Gears2 Environment Art

Kevin Johnstone

Hey Folks,

I got permission to pimp my Gears2 stuff today so I'll be posting as I render again like I did with my UT3 stuff before.

Starting off with the COG_Hospital set, it was the first thing I worked on for Gears2 -

alexk

woooot! ty kevin

Ryan Smith

Awesome!!!! Your UT3 mega thread was an inspiration to all of us... i'm looking forward to round 2. :-)

ThatDon

killer work man, see if you can get your character guys to do the same (I'm talking to you mike)

VikingJim

awesome! can't wait to see more

divi

once again simply stunning

BlackulaDZ

i came O_O. its all so detailed, cant wait for more!

Slum

I love those snake heads. Awesome detail as alwasy ror.

ae.

man going in my inspiration folder! your a god i hope to have your skills one day good sir!

edit: whats your workflow to make something like that if you dont mind sharing? i wish you could make a tutorial!

EbolaV

yeaah new epic stuff its like christmas for me ^^ great work

Saidin311

sweet sweet arts.

Curious question about the brick wall in behind that first arch. Did you duplicate the bricks in Zbrush? Or did you just make 1 brick with 4 different sides and then copied them in max when you were ready to bake? Or some other completely awesome technique.

DEElekgolo

How did you sculpt the snakes like that? Did you make a high poly and then deform it or is there some other method?

jocose

Can you list the tools and basic work flow for the snake piece? Did you use any sculpting software or did you just sub-D the entire thing?

Gannon

Incredible stuff, I love the work around the archway. Can't wait to see some more.

raul

awesome work!!!!!

I was also wondering about the snake.

whats_true

Very nice man

NoltaN

Your stuff is so inspiring Kevin, I could look at your models for hours.

Joshua Stubbles

Outstanding per usual, KJ. Only thing that's a bit disappointing is that a lot of that hard work gets lost in translation to the flat geometry & normals in the game. Those hires assets are absolutely beautiful though.

Cojax

Awesome! It is like Christmas when you post your stuff haha. Thanks man!

vik

very awesome. how long did each piece take?

Lee3dee

Kevin awesome work! added to my Gears art inspiration folder

carlo_c

Always inspiring when you post up your environment art KJ, I look forward to seeing more hopefully

peppi

Awesome stuff Kevin. Keep them coming.

Kevin Johnstone

Thanks folks.

The Snake was modelled straight in max, zbrushed, reimported, crunched and then path deformed into position, the idea being I could reuse it again later.

I modelled between 8 and 12 half bricks in a previous brickwall piece and then reused those in the arch piece. As they were all on the grid it was easy to reposition , rotated or flip them into different positions so the repeat and reuse wasn't obvious.

The arch took about 12 hours for the high, further 12 hours for about a dozen variant lowpoly versions. The Chiron statue took about 3 days (36hours) for the high, another day for variants.

re:Detail levels, yeah I pushed a little too much with the fine details on the arch in particular but I processed only half of it to a bsp 1024 texture so it worked out as hi res as I could get it. I think the problem was more to do with pushing twice as many claw bits than I should have and the inner line of them nearest to the metal arch in the center should have been dropped but I was under the gun with the schedule and didnt have time to mull it over before processing. Live and learn!

As far as workflow, I model everything pretty well defined im max to be sure its on the grid and will unwrap the way I want, then equally subdivide, take it into zbrush, doodle, export, polycrunch then process back in max. Nothing fancy really, just lots of planning on the front end. Thinking ahead is where I invest a lot more of my time than average.

DimitrisT

Thanks for sharing and for the inspiration!

Art-Machine

I was always impressed with the good planning that went into the levels and props in gears 1, made the project i was on look like a joke at the time. Nice to see this good planning goes all the way down to the asset creation front.

Props to you and your team from a fellow pro :thumbup:

Paul Pepera

Thanks for posting these Kevin

InProgress

When I grow up, I want to be just like you. 8) It's pure win all the way.

Gav

Thanks for sharing, man, very inspiring. Seconding your character guys to do the same

Firebert

Fresh.:thumbup::thumbup:

Kessler

Kevin... When i grow up... I want to be like you. But seriously; teach me how to be awesome.

Kevin Johnstone

Couple more pieces from the Hospital set -

Cojax

Awesome man! Hey do you guys all share one big kit bash? I can imagine it's gotta be huge by now...

Talbot

Hey nice job!

When do you think you're going to get your website up?

Also, you mentioned "variants" in a previous post... could you give explain what exactly you mean by that?

Thanks.

IronHawk

nice stuff Kevin. Thanks for posting.

Rens

That wall, is that one solid piece or is it tiled in the shot? (the crack pattern is pretty repetative)

nicely done man!

Mistry10

amazing stuff man !

I got one question, how much creative freedom do you have when working your projects ?

JacqueChoi

Wicked work! very inspirational!

Nick Carver

Tight! So very, very tight. The pillar is particularly fine.

Hope to see more soon.

Cheers, Nick.

BradMyers82

Man, these are great! All that detail, and tiling so nicely. Superb.

mr_ace

the amount of detail in the high polys is quite incredible. I have a folder of cool shit from gears of war, and its getting very big these days...

MoP

I bet you just sculpted one brick and then told your art director that it was going to take days to finish the highpolys, then just kicked back and had a little snooze

Just kidding, it's really nice stuff. If i had a quid for every time I saw someone from Epic using Max's Spacing Tool...

Kevin Johnstone

Thanks again for all the comments, no answers tonight as I'm tired and dont want to stare at the pc, just images tonight but I will post proper answers to everyones questions ( including PM's)

mLichy

holy shit... very awesome work.... Do you think you could do a little quick tutorial on your workflow by chance? I'm an avid Max user and like to do most highpoly work in there, but I'm just wondering how you go about setting everything up before going to Zbrush?

thanks

G3L

so you do go the subdivision modelling route at the beginning in max and end up taking your stuff into zbrush anyways (with the mesh quad-ed up)?

yowza, that sounds like a lot of dedication and hard work! but very well worth it at the end! incredible stuff kevin! very inspiring stuff and thanks for sharing your tips and tricks every chance you get.

notebookguy

I really like those angles the look is clean nice modeling and sculpting it is good to see sculpts on environments.

HAL

Really awesome stuff, like the details and the style of gears a lot

bluekangaroo

crazy....

vj_box

pure awesomeness kevin!,love the hospital piece pillar. The only thing i keep wondering is how do really manage to get all the detail preserved from zbrush back to max?. I have seen the polycruncher work flow,but still you would have a lot of polys to import back to max. Have you ever suffred from crashes?,even though you guys use the best machines:). And how far do you use the zmapper utility?
Thanks
Vj

EmAr

Thanks a lot Kevin! Saving these into my inspiration folder as you post

Aldo

Amazing stuff, very inspiring