the scene is that of the main chamber of their Library known as the Omnieon.
My first task was to garner the feel I wanted to produce. Not gritty Sci-fi, but not fantasy with dragons and such, my goal is a more abstract focus on lighting and design not impossible in our world, but not common. A mixture of carved stone, stained glass, wrought iron and large architecture, I want to give a vertical feel to the environment drawing the observer upwards.
They are a civilization used to low light, or light schemes focused on cold colors. With an abundance of stone and metal at their disposal. Most importantly is the display of a seemingly out of place artifact known as ‘The Mother’ a long dormant computer and the AI of their ship that crash landed hundreds of years ago.
In the next phase, I being to explore the pallet I might use. In considering this, I must also keep in mind what the materials might be made from. I image this vault to be housed underground rather stony. Many images of Greek structures fill my mind. Also, I want the edges to be metallic but still simple. The metals here are cold and rough, more like wrought iron, a very basic metal-forging process. Lastly, lights are going to feel ominous and alien; pouring through colorful chucks of stained glass while not betraying their means of luminance.
I won't contain the slew of reference pictures I have obtained, but I have done some sketching and painting prior to all this.
The First picture was a mockup I did a few years ago. It shows the lighting I am going for. I though the enormous book cases were cool, but now I don't think they are practical. This was originally just to give me perspective lines and colors so I could do a paint-over.
Now I am considering a more realistic sense of scale, all the while trying to keep the scene visually interesting. Where the purple light is coming from, I need to have giant doors. I am also exploring a tiered approach having steps that go down if you want to get closer to the museum piece on display.
The think in the middle is the computer that their forefathers used to pilot the ship. Dinged and scratched they have no idea that it is in low power mode, watching and learning all about this fledgling civilization. I am having trouble designing it, though I know I want to to be round and sleek and look out of place. I am going to have to practice some hard edge modeling to pull that one off correctly. For the sake of practice most things will be normal mapped.
I want to walk a line between cartoon and photo inspired; much like Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction has. They still use Normals and the lighting sells you on that the objects/materials are realistically represented, but they are not all gritty and photo-real.
Below are the concept pieces I have done. Included are some miscellaneous objects, as I want the place to be clean, but not barren, having that lived in look.
Replies
Is 60,000 Tris a lot for a scene?
The box is to give a sense of scale, and represents a person.
I really like your 2nd concept image (the one with the lamps) and your original lighting blocked out area.
One thing that will help you is buy the Ratchet & Clank: Future Weapons strategy guide for in-game images and level layouts. This will grant you great insight when you hit a detailing snag.
I'm a nut for crazy lighting, and even I think you need to lower the saturation of those lights.
All of the current materials tiling is obvious (floors and walls). The contrast might be high on some of them. The materials have one scale, as in, one distance that they look good at. A brick should read as a brick from across the room the same as it does when you look straight down at it. Again, personally, I'd focus only on the modeling now, and possibly just the normal maps to show shapes. Once everything is coming together, do a color pass.
The bookshelves didn't read at first. I thought this was a maternity ward. More human level detail can help. Try filling up more space with them so they don't appear wheeled into the room.
Here's a few examples
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Old_library_1,_University_of_Salamanca.jpg/800px-Old_library_1,_University_of_Salamanca.jpg
http://www.germansociety.org/OldLibraryPic.jpg
http://www.paddi.net/images/longroom.htm
Finally, if you're going for that Ratchet & Clank look, you're going to have to model in a lot more detail. I modeled a few of their environments a while back, and they are very detailed. They use a lot of big simple shapes so it's easy to make something that looks great.
I was thinking of adding a railing around the edge of the inner circle.
I have yet to model the large planet like chandelier.
I think I am going to make the book cases on the outside twice as tall to give the ceiling that same stretched look I did in my layout years ago.
I am running into problems with the lighting. I have placed 2 green lights on each pillar, one facing outward, one inward. The large blue lights come from the model in the concept sheet. The Purple light will come from the chandelier.
I need to carve in some stairs so you can go from the first to the sub level.
I am having trouble getting the lighting to be like it was in the above concept render; that used Final Gather and I was using Max 8; now I am using 2008 on a better system, and things seem to take longer. I let it go all night the other night and it was only 16% done.
Thank you for the advice.
Questions:
Can/do you make some complex textures out of doing a Normal comparison to a complex model and just a single plain? Do people do this? For these repeaters, I am relying on Crazy Bump; my props on the other hand will have be made from High/Low polys. I plan on using the methods described in the Old Pillar DVD, but not using it to make a gritty column.
Feed back is always appreciated. More work to come...
I am liking the lighting a lot more now. Most of the props have been taken out and added back in as XRefs.
I have to figure out a way to quickly unwrap and texture them. I already know this project is going to have two iterations. The one it takes to meet the deadline and pass my class, and the one that I make look -even- better for my portfolio.
I think it's time to start adding placeholders for things like the lights, tables, and globe.
I also have to figure out how to keep my texture from swimming when placed on large surfaces. The bottom most floor with it's tiles, in the second picture, you can see the texture start to curve to the left.
I like the way that making the 1st level book cases taller not only takes up that negative space, but also draws the eye up and make the room look taller. Logistically though, I will need to design some props that show -how- people get up to to those very high shelves.
((Thoughts crits are welcome))
http://www.AndrewChason.com/Files/Omnieon/Pano_002.mov
If any of you know how to make the preview window bigger on this it would be nice to know. Seems no matter what resolution I render it at, the panoramic view finder window is tiny afterward.
Focus on making the scene look good with the modeling and lighting alone. As you being to step into the texturing, focus on creating simple, clean shapes (no color, no lighting, no texture overlays, just the major detail lines).
For example, currently, the only texture that looks like anything is that curly upper trim above the large bookcases. With the idea being detail only, you'd have something like this:
Of course, this quick example is bs since it's just shapes tool in photoshop, it's designed to yeild the idea, not results.
I agree.
While I will not be deleting them all together, I will be remaking most of them. I don't think they are as bad as you have said, but they are certainly not helping my case. No, what will remain is the -idea- each texture; or material. Here I have a light marble, there I have some blue tiles... I like the colors scheme, but I need to take the time to give the textures more love. Right now they are a mix of painting and editing textured from the various 3Dtotal Texture Packs, and CG textures, as well as some hand painted elements.
The biggest hindrance? Time. As I go and model things, I will be unwrapping them. I hope that this will make a future texture pass more accessible.
Also. PLEASE define "muddy" and how to fix this. I have heard this before, and people have not given me a detailed explanation -or- solution.
I don't understand however what you are saying about the curly trim. I agree is it something that reads well. If I do only detail, what do I do afterward?
Time shouldn't be a problem with unwrapping if you instance your geometry. And if you think it's a problem now, wait till you get in the real world and you are handed an entire level that's modeled, isn't UV'ed and your job is to uv the whole thing.
Muddy in textures refers to textures being blurry and/or unclean details. A great example is when someone takes a big picture of a brick wall, scales it down and tries to use it as a texture. All the details become a blurry mess of color and god-knows-what. Basically when a texture is muddy it must be repainted at a finer detail level.
After getting details your happy with, you continue with the texturing process; color, texture, etc.
So then, do you ever just apply detail textures all around in the Diffuse channels to see if it reads well, and then color them?
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/682217/dragon-age-origins/images/dragon-age-origins-20080820104205250.html?page=mediaFull
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/682217/dragon-age-origins/images/dragon-age-origins-20080820104201922.html?page=mediaFull
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/682217/dragon-age-origins/images/dragon-age-origins-20080820104211625.html?page=mediaFull
http://polycreator.com/
otherwise, i agree with him completely.
the untextured shots look great, so full of potential, but those textures are painful on the eyes.
I am getting a new PC here in a week or so, and want to start doing a lot more in mudbox; and trying to find a decent tutorial on hard surface highpoly modeling.
Here are the latest renders. Again, I feel like the materials are going to stay the same (Marble where there is marble, stone where there is stone) but the textures will be swapped out in time (should I look a the texturing tutorial from Eat3d?).
Also included are two panoramas of the final scene
http://www.andrewchason.com/Files/Omnieon/Final_001.mov
http://www.andrewchason.com/Files/Omnieon/Final_002.mov
Your comments are always appreciated. Please don't feel like I am ignoring your directions. I will make changes in time.
The color choices and design is really unique, but your execution on the textures is lacking... keep practicing, it's the only thing that helps in the end.
Yeah, I am waiting to do some sculpting and texturing when I get my new rig build (just waiting on the Nvidia 8600 (no onboard video)).
Have you watched the texturing DVD of the fence and post form Eat3D? Is it worth getting?
Despite abysmal textures I have been learning UE3. I have learned how to get assets in, and wanted to see this Pillar in there while learning the Material system. I want to post this while I am thinking of it. I am going to learn more making these shiny parts reflective.
IF this looks decent (to me anyway), with little planning, and
The textures for the walls are not related to my original scene in anyway.
Next step, trying to learn how UE3 handles material Ideas, and how to link different materials to each ID.
Now I have my portfolio (http://www.AndrewChason.com ) and I need to prove that I know how to model and texture.
So here goes. I want to do a western type scene of a campsite post civil war. Here is the item I am starting with however.
And here are some WIP shots:
I was quite proud of the wood-grain texture, but it turns out I am overdoing it. I couldn't get the thing to import from Mudbox to Max, and many said it was too much high-frequency noise with not enough detail. So I am going to go back to the drawing board with my work-flow and make the normal in CrazyBump.
Hope there is more to come soon.
In addition to reworking all the textures, I added a mural to the alley wall, and worked out a sign for the front. Hooray for neon!
Here is a render of the Air Conditioning unit I modeled. It's one of the large commercial types. I learned a lot today, like how to clean up seams in Photoshop, and how to load models into Marmoset Toolbag.
This is also the first time I have made judicious use of Floats rather than trying to carve the geometry right in and vomit everywhere while trying to deal with Chamfer Stars. :S
Other things I am going to be modeling.
Newspaper Dispensers, Parking Meters, a Bus Stop, Dumpster, Trashcan, Light Sconces, and a Payphone.
I looked at several different city bus-stops to get a feel for how I wanted this to turn out. I may tweak a few more things here and there; but it's not going to change much so enjoy!
If you want to see the adverts:
Above are the two renders from Max, and below is the real-time output from Marmoset. Good-golly I love Marmoset (I just wish it handled transparency better.:
This sort of thing is the result of a full 8 hour day. It's frustrating getting only one model done a day. But that is Modeled, Unwrapped, and textured
Any-who, here are my two Newspaper Dispensers. Courtesy of Marmoset Toolbag.
And here are the two adverts a little closer:
So, while I haven't set to any modeling today, here is an update that shows the building, in day and night conditions.
Then I went on to modeling, unwrapping, and texturing this lamp to use around the building. As well as a "lit" version of the texture for when I change over to the night version.
See for yourself:
Tomorrow I need to texture the Parking Meters. Soon I will be modeling and texturing a Mailbox,Trashcan, Dumpster... and I am not sure how to decorate the roof.
I could either make it a whole mini-scene in its self, or put something large up there like a billboard or urban water-tower.
All that, and I will be revisiting the structure of the building its self. At the rate I am going now it will take me at least 6 more days :S. I also might want to do a Soda Machine or two. I am really liking props where I get to do some sarcastic neo-retro marketing like I have been.
I have had this idea for some time. That, coupled with the fact that I desperately need to polish my abilities as well as add more bulk to my portfolio so I can start applying for jobs; has led me to finally resort to this method.
To show off my environmental art abilities I am going to build, what I am calling, Playsets. These each have about 6 props or set pieces that fit a theme and genre. From there I will define a style and set about using Max, Mudbox, and Photoshop to make these a reality.
Starting out I did some -quick- thumbnails of how these might come out. Once I settle on a set then I will redraw the parts in more detail before getting down to business. I am looking for some feedback, and while these drawings are hurried and crude, am eager to see which one -you- think I should tackle first.
I can do each prop from concept to model to texture in about a day so I hope that knocking these out wont take longer than January and I can then feel confident enough about applying for jobs some the end of the month.
If you want to see the original Crystal Altar I did some years ago you can click HERE
If you want to help vote go on over to my WEBSITE.
I am deciding to gamble and go to GDC this year. I am particularly interested in moving to Texas, as such I think I am going to cross reference the expo floor with companies I know are in Texas.
I have learned a great deal about UDK and feel -very- confident to say I "know" how to use it. I am in the process to exporting my City Assets out, with collisions and bringing them into UDK. Props are having to be scaled up by 1.33 percent to be the right scale; the difference between a Hammer, 72 unit tall character, and a UDK 96 unit tall character.
I will then be showing off my assets from Within UDK. I did a lot of beauty renders, but they aren't as honest as taking a screen-shot in UDK is. Raw and unforgiving.
All this is also forcing me to revamp my portfolio website. I am not sure if I should reskin it and make it a little more "neutral". As it stands the current site shows a bit of personality, however it also my stifle my chances of getting a job.
HERE is the site now; and HERE here is a mock-up of the redesign. If anything the latter allows the -entire- 1000px wide element to be dedicated to large images.
Soon I hope to deconstruct my city buildings and rebuild them in a more modular way. They were built in Max modularly, however, they were then welded together or attached and not built to the right scale. I am learning that each PART of the building needs to be preserved as a modular chunk that also works with "the grid" in UDK.
eat3d, 3Dmotive, and the folks over at the UDK forum have been VERY helpful showing me the ropes the past few days. I feel it has a steeper learning curve than Hammer, but is LOTS more forgiving. "You mean the level doesn't have to be air tight, and I can just throw a DOME over the top?"
I feel like I am late to the party. I hope I am not obsolete.
I still have plans to dabble in a little bit of character art in Mudbox (characters are my main weakness, building a good base mesh is daunting), work on my civil war camp scene (Mom plays HOUR of Red-Dead every night, and has beat it over 15 time now), and remake my glowing [ame="
I also need to make business cards after I reskin my site. I had better work my ass off, I don't know if it is possible to impress those at GDC enough to land a gig. Last time I went no one was interested and they all said "Yeah, Yeah, apply via the website".
Below is a test I did of using Fraps to show off some of my assets in UDK. I will be using Kismet to control the camera for the final "Demo Reel". Anyone know any good quality Video Converters/Compressors? I need to get the file size down on these Fraps videos so they will upload faster, without losing much quality.
[ame="
I know it is sloppy, but THIS folder is acting as a container for now, showing of the beauty renders I probably won't include, until I can mock these up better.
Except for the grass, I have modeled and textured everything. I hope to make efficient grass soon too. I am REAL mad that they nuked the foilage system before presenting it's replacement.
As I said this is just a test scene to teach me some basic concept. I hope rebuild my city block with a desert terrain beyond it after I have all my props in the engine.