I've been reworking this generic stone block today and while it's still far from being finished, I would like to know if I am moving in the right direction. I don't want to waste my time detailing something that might end up getting scrapped again.
I truly hope I am moving in the right direction; I believe I finally pin-pointed my main problem. While making all my previous models, I have been instantly jumping to the highest sub-division level and working on minor details using small, soft brushes. This time I have done the opposite - I focused on the major forms first and kept playing with the lower sub-division levels until I was satisfied with it. I also used big brushes with relatively high intensity. I much more satisfied with it and ironically, it took me less time than before.
Please ignore some random crap going on the mesh - I will deal with that later.
Give me your worst Polycount.
I believe that harsh criticism and nut kicking works better for me than gentle patting on the back.
Either that or I have a bdsm fetish.
I see a quality raise with the last one, nice defined shapes not so muddy as the first ones. Natural yet crispy corners that are pleasing to read for the eyes - thats why mechanical modeling is so trendy lately because its kind of pleasing for the eye reading as edges give a shape directions to identify.
Thanks render and razorb, I'm really glad to hear that.
For some reason I was really afraid that making crisp edges would make it look unnatural. I've been counting too much on the surface detail instead, but that didn't look so convincing either.
Since it often took me hours to work on the details, I usually lost the definition of my models in the process. If you take a closer look at my previous model, you can notice dozens of small strokes, that don't really have much of a purpose. It's quite hilarious that it took me so long to discover it - even though I was constantly looking for a way to improve. Thanks whats_true, that "turd" you mentioned was like a touch of Buddha, or some shit and really helped me realise what I was doing wrong.
Once I finish this sculpt, I will have another go at some of my previous models and improve the ones I'm currently working on.
Hey guys.
I had some fun today with the sculpt I posted before.
I've been working on the surface, trying to stay away from the photo-sourced alphas as they are quite noisy. Instead I have decided to sculpt it and add some bw_cliffFace alphas on the top. Surprisingly, it took me less time than I expected. Contrast brush proved to be incredibly handy.
I can only hope I didn't go too far and my model is not TOO sharp this time
However, I have done all the surface work on separate layers, so it should be easy to tweak.
Comments and critique are very welcome. Even though it's a really simple prop I feel that this time I am really learning something. I would love to polish this piece as soon as possible and use this knowledge to pimp out the rest of my stuff.
edit:
looking at it now, it looks a little bit too busy in some places and underdetailed in other parts. Gonna fix that tomorrow.
Im very glad you actually accepted weaknesses in your model and went back to work on it again. So thats actually a two-sided victory as an artist. A complete win-win situation
kudos!
Well done sir!
I know everyone is telling you to add more colour variation, but I'm loving those muted tones!
Are wires and perhaps a tutorial a possibility? Those trees are damn good too, yours or Cryengine?
butt_sahib: Thanks. There's no point in avoiding people's suggestion if they are spending their time giving me feedback. These forums have been incredibly helpful to me in the past. I've been browsing them for a while until I finally decided to join the party. I feel great respect towards people posting here - they're getting me closer to getting a job after all
and harsh, straight-to-the-point critique is not something you get that often in other games development related communities
BerserK: Thanks mate I don't want to aim for photo-realism and my goal was to make something different from other Crysis mods. I am not entirely satisfied with it, since it still has that Cryengine-look to it. I've been considering using UDK for a while, since it's well documented and its shader editor appears like a tool that would allow me to come up with a more creative art direction.
Do you mean the wires of my models featured in my in-game shots, or the ones made with Zbrush/Mudbox? I do not mind making some tutorials on CE2 - I've been using it for a while now and I would love to share my knowledge. I've seen plenty of people here becoming more and more interested in CryEngine.
If you meant my sculpts, I think it might be too early for that. I haven't done any low-poly work on them yet and my sculpting skills are far from perfect.
However, once I do improve I wouldn't mind doing some tutorials - one thing that let me down when I first picked up Zbrush was the amount of envo tutorials for Zbrush/Mudbox. There are plenty of character/anatomy tutorials, but environmental artists don't get much love.
Hey guys, I have made some progress a little bit today. I made the crack thinner and slightly more shallow. Worked a little bit on the details - removed some of them and added more to the parts that were not detailed enough. I have also toned down the opacity of my surface layer - it shouldn't be as sharp as before.
I have also started working on a modular set of walls - whole workflow was shamelessly stolen from Peris and Kevin.
I didn't go too much into details - mainly for performance reasons, though instancing works surprisingly well. I will probably add more surface details by overlaying a normal map made in CrazyBump.
All pieces are tillable and can be snapped to the grid - here's a shot from Max which shows how they can be used. I still have to make right-left variations of these broken piece, though
Once I finish these pieces I will try to turn them into lowpoly. I would like to go through the whole process and see how it turns out.
Cant wait until you post how you did your low polies im currently attempting to do the same thing although with problems it will be interesting to see how you go about it.
I'm still thinking about the most effiecient way to do it.
I could use brute force and just model the lowpoly from the scratch, but I am pretty sure there has to be a better way.
So far I've been thinking about decimating the highpoly mesh and importing it into 3dsmax. Then, I would attach all the bricks, select the faces between the bricks and weld/bridge the edges. Not the fastest way, but I'm sure it would be less time consuming than modelling the lowpoly from scratch.
Now if there was a way to weld two faces together and remove them, then it would be quite fast.
I'm still thinking about the most effiecient way to do it.
I could use brute force and just model the lowpoly from the scratch, but I am pretty sure there has to be a better way.
So far I've been thinking about decimating the highpoly mesh and importing it into 3dsmax. Then, I would attach all the bricks, select the faces between the bricks and weld/bridge the edges. Not the fastest way, but I'm sure it would be less time consuming than modelling the lowpoly from scratch.
Now if there was a way to weld two faces together and remove them, then it would be quite fast.
I will try this out once I get some time.
Something I've been meaning to try....how about making a unified skin from your highpoly wall in Zbrush and then reducing that in Max?
Ark: Thanks, glad to hear you like it I have always had an impression that bridge faces didn't work that way. Silly me - this will certainly be useful in the future. Thanks
CheeseOnToast: You sir are a genius! That worked perfectly. Here's a quick bake done in xnormal. Don't mind some ugly errors - I will make a proper later.
The only problem I have encountered so far was that the size of my unified mesh was completely screwed up and I had to resize it to match my highpoly. But this might be because I have scaled my model in Zbrush to fit the canvas. I will do more testing later. Other than that - it's a perfect solution.
Bugo: I'm still thinking about that, but since they are highly modular I will have plenty of freedom once I put them into an editor.
I've been playing around with Mudbox painting features and decided to texture that stone block I posted before. Here's the in-game shot of my progress so far.
Any suggestions? I'm pretty sure that moss has to go - I doesn't look great at the moment and I want to make some fairly simple textures, since the objects will be reused a lot and I don't want any distinctive patterns. I will add decals to achieve less uniform look.
Apart from that, I have been doing some hard-surface, stuff.
I will be adding a Mudbox pass as soon as I figure out how to join all my floaters together, as that would make sculpting and creating a lowpoly mesh much easier. I have been trying to use Unified Skin and then using Project All to bring back my details, but I couldn't achieve satisfying results so far.
Here are some critiques from my wife, that I simply had to share with you:
From the "When it was brown" stage:
"That looks like poo." *scrolls up* "It didn't look so much like poo up there, but then it got colored brown and now it looks a lot like poo."
After its most recent texture:
"Now it doesn't look like poo. Unless it's petrified poo and like has stuff growing on it."
Which essentially, translates into "Haha, poo. But then it got textured, and now it looks great! Much more like its intended idea, and you should be happy with how it turned out. The moss doesn't look bad as it is, but there could be either a little bit more - or none at all. Great job as a whole!"
Just because Tea happens to be an extremely good modeler, doesn't mean we deserve criticism for thinking it looks so much like realistic poo. Oh c'mon, that entire page is full of it!
...haha...
Seriously though, these models are turning out really nice. And the texture really does sell that poo rock. Which I suppose now, must simply be dubbed "rock".
I have been trying to use Unified Skin and then using Project All to bring back my details, but I couldn't achieve satisfying results so far.
I've been doing a fair bit of this myself recently. Firstly make sure you've set the subdivision of the unified skin to a high enough level to hold the detail. Also, on creation of the skin switch smoothing to 1 so it conforms to the highpoly more closely. After that, a combo of project all followed by smoothing out any errors and spiky bits, then another pass with the zproject brush usually does the trick. I've been reprojecting details like chainmail with pretty good success using the above.
Don't worry about the tri-count I will be adjusting the low-poly of that brick wall later. This was merely a test and I still have to go through my highpoly once again as I spotted some mistakes that have to be corrected before I do my bakes.
Two listen: I really lol'ed at that "petrified poo" comment. I will try to avoid using brown materials with anything that resembles poo Thanks
ZacD: Thanks. I will work on the moss - it looks like splotches of green paint at the moment.
Spitfire: Thanks I'm sure I will have another go at these environments however, I can't wait to bring more assets in game as I see plenty of stuff I would like to improve.
CheeseOnToast: Thanks. You save my butt again I will try to go through your process tomorrow and I will post the results as soon as possible.
I'm still trying to project my details correctly, but I keep running into strange errors. Whenever I import my highpoly mesh it is not in exactly the same position as my unified skin-one. It always gets imported a few pixels to the right and for that reason only one side of my unified skin receives the details. I tried moving it manually (nearly impossible, wish Zbrush had more precise moving features), resetting Xfrom in max, resetting pivots to the centre, etc. etc. However, when I was making a unified skin of the model shown below, I noticed that radial symmetry was set to on, which resulted in similar results. I will check my pillar once again; hopefully turning it off during the creation of unified skin will solve the problems.
I've did manage however to project the details of my other model that I've been working on; a tileable floor piece. Stone model was done in Mudbox, then brought to Max and instanced, unified and detailed in Zbrush.
those really broken pieces in the center might give you some very obvious repetition and the fact that everything fits nicely into a square might show some as well.
the small sharp scratches look like they occured quite a while after the stones were cut by the stonemasons so it would be okay for some of them to pass over onto other stones, but thats really minor.
but other than that it looks pretty neat. looking forward to more updates
Don't worry too much about the repetition; I will be creating one or two more variations, along with debris models. I will be also using decals and vegetation; hopefully that should take care of it.
Good point about the scratches, I will pimp them out a little bit
Floor looks great. I am workin on a very similar workflow right now. One question what was your technique for getting that angular rock texture on the faces of each stone? Assuming you did that detail in Z.
I sculpted it with long brush strokes using Clay Brush with no alpha. It was done on a separate layer, which intensity was then adjusted to something along 0.45. Then I went through the same process again on a new layer and I set its intensity to 0.25.
Feel free to play around with different alphas, intensity and brush settings. As long as you keep your details on different layers you can tweak your surface later in a non-destructive way. Don't rely on photo-sourced alphas though; they can be very noisy.
If you use Mudbox, then Contrast brush is godsend
Hope any of these tips helps - there aren't many environmental tutorials when it comes to Zbrush/Mudbox/3dcoat, so I guess you will have to figure out a lot of stuff in the hard way.
When you import your obj, do you have the polymesh 3d shape selected in the tool palette rather than the default simple brush? Some people say that it helps to preserve the size/position of your imported object.
I've pretty much stopped using unified skin now anyway. The new release of Zbrush (3.5r3) has the funky remeshing tools which seem to be a bit more reliable than the skin, although they work in a similar way. Nice floor by the way
Good work!
I had a lot of problems, too, with Zbrush rocks. Well, I HAVE actually , but it's better... Or less worse, as you prefer...
To have hard surface, with a natural erosion effect, not too hard, not too soft, or just not like a big poo... argh.
But there's a lot of great stuff here, keep going...
I've had polymesh 3d selected at all times. I'm going to try the remeshing tools, as they seem to be more accurate from what I've read. If that doesn't work, I will just do my basemesh manually, turn it into quads subdivide and use Project All. That should work, I guess.
It's really strange to be honest - this is the only model that gives me any trouble. The floor and a few test sculpts I made worked flawlessly.
Boyo: Cheers boyo I love the stuff you made and can't wait to see the finished scene.
I know what you mean about the rocks. It's surprisingly hard to make a well defined rock. It's so easy to turn it into muddy clay-like sculpt. Like everything; it just needs loads of practice I guess. I'm still not perfectly happy with my stuff, but I think I'm slowly getting there.
3dLee: Thanks Lee Glad to hear you liked this sculpt.
Replies
Gonna work on the overall shape tomorrow and I will possibly add more detail to the surface.
Thanks
I've been reworking this generic stone block today and while it's still far from being finished, I would like to know if I am moving in the right direction. I don't want to waste my time detailing something that might end up getting scrapped again.
I truly hope I am moving in the right direction; I believe I finally pin-pointed my main problem. While making all my previous models, I have been instantly jumping to the highest sub-division level and working on minor details using small, soft brushes. This time I have done the opposite - I focused on the major forms first and kept playing with the lower sub-division levels until I was satisfied with it. I also used big brushes with relatively high intensity. I much more satisfied with it and ironically, it took me less time than before.
Please ignore some random crap going on the mesh - I will deal with that later.
Give me your worst Polycount.
I believe that harsh criticism and nut kicking works better for me than gentle patting on the back.
Either that or I have a bdsm fetish.
For some reason I was really afraid that making crisp edges would make it look unnatural. I've been counting too much on the surface detail instead, but that didn't look so convincing either.
Since it often took me hours to work on the details, I usually lost the definition of my models in the process. If you take a closer look at my previous model, you can notice dozens of small strokes, that don't really have much of a purpose. It's quite hilarious that it took me so long to discover it - even though I was constantly looking for a way to improve. Thanks whats_true, that "turd" you mentioned was like a touch of Buddha, or some shit and really helped me realise what I was doing wrong.
Once I finish this sculpt, I will have another go at some of my previous models and improve the ones I'm currently working on.
I had some fun today with the sculpt I posted before.
I've been working on the surface, trying to stay away from the photo-sourced alphas as they are quite noisy. Instead I have decided to sculpt it and add some bw_cliffFace alphas on the top. Surprisingly, it took me less time than I expected. Contrast brush proved to be incredibly handy.
I can only hope I didn't go too far and my model is not TOO sharp this time
However, I have done all the surface work on separate layers, so it should be easy to tweak.
Comments and critique are very welcome. Even though it's a really simple prop I feel that this time I am really learning something. I would love to polish this piece as soon as possible and use this knowledge to pimp out the rest of my stuff.
edit:
looking at it now, it looks a little bit too busy in some places and underdetailed in other parts. Gonna fix that tomorrow.
Although as you said in your update, some areas are too noisy and some too "clean".
One thing I would change, is the crack on the back of the rock in the bottom part, it looks a bit too dramatic for my taste.
Keep up the good work, you're making some nice progress!
I will take a look at the crack tomorrow. I don't really want to remove it, so I will try to make it thinner, but I will see what works
kudos!
I know everyone is telling you to add more colour variation, but I'm loving those muted tones!
Are wires and perhaps a tutorial a possibility? Those trees are damn good too, yours or Cryengine?
butt_sahib: Thanks. There's no point in avoiding people's suggestion if they are spending their time giving me feedback. These forums have been incredibly helpful to me in the past. I've been browsing them for a while until I finally decided to join the party. I feel great respect towards people posting here - they're getting me closer to getting a job after all
and harsh, straight-to-the-point critique is not something you get that often in other games development related communities
BerserK: Thanks mate
Do you mean the wires of my models featured in my in-game shots, or the ones made with Zbrush/Mudbox? I do not mind making some tutorials on CE2 - I've been using it for a while now and I would love to share my knowledge. I've seen plenty of people here becoming more and more interested in CryEngine.
If you meant my sculpts, I think it might be too early for that. I haven't done any low-poly work on them yet and my sculpting skills are far from perfect.
However, once I do improve I wouldn't mind doing some tutorials - one thing that let me down when I first picked up Zbrush was the amount of envo tutorials for Zbrush/Mudbox. There are plenty of character/anatomy tutorials, but environmental artists don't get much love.
I have also started working on a modular set of walls - whole workflow was shamelessly stolen from Peris and Kevin.
I didn't go too much into details - mainly for performance reasons, though instancing works surprisingly well. I will probably add more surface details by overlaying a normal map made in CrazyBump.
All pieces are tillable and can be snapped to the grid - here's a shot from Max which shows how they can be used. I still have to make right-left variations of these broken piece, though
Once I finish these pieces I will try to turn them into lowpoly. I would like to go through the whole process and see how it turns out.
Looking forward to your comments and critique
I could use brute force and just model the lowpoly from the scratch, but I am pretty sure there has to be a better way.
So far I've been thinking about decimating the highpoly mesh and importing it into 3dsmax. Then, I would attach all the bricks, select the faces between the bricks and weld/bridge the edges. Not the fastest way, but I'm sure it would be less time consuming than modelling the lowpoly from scratch.
Now if there was a way to weld two faces together and remove them, then it would be quite fast.
I will try this out once I get some time.
Bridge tool will weld two faces together and remove the inner faces, so long as they share the same number of edges.
Something I've been meaning to try....how about making a unified skin from your highpoly wall in Zbrush and then reducing that in Max?
CheeseOnToast: You sir are a genius! That worked perfectly. Here's a quick bake done in xnormal. Don't mind some ugly errors - I will make a proper later.
The only problem I have encountered so far was that the size of my unified mesh was completely screwed up and I had to resize it to match my highpoly. But this might be because I have scaled my model in Zbrush to fit the canvas. I will do more testing later. Other than that - it's a perfect solution.
Bugo: I'm still thinking about that, but since they are highly modular I will have plenty of freedom once I put them into an editor.
I've been playing around with Mudbox painting features and decided to texture that stone block I posted before. Here's the in-game shot of my progress so far.
Any suggestions? I'm pretty sure that moss has to go - I doesn't look great at the moment and I want to make some fairly simple textures, since the objects will be reused a lot and I don't want any distinctive patterns. I will add decals to achieve less uniform look.
Apart from that, I have been doing some hard-surface, stuff.
I will be adding a Mudbox pass as soon as I figure out how to join all my floaters together, as that would make sculpting and creating a lowpoly mesh much easier. I have been trying to use Unified Skin and then using Project All to bring back my details, but I couldn't achieve satisfying results so far.
I'm looking forward to your crits guys
Nice thread with lots of inspiration.
The brick wall tri count seems fairly high at first glance, but that may be the price you pay for its silhouette.
From the "When it was brown" stage:
"That looks like poo." *scrolls up* "It didn't look so much like poo up there, but then it got colored brown and now it looks a lot like poo."
After its most recent texture:
"Now it doesn't look like poo. Unless it's petrified poo and like has stuff growing on it."
Which essentially, translates into "Haha, poo. But then it got textured, and now it looks great! Much more like its intended idea, and you should be happy with how it turned out. The moss doesn't look bad as it is, but there could be either a little bit more - or none at all. Great job as a whole!"
Just because Tea happens to be an extremely good modeler, doesn't mean we deserve criticism for thinking it looks so much like realistic poo. Oh c'mon, that entire page is full of it!
...haha...
Seriously though, these models are turning out really nice. And the texture really does sell that poo rock. Which I suppose now, must simply be dubbed "rock".
I think that name is taken...
http://i46.tinypic.com/20kdc3d.jpg
EDIT: I went too off topic
The modular brick wall turned out great, I think the moss on the rock should be smaller.
Those environments look insane, not only the modeling but the lighting and feeling of the composition.
I've been doing a fair bit of this myself recently. Firstly make sure you've set the subdivision of the unified skin to a high enough level to hold the detail. Also, on creation of the skin switch smoothing to 1 so it conforms to the highpoly more closely. After that, a combo of project all followed by smoothing out any errors and spiky bits, then another pass with the zproject brush usually does the trick. I've been reprojecting details like chainmail with pretty good success using the above.
Don't worry about the tri-count
Two listen: I really lol'ed at that "petrified poo" comment. I will try to avoid using brown materials with anything that resembles poo
ZacD: Thanks. I will work on the moss - it looks like splotches of green paint at the moment.
Spitfire: Thanks
CheeseOnToast: Thanks. You save my butt again
I'm still trying to project my details correctly, but I keep running into strange errors. Whenever I import my highpoly mesh it is not in exactly the same position as my unified skin-one. It always gets imported a few pixels to the right and for that reason only one side of my unified skin receives the details. I tried moving it manually (nearly impossible, wish Zbrush had more precise moving features), resetting Xfrom in max, resetting pivots to the centre, etc. etc. However, when I was making a unified skin of the model shown below, I noticed that radial symmetry was set to on, which resulted in similar results. I will check my pillar once again; hopefully turning it off during the creation of unified skin will solve the problems.
I've did manage however to project the details of my other model that I've been working on; a tileable floor piece. Stone model was done in Mudbox, then brought to Max and instanced, unified and detailed in Zbrush.
Any crits are welcome
the small sharp scratches look like they occured quite a while after the stones were cut by the stonemasons so it would be okay for some of them to pass over onto other stones, but thats really minor.
but other than that it looks pretty neat. looking forward to more updates
Don't worry too much about the repetition; I will be creating one or two more variations, along with debris models. I will be also using decals and vegetation; hopefully that should take care of it.
Good point about the scratches, I will pimp them out a little bit
Feel free to play around with different alphas, intensity and brush settings. As long as you keep your details on different layers you can tweak your surface later in a non-destructive way. Don't rely on photo-sourced alphas though; they can be very noisy.
If you use Mudbox, then Contrast brush is godsend
Hope any of these tips helps
I've pretty much stopped using unified skin now anyway. The new release of Zbrush (3.5r3) has the funky remeshing tools which seem to be a bit more reliable than the skin, although they work in a similar way. Nice floor by the way
I had a lot of problems, too, with Zbrush rocks. Well, I HAVE actually
To have hard surface, with a natural erosion effect, not too hard, not too soft, or just not like a big poo... argh.
But there's a lot of great stuff here, keep going...
And, can I ask you a quick tut for your pillar?
I've had polymesh 3d selected at all times. I'm going to try the remeshing tools, as they seem to be more accurate from what I've read. If that doesn't work, I will just do my basemesh manually, turn it into quads subdivide and use Project All. That should work, I guess.
It's really strange to be honest - this is the only model that gives me any trouble. The floor and a few test sculpts I made worked flawlessly.
Boyo: Cheers boyo
I know what you mean about the rocks. It's surprisingly hard to make a well defined rock. It's so easy to turn it into muddy clay-like sculpt. Like everything; it just needs loads of practice I guess. I'm still not perfectly happy with my stuff, but I think I'm slowly getting there.
3dLee: Thanks Lee