City Building

salman_fas

Hi,

Currently working on this building. Mainly made this with the level of details to keep the Player at ground level. Currently it has about 3500 tris(its only front and side) and one 1024 X 1024 map(ATM diffuse only). I will make other maps soon. Looking for critics:)

Final lighting will be night time lighting in Unreal Engine.

oobersli

its a tad too modular/boring now. add some specific detail to spots to break it up some. have some windows with lights on..some off... more billboards etc...

Tumerboy

I think your lighting is hurting you a lot. Try bumping up the contrast a bit, and throwing some color into the lights.

SHEPEIRO

yea lighting could be used to break this up, try a night style lighting setup with some lampposts amazing the way a little localised lighting can draw the eye away from repeating components

BradMyers82

Looking pretty cool. Now just add detail as Oobersli said... Grim planes please.

salman_fas

Thanks for the awesome feed back. I do have some space in my texture map so I can use that for additional details. As for windows having light on/off, I am gonna use glowing planes randomly.

Will pimp again and show the update tomorrow

vj_box

can u also share ur texture maps,so that we could further take the reviews.
when modeling buildings,u have to be keen on the variety of details as obersli mentioned here. right now its too monotonous and boring,try using some decal patches(alpha textures) and slap em to where ever u need the variety.
another modeling detail u always have to remember is to not leave the edges of ur buildings like razer sharp.slightly bevel it so that it will look a bit more realistic.again this depends from where u see the building and stuff like that. You can also model damage details to make it a bit more interesting unless u really need a mirrors edge kinda building.

Cheers
Vj

motives

yea what others said + occlusion and some lightmaps!

oobersli

could you not just create a small glow mask/map for the windows and create two materials with the same textures? just one has the glow... the other doesn't.

Jesse Moody

what oobersli said. make a material variant and just do over rides for the ones you want to have glowing windows on.

Also dirt decals, graffiti, pipes, air conditioners, stuff on the roof, etc.

Matroskin

building looks neat to me.

The only major thing that i don't agree with is a LOD for the top floors. I think that does not save many tris (at least not enough to be serious amount in current gen) but it reduces the quality a lot.
the difference is clearly seen in pillars and windows. Basically it looks like side by side comparison of with and without extrude Thus the absence of volume on the top 2 floor becomes more evident.

David-J

It's looking pretty good. I agree that it needs more detail. In my opinion it will help if you dirty it up.

Cheers!

salman_fas

Thanks all for really helpful critics. I did make a little change to the upper stories. Here it is. I really need to know if the lighting is working for you guys or not. Here is the texture map(original is 1024 X 1024). I will probably add side walk and a bit more details on the ground.

vj_box

The lighting looks cool now, the glow is kinda same on all the windows,not a harm if u have three or four different versions of the glow.
and try and add a fire escape stairs to the side of the building ,which will look interesting.
I would love to see the other maps like spec,nomal,occlusion. and ultimately imported into unreal as u were planning i guess.
Nice job and Cool progress dude!!

Vj

michi.be

add details to the building not to the ground man.

Matroskin

looks very cool at night
Nice to see that u have added details to the upper floors.
For now the only thing i can add is that windows look too glow. Usually u never get that bright uniform color in windows. One can get that effect with photography but the human eye normally won't see that glowing like that Usually it is less bright and one can see what's inside e.g. blinders, curtain or even some celling. A good example would be this screenshot:
http://www.stefan-morrell.com/oe2/OE2template_1440_offline.jpg

But in general the building is shaping up nicely. Lamps turned upwards to lit the wall add a cool detail as well.

renderhjs

that watermark is ridiculous think about it - its useless to anyone who does not own your mesh

the result is nice, maybe some xtra decoration objects (posters, dirt, boards, door number, any signs,...) would make it look less sterile

Tumerboy

Lighting is definitely more interesting than before.
Though, if this is a building you want people to go into, I would light up the doorway, rather than the windows on either side.

Same as everyone else mentioned about the glowy windows. It's a good start, but some variation/blinds/curtains would help considerably.

Your textures are good (though the watermark is kind of ridiculous) But your UVs seem a bit odd. It looks like the wall segment with the window on it is being stretched a bit horizontally. I would avoid stretching textures whenever possible.

In this instance, I would go as far as to just pull all the brick out into a separate 256 or 512 tiling texture, and just place windows on top of that as decals on the upper floors, or cut ins down below (like you have now)

I would brighten up the whole facade a bit (there's a lot of lights in that area, so some reflected/bounced light would be lighting up even the darker parts of the front.)

Also, your 'Edge DVD' sign is glowing, but not casting any light on the building. I'd toss an omni or two in that sign, to show some light on that corner of the building.

David-J

Looks better. Great improvement with the mood change. I still think still needs something to break the monotony.

cheers!

imb3nt

I like it!

The only thing that popped out at me is the top room on the corner has 1 window lit but the one on the other side is dark. Both should be dark or lit if its the same room me thinks. Otherwise very cool. Keep it up! :thumbup:

salman_fas

Thanks guys. What is that water mark thing you talk about:) (I droped the habit, hit referesh ). I worked on it a little bit more and played with the lighting to give it a bit more happy/living look.

The texture is stretching a bit only on the window not the whole section:)

Also fixed the problem mentioned by imb3nt. The side walk is temporary, it has a nasty seam.

Let me know what you guys think.

Jesse Moody

Looking really nice man. Much improved. Now time to build up some trash meshes, decals, light poles and make another building to go with this.

Keep adding and before you know it you will have one awesome city block or corner put together.

Tumerboy

Much Better! I'm with Jesse, move on to some supporting props, and then you can come back and re-evaluate, to see if there's anything more you can do to make the building itself better.

PixelMasher

nice work man, the only thing that really stands out to me is the edge dvd sign, its kinda boring and looks quickly done. maybe some type of border around it, just something subtle to make it look a bit more grounded.

the lighting is looking good, i like the little pot lights shining up at the building, adds some nice light/shadow.

warby

loving it but i think your layout on the texture could use some more ORDER and ALIGNMENT the more often used next o each other elements you can actually put next to each other the better the quality of your lods and the reusability of the texture will increase significantly!

whats_true

So....what are those two lights on the walls supposed to be "lighting" up again? I know you have some nice brick texture, but~

Just seems a little out of place without something their.

Matroskin

wow, lit windows look great as to me.
And building how has got some more nice details

Now those windows are waiting for some spec

vj_box

now it a lot better,with some nice variations.

Vj

BradMyers82

Nice, all the details you added in since the previous image are really making this interesting. I agree that the DVD sign could look better though. If you push the detail up just a little more youll have a really great piece.

Thewiruz

Can you tell how meny maps you have?I cant figure out how you made the brick wall.It doesnt make sence when looking at your diffuse map.Or do you have a big brick texture also besides the diffuse you showed here?Looks damn nice!

salman_fas

what_true: I see your point man, but if I remove those lights it doesn't look as good so I will keep those light for now.

Thewiruz: The building is only pulling from that texture I posted(except fire escape, ac etc.). I hope this image makes sense.

Thanks everyone I worked on the sign a bit and I will make a few more contents around the building and will post an update tomorrow.

AshleyTayles

How was this building put together? Is it modular? I'm having a hard time getting my head around UVmapping large buildings like these. How have you gotten it so each window section is using the same part of the texture map?

I'm interested

BradMyers82

Overlapping Uv's...

AshleyTayles

I know that, I'm just interested how the building is put together. Is each piece separate or is it all made from 1 box/plane?

Jeremy Lindstrom

This might help you Ashley;

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=53002

AshleyTayles

Thanks Dekard, that does help quite a bit. I'm new and haven't stumbled across that yet. Thanks for the link.

salman_fas

Here is an update. I made this building and texture came up quite sharp. It will probably get blurred once I re-open the package. Anyways here it is(ignore the road).

Lamont

Great progress!! Now if that liquor store was truly open, then a light would be on .

As a note for scene dressing: try some window ledges with flowerpots and AC units. Throw a storm drain along one of the corners to break up the straight lines.

AshleyTayles

How many polys/tri's is that store?

salman_fas

Lamont: you are right, I think I will have to change the texture for window a bit to make it look like its open. Generally I thought that these kind of buildings have dark looking window glass.

Ashley: Its at 1577tris(this building has only 3 sides, no back). Here is wire shot.