Mecanique (Operation: Windmill)
polycounter lvl 12
So.. I've been working on this the past couple of weeks. I graduate from the Art Institute of San Diego in a week, and have a portfolio show in two weeks! Sooo.. I got a lot of work to do, so hopefully this brand new bag of coffee will be put to damn good use.
I rendered this in Maya using Maya's Physical Sun and Sky. . Rendering has always been my Achilles' heel and is something I need to learn. I've also been setting up a scene in Unreal's Editor. . .but..it's going slow because I've been learning that as I go a long. Haha. I'll try to do both and we'll see what happens! As the week progresses I promise to post some better wireframes. . I can't for the life of me figure out how to do real renders of Wireframes in Maya. Any critiques will be very appreciated! Thank you!
I rendered this in Maya using Maya's Physical Sun and Sky. . Rendering has always been my Achilles' heel and is something I need to learn. I've also been setting up a scene in Unreal's Editor. . .but..it's going slow because I've been learning that as I go a long. Haha. I'll try to do both and we'll see what happens! As the week progresses I promise to post some better wireframes. . I can't for the life of me figure out how to do real renders of Wireframes in Maya. Any critiques will be very appreciated! Thank you!
Replies
Oh, and to get REALLY good wire frames with very little effort involved at ALL....use max lol Maya has always been tricky and icky (well, maybe different for the newer version. idk).
and ya that grass kills it >.< Try Wes' tip
Remind me of "feel good inc".
I like that style, there should be a whole game with this style.
You should also try to use larger ones, with more overlap. Right now you'd need tens of thousands of triangles to get good coverage. Scale them up, so you can have lots of overlap, and with the same amount of triangles, you can have better coverage.
Love the windmill design though, looks fresh.
great modeling and texturing otherwise..
cheers
I cant help but think that the top needs something. maybe an observation platform? large antenna? satellite array? right now there's just these boxy forms that come to an abrupt stop.
also - I second what everyone is saying about the grass and also the way the windmill blades are connected to the central rotation point.
I like how elegant it looks being thin. Maybe you could still have the thin part if you made the connection points more reinforced, then used some cables to help assist the visual attachment of the two heaver pieces (the blade, and the central pivot) with some cable work. that way its not just the thin piping doing all the heavy lifting.
I like it, but as every has said - the grass is bad.
How did you make the normals? Hard surface poly modelling or sculpting?
@Poop: Thanks so much for the ideas on how to make better grass, I will get on it asap.
@Sterman & Konstruct: You're right. I also like the elegance and simplicity but. . maybe I can add something cool to make it look sturdier. I'm gonna draw some concepts up and see if I can reinforce it some more. Also, since I am on a super strict time schedule I will get to new modeling last but you're right it needs some slight more touches! There's just so much I want to do with it. . . but so little time.
and @vcool: Mostly everything was hard surface. But my rocks were zbrushed and so was the big water tower looking thingy to get that "welded" look. And same with the bricks to get the plastering look between the bricks.
But yeah, definitely try what Poop mentioned, I'm sure you will do fine.
The grass is a minor detail imo, on what is turning into a really great scene.
The design is cool as, though! I also get that feel good inc vibe. And you have inspired me to investigate this Physical Sun and Sky thing, of which I have no knowledge- I too find rendering and lighting a PITA and, as Starship Troopers would have it, Want To Know More!
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Really cool design, i like the blend of old and new, but i'd feel bad for anyone walking out of the door at the wrong time
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link <-
Be careful not to make the physical sun and sky too obvious, get a custom skybox in there. Also, sometimes the sun and sky washes out your textures and gives overexposed lighting. If that happens you will have to gamma correct your textures, which is all kind of fun(there are actually scripts to do it fairly easily). Overall I'd advise you use it as little as possible. It's the same as one big spotlight or directional light and some blue ambiance with final gather cranked. Easy to set up yourself and with less headache. I know how the week before the portfolio show is, so maybe it's not the most ideal time to learn about lighting and rendering, but this book by Jeremy Birn is awesome for an intro to lighting.
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Which includes
-New grass and made ivy!
-Textured the giant Screw
-Textured the top water tower looking thingy
-Textured the base of the top section
-Pushed Brick Normals, added more grunge on certain textures
-Messed with Gamma in Mental Ray so it stops over blowing and Desaturating my shit.
@Frump - Thank you for those tips! They will come incredibly handy.
@Rasmus - Yea, it was a design choice to keep the base fairly bare because I am planning on letting nature overtake the bricks and after I'm done texturing what I have I'm going to make pipes weaving in and out of the bricks.
I hope my grass looks better...I would still REAAALLY like to have grass cover the entire pedestal. . but I can't find any scripts that really help to quicken the process, and placing 30k tris with of grass by hand doesn't sound terribly appealing right now.
Once again, any critiques and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
and I agree, you should try using some other form of lighting. maybe ut3? ^.^
Question, are the pipes that run from the pedestal to the tower textured?
I'd suggest just using a higher resolution texture thats more rocks/dirt, and really short, semi-sparse grass.
Something like a combination of this: http://mayang.com/textures/Plants/images/Repetitive%20Plants%20Textures/grassy_bank_7160794.JPG
and the bottom right corner of this: http://www.griquas.com/2006/21Sep/040.jpg
I'd beef up the center spindle as well as each of the arms, as they all look like they'd snap off under that much weight in a brisk wind.
and this
Something with really saturated green vegetation mixed with machines have always appealed to me. But you are 100% right. It's hard to do, and I should play to my strengths in order to make this look bangin.
I still need to add some antennas and structural support (hopefully) on the propellers, but I have about another day left to work on this so we will see how much I can churn out.
I'll post individual props out tomorrow. Hope it's coming a long.
Lastly the spec on the ivy looks off, but I'm sure you see that.
the only things that bug me atm, are the bright turquoise Ivy, and the connection between the the windmill propeller and the watertower looks very unbelievable,
I know time is a harsh mistress for you, but I imagine you could reuse some components from somewhere else on this piece and construct some sort of mechanism/antenna to the top of the tower to spice up the silouette a tad. It wouldnt even need to be anything too big, just something for the eye to roll around and marinate on for a second or 2.
lastly if time permits, youed be amazed how much a few large weed/shubs will add to the overgrown look, especially if they are kind of dead and dried out looking
I DEMAND A SHRUBRY!
Looking mighty fine though!
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So far the best render I've achieved yet! Also the angle to the original pictures was weird so it gave an illusion that the blades were too low or hit someone walking out of the door.
Regarding foliage, I may just say eff it and not do the grass and just try to get the vines rad. If I work on the base grass a bit I can get something that will look good with my beauty shot which will be something like this I think. Thanks Konstruct and Kill for your ideas, they are much appreciated but time is running short.
Also! A concept of possible propeller beefer-uppers?
And is that a shading error on my door??? Ugh..haha. I will fix that....some..how.
THANKS AGAIN! Critiques appreciated
Already graduating dude? That's sick, this will definitely be a nice portfolio piece. Let's see some texture sheets eh?
Who do you know at Cryptic? (I know there are AI people, but I honestly don't remember specifics)
Looking at the black and white version, gets me thinking that the colors are not doing this piece justice though. I mean, it looks way better in black and white, IMO.
I guess a lot of people are liking your color scheme, but to me it seems over saturated, and bright. I also think that the main bricks are a tad too clean. I think some of that directional grunge, you have going on the outside base (where you have darker areas near the top, and it fades down) would help the main brick area.
Anyways, keep up the good work!
[Edit] I do like the changes you made with the lighting, I just think you coud pay with the hue sat/ and levels some more on certain areas (grass and gold door bits in particular).
brad: Yea. I had to over compensate the saturation with the original lighting scheme, I will tone it done a little bit, or maybe mess with the gamma a little bit. And about the bricks, yea you are right. I will try to figure out something. It's a tileable texture I made so I can't really have the top part a different color compared to the rest. So I can try to make some sort of alpha grunge map. I will see how that works out. Thank you again for the words! I'll post it all tonight...cause god knows I'm not going to bed.
Brad, I think what I like so much about the color version is how happy & Myazaki it feels. The black and white one takes so much away, and just turns it into an industrial feeling scene. I like that in color it DOESN'T feel industrial, despite most of it's components being industrial.
here is what I'm presenting.
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