School Hallway - WIP

alexk

This may be too early to post screens, but I figure I'd start the thread anyway. This is my first scene ever and already I'm kinda hitting snags. Mostly just figuring out how I want to execute some of the stuff in the scene.. like do I want to make the walls, floor, ceiling modular, or should it just be one long plane with a tileable texture on it, and then stick meshes on it. Anyways, i'll be hammering away at this so will definitely update it regularily. Definetly open to any tips and suggestions for the beginning phases, I'm hopeing to make it unreal friendly so I've been snapping stuff to a 16 grid

Blocking out some stuff, figuring out the size of the props.


Here is my sweet concept lol

Talbot

That is a sweet concept drawing! haha

I'll wait for more screens before say anything more. :P

00Zero

lol, yea sounds interesting. but i want to see more.

btw. be careful about showing this to people at school. you could get in trouble for making a school level (in a fps game). its pretty lame and very unlikely, but its happened in the past.

alexk

Good lord! I just realised what you're trying to tell me 00Zero. Just to make it clear I'm NOT making some kind of sick school FPS scenario. I'm hoping to have a hallway where some kind of large cliche disaster just happened... I managed to test some of meshes in Unreal and started on a highpoly locker

Autocon

Go Team!

alexk

small update, pretty much done my locker highpoly, but not sure what to put on the inside of it. I don't think I'll have any lockers fully open anyways.. hmm.. heres a screeny

alexk

just wanted to post a screeny of my progress, still not yet in the texturing phase. But I learned ALOT about the importance of keeping things on a grid, since I'm importing to unreal. I'm not going to get into what I did wrong but lesson learned the hard way lol! I need to make a few more major peices and then should be able to get some basic textures going. And will model the smaller rubble, decals, and miscellaneous peices as I need them..

AshleyTayles

Looks nice so far. The ground seems a bit bare at this stage, but you said you're going to model some rubble to but on it so I guess that doesn't really matter.

vj_box

mmh,why would you take this to unreal,so early at this stage? You could do all the blocking in the 3d software of your choice,complete all the assets and then you can probably put out a small level in unreal.
Keep it coming
Vj

Microneezia

a School seems fairly modular in its setup and look generally. i think you could get away with the following setup;

3d application assets:

base structure;
a wall section -standardized size
a roof section -standardized size

decor structures;
a wall section with fire door
a wal section with double doors
a wall section with that high window
a wall section with the pillar outcropping in the middle
a roof section with lights

decor asset /props;
a water fountain
closed locker
open locker
broken locker
radiator
broken hanging lights
one floor section length of that broken pipe stuff on your ceiling but make it seemless....

after those are created in 3d application, go to ued and make the builder brush the same size as the roof, maybe a little wider... build as many hallways as you want out of bsp in unreal. then bring in the structures above as single static mesh's you will instance around and easily set up.

i think this way you will do the same amount of work, maybe less, and have the assets to create a much larger environment much easier than how its going now i think. plus when you are finished you can present the assets you used laid out on a single prop sheet and show everyone how fantastically modular you are.

im trying to think modular myself so this was an exercise for myself mainly. thanks1

Jesse Moody

what is up with the crazy uvs on the walls?

I would say with some proper floor planning a school hallway could be done with very minimal assetts. Lockers, lights, walls, doors, water fountain, trash/debris, etc.

alexk

@Micro: I think you pretty much just listed the current setup lol. so far, in the scene these are my modular peices, i'll definetly have a sheet of all my seperate peices when I'm further along:

plain wall
wall with high window cutouts
wall with cutout for a class door
the exit door wall
2 variations of the bend celing panel support thingys
a column

current modular decor:

a ceiling light with seperate flourescent lights and the support thing that connects to the ceilings
2 lockers, one which is closed, one which is open with a seperate door so I can rotate it out however I wish (later I'm going to FFD a few bent versions in max). these 2 lockers are the same model and texture, just one is stuck together, one is seperated
a radiator
small windows for the high window cutouts
class door with labels for the wall next to it
the exit door
exit sign above the exit door

current BSP:

floor

the next 2 things I want to add is:

the panels to the ceiling
large floor rubble, like in an earthquake, where the floor comes out

@Jess: oh the walls.. I didn't UV them yet

alexk

did a large reusable broken floor peice today and I couldn't help but mess around with some colored lights. Got my major peices in, and should be able to start texturing and start placing it in the scene as I go

Daaark

I like it, but I've never seen so few lockers in a hallway before.

Microneezia

Its looking good... a blocked off hallway area. I like it. I look at this and think "turn around!".. I like the ceiling.

I have some ideas; for your modular setup

maybe for the other hallway you could have the floor disruption but way more subtle. Break the floor in 2 or 3 spots but spend a lot of time on those spots. IE show the cracked up broken cement layer at the bottom, the linoleum / tiles top layer peeling off that to reveal the cement. normal map that weird circle glue stuff that comes in squares and is used to adhere the tiles or linoleum onto the top of the cement layer...

The ceiling tiles that have broken and fallen uhm... put most of the ceiling tiles in, then have the fallen ones right under the only open spots, this way its an instant connection and easy to read maybe.

killingpeople

Go Team!

renderhjs

the lockers do look wrong and distorted on the top -its very distracting to me

there is not much else to say at this point because anything else I would write atm. would adress the limits of the engine.

Microneezia

renderhjs wrote: »

would adress the limits of the engine.

release your engine! with GUI please...

StJoris

I wish to second renderhjs' concern with the lockers having no justification for that strange angled shape at the top. I noticed it before but thought it was too much nitpicking, apparently not!

Gannon

it feels a little odd that the floors being ripped up and the lockers are still sitting evenly against the walls. Also i agree there seems to be very few lockers throw some around like they've piled up and fallen over in front of a door. should make it a little more interesting.

Keep at it this has a lot of potential.:)

Talbot

I think that the lockers are fine... there just needs to be more of them.

alexk

another update screeny, its a little bit dark. I modeled an angled locker because I was thinking it's a little bit more insteresting than a basic box if it's really that bad I can just pull the angle a bit. In this screen, I'm just placing all my assets and fiddling around with lighting, I'm leaving some room for extra rubble on the ground and on the ceiling. I also modeled a modular wall and window/door trim, I felt the old walls were a bit too bare. the nasty texture on the walls is just temporary

Microneezia

hey man, nice update, i was happy to see the roof tiles in greater numbers... the roof looks boss to me now. Id like to see a bit more of that red on the floor coming towards us. it just seems too much faded green right now... but meh its getting out of my league to crit. here is your hall-pass, go see one of the principles... wth do I know.

alexk

An update. Been a bit frustrated, especially with the walls.. I can't get a good look to them and still haven't settled on what type of wall and color I want for them. I want a painted concrete, but when I try that it look so boring and ugly. I know I'm missing something on the walls, maybe more stuff...but I just can't seem to put my finger on what it is I'm missing...

Vrav

Maybe a row of dust-rimmed holes where the lockers were once bolted? Are lockers even bolted to the wall? Or maybe make the wall a different, dingy colour beneath them - as if they were added, then the walls painted again around them. This is pretty cool though, reminds me of the demo level for FEAR2. I like that it looks to be realistically traversable, but isn't the sort of hallway you'd usually see in a game. Nice nightmarish breakdown you've got going here. Maybe the light in the back is a bit pink.

Seems a bit strange that the floor and ceiling are broken up but there isn't a lot of damage, or broken tiles anywhere.

theDEAD

Coool hallway so far! Regarding your wall concerns:

Perhaps it doesn't look right because everything else (epecially your floors) are completely annihilated, and the walls look newly built. Whatever catastrophe ran through this hallway should leave some major cracks, small chunks missing, maybe even a whole section of concrete wall that may have slightly shifted.

I think it might be kinda cool to have some 'school colors' painted onto the wall. Maybe the school's mascot is the 'Hornets' and have a Yellow stripe of paint that lines the walls. (Iono, you can get creative with that, but hopefully that makes sense)

In addition there might be painted letters / numbers on the wall, to indicate which building and room #'s are in this particular row or section?

I know you mentioned that you were going to add other small models as you go along, so breaking up the wall a bit with a fire alarm switch, or a fire exstinguisher of some sort might even add a bit more too it.

Hope that helps! Keep on truckin, lookin forward to see how it turns out!

Mark Dygert

It looks cool, really cool. It's come a long way

Crits:
- Cinderblock walls wouldn't survive a massive upheaval like that.
- A building might have clinerblock for the outside walls and regular studs (steel or wood) and sheetrock for interior walls. It's easier to manipulate later, and allows for all kinds of things to be run through it and hung on it.
- Also think about what things are laid down under the floor and in the ceiling. With Cinderblock construction most of the plumbing and electrical would have to go in the drop cieling or under the school.
- The broken floor looks cool but might cause all kinds of collision problems?
- When walls shift and twist around some of the weakest points break first, those being windows.
- I'm not sure how you constructed the floor, but if you could shrink it down so its obvious that it has been damaged but not wall to wall. Also mixing in some normal patches of flooring that aren't touched, could help contrast the damaged areas, making the damage more meaningful.

It's looking cool, nice work so far! Keep at it!

alexk

I think I'm going to redo the entire ground. My original idea was to include unbroken patches like Vig suggested, but somehow it turned into what it is now and I'm not fully happy with it. I'm also going to work on the walls more, so that it's not just a plane with a tiling texture.. hmm.. but we'll see how it goes I guess. Also, I like the idea of the painted "school colors" and I'm going to try to incorporate that. Thanks for the replys and suggestions, they're very helpful