ARG! I know why, thanks for the post divi. It doesn't have anything to do with the normal, it's because my diffuse and spec UV's aren't yet laid out to tile... I'm a noob :P. Oh, well i can set that up as i set up the UV's for light maps.
Oh, and ZacD: Totally hear you. In fact now that you mention it the next thing i'll be doing is extending the concept to expose more canvas. As much as i'm over the 2d it needs to be done so we know where we're headed.
sneaky workflow you've got there with reusing spec and dif, but wouldn't it be "better" do have individual textures for the stuff? i mean, i'm not saying that it looks bad, quite the contrary, but since you use unique normal maps why not have dif and spec aswell, since you are allowed the same amount of texture space for each of them. but that's probably something you could always do later on if necessary.
Yea, we'll be polishing these things up as we move along, may keep base textures but at the very least we'll be creating unique grunge textures for each peice, like a bird poo texture for exampe . Right now we're In a mad dash to just get everything in so we can see where we need to push textures.
Doing lots of tweaks in UT3 as well, the material editor in that game is amazing. Couple adjustments to tiling, multiplication, etc and you can get some very different texture from the same one!
Also just want to say that i agree reusing all these textures is kinda cheap considering the intent of the challenge, a celebration of game art. Kinda kills the element of craft, so we will definitely have a few props that are 100% unique in all textures!
Update on concept, broader scope, changed the color scheme a bit to be more unique.
Hardly finished, but pushin' the composition a bit every day, just want to get into more 3d
I've had max open all day, just so burned out right now i've gotten almost nothing done, but here's a blockout with uninspired canopies. Just gotta hope i've got more art juice tommorow.
Hey, man! I feel like that the tarps seem a biiiit droopy. Maybe they could have more tension on them with some wood support instead of using the roofs to support their weight. Plus tarps should more hand from the sides of buildings instead of the roofs. And! I think we should mix it up so it's not only tarps. Like a bunch of tarps, near bottom levels with these style roofs as we go higher.
Wooo.. a little over halfway done with the hipoly of one of the Airships!
Not putting an intense amount of tiny detail.. ships will be out in the distance and I don't get a huge amount of texture space to use. Also With the exception of the roof, the ship is cut in half for duplication..so thats why it looks kinda thin!
That's a nice composition you've got going in that blockout Crazyfingers, you're right about the canopies though. Maybe you should just keep exaggerating the shapes of the canopies with the same wild abandon you have in the 2d.
Cool ship ErichWK. Good call not adding any minute details, that will give you more time to work on other stuff.
Did a first run at housing, just wanted to develope a workflow, see what problems develope, get a feel for the detail required and just practice. Not too happy with the style or execution, but that's the whole point! Just practicing and gettin' it out of the system. This is totally getting nuked and replaced with better stuff!
I'd really like to see the roofing pushed to the max. I feel like the cloth roofing could be taken to insane levels of awesomeness. You could really get some unique and interesting silhouettes going on; maybe try swinging a little towards the shanty side of things to get some truly interesting shapes? maybe add some tarps in here and there also. If you could knock up a nice neutral cloth material, then vary the colour using masks or similar technique, I'm sure you'd be on to a winner.
I hear ya BHJ, kinda felt I was starting to head in that direction with the concept, good to have a vote in that direction. Some crazy canopy work could really punch this scene up a notch.
Think i'll go ahead and do the canopy first and buildings second, should make the scene more unique.
Update, no break today! came up with this:
Canopy thus far in the UT3 engine. These would go over bridges, not act as ceiling.
Pretty much done with the hipoly. Though I did realize now I forgot to put in some sort of connector with the wings.
Still have no idea what I wanna do with the wings.. The ship looks super awkward without them, but then cloth wings wouldn't make much sense with an airship that is predominantly metal. Hmm. I don't want to use up too much texture space for such a large asset. So I have a lot of planning and concepting to do with the wings. Opinions will help. Next stop . . ugh... unwrapping. . Actually. Next stop a break with Metroid Prime 3!
if they are as far away as tehy are in the concept you won't see that theres a connection between wings and bulk missing. as a matter of fact you probably won't see most of the details you put in there. it might even look too busy from a distance. other than that it looks great maybe give the wings some supporting structures like on the wings on windmills. but not sure if it would read well from a distance. leaving them plain might help sell the forms better.
It's true we wont need so much detail on the ships for the concept divi, but we plan on having a secondary aerial shot showcasing some up close and personal ship to ship combat! While we're not obsessing over that composition but we're keeping it in mind as we work on the ships. We're trying to take lots of care with the them, get some showpieces out of this .
Also, glad to hear you guys think this might actually come together.
You guys are looking good. I like the progress you have so far. Ships are stylishly wicked.)or wickedly stylish.)
Your blockout look nice, but i think it'd be even cooler if youd play with the scale or distances of objects and make your horizon line help express the whole shots composition.
Good luck guys, I'm looking forwrad to what you've got coocking!=)))
Update!
Pushing the canopies a bit. Gotta say i'm pretty happy with this direction, the canopies will give some nice drop shadows to the scene. Not to mention we won't have to worry about architecture so much with all the real estate taken up by canopy! I can't help but envision tall standing lookout posts popping out of the canopies and rope ladders.
Ideas are still very welcome for this scene!
I see where you're coming from d1ver, the scope of the blockout seems a bit flat, with a little luck and elbow grease we'll have some cool effects going on. Cannonballs flying and crashing into the foreground with cool smoke effects from way off in the distance, some tall standing distant structures and smoke pillars. Thanks for the support!
P.S. Scene is currently sitting at 60k tris in unreal.
Hmm. Seems a bit busy! I think once you and I started blocking out the actual houses we can get a better sense of how to get the canopies and tarps to interact. I have a pretty rad idea picture in my head... I will draw up a concept and post it tonight! But I think if we do have windmills...maybe they should be way out in the distance like on the right corner! Cause that looks really rad.
Yeah, i hear you guys, canopies on top of canopies gets a little redundant. That said i think there's potential for lots of interesting vertical scale like BHJ was saying. Going to revisit that idea once we have more in place to build off of, Lots to be done above and below the canopies.
Erich, concepts for the buildings would be great, a little guidance would go a long way in regards to architecture.
I'm actually kinda gearing up to start on the road/ sidewalk area tommorow, reply with any ideas you might have or send me a message!
Yea! I think it would be smart to work on the roads and sidewalks while I finish the airship. And we should both be done at the same time to work on the architecture together.
Movin' forward pretty quickly, doing some hand painted road textures. Not exactly sure what they are maybe some kind of opal stone composite, but this is supposed to be unearthly so who cares. Concerete blocks are very much a work in progress:
Edit:
First go at a cannonballs crashing into the ground. Fairly simple smoke material put on a tube-like cylinder for the smoke effect. Pretty sure that's legal for this challenge, just using UT3 shader effects... Also cleaned up the concrete! Thinking of taking the bridges out and just making them large canopies to simply the scene and make it read easier.
Update!
Any and all crits welcome! as well as suggestions.
Edit: Updated the floor to be a bit more "real worldy" per oober's suggestion, going for a dried sand look. Will probably use masks to make the sand less cracked where cannonballs haven't hit nearby. and away from sidewalks.
going pretty fast. I've barely got my blockout started.
So my biggest crit is your floor right now. it doesn't really read as anything except randoms shapes. it really looks more like a blockout material than a polish. maybe photoref some marble or granite to mix with it? even look at brick/stone layout of roads too. The way the stone is placed it looks sorta sloppy.
the cannonballs are sweet. don't read as glowing hot metal though, more along the lines of lava-orbs. but maybe that's what you guys are going for. digging it nontheless
Haha, BlvdNights, you're right, our composition has a LOOooooong way to go.
Thanks for the feedback guys, I was using too many random textures and thinking mostly about colors and tones, sooner we focus on believability the better.
I've also been spending way too much time jazzing up unfinished textures, normals and specs and all that. Gotta focus on the diffuses for now, get feedback and revamp the textures as we move forward. Killer specs and normals we can deal with in the future.
Still a ton to think about with canopies and architecture. It's also been brought to my attention that our scene is a little too flat and could use a lot more vertical scale in the landscape and buildings. Was going to rely on airships for vertical scale but a more interseting town can't hurt.
The city also lacks purpose, just lots of random buildings at the moment, going to have to think of what part of town this is going on in, probably a market, but we need to exemplify that. We can add things like clocktowers, small park areas, etc.
So yeah, this game art stuff ain't easy, lots of things to take into consideration. Whew, still a long way to go!
Rope a dope:
Made some ropes. Got a helix going with some alphas to give it a frilly feel, thought that was kinda clever. Yes this update sucks. On the plus side erich's about to drop a kick ass fully textured airship sometime in the near future!
Finally got enough time to finish this damn thing! It sits at 9591 tris and the main ship is a 1024 map with the wings at 512. I dunno how I feel about the wings.. a part of me likes the animal-istic and savageness of the ship to strike fear into it's enemies..but another part makes me think it's a dragonfly. Anyways. I will make LOD versions in the next upcoming weeks. Right now Jeff and I want to get work on the buildings so we can start really working on our composition and what not. Critiques welcome!
I hear you teriyaki style, we have a long way to go in developing a tarp that really works. Probably going to try to take the detail out of the spec and diffuse like you suggested and try to get more out of the normals. This way we can use more tarps and change the hue, opacity, and tone around without it looking too repetitive. Not to mention we just plain need more cool tarp shapes. Can't be lazy and expect to just throw one generic looking one everywhere.
I'm going to try my best to slow down the posts into this thread (as much as i'm addicted to this site). We're definitely in "sandbox" mode for a lot of our assets right now and showing 'em off isn't doing any good considering how obvious some of the flaws are. But a lot of this early feedback has been greatly helpful in how we will approach our future assets! Again thanks all for the feedback
Edit: Wow, looks great Erich! Only suggestion i have would be to add a little something where the wing connects to the ship, maybe copy one of the cylindrical shapes from the bottem/rear of the ship to the side where it connects? Oh and slap my ropes on that thing! haha, jk.
The ship looks cool, but where does it shoot the canon balls from? I think it needs some windows and some gun ports. The Texture work looks nice though
I actually wondered the same thing till we had erich's stuff in unreal and i noticed the things on the side were turrets. I think it's safe to say we may beef up the size of these guns to make it more obvious and point them away from the main body of the ship to give it a more threatening silhouette too. We'll probably have some flack effects going on also. Here's a shot of it in UT3 that might help clear it up:
I'd throw 'em up for ya if they were mine, but this is erich's work , i think he maybe be out for a couple days though. I'll see if he's cool with posting the textures for you guys when I next hear from him.
Hey guys~ First off I really like the entry. Been following it.
I agree with TeriyakiStyle about the tarps / tent tops. Also, I really agree with what you wrote about varrying up the hue and value on the tent tops. I think it'll tone it down a bit but still make it a strong part of the scene.
Secondly, I really like the ship design and in the first render (before unreal) I liked the blues that are introduced into the render. Not sure if its lighting or just the background playing with my eyeballs. But, seeing a bit more blue (not much) into that gray metal texture would be pretty rad I'd think.
Replies
Oh, and ZacD: Totally hear you. In fact now that you mention it the next thing i'll be doing is extending the concept to expose more canvas. As much as i'm over the 2d it needs to be done so we know where we're headed.
that's what i was referring to.
sneaky workflow you've got there with reusing spec and dif, but wouldn't it be "better" do have individual textures for the stuff? i mean, i'm not saying that it looks bad, quite the contrary, but since you use unique normal maps why not have dif and spec aswell, since you are allowed the same amount of texture space for each of them. but that's probably something you could always do later on if necessary.
keep it up
Doing lots of tweaks in UT3 as well, the material editor in that game is amazing. Couple adjustments to tiling, multiplication, etc and you can get some very different texture from the same one!
Also just want to say that i agree reusing all these textures is kinda cheap considering the intent of the challenge, a celebration of game art. Kinda kills the element of craft, so we will definitely have a few props that are 100% unique in all textures!
Update on concept, broader scope, changed the color scheme a bit to be more unique.
Hardly finished, but pushin' the composition a bit every day, just want to get into more 3d
I've had max open all day, just so burned out right now i've gotten almost nothing done, but here's a blockout with uninspired canopies. Just gotta hope i've got more art juice tommorow.
Not putting an intense amount of tiny detail.. ships will be out in the distance and I don't get a huge amount of texture space to use. Also With the exception of the roof, the ship is cut in half for duplication..so thats why it looks kinda thin!
Cool ship ErichWK. Good call not adding any minute details, that will give you more time to work on other stuff.
Keep it up, you guys are rocking.
I'd really like to see the roofing pushed to the max. I feel like the cloth roofing could be taken to insane levels of awesomeness. You could really get some unique and interesting silhouettes going on; maybe try swinging a little towards the shanty side of things to get some truly interesting shapes? maybe add some tarps in here and there also. If you could knock up a nice neutral cloth material, then vary the colour using masks or similar technique, I'm sure you'd be on to a winner.
Think i'll go ahead and do the canopy first and buildings second, should make the scene more unique.
Update, no break today! came up with this:
Canopy thus far in the UT3 engine. These would go over bridges, not act as ceiling.
Good to have reference for how these canopies are actually going to look. Right now, like crap
Ill be watching this thread.
Still have no idea what I wanna do with the wings.. The ship looks super awkward without them, but then cloth wings wouldn't make much sense with an airship that is predominantly metal. Hmm. I don't want to use up too much texture space for such a large asset. So I have a lot of planning and concepting to do with the wings. Opinions will help. Next stop . . ugh... unwrapping. . Actually. Next stop a break with Metroid Prime 3!
Also, glad to hear you guys think this might actually come together.
Your blockout look nice, but i think it'd be even cooler if youd play with the scale or distances of objects and make your horizon line help express the whole shots composition.
Good luck guys, I'm looking forwrad to what you've got coocking!=)))
Pushing the canopies a bit. Gotta say i'm pretty happy with this direction, the canopies will give some nice drop shadows to the scene. Not to mention we won't have to worry about architecture so much with all the real estate taken up by canopy! I can't help but envision tall standing lookout posts popping out of the canopies and rope ladders.
Ideas are still very welcome for this scene!
I see where you're coming from d1ver, the scope of the blockout seems a bit flat, with a little luck and elbow grease we'll have some cool effects going on. Cannonballs flying and crashing into the foreground with cool smoke effects from way off in the distance, some tall standing distant structures and smoke pillars. Thanks for the support!
P.S. Scene is currently sitting at 60k tris in unreal.
I'm enjoying tracking this; don't make it suck now! :poly124:
Tried to go a little crazy, tell me whatcha think
Keep in mind ropes and support beams can be added later.
I can't get a good sense of the form/function of any of the houses.
It's only going to become more noisy once you get the destruction going.
Some things to think about, maybe. Hope it's helpful.
Erich, concepts for the buildings would be great, a little guidance would go a long way in regards to architecture.
I'm actually kinda gearing up to start on the road/ sidewalk area tommorow, reply with any ideas you might have or send me a message!
Edit:
First go at a cannonballs crashing into the ground. Fairly simple smoke material put on a tube-like cylinder for the smoke effect. Pretty sure that's legal for this challenge, just using UT3 shader effects... Also cleaned up the concrete! Thinking of taking the bridges out and just making them large canopies to simply the scene and make it read easier.
Any and all crits welcome! as well as suggestions.
Edit: Updated the floor to be a bit more "real worldy" per oober's suggestion, going for a dried sand look. Will probably use masks to make the sand less cracked where cannonballs haven't hit nearby. and away from sidewalks.
So my biggest crit is your floor right now. it doesn't really read as anything except randoms shapes. it really looks more like a blockout material than a polish. maybe photoref some marble or granite to mix with it? even look at brick/stone layout of roads too. The way the stone is placed it looks sorta sloppy.
Good looking assets though
Thanks for the feedback guys, I was using too many random textures and thinking mostly about colors and tones, sooner we focus on believability the better.
I've also been spending way too much time jazzing up unfinished textures, normals and specs and all that. Gotta focus on the diffuses for now, get feedback and revamp the textures as we move forward. Killer specs and normals we can deal with in the future.
Still a ton to think about with canopies and architecture. It's also been brought to my attention that our scene is a little too flat and could use a lot more vertical scale in the landscape and buildings. Was going to rely on airships for vertical scale but a more interseting town can't hurt.
The city also lacks purpose, just lots of random buildings at the moment, going to have to think of what part of town this is going on in, probably a market, but we need to exemplify that. We can add things like clocktowers, small park areas, etc.
So yeah, this game art stuff ain't easy, lots of things to take into consideration. Whew, still a long way to go!
Made some ropes. Got a helix going with some alphas to give it a frilly feel, thought that was kinda clever. Yes this update sucks. On the plus side erich's about to drop a kick ass fully textured airship sometime in the near future!
Very good though!
I'm going to try my best to slow down the posts into this thread (as much as i'm addicted to this site). We're definitely in "sandbox" mode for a lot of our assets right now and showing 'em off isn't doing any good considering how obvious some of the flaws are. But a lot of this early feedback has been greatly helpful in how we will approach our future assets! Again thanks all for the feedback
Edit: Wow, looks great Erich! Only suggestion i have would be to add a little something where the wing connects to the ship, maybe copy one of the cylindrical shapes from the bottem/rear of the ship to the side where it connects? Oh and slap my ropes on that thing! haha, jk.
Great work so far!
I agree with TeriyakiStyle about the tarps / tent tops. Also, I really agree with what you wrote about varrying up the hue and value on the tent tops. I think it'll tone it down a bit but still make it a strong part of the scene.
Secondly, I really like the ship design and in the first render (before unreal) I liked the blues that are introduced into the render. Not sure if its lighting or just the background playing with my eyeballs. But, seeing a bit more blue (not much) into that gray metal texture would be pretty rad I'd think.
Great work all around.