Environment - Splash Damage Dock

JonMurphy

I don't know, I don't post for an age, and when I do, it's my take on an art test.

Emerging from a budget games wilderness, I find my portfolio lacking all the shiny stuff you don't get when you do nothing but PS2 and Wii projects for a few years So, here I am, filling in the gaps and letting loose with the shiny toolbox.

Working from the Spash Damage brief. Currently 16,500 polys down of the 20,000 budget. The scene is captured from the MAX viewport, using custom shaders built using ShaderFX. Diffuse, specular an normal maps, with some subtle AO/radiosity baked into the vertex colours. Textures have been authored using a 512^2 per square meter resolution.









http://jonmurphy-gameart.blogspot.com/2009/06/work-in-progress-dock.html

sorry for the blooger link. Away from home so can't get images linked

God knows how the image colour balance is as I've been working on not the greatest of monitors, and posting this from a borrowed laptop.

EbolaV

hmm. I dont see anything.

carlo_c

Yeah, no pics here either

JonMurphy

Changed to link to blogger post untl I can sort out image host.

renderhjs

meh yet another of those tests, splashdamage should update perhaps their tests because theme wise this is getting boring.

- I assume you did not thought about using colored lights? because the ones you have are either default setups or just white lights (it has the grey layer). So presentation wise they look rather boring.
- The texture have this coders art where colors a choses by symbolic manner and not based on actual research on the topic (like yellow stand for banana, grey for metal, brown for wood though in reality its never just one color or perhaps even that color). So try to look at reference photos and paintings on how the colors really are like.
- perhaps some wireframes for the presentation as well? might be nice to see how you created your topology and used textures on the faces.

all in all I think colors and lighting is the most critical aspect right now

JonMurphy

I appreciate comments about how the colours are looking, as mentioned I'm not working on the best quality monitor (and no money to get a new one). As for the colours choosen, I was taking a lead from the initial images from Brink, with the strandend/abandoned side having plenty of reds and yellows. I have to agree looking at these images on this borrwed laptop that they are looking rather grey compared to how they look on the PC they were authored on.

Did mention that at the moment ithe scene is using a single spot light with a slight shift to yellow. I'll be getting some funky lighting once the external lights are built and the scene can be lit to illustrate different times of day.

Away from home atm, so this is the best wireframe image I have available.

JonMurphy

Bit of an update. Rebuilt the shader (It wasn't working with multiple lights, and the ambient was causing a wash-out). Shader for the reflective wind is a placeholder.

Still not quite happy with the texture on the door hood, the bulkhead, or the algae on the tyres.

First image - Single spotlight flat white



Wirefame



Night lighting (no light fittings built yet)

EbolaV

I see on your wireframes that you have a lot of beveled edges like on your planks, the metalbase and those fittings where the tyres hanging on and some other places. I think this is a waste of tris unless you realy need them but i wouldnt know why. You could spend them on some other props like some lightsourcemodels cause you dont have some or break a plank could be interesting too. You could also use the windows as small lightsource fake some life behind the walls .

JonMurphy

The bevels are to smooth the lighting over the mesh, in addition to what is provided by the normal maps, when the texture is tiled.

Still plenty of polys in the budget for a few more props

SHEPEIRO

tight bevels are costly in term of draw, by all means use them but try and be sparing. there are a few places where they are not needed, for example the metal at the water level could easily be done in normal map

JasonLavoie

Hey Shepeiro, I was wondering if you could explain that a bit more "tight bevels are costly in terms of draw"... sounds like something I shoud already know (and I don't)

Mark Dygert

For bevels that tight you could probably get away with using hard edges/smoothing groups. But I'd be reluctant to use a flat plane with a normal map.

There is the question of how well would the water and the normal map work together? If you can get away using using a few more polys but reduce the shader to just a diffuse then it might run smoother.

Some engines have trouble rendering complex shaders that are half in/out of the water. Sometimes you end up cutting the geo at the water line and having two separate pieces with different shaders applied. Its really engine/game specific, but I think when working at a water line you want to keep shaders very simple.

warby

splash damage really needs to get a new art test scene this one is getting boring ^^

Snader

actually, warby, i disagree. it's fun to see so many peoples takes on the same thing. it serves as a nice sort of benchmark. even for us as artists, we can see how *well* others did. it's always fun to see personal interpretations imho.

to the original poster: it's coming along nicely but there's some things that don't make sense in my eyes. For instance the yellow thing on the floating platform. what is it? it looks like a spray but then it looks a bit too sharp and neat for that. the red under the windows looks v

nrek

Out of all these tests I don't think I have seen a single seagull or even a nasty white splat of poop anywhere....think about it. Along with what everyone else has said, I would watch your texture density, looking at the tires they seem to have a small texture resulting in almost no tread detail, yet we can see the tiny rings in the wood grain on top of the wooden pillars. Keep going.

JonMurphy

Really appreciate the comments. It's been a long time since my work was subject to such peer review so it's been a good kick up the bum.

Update on progress. Bulkhead has been remodelled and re-textured, removing the tight bevels. Same done on the planks for the pontoon.

Hung clumps of algae around, although the alpha and the specular of the texture still needs work. Added light fittings and built a better shader for the portholes so they have a degree of self-illumination.

Still a work in progress. I want to re-do the mooring points, then spend the remaining 4k polys on some cargo to scatter around, and some seagull poop decals

renderhjs

Presentation wise (lights, colors, shadows,...) it looks plain boring. There is to much grey and black in them which makes it hard to read some of the surfaces. Maybe some more lights or more the kind of distributed lighting (Final Gather, AO, Radiosity light map,...) would show more of the scene and give a more natural and modern look.


maybe I overdid the last one with dominating blue and pink colors but at least it stands out more compared to the upper one.

Zack Fowler

Render's paintover adds a lot more interest and looks a lot more like the screens that Splash Damage put out for Brink during E3. It looks like a 1px blur is being applied the the whole scene, not sure if you are doing that on purpose but it is definitely not helping. Right now the shadows from that left side light are pretty artifacted and distracting, I would just take them out. More attention to bounced lighting could help too. The portholes and door are looking good.

JonMurphy

Had a quick tweak of the lighting



I think I should note that the shots are taken direct from the MAX viewport, hence the artifacts in the shadows. I feel the next step is to get myself a copy of UT or Crysis and import the scene into either of those engines.

JasonLavoie

Definatly has a bit more life to it now Johny, but as you can also see, way to much spec on the water, and now its blowing any and all detail out of it (the left, bottom part).

At this stage, the metals really don't feel all that "metal" to me, and I think its mostly due to your spec, see if you can manage to get some nice highlights from your light, as well as the outside lighting. This seems like (based on how your scene is lighted right now) that it is night out (the background is a bit confusing right now, its throwing me off) so why not try and get some cool rim light from the moon or something, even on the water as well. I think this will help balance out your overall lighting, cause right now the docks and ramp seem like they are being shaded by something.

Good work though man, really interested to see how this turns out.

JonMurphy

Thought I would come back to this, never being totally happy with where I left it last year, before getting sucked into the fun of producing another wii shovelware title...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6745271/JonMurphy-2009-dock12-c.jpg

Made a rod for my own back trying to produce a convincing scene using custom shaders in the MAX viewport, so I'm bringing the pieces into UDK, giving them a fresh lick of texture paint and whatnot.



Having a play with animating the emmisive in the portholes, trying to suggest some life going on inside.

JonMurphy

Didn't get to do as much today as hoped. A few more assets ported over. Door replaced, although the texture needs another pass as the handle is getting lost against the door.

Hopefully get the pontoon in tomorrow which will bring in some greens to the scene.