Building

carlo_c

Hey everyone, just working on a building at the moment and need some crit/advice on a few things to take it in the right direction.

The upper windows I'm a bit confused as to how I should do them, shall I just grab some window textures and make them fit in or should I put together a quick hi-poly window frame for a normal + AO bake even though its a flat plane.

The setting for the buliding is an abandoned city, recent enough that there's not much overgrowth but there aren't people living there anymore.

Here's the screengrab and flats (lol sorry about tooltip in last flat :P ) so far, thanks for looking

oobersli

you could save a ton of space by making a tileable brick texture and then another texture with the window and door elements. Then just add grime decals for the dirt. same goes for the concrete. make a tileable texture in one direction for the concrete trim.

also.. put some more polys into those arches on the bottom level. they're pretty jagged.

carlo_c

I did want to make it the way you described and I made a test building using that method but it didn't work out very well, I couldn't get the AO to come out properly and it just didn't really come together in the end.

I'm making a few buildings so I will try to use that method next since I know thats the current way of making high quality environment assets.

Lamont

carlo_c wrote: »

I did want to make it the way you described and I made a test building using that method but it didn't work out very well, I couldn't get the AO to come out properly and it just didn't really come together in the end.

I'm making a few buildings so I will try to use that method next since I know thats the current way of making high quality environment assets.

To use the technique Oobersli outlined you'd need two UV maps. UV map 1 is 0 to 1 non-overlaping. This map will have your AO, and your brick texture. And since this has your brick texture, pay attention to the orientation of the polys.

UV map 2 will be the detail elements, the dirt and grime. I usually have this as a 32 bit image for the decals and such.

So use a layered material (from left to right in Maya) AO set to multiply, Detail set to Over and brick set to default. In the UV linker you set what goes to what (it is helpful to name your images/shaders).

I don't know how to set up this kind of material in 3DS Max, but if you need pictures instead of words to show you how this is done in Maya, I can write something up and post an example.

carlo_c

Thanks for the explanation Lamont, it's definately something I need to try. I guess I'll start small and see how it turns out before I approach a large building like this.

This post by Matroskin and the post after that one looks like a really efficient approach to buildings within UE3, I got a bit lost with the explanation but the result was really effective.

I'm going to try and wrap up this building over the next couple of days so here's where I'm at now, still just diffuse. Opacity isn't showing up properly with the directx shader i'm using, not sure why.

Lamont

I think you'll find the other technique more versatile, and once you set it up, you can change the look of your building quickly. I'll even share how to set up the UnrealED materials. What you want to do is reduce the frequency of repetition in the images.

Sounds like you're using 3DS Max too, I don't know how to do this in 3DS Max since it's been 6 years since I was required to use it.

carlo_c

I'm going to start the texturing again, it's clear I'm not going to get any level of quality doing it the way I am and listening to you guys will help me improve.

Lamont, any advice you could give would be great. The help with the UnrealED materials would be much appreciated.

I'm going to unwrap this again following your advice Lamont, hopefully I can take this in the right direction.

Lamont

carlo_c wrote: »

I'm going to start the texturing again, it's clear I'm not going to get any level of quality doing it the way I am and listening to you guys will help me improve.

Lamont, any advice you could give would be great. The help with the UnrealED materials would be much appreciated.

I'm going to unwrap this again following your advice Lamont, hopefully I can take this in the right direction.

There is nothing wrong with the technique you used below BTW, I still use that technique for filler meshes. But you put in 3 elements that would make it hard for re-use (the graffiti and the cutie pie in the sun-glasses and the AO). Just move some of the elements in the texture so you can tile and reuse them better. And pull the AO out of the texture. The cement trim should be plain-Jane almost. You can add the detail with the AO and decals.

EarthQuake

You want to to bake your AO onto a separate UV channel, thats how this stuff is done. Doing it this was is an excersize in futility, and will just show you exactly how *not* to create work for actual games. =D

BradMyers82

You want to to bake your AO onto a separate UV channel, thats how this stuff is done. Doing it this was is an excersize in futility, and will just show you exactly how *not* to create work for actual games. =D

What EarthQuake said, ha ha.

Seriously though, if I have learned anything from being on polycount it is that you should always listen to the crits you get.

I'm looking forward to seeing your progress here. Being a character art guy, I would like to learn more about environment art. And I am finding this thread helpful so far (with the tiling textures bit).

carlo_c

Success! lol after a break during xmas day and (most of) boxing day thought I'd have a quick bash at this and get the AO baked out to try in engine.



I'm pretty pleased I got this working, it's only a small thing but it means I've got another part of the workflow down so the other buildings I need to make should go a lot quicker

Just want to say thanks to everyone for the crits and another thanks to matroskin because I'm pretty much using his thread for material reference, haha EQ yes it was definately futility... like putting out a fire with oil :poly127:

carlo_c

Right, just got the door left to finish diffuse on then I'll get the normals done for it. I think I'll just keep posting building progress in this thread, as I'll be starting another one as soon as this is done. Sorry for the extremeee bloom on the windows lolol.