Preview: Close encounters and Rednecks
polycounter lvl 10
Here's the concept I have for a senior project at school: A redneck home/ fishing hole has been taken over by an alien invasion. The plan is to eventualy have this all in UT3 with fancy shaders and some simple but effective matinee animations.
The push is environment, no actual rednecks, maybe some simple alien creatures.
No gameplay just an art peice.
Here's some very preliminary concepts i half-assed last quarter because i was swamped with other classes:
Going to do my best to stay motivated over the next couple weeks to get some real work done for you guys to crit before the break's over.
Feedback/ suggestions appreciated!
The push is environment, no actual rednecks, maybe some simple alien creatures.
No gameplay just an art peice.
Here's some very preliminary concepts i half-assed last quarter because i was swamped with other classes:
Going to do my best to stay motivated over the next couple weeks to get some real work done for you guys to crit before the break's over.
Feedback/ suggestions appreciated!
Replies
Not happy with the handle yet, need to play with that part but overall i'm pretty happy with it.
Half the handle's fallen off, duct tape has been used to "fix" it.
REDNECK RAMPAGE!
The duct tape looks great in my opinion. But isn't the actually blade a little more shiny and not so...flat? maybe its just the angle of the screenshot.
Either way, get er done!
The redneck tire is done, complete with "ass print". The horrors i went through on google image search i will spare you. Bask in its PG glory, and might i suggest never, ever searching for "ass print" in google unless you have some kind of gay cowboy filter enableled.
Just a diffuse on this sucker for now, but i don't see a spec or normal adding too much to this one, mostly just to give the tire treads bump and a little more sheen on the wheel.
First pass on the stump. Might add more roots to make it gnarlier. Probably make 'em modular though so i can throw 'em all over the place. There are little hearts carved out on the stump with beer bottle caps in 'em just to add some character. This is where the fishermen cut up their bait. I'll throw some fish guts around in the future, fishbones too. Got lucky with the texture, set one of the layers to "difference" it it suddenly popped really nice.... just gotta go with the flow and take whatever luck you can get sometimes.
Another update: Finished a first pass on trashbags. Big shoutout to www.cgtextures.com, couldn't have done these so fast without this awesome site. Amazing what just slapping the diffuse as the spec can do. No normal so far but looks fine without. They're double bagged so there are 4 of the twistie tie things on top. Obviously someone was too lazy to tie 'em.
Comp shot, just to see how everything works together. I'm digging the extra roots on the tree stump, worth the tris for sure, makes it seem more swampy, i'll play with adding more green in the future. Trash bags are kinda flat, can use some dust/ crud on 'em. Pretty happy with the tires, any more work on 'em and they wont be repeatable.
the tree trunk, knife and beer bottles look too small when compared to the tires and garbage bags
the rusted metal texture you're using on the knife makes it look like it was painted white and the tree truck texture should be a little more involved, add some grime from the ground, etc the top looks really red orange, like rust, in the most recent
Oh well, Killingpeople i agree with all yer crits, i'll be sure to work on those issues in a bit. Still flushing out what exactly all this stuff will be sitting on.
For now i'm thinking just generic brown mud, nothin' fancy and easy to render. By having mostly mud what few flora i do put in i can make look realy nice and have a higher tri count, maybe even do some cattails. Also mud's color isn't really defined so if i decide the color scheme isn't working i'll just play with the hue slider. Anyway, time to recharge the batteries...
haha lookin cool man... i'd be interested in seeing the tires with more tread. The tree trunk looks like it's from a baby banyon tree... maybe a bit too rooty? The duct tape on the knife looks cool and the plastic bags look great too.
i was thinking they were regular sized car tires maybe smaller since it's a motor home. maybe they're motor home farmers, or something.
maybe the spaceship crash caused glass to shrink and rubber to expand. ;p
maybe my amazing research will help:
assuming these girls are normal sized adults, i'd say the tires currently look to be a little under this big:
http://www.achievefit.net/uploaded_images/DSC00951-781761.JPG
http://image12.webshots.com/12/2/99/69/150129969sgTpQu_ph.jpg
hand and tire:
http://content5.videojug.com/71/7112bc7d-8911-3ece-cfbd-ff0008c97438/how-to-change-a-tire.jpg
beer and hand:
http://www.delsjourney.com/images/news/news_01-08-14/339B-Brad-Drinking-Beer.jpg
kind of a shitty way of doing it, but whatever, i'm tired.
these are pretty decent:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/26/60671349_1fc70b90bf_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/27/60603185_178417f2ef_o.jpg
I would say for the sake of aesthetics that you're right... the tires and bags are a bit large... and make everything else look shewper tiny... i was more or less just making a redneck joke.
And yes, mobile home tires are small... not even sure why they have tires other than being able to adjust their position easily... every time i've seen them moved it was on the back of an 18 wheeler... and when they're in someones yard.. on bricks. SOOO.
killing - you do have a great point. The tires look odd even if they are somewhat accurate.
Saw this thread in the general discussion: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=63970
and now i'm inspired to add some alien "droppings" that will pulse and possibly constrict at the base if you get near them, as alien worms devour the rancid things.
So i've got a few real world things kinda started and I'm lookin' forward to working on some more otherworldly stuff in the near future. It's crucial that the 2 worlds blend together into a coherent piece. For now I'm just trying to enjoy my break a little bit while i can
Thanks again for the crits and comments polycount, they really do help.
Here's my first pass on "alien droppings". The last remnants of the valiant redneck army of earth.
Comp shot:
They're currently unoptimized but each pile is sitting at 8k tris, which i can live with for now. The worms are actually using the texture i had planned for bones, with the tip being where it would blend into the pile of refuse. But i really dig how they came out and they aren't taking up any extra texture space so i might just keep 'em. Got some seams to clean up and i might play with the hue in-engine.
I realize it looks like more worms at the top because of identical textures, but those are supposed to be bones. I'll sort that out in the future.
Next up i think i'll be creating "goo". Probably just spec on some geo with 100% transparency.
*Update* Sticky Version:
Here's an update, finished up some Budweiser beer bottles and beer cans (no specific allegiance to this beer, the color scheme just fits).
They both use the same 512x512 texture, got a little tricky with UV's and crammed in a lot of Polys into a VERY small space on the can,
I also made some new trees with crazier roots by simply duplicating my first stump and doing some quick UVing. First pass but pretty happy with them. Very repetitive textures on the side, but I don't think it looks terrible.
Polyflow for anyone intereseted (ignore terrain it's very temp):
Not sure what's up next, but the ground is screaming to be done up a bit, maybe some flora or mud who knows.
Also retooled the lighting to downplay the "tentacle" silhouette. I'll be switching up the textures in the future so the non stump trees don't have such obvious texture issues. But i'm really ichin' to do the ground up a bit because i think once there's some decent flora and ground textures this scene is going to really start popping.
Would there be a huge performance hit for importing a mesh as the ground and using that for a 30x30ish yard area as long as the mesh was reasonable geo?
I'm not making a death match out of this by any means, but i want it to run smooth with matinee animations and some relatively complex shaders on a decent machine.
Thanks in advance!
Really need to add ground at some point
If the trees bother you guys i'll change 'em up to be more like regular trees.
If anything i'd go for this pic i just found. Take out the extra geo and just deform the base of the trees:
I am fairly new to game art so i haven't had to choose between photo reference and creating something new. I thought it would be cool to kinda create my own tree, after all why recreate something we've already seen when you can create something a little fantastical and more interesting? I can see the importance of making something that looks "real" but i also want the scene to be eerie and interesting. I admit i can achieve both with rare types of trees though.
I'll probably try both, see which one you guys think is best sometime in the future.
As always the teacher has the final say...
Right now it looks like the base of a corn plant.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2340/2178818653_8692876270.jpg?v=0
also, the grass and the reeds are really distracting... along with the bug zapper lamps.
Some good stuff here, otherwise.
I would try to balance the composition as well. The grass could be toned down, and the environment on the whole is too dark. The ground doesn't look like it's being lit at all. If this is supposed to be for a game environment, there's no destiquishable playable area. And the polygons used on the roots is a bit high.
Just some thoughts. I hope they're helpful.
Take care!
Quick candidate for the redneck house. I thought a redneck "mansion" would be kinda funny. Let me know if you think it's a bit much for the scene, i think it helps add to the light hearted nature i'm going for to downplay the genocide backstory
First take on ground textures, really happy with them in Max, not so much in UT3. The UT3 engine tends to isolate shine on normals to directly in front of you. So instead of getting a nice wet looking landscape it only looks wet directly in front of you. Kinda put off for now on putting this in engine. I was going to do it side by side as i made this scene but i might just wait till the end now so i don't get discouraged.
nfrrtycmplx, thanks for the crits man. I'm definitely going to change the trees, need to figure out how to keep the base modular so i can have lots of unique trees with it still looking believable. The cattails were really distracting in that shot, I compensated for a lack of terrain by covering the void with entirely too much and close lake foliage. Spending a lot of time putting lipstick on a pig so to speak at this point and just need to slam out more stuff.
This is for a game art portfolio, but for the purposes of this project we're instructed to focus on the art and not worry about gameplay.
A lot of this project is up in the air right now. Is it too saturated? I kinda like the comic book feel but it's gotta look at least a little generic for a "game art" portfolio so i can actually get a job and pay off student loans with this stuff. It's too dark, that's for sure, in part to mask the void of unfinishedness. Trying to stay productive and not sweat the big picture when there's so much "small stuff" to be done.
And thanks again for the comments PC, don't like makin' stuff in a vacuum. After all if no one likes the stuff we make then what's the point?
One thing to keep in mind with putting it in the engine and keeping the wet feel. Specular is based entirely off the lighting in the scene. If you don't have light bouncing off the surface into the camera, or reflectivity (cube map or otherwise) it'll be hard to make it look wet... and that's probably why putting it in the engine looks strange. If the lighting is bogus, the specular will be as well. and how a surface "feels" is largely specular in this case.
Lighting is paramount as they say... did i get that right?
One thing you can try is putting the shaders on your terrain and putting low angle spot lights pointing back towards the camera but still pointing at the ground...
Below is an example of a light showing low specular contribution
Below is an example of a light causing greater specular contribution
In unreal the light color is going to be modulated on top of the specular color and the specular color will be multiplied by the light's value.
Hopefully this helps.
The normal map also affects the light angle. so if you have extreme normal angles in your normal map and a light pointing directly at the surface, you'll still get quite a lot of specular contribution.
the higher the specular power value the tighter the spec... and the lower the spec power the closer to a matte finish you will have.
If you're going to do a house... and it's not a bad idea given the amount of random garbage in the scene... i'd suggest doing a trailer... or looking up shacks from the swamp areas of southern united states...
Lookin good, can't wait to see what you do next on it!
Cheers
Current terrain/ water concept:
Have a lot to think about right now, gets hard to focus. I like the pop the lilypads add, but they pull a lot of attention, which isn't so bad considering the dock is a focal point.
The water's very preliminary and i'm not sure how i want to go forward with it. Torn between the now of making it look good in a single frame of max, and the future of making sure it's optimized and looks good animated in UT3.
Going to break up rock meshes with some different textures to match the tiled texture of the riverbed more.
Need to come up with some new natural props for the mid ground to add pop like the lily pads add. River's a little too dominant right now. Toying with the idea of some kind of alien plants that have started infesting earth but i also think it's important that the natural element of the piece look cohesive. The two aren't mutually exclusive though.
All that said, i'm really itchin' to do some alien drop pods and start rockin' the sci fi!
Anyway, treaded:
Some seems but i think they're passable for game art. Did what i could with the texture space i had for this asset:
Cylinder mapped, and repeated the hell out of that little space in the upper right. Quick height to normal seems to be fine for the normal, in fact i may even tone it down to make it appear dirtier.
For now i like the bulbous quality of the tire. Adds a cartoony character that fits with the over-saturation of the scene. Might go for hyper realism at some point, may even do 2 versions in the end.
Sitting at about 20k tris right now unoptimized. Not going to optimize too much on this one, want it to look cool.
Nice work so far though.
Long way to go on texturing though, used lots of lighting to hide repetition and overall unfinished textures by repeating them. Here's a shot better showing where i'm at in the texture process:
The beer's just for scale, not like I'd like to have one after doing 3d for 10 hours straight
And thanks for the crits guys.
Cody: I agree the terrain looks a little out of place with the rolling hills, an experiment gone wrong. Just pushing things till they break atm.
Nate: Yeah, some of the composites show some flaws in the textures, i'll clean those up as I move forward. Considering i've got 3 quarters to work on this and I've got all this done I'm pretty pumped to make a friggin big scene. And the only classes I have weighing me down this quarter are 3d camera techniques, storyboarding, art history, and scripting. Should be cake.
I have to say though, I think you should do some color isolation on your ship. Right now, its got a looooot going on, especially in the texture, and its hard to read whats going on.
Made some snails and some fences today. Just adding things bit by bit...
The snails are big, stupid big, but i think they work for this scene. If I'm going to have some weird alien stuff i want some weird indigenous life too. Also threw in a really quick dead bug silhouettes where you see that kind of crud accumulate on fences.
P.S. The snail in the upper left isn't to scale, just for close inspection
Nice snails crazyfingers. One thing to be careful about that I've noticed with your assets so far is a tendency to want to put specular fairly evenly across all surfaces. Not everything should be shiny, even though individual things might seem to look nicer with a shiny material by themselves. Don't forget that the dirtier or rustier something is, the less shiny it will be.
I'll probably cover the jelly bags with leaves to give it more context and cover these new ones with a few bits of household type trash, kleenex box or something.
Thanks Zack, I do have a tendency to go overboard with my Specs, especially trying to make these mini comps look good. And this is definitely going to be a rusted over/ grimy scene.
I'll grunge up the fences more in the future and not make them so "perdy".
Going to overhaul the door opening mechanisms on the side. Swapping hydraulics for some kind of wicked looking rotar system.
The point of this project is to have a main portfolio piece that will get me a job so i can pay back some pretty hefty student loans.
So how do I take this project in a direction that will get me a job? Should i try for hyper realism? Should I stylize? How much should I focus on making things look pretty and how much should i worry bout optimizing textures and polygons? How important is it to get into UT3? would potential employers even play through the level? Should i worry about Kismet animations and particle effects? Or do i just need a few really amazing looking stills?
It's late in the game and I'm still unsure what kind of environment I need to make to land a job, so any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated! I realize there are many avenues, but really right now i need to choose one and i'm having trouble.
Just now saw this thread - off to a fun start here! I haven't read anyone else's comments but first impressions are this:
Tires - too specular. Esp. for being old tires. Get some more photo reference of some old rotted tires. Make some of them flat tires? HAve some of the wire-threading showing through on some of them?? That'd be really cool because you'd be able to still ahve visual interest with them that way, and show off some good spec. Old tires are very dulla nd don't reflect. Usually they are dusty, covered with old dirt etc. so try to show more character on those props.
Glad you redid those trash bags... the new ones are fucking nice! I think you could add more interest to them though by having maybe some white streaking or something. YOu know how when you stretch those black bags out to omuch and they start becoming thin and almost transparent? See if you can show some detail like that, or maybe fingerprints from a dirty hand, or even just oil - show this in your spec map, but not your diffuse and it'll look more realistic. Bags look awesome right now though.
The blue light in your scene might be alittle too strong and too saturated. Try decreasing the area of effect from that light, it's a bit much. Bug zappers aren't like million candlepower bulbs, they are very low candlepower neon. If it gets too dark, just kick up your fill light (moonlight or orange city light or something) but I think the bug zap light is too intense as it is right now.
Assuming you haven't done spec maps for your trees yet. They look like a default blinn or something right now. If you have done spec for them, I reckon you pull it back a bit.
The little dock going out in to the water - make it bigger and darker.
alien ship - kindof hard to identify what it is. Since it's an object no one has ever seen before, try to communicate more immediately what it is. It's kindof amorphous and multicolored right now and it's making me fight to identify it.
The textures on it are equally "busy" over it's entire surface. Go back and reconsider which areas you' would like to have more "business" and less in others so the eye can flow naturally through it instead of trying to make sense of the jumbled mess of greebly texture detail. Is it metal? it looks like metal flesh in the most recent screenie. Keep playing with the textures on that guy until it starts rocking.
Fences look dope!
Overall I like the scene and think your composition is going to come together soon. It's good that you put this project online early on so you can get help from the community as you refine it.
Stay in touch dude, hope all is well down there in SD!
Your advice echos a bit of what i've heard here and there but i dig the idea about the tires and trash bags, they will indeed be going in. It's really time i just stop slamming stuff out, and really focus on a quality, grunge, cohesion, and identifiably. Lots of revisions in order.
Things are good, but they'll be better once i get this thing on track
I went back to your concept drawings... the one for your crashed ship.
I reckon you make MAJOR refinements to the current model or possibly go back to the drawing board with the ship man. Looking at the drawing I can see a silhouette but inside the sil. there's really nothing about it that says "spacecraft" to me. Maybe make 5 or 10 variation sketches for thsi guy and show polycount before you pour too much more time into this.
I don't mean to say I don't like the current model or anything, but the design is simply too abstract right now. It looksl ike a combination of a heap of scrap metal, a set of wind up dentures, and some Cheshire Cat colored plant material\ - all of which is actually reminiscent of your concept. So the execution is accurate but in my opinion the design is suffering and needs to be rethought, reinterpreted or simply cleaned up before you take it any further.
Much like my own senior project, I ended up really hating the initial design for my Ark machine by the time i finished it and would have totally gone back and redesigned the thing from scratch had it not been waaaay to fucking late by the time i realized I simply couldn't get the results I really wanted.
sorry for wall of text - trying to be concise without sounding pretentious.
Doesn't crash cockpit down any more, and has more of a ship sillhouhette. Also took the organic nature of the ship to a specific insectoid direction. Lemme know what you guys think. I'll be doing concepts for the redneck house next.
On the environment front, new footage from valve's L4D2 looks pretty much how i was going to re-concept my trees and swamp http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/left-4-dead-2-swamp-bridge/325153?playlist=featured . Gotta think of something else now :P
Take a minute and actually tell us what the idea is for the ship. I guess I"m struggling with making a critique on the ship itself because i know nothing about it and it's shape, form and texture is all so foreign and unusual that i'm incapable of referencing it against anything recognizable.
I still dont think the textures look insectlike. They look more like rusty flesh. Consider having scarab shell like plates?
The winglets dont look insectoid to me either, they look leafy and plant like.
The boosters look white to me. If this is a metallic spacecraft, consider making it read more as metal, if it is supposed to be alive, consider making it have an irridescent sheen like the back of a beetle?
I still urge you not to continue on this ship until you figure out what you're really trying to do here.
You've got a great start on a scene that will turn oujt very cool, I'd hate to see it weakend by a ship that nobody can tell what it really is supposed to be.
Zac, the six legs is a great idea, will definitely sell this thing as insectiod and give me a way of dynamically positioning the ship in the scene
Adam, I see where you're coming from and to be honest i haven't really thought of the materials or backstory of the ship other than it houses organic killing machines. I kinda lazily just created some forms that looked cool to me and that was that. I liked the WTF factor of it being totally alien and wierd, but that wont fly. These things, even alien, need to be identifiable. It's so easy to forget about simple design desicions when you get caught up in your work when you're still kinda new to this stuff.
Sorry for all the rapid posts but i think i'm finally in a good position. Going to slow things down, do some high quality concept pieces and take things from there. I've been working at a pace like this was due in 2 months when i've got almost a year to finish this thing.
Next update probably wont be for a week or two, thanks again guys
Good call. The environment is really coming along nicely - most def. a good idea to slow down and really think about the ship. It's really going to be the coolest part of the scene, and it's the one object that you will have ZERO real life reference for.
Anxious to see the designs after you re-think it. Show us thumbnails!
feel free to PM me on any of im instant messengers or steam and stuff, or emails etc. Really want to see you succeed with this project.