Yup, a scifi-floor!

sampson

Hey guys,
i'm working on a sci fi base thingy just to practice my highpoly + baking + texturing skills.

i'm not really sure for how i'm going to design the rest of it.. im thinking more panels and bolts!
here's what i've got so far - i'm looking to put it on a flat plane and i'm guessing some of the areas wont bake super well:

JesterBox

---Edit Miss-read title----

Woops! totally thought the title said door for some reason. I'd say it looks good (But I'm pretty new to this stuff), I'm wondering if it opens or anything so that the wires and what not underneath can be accessed.

turpedo

You will probably end up losing a lot of the depth you have in your highpoly model if you bake it on just a flat plane(the side borders).

adam

I'd actually think about thicking up your forms and overall shapes. As turpedo alluded to you'll lose a lot of depth when you bake this, even if your mesh isn't a flat plane but something closer representing the shapes of this.

As well, I'd think about making the pot lights a seperate mesh with their own bake and sheet. This way you can place them manually in whatever engine (or 3D app) you're planning on using.

sampson

hmm not a huge update but i decided i'm going to have it so that theres metal beams running across, with concrete under it. just to make it a lil bit different.
so imagine the below image, but with cracks running across the middle stuff!

Muzzoid

man that thing is a trip hazard!

, think of the law suits in the future if they have those on the streets.

Cool mocelling though. Perhaps it should be a roof instead?

sampson

yeah i could always turn this prop into a corridorr... hehe we'll see..maybe i can come up with a not as trippy solution -
maybe i could just get rid of the horizontal re inforcey thingys??

or have it so the concrete dips down a bit, and move the metal down

sampson

hmm how am i supposed to do this - i tried sculpting my concrete thing. then imported into max and max ran out of memory and crashed (only 1mil polygons!) i have 4gb of ram on win xp 32 (yeah i know 32 bit can't use all of it)

Reverenddevil

Why do you want to reimport it back into Max? I would use Xnormal and import the obj from Mudbox or Zbrush.

If you dont use this solution then you can take the high sub divided model and step it down and reimport it into max and see if that works.

[HP]

This is looking nice, keep up!

Here's some ref / inspiration for you:


http://www.game-artist.net/forums/3d-sketchbooks/7794-stefan-morrell-environments-x-y-z-3.html

00Zero

maybe youre running out of vid card memory.

i wouldnt bring in that high of a mesh into max. just use xnormal. if youre doing it for position/size reference then just bring in a subd or 2 lower. looks good so far, although the tripping hazard is making it hard to be believeable. but thats the problem with all scifi floors, theyre ALL a tripping hazard.

try putting in a door on the ground that can flip open to get to stuff for maintenence. a maintenence hatch, yes. lol

sampson

does anyone know how to model dem shapes:
i can't stop it from pinching! (yes i do see the 5 sided i dunno wat to do)



edit: yup and an update

fast1

Muzz wrote: »

man that thing is a trip hazard!

, think of the law suits in the future if they have those on the streets.

Cool mocelling though. Perhaps it should be a roof instead?

haha yea so true on the hazard part.

sampson

who says they'll be walking?! maybe theyll be hovering (meh i can always make this roof/wall

renderhjs

it looks so 80's from it's design because it has such boring 45° edges & zig zags. Apart from that there is not much dynamic like a contrast in size, concarve/convex or style.
All in all it looks very steril and not at all outstanding or catching. Maybe go with some bigger tubes that follow the tile, or some wire cage around the lights.
And regarding lights - while would a industry manufacturer use 2 different light sizes if they are placed anyway in a row? - you wont usually see that in industrial pieces- same for to many different bolts for example (not the case here).

sampson

i see what you mean by 80's but i can't visualise whay yuo mean by your dynamic size/ concave/convex thingy. like i know what concave and convex are... i just want to know what you meant by it... like panels that bend out/ in?

edit: slight update - any crits on the things i added on the side

Delaney King

Nice work so far man. Here are a few titbits of theory that you may get a spark from.

Rythm
Think about the experience of the player moving through (or over in this case) the scenery. Some corridoors feel 'slow', some 'fast', some 'erratic' and some 'busy' - and best of all - 'silky smooth and yet memorable'. This is mainly down to Rythm. Some feel like you are trudging down forever. This all comes down to texture artists mad skillz (or sadly lack thereof). Rythm is where its at here.

Generally as you move along your mind will click off large details or focal points giving you a feeling of getting somewhere- in your case the main rythm is those horizontal bands.

Think of it like a drum line - big band is a boom, little details are chaks.
Boom - chak - pause- boom- pause- chak (bit dull but regular)
Boom! - pause- pause- pause - Boom! (slow solid feel )
Boom! Chaka chaka chaka chaka chaka Boom! chaka chaka chaka Boom! (busy)
Boom, chakka, chakka, boom, chakka, chakka (Nice, good progression)

Rythm can make the experience feel smooth, can guide the characters and can add interest to your scenery. Positioning your details, your bands of color, your surface textures- all that sets the rythm.

Weird tip: people generally feel uneasy walking over diagonals that are not pure 45 degree for some reason? - try it and see. I did an hourglass like pattern down a dungeon once and it made you feel like you where being squeezed in and out as you walked down it - really odd sensation - not fun to play.

Eye draw and payoff
When you look at something your eye is drawn to main features then skips around trying to take in the clusters of detail. You can use this to draw the eye around your work- but be sure if you draw the eye somewhere there is something that takes a moment to examine. So if your eye is drawn to a cool little detail, if you look you realise that its a release handle with a little text- and some scratches from constant use. Just throwing details around down does not make for interest- and the result can distract from the key details and make the eye skip across the whole. Again, like Rythm - its a little like jazz- some busy interesting areas, some gaps your eye skims across. Placing a little detail around a key detail adds weight and holds the eye a little longer.

Pixel motion
When your scenery texture is layed down at your feet and your moving down it, will those grills turn into sludge as it is rasterized? How wide do your slats need to be to be clear and sexy when in first person? Also, when your walking along, does the high frequency cause a blittering feel? Remember this especially when your doing very small stuff - like DS handheld stuff!

Detail to texture
Lots of fine details great, but remember the texture size your capturing to - a really fine bolt needs at least three pixels across to read in a normal map - and at least five to get a clean read and have some nice occlusion. Sometimes its better to have the surface 'read' clearly than be exactly right in scale.

Well, that killed the time whilst my fiance watched the Dancing with the Stars finale. Uhg. Rather be here crapping on about game art. Hope that helped ya.

sampson

lol, poor you!

hehe, well THANKS alot for that list man... uhmm i can probably rethink the 45' horizontals... i'll look at some of those other things as wel..

(i'll copy it over and over and flythrough and see how it feels)