i would say dont care too much about that :P
Just could be "on eye".
i will have approximate tri count as well, just will see how much i have in max, then figure out how it is in Unreal.
Plus-minus a couple of thousands in not big deal if u have between 100 an 200 K
I really really like the broken silhouette of the overpass. Some more cracks with some tiny light holes would look great. Bullet tracers rock as well!
@Adam - are you sure primitive stats / instances triangles isnt adding in the terrain / grass? Try deleting and see if the number changes?
As for the grass, Adam, I'm doing non-directional + translucent and tiny bit of emissive back light so they don't get dark. Shadow casting turned off for them as well. Tried to use some transmission mask magic but it does not seem to function w/ translucent mats.
OMG that update is awesome man! i really wanna see what's taking this ships out of commission.... but i think that is kind of the point you guys are going for here... it would still be cool to see a few massive ships looming in the background or something... like the bay area scene from R2. looks so great with everything all coming together so nicely... i'm stoked for this one!
Have you considered having that bridge / highway in the background tearing apart as a ship is just crashing through it? Some motion-blurred rubble flying from the underneath towards the ground as the pod penetrates through the concrete, backed up with some awesome particle effects, and I think it could look pretty awesome. It could help add some more motion to the image aswell.
Not sure about that bluish lamp on the left. As to me it breaks the color composition and it lits empty spot, therefore it kinda does not serve any purpose for now.
So is there any magic solution to getting foliage to light properly? I have a peach coloured directional in my scene, which is lighting most things up nice, but as you can see in my image the grass is basically untouched.
If I have to, I'll bake those colours in to the diffuse of the grass and call it a day, but thats such a shit way of doing it I can't think its the only way.
So is there any magic solution to getting foliage to light properly? I have a peach coloured directional in my scene, which is lighting most things up nice, but as you can see in my image the grass is basically untouched.
If I have to, I'll bake those colours in to the diffuse of the grass and call it a day, but thats such a shit way of doing it I can't think its the only way.
Have you messed around with setting up a light channel yet?
"The rest of the lighting channels are unused by default and are available to use for multiple lighting setups. For instance, one trick that we use sometimes is to put all foliage in one of the unnamed channels, and then add a directional light to the level which is only in that unnamed lighting channel and is set to not cast shadows. This directional light can then be used to modify the color of the foliage in the level." http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightingReference.html#LightingChannels
maybe try to add a normal map to the folliage with a curved surface overlayed ? i would play with normal effects that can help getting some nice lightning gradients in the grass looking cool this last update and concept man !
It's really hard to get good lighting on the foliage, especially if it's translucent. I'm having the same issues with my vegetation. My only thought would be to look into unreal's custom lighting within a material, or doing the bake technique that you mentioned.
What if... and I really just mean *what if* you multiply the camera vector by the light vector, transform that into a tangent, multiply that (or maybe not) by your normal map and plug that into the normal slot...
Could that just work with the light setup you have (direct light facing the cam)? or could it be I am just mildly retarded? (for the record, though, I'd never do such a thing anyways).
2 images for this update. One is the scene as it is, the other is an idea we're shooting around for our second shot, something which you'll see is very different from what most people will do with their second shot.
Lookin' really good man, everything just fits so well in that still.
Just gonna make one suggestion, I think you could put a little hot pink sheen coming off the upper left of the craft, just to draw your eye to it a bit and bring the lighting together a little more.
The scene really just drips polish at this point, this is gonna be hot sh*t!
The scene is looking great guys! My only beef at the moment is with those smoke trails. It looks like you're using some kind of particle system to make them? The scene is static - I'd suggest just painting a plane or something. Right now it looks really really tiled. Still nifty though!
Instead of reading the story or anything, I'm just going to look at the latest images and ask: what do the little pods do? It looks like the one in the foreground just crashed and made a little hole in the dirt; otherwise, things are relatively unperturbed. I'm sure it'll look more epic with effects and such, but maybe that pod could be "doing" something - opening up, expanding in some way... otherwise, it doesn't feel like there's much of a threat other than giant metal pods falling from the sky and breaking stuff.
edit: What I mean is, they seem inert. The glowing "eye" light in the concept solves that. Totally up to you though, the composition of this entry is amazing, even though I can't imagine what exactly I'd be doing if it were a level in a game (trying not to get hit? trying to shoot them down so they don't hit populated areas? who knows).
Digging how this is coming together. My initial concerns of palette not breaking "next-gen brown" are starting to dwindle. I like that second image, but I'm a sucker for spaceships and clouds.
Maybe I wish there was more steam/smoke coming off that crashed ship up front, but I don't know how long it's been there I didn't read the cliff notes.
Another frame idea for our 2nd beauty render. It's not in this image, as I literally just snapped it to see if it'd work, but I'd have a couple more pods screaming through the sky in the upper left of the shot.
EDIT, the 3 updates for today were separated by page breaks in the thread so i wanted to put all 3 on 1 post.
The 1st one looks good, but it's just more of the same, even the angle is pretty much the same. I like the pods flying through the sky - that's badass.
I am missing a lil crater here. The pod looks like it was brought there with a crane and rubbed over the ground a bit. Looks not really like the impact the other pods suggest.
Yea I love the 2nd idea myself, I am just not sure how it'd be viewed in the judges eyes to have something that doesn't show much of the environment.
I agree. It's a cool shot (and very different), just not sure what they'll think.
Bits of feedback, as this thing is really gaining steam:
- background city scape looks a bit too detailed for distance, would play w/ the fog and post a bit to smooth out the details. Also consider playing with light color and brightness to separate foreground and background from each other.
- 2nd crashed pod looks too large for the distance that its at. Artificially scaled up?
- entire foreground is covered in grass. Would like to see a bit of clearing under the overpass and even a large road debris chunk
- can barely make out the water and docks. They are currently a bit of an awkward element.
super shitty OMFG crap paintover w/ a few of those ideas in play:
I agree with gamedev here. Especially with the light color in the forground. Anything you can do to help with distinguishing some depth into your scene at this point. It's really looking great otherwise.
I'll play with the grass and foreground colour. Previous iterations had it closer to what you have there, gamedev. I doubt I'll go that cool with the colours, but I'll throw some of the blue's in there I once had.
The pod in the background, crashed, I don't think is scaled upward but there's a chance it could be so I will check it out when I get home from work.
As for the crater, I am not going to go super larger with it. A couple more pieces of debris and thats its really.
-Other beauty shot
-afterburners on the pods in the sky
---pull their smoke effects further from the pod, at the tip of the afterburner
-lighting
-address the crater size, see how it looks
-relax
EDIT: I'm away of the aliasing. That'll go away when I go in-game with this and super shot it.
the fire really added a nice punch! i say try adding in just a little more throughout those slum areas and maybe even add some lighting back there in as well to accent or hint that there is flames which would also probably add more depth to these regions. do a little bit to the back corner too... just to try it at least, but that little bit there REALLY caught my eye this time.
Can you do inverse square falloff on lights in this editor? I feel like the image is a bit flat and could really use some more contrast overall. I'll do a paintover when I get home to show what I mean.
Can you do inverse square falloff on lights in this editor? I feel like the image is a bit flat and could really use some more contrast overall. I'll do a paintover when I get home to show what I mean.
Yea I'd love to see this when you get it Ben. No idea about the inverse square fall-off, to be honest
the foreground pod looks to be about 15 feet tall, the background ones look more on the order of 50 feet tall... it's really killing the sense of scale for me... or at least its confusing my lizard brain
The added color contrast on the stuff in the foreground made all the difference in the world here. The brightness of the pillar is kind of distracting, though; I want to look at it instead of the pod because it's saturated and noticeable. If there was a way of toning the light on it down without sacrificing the light on the pod, it'd make the pod much more of a focal point.
Replies
Just could be "on eye".
i will have approximate tri count as well, just will see how much i have in max, then figure out how it is in Unreal.
Plus-minus a couple of thousands in not big deal if u have between 100 an 200 K
and a potential lighting schemes update.
@Adam - are you sure primitive stats / instances triangles isnt adding in the terrain / grass? Try deleting and see if the number changes?
As for the grass, Adam, I'm doing non-directional + translucent and tiny bit of emissive back light so they don't get dark. Shadow casting turned off for them as well. Tried to use some transmission mask magic but it does not seem to function w/ translucent mats.
-Tyler
Get it? Small update?
Have you considered having that bridge / highway in the background tearing apart as a ship is just crashing through it? Some motion-blurred rubble flying from the underneath towards the ground as the pod penetrates through the concrete, backed up with some awesome particle effects, and I think it could look pretty awesome. It could help add some more motion to the image aswell.
Unless that would break what you're going for.
Either way, keep it up!
Not sure about that bluish lamp on the left. As to me it breaks the color composition and it lits empty spot, therefore it kinda does not serve any purpose for now.
If I have to, I'll bake those colours in to the diffuse of the grass and call it a day, but thats such a shit way of doing it I can't think its the only way.
"The rest of the lighting channels are unused by default and are available to use for multiple lighting setups. For instance, one trick that we use sometimes is to put all foliage in one of the unnamed channels, and then add a directional light to the level which is only in that unnamed lighting channel and is set to not cast shadows. This directional light can then be used to modify the color of the foliage in the level."
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightingReference.html#LightingChannels
Could that just work with the light setup you have (direct light facing the cam)? or could it be I am just mildly retarded? (for the record, though, I'd never do such a thing anyways).
2 images for this update. One is the scene as it is, the other is an idea we're shooting around for our second shot, something which you'll see is very different from what most people will do with their second shot.
Just gonna make one suggestion, I think you could put a little hot pink sheen coming off the upper left of the craft, just to draw your eye to it a bit and bring the lighting together a little more.
The scene really just drips polish at this point, this is gonna be hot sh*t!
edit: What I mean is, they seem inert. The glowing "eye" light in the concept solves that. Totally up to you though, the composition of this entry is amazing, even though I can't imagine what exactly I'd be doing if it were a level in a game (trying not to get hit? trying to shoot them down so they don't hit populated areas? who knows).
Vrav - Ya we want the foreground one to be opening, will do this Wednesday i think.
imb3nt - magic. That said, I'll add in some stuff soon
Maybe I wish there was more steam/smoke coming off that crashed ship up front, but I don't know how long it's been there I didn't read the cliff notes.
EDIT, the 3 updates for today were separated by page breaks in the thread so i wanted to put all 3 on 1 post.
MAIN FRAME
FRAME 2 IDEA #1
FRAME 2 IDEA #2
Yea I love the 2nd idea myself, I am just not sure how it'd be viewed in the judges eyes to have something that doesn't show much of the environment.
Apart of this, nice work!
Bits of feedback, as this thing is really gaining steam:
- background city scape looks a bit too detailed for distance, would play w/ the fog and post a bit to smooth out the details. Also consider playing with light color and brightness to separate foreground and background from each other.
- 2nd crashed pod looks too large for the distance that its at. Artificially scaled up?
- entire foreground is covered in grass. Would like to see a bit of clearing under the overpass and even a large road debris chunk
- can barely make out the water and docks. They are currently a bit of an awkward element.
super shitty OMFG crap paintover w/ a few of those ideas in play:
Sorry to desecrate your scene!
The pod in the background, crashed, I don't think is scaled upward but there's a chance it could be so I will check it out when I get home from work.
As for the crater, I am not going to go super larger with it. A couple more pieces of debris and thats its really.
Love it.
The black smoke FX coming from under and around the pod on the ground could be done as particles though. I see the "flat" nature of that FX :P
Not a huge issue though.
Atmosphere is so cool i have to say.
-Other beauty shot
-afterburners on the pods in the sky
---pull their smoke effects further from the pod, at the tip of the afterburner
-lighting
-address the crater size, see how it looks
-relax
EDIT: I'm away of the aliasing. That'll go away when I go in-game with this and super shot it.
PS: I hope I didnt hurt your feelings:)
Yea I'd love to see this when you get it Ben. No idea about the inverse square fall-off, to be honest
More fire will come tonight/this week!
Ferg - I'll scale it some more