GDC Environment: Palace
polycounter lvl 15
Hello everyone, I haven't been able to put myself up to posting here as of yet, but this seems like a good time.
I began this project palace project about 4 weeks ago now with the aim to show it off at GDC, so I think 4 weeks for the production time seems right (seeing as I've made some minor adjustments since GDC). I basically took what I had learned from a couple failed art tests and applied it here. The aim was a cartoony/real hybrid style, something in the vein of Prince of Persia. It is based loosely on a painting by Gregory Fromenteau.
From mixing in high poly work and Zbrush for terrain, I think the textures turned out fairly well this time around. In the past, my materials haven't been the strongest, but here I think there are definite improvements. I settled on a hybrid approach here with the normal mapping, combining the generated normal map from high poly meshes with a Crazy Bump normal map produced from a sort of 'grunge' pass.
It is rendered in Maya, as I had some last minute trouble with UE3. However, I still used a 2048 Shadow/AO map for this environment.
Anyway, I got some fairly good responses at GDC, but haven't heard back from anyone as of yet. In the meantime I thought I'd get some feedback. You can view various prop/texture breakdowns on my webpage:
http://justinkenneallyart.com/
There are plenty of things I feel I could have done better, but I'll let you decide what you think about it.
Thanks!
I began this project palace project about 4 weeks ago now with the aim to show it off at GDC, so I think 4 weeks for the production time seems right (seeing as I've made some minor adjustments since GDC). I basically took what I had learned from a couple failed art tests and applied it here. The aim was a cartoony/real hybrid style, something in the vein of Prince of Persia. It is based loosely on a painting by Gregory Fromenteau.
From mixing in high poly work and Zbrush for terrain, I think the textures turned out fairly well this time around. In the past, my materials haven't been the strongest, but here I think there are definite improvements. I settled on a hybrid approach here with the normal mapping, combining the generated normal map from high poly meshes with a Crazy Bump normal map produced from a sort of 'grunge' pass.
It is rendered in Maya, as I had some last minute trouble with UE3. However, I still used a 2048 Shadow/AO map for this environment.
Anyway, I got some fairly good responses at GDC, but haven't heard back from anyone as of yet. In the meantime I thought I'd get some feedback. You can view various prop/texture breakdowns on my webpage:
http://justinkenneallyart.com/
There are plenty of things I feel I could have done better, but I'll let you decide what you think about it.
Thanks!
Replies
Dont be disheartened by the lack of responses. I think that what you have done is excellent and i really like it. I would be interested to know how you have gone about tackling the texturing of this project. It might be good to show some shot break downs, high polies if you have them, and some flats of textures. Might get people a bit more interested
Keep it up, i have seen far worse get someone a job so im sure you will have one in no time
It's a very small nitpick, but your door details seem like they're inverted. The wood door. They're light from underneath, and dark at the top?
Might be cool to see more shadows/GI in the scene, but that might ruin the mood.
Good luck.
I'd love to see some of the high poly pieces, textures, and wires!
It's amazing how you did all this in 4 weeks man, congrats!
A lot of the textures are really flat though - nothing seems to have a shine or reflective property to it. As well, the difference in styles between the prop and structual textures is a bit off putting (IMO), but otherwise this is really well done.
jocose: Good question. What kind of crazy network did I use in my hypershade? I didn't! All I did is make a render pass with the different maps. I spent hours trying to efficiently get 50 materials to share UV's. If someone has a tutorial somewhere that'd help a lot. Sorry if that spoils it.
Dakkon: I see the inverted lighting, and I didn't notice that. It could be the texture itself. The shadows are a bit weak still. I easily spent the least amount of time on the lighting. The shadows have a pretty high spread and some got muted by the intensity of the other lights in the scene. Also, the AO is only really noticeable in a couple areas.
adamBrome: I share sentiments about the textures. A couple of them are generated mostly off of a single photograph. Like the large door in front (still made a high poly for that one) and the brick texture on the large pylon (or turret) uses a brick texture from CGTextures with some modification(unfortunately I don't have easy access to other parts of the world). But I think the solution to this is to eliminate photographic textures almost entirely (with the exception of grunge passes/overlays). Perhaps not overloading myself would help as well.
As far as the shininess, I actually spent a lot more time in UE3 setting up the spec/normal intensity. A couple materials don't even have spec maps :O.
I'll post a few prop sheets on here soon, but I don't want to overload this post (you can also find them on my webpage mentioned in the first post). I'm thankful for the responses, and to be fair I'll be critiquing other works from time to time. There is some great work on these forums!
Also, what about secondary light sources? Right now you're doing you're lighting from the suns location, but I think adding in secondary lights will help accent areas and remove some of the flatness this piece has. (Torches/fire sconces would fit really well with this piece).
You should do a night time shot
1
2
3
4
5
6
I didn't get a lot of time to make these sheets, but I think they convey the info they need to. Tell me if anything needs to be done differently.
EDIT: I am aware that a couple of these props could have been done more efficiently, namely the barrel and the balcony piece. That's for next time to do differently!
This is some inspiring work man, very nice.
stick an edge & sharpen PP shader on that and you've got POP (Almost!)
Really nice man
how'd you do the crashing wave, is it just a particle effect?
Very inspiring work and a good reference
Still, give it a shot!
*Okay looked again, definitely the normal maps. It just makes it seem too harsh. I think maybe it's a mix of having some wonky spec here/there, as well as having too much shadow info in the diffuse. The normals themselves are also really really sharp.
I'd suggest to keep an eye on texture tone values also. For example, that wooden barrel and planter. There are a lot of spots on that texture that are black, or very close to black. You really don't want to push your textures below 10% brightness as it can lead to real wonky artifacts. Even your renders that have antialiasing show an aliasing effect on those super high contrast areas. Just small things to watch out for.
Oh one more thing that just poked my eye -> the shadow on your door texture is upside down.
Overall though, very nice and cohesive scene