Interior / Exterior work thread

nrek

Well class started back up this week so for the quarter I am going to be working on an exterior and interior scene among other things. I hope to keep this thread updated regularly with my progress so I can try to pick up some good criticism along the way . The rough idea for the enviro is an underground bunker that was built beneath an old secluded house during one war or another and has since been used for some shady scientific research. Topside the house that once concealed the entrance to the bunker has been partially destroyed leaving the service elevator to the bunker exposed. A more detailed description along with some sketches will follow eventually.

So to kick things off I give you a table.

kite212

the textures turned out great, you should post the high poly as well, i hope you have moved on to some fetuses

nrek

Thanks dude : ). Here is the high poly along with a little side table. I tweaked my textures a bit so I could use the top of the table as a modular piece to slice up and make the smaller one.

DInusty

thats pretty cool! one thing ive noticed is that the low poly normal map looks like its holding some hard edges from the lowpoly when u were baking. i dont know if u see it but its on your low poly were the leg meets the tray.

keep it up though i really like ur presentation. the design is cool too. are those revits floating geometry? do you have any concepts you drew or went from to create these?

Thanks for sharing! cant wait to see more.

nrek

Thanks Frozan! I think I see the edge you are talking about, I will check it out. The dots on the table are actually little holes for drainage in case something is spilled on the table while dastardly deeds are being done, and they were modeled in. (if that is what you meant by revits) And below is the concept I did for the table. I am also getting close to being finished with a old street lamp so I have some shots of that as well. With the lamp I worked from reference for the base and then did my own top section.

Snefer

Overall it looks good, I think the texture work is good, the foot of the table seems a bit flat in the texture compared to the rest, though, I think it would benefit from some more work. The lamp looks sweet I think you are using more geometry in the lowply than you need. You can probably remove alot of those bevels on the lower part of the lamp, and probably some on the edges of the table aswell, and let the normalmap hold that information instead.

other than that, its great. The texturework on the lamp is niiice

kite212

i really like the lamp man, i cant wait to see it all come together

alexk

sweet lamp! did you have some of those sculpted parts modelled out in max before going into Zbrush?

Shogun3d

Diggin' the zbrush sculpts. Great job!

nrek

Thanks everyone glad you like it . Snefer: you were totally right about the wasted polys in the low rez mesh so I went back in and was able to chop like 645 tris from it. I pushed the normals further in the table bases and I will repost them later when I get them in the engine. Alexk: I modeled out the lowpoly for the base sections and then sculpted the detail in zbrush, and with the lamp sections I did all modeling in max and just hit it with some scratches in zbrush. I also have some quick and dirty screens of the light post in unreal 3. This is my first real try with bringing a mesh into unreal so I still need to play with all the settings and stuff.

Lamont

Nice sculpts . Carry on.

easterislandnick

That's some lovely work! It all looks really nice in Unreal, great use of shaders! I'm jealous! makes me really want to master zbrush as your normals and topography are ace!

Joshua Stubbles

That light post is pimp. The stains, discoloring and specular are all really nice. Love it.

nrek

Thanks for all the comments you guys, im pleased to know you like the stuff. And just to to make sure you know the lamp was the only thing of mine in the scene, everything else was default unreal ed meshes and textures. Now here is a little alien baby I worked up tonight, I needed a break from concept stuff. Hopefully I will have the low poly and textures done tomorrow or Friday.

kite212

alien babies ftw!!!!!!

nrek

Time to bring this thread back to life . This is some of the stuff I have in the works for this project. I feel like nothing is done because I keep bouncing from piece to piece. Anyway the building scene is getting close to done, I need to do a spec map pass for everything and fix the textures on the inside like the underside of the roof. It is meant to be a crappy shack like house that was built around that elevator just as a way to hide it from sight. Then I have high poly and low poly shots of the elevator, the normals and the AO have been baked out for that so far. The low poly baby and it's textures are still wip at the moment. Then there is the High poly of the big alien that will be in the center of the room at the disection/observation station,which was inspired by the film the cell and Damien Hirst's art exhibits. As always crits and comments welcomed .





Ref image






My concept for the interior scene.

Kevin Johnstone

Great lampost, but you should still go ahead and half that polycount and there be no discernable difference at all ingame. All those stepped bevels can be reduced to a simple slope and the base section can be quartered almost and read just as well.

It always comes down to a choice between loving each piece so much that itcan be used only a handful of times, or loving it a little less so it can be used a lot of times. With a lampost its best to love it a little less and let it be used a lot because its the sort of asset that helps define atmosphere.

All your hipoly stuff is great, its clean and so are your lows but you are always using double what you need to because you are over analyzing the assets in max where you can scrutinize the form and outline too much.

In the game, no one ever looks that close or has the fidelity of camera control to even allow them to. The lampost already has a stunning silohuette and thats enough.

Great stuff though.

Coreyhkh

Nice work, it all looks pretty professional.

Sandbag

looking cool so far; definitely looking forward to seeing more

toren3d

The house on post #16 is great! very nice work, and the light above the door adds a lot, but I think you should self-illuminate the lightbulb geometry (or brightening the texture)for a better look.

sprunghunt

The house looks good although usually there's a small foundation on the bottom of a house like that. At the very least a house would be raised off the ground by about a foot. You might get rising damp problems otherwise The house in the reference is off the ground a bit - that's why there's stairs to get to the front door.

Otherwise everything looks pretty cool and there's some good texturing work in there.

nrek

Wow I cant believe its been sooo long since I updated this thread :poly122:. I got caught up working on everything I guess. First off thanks are in order.

@ Kevin Johnstone - Thanks for the great advice man, I really tried to take what you said to heart. I went back into most of my assets and managed to cut around 1k tris at least. Here are links to my updated Baby and Lightpost mesh.
http://img14.imageshack.us/my.php?image=finalbabywires.jpg
http://img15.imageshack.us/my.php?image=finalstreetlampwires.jpg

@ Coreyhkh - Thanks, glad you think so.

@ Sandbag - Thanks dude.

@ toren3d - Your definitely right about the light bulb illumination, thanks for spotting that.

@ sprunghunt - Thanks, your totally right about the foundation. I really wasn't a fan of working on this house, it was just something I had to do to fulfill class criteria. I wanted to devote more time to the lab scene so I felt this was just soaking up too much time. Its probably as done as it will get :poly141:. But if I revisit it, I will make sure to give it a proper foundation.

So class ended and im left with a half finished exterior and interior, not a good feeling. Here are some shots of various assets along with screencaps of the scene as it stands in unreal. Postmortem at the bottom.

Sculpt for the mid sized alien to be placed in the stasis tubes.


Low poly mid alien in 3 of the 6 poses I made for the tubes.


mid alien wires


Stasis tube for the mid size alien


wires


final sculpt of large alien


Large alien cut in half for observation


wires


jars of goodies


Unreal shots




(the big incubator tube with the baby is a crappy re purposed version of my elevator I made early on)

POSTMORTEM:

GENERAL:

I learned a hard lesson about time management on this project as well as the importance of planning everything out before jumping into modeling. I wasted sooo much time working on the high poly version of my elevator because I didn't have a clear concept on what I wanted it to look like, and in the end it ended up looking rather bland and not even being used or finished properly. The time lost working on that peice stopped me from finishing others that I did have concepts for.

Now I need to decide if I should comit to working on this piece for my game prototyping classes or work on a new race track enviroment idea and just work on this in spare time later on down the line. So whos knows I may be back on this soon enough.

Rough proof of concept for a race track level.
http://img3.imageshack.us/my.php?image=racelevel.jpg

ENJOYED:

I learned a shit ton about unreal and unreal materials when I went to throw everything in the engine so that was nice.

I loved being able to actually do some real work in Z brush for a change. And spending the time working on assests in there really forced me to learn how to do things such as retopoing a model, polypainting, subtool management, etc.

WOULD/WILL IMPROVE:

The scene needs more objects, things like doctors cahir, crazy x ray machine, microscope, cabinets or toolbox for tools, operating tools, etc etc. The floor is in dire need of decals for stuff like puddles from dripping water, blood, grim, etc. The bunker portion of the scene is relatively untouched other than the walls themselves so that entire part needs to be done.

I feel like I didnt spend enough time texturing the large glass case and large incubation unit, so those will need some more love later on. And after watching Racer's awesome metal crate tutorial I feel I should be able to really give them a better look.

The lights were another rushed asset, but after getting it into the engine im glad I did not spend much time on it. Seeing it in the scene with everything else I feel its rather obnoxious and out of place. So a whole new fixture is needed.


If you managed to read all of this then I am flattered by your interest in my thread and I thank you.

sprunghunt

the 'sliced in half' creature is great!

Wiktor

Wow!!! That alien cut in half is simply amazing! One of the coolest things I've seen here tbh.

Keep it up man! Can't wait to see more stuff! *puts it all into inspiration folder*

michi.be

Stunning scene. I just felt in love with the sliced alien guy.

Luke_Starkie

Holy shit! Thats awesome! You have inspired me !

EbolaV

wow really nice work. waiting for more ^^

nrek

@ sprunghunt- Thanks dude, I had a lot of fun working on that one.
@ Disting- Thx, im honored my work made it into your inspiration folder :poly121:.
@ michi.be- Glad you like the scene!
@ Luke_Starkie- Thanks Luke!
@ EbolaV- Thanks man, new project starting up so I should have more stuff up soon.

vladino

Amazing job! The scene works nicely together.