Oh! And the ship is super tall..like 10 stories? I think. The control room is on the first tier. You can see little windows. And the guns are way bigger than a person's size, so thats where the cannons come out of. May be hard to see from a distance. =] Or I probably just didn't show scale that well. Maybe the rope is too thick. . .but that rope is just a placeholder really.
Ya I can see that they're guns now, but it would help to make it a bit more obvious. Another crit I have isn't with the modelling or texture of the ship its with the design. The posts on top don't seem to have any function right now which seems odd to me
oh! Haha, they are supposed to be epic exhaust pipes. When Jeff and I make fumes and smoke maybe it will make more sense... But I guess without them they may not make sense. Aesthetics perhaps? ;-)
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:
the only thing that bothers me about the ship is the wings, they look like they are just stuck into the side of the hull, almost like they wouldnt function. maybe you could great some sort of holder on the side othe the hull that the wings could adjust or pivot other than that kick ass design and looks close to being done
I don't plan on putting sails on it, cause I wanted it to look different from Jeff's greentooth warships. I was thinking of more how far away these babies might be and wanted it to read as a different breed of fighters. Glad you guys like it, and thank for the critiques. I'm gonna take them all into consideration when I get back!
Yeah, we'd definitely like to get some cool tarps in there that don't dominate the scene. We don't need a lot, just a couple really good ones to kick it up like in the concept you linked.
I spent way too much time today getting some sand kicked up and some basic building blockouts. Lots of fidgeting with the engine, lights, light channels, yada, yada. Hours can go by and you realize you've gotten next to nothing done, but knowing how engine tweaks work with your assets is invaluable if not tangible.
I know i said i'd try to post work only when it was worth posting but meh, i like posting work if i spent a long time on it, regardless of how it's coming along so here's some dirt, ZOMG:
We plan on having wind swept dirt piled up on one side of the city streets, buildings, and anything coming out of the ground really. Will use some tricks to blend it into the ground and other textures.
Just playin' around with some canpoies the past few hours:
I like this toned down version you guys suggested a lot more. Just getting some basic detail out of a normal map. The diffuse and colors are very placeholder right now (mostly just there to help with UV layout) and a fleshed out scene will have more shapes for tarps, a color scheme that fits with the scene as well as a focus on wind speed and direction (plan on having some cool reactionary movement on cloth from canonbal impacts as well as from the gusts of wind created by the anchors moving through the streets).
Some concepts I threw together yesterday for various tarp shapes i may add in the future:
Is it just me - but instead of anchors - i see two Krato's with their arms outstreched w/blades?....lolz
that woud be awesome - cannons that shoot angry kratoses (kratosii?) at the people......
Tryin' out some bricks. Early rubble/ lighting test.
Should have some sand tests in the near future, going to use the brick diffuse for a mask and try to get some extra sand in the cracks.
Update:
Some new canopies to boot
I can kinda see the kratos's hehe, but i don't think the current anchor matches his color scheme.
To be fair that fire is more or less a cut and paste from a google search for "fire" . The smoke has more effort put into it, but the base texture for that's from www.cgtextures.com (awesome site and free).
We'll put more time into making these effects "our own" as time goes by, gotta make 'em fit with our graphic style, whatever that ends up evolving to be. They'll also be toned down selectively depending on where we need interest in the scene.
We're still rushing to get to the polish phase. Erichs about to pwn some base architecture and i'll be starting on my airship in the very near future. Once those two elements are done we just need some cool stairways and sidewalks. I'd like to think we can have the main composition of the shot done by the end of the week with every main asset needed in the scene, but that maybe be wishful thinking on my part .
Once that's done we can see where we stand on poly count and texture size and see where we want to push the scene. Not to mention taking into account your feedback!
Could be the flora bringing the scale down, i'll shrink it down in future shots, maybe get rid of it or singe it up. I agree the scene has definitely lost some of its impact as we try to cram more and more things in there, had to make certain things smaller in anticipation of more "stuff", but as we play with what looks good you'll see those things look bigger and bigger like the crashed airship. At some point we'll surrender to the fact that we can't fit everything we'd like to in our scene, and when we do we'll have burlier smoke, bigger 'splosions, and big buildings.
Can't sleep, decided to do a lil' more art:
Quick go at the pirate ship. Silhouette somewhat inspired by the USA. Lil bit of American and Polycount pride going on. The sails will sport the green and black as well as possibly the PC logo.
For now I'm diggin' the crude assemblage of the ship, contrasts well with Erich's. This bad boy might be fun to make entirely in zbrush, excluding a few obvious assets. I think i've been inspired by ProfessorXXX.
it look interesting but I think you might want to watch what direction the wind is moving? the meteors smoke tells me the wind is going left to right the billowed cloths tell me it is going right to left?
These effects are simply alpha planes right now. One thing we really want to have in our final shot is the illusion of depth, so there's a good chance these textures will be completely revamped and put onto cylenders that are bent into arches, among other visual tweaks, just a very preliminary first go.
Ged good call, wind direction is something we're going to keep a careful eye on/
Just a quick blockout, no real votes FOR the concept, but no votes against either so i'm just gonna run with it for now. Movin' on to UV's and soon some zbrush.
Uv's done on the hull, placeholder texture:
Lots of time getting some initial sails done (just normals for now) and the whole thing in engine:
Good lord, spent the past 3 hours trying to track down a light map issue, this is driving me insane.
4 hours, finally got it resolved. It was a combination of multiple issues, the biggest one being that map no longer wants to shade new objects... for some reason. Going to have to start from scratch on a new level, not a huge deal, just a waste of a lot of time and energy :P. Really wanted to get a lot of this done today but dunno if that's going to happen, just so beat and have 2 homework assignments to do.
Jumpin' back into this thing a little bit, first full pass at the pirate ship, got a ways to go before it matches Erich's for polish, but gettin' there:
Using lerps right now but finding it really limiting for this type of object, might overhaul the textures on the main body to not use masks and just do it the old fasioned way, will alow for much easier baked lighting and the atrocious tiled texture on the main body will simply disappear.
Future versions will be more sinister and have large rings bolted to the side that will attach to multiple anchor lines. Should be a fun asset . Kinda bland now but that wont last too long
For shits and giggles, here's a version i thought was just too unearthly even for this challenge:
Bit the bullet and decided to revamp the ship textures. Turned into instant happiness. Literally like 15 minutes of work of just using masks i'd already made and inserting regular 1024 textures where the old tiled ones would go. I could still throw a lerp on there if i want some high frequency details, but honestly the camera's never going to be too close to this ship so it was probably not the best way to go about it to begin with.
Used the light map bake to add some hue difference in the wood, MUCH happier with it at this point. Still going to tweak it, but not much, saving major tweaks for the polish phase.
Edit: First go at masts in as well as some texture tweaks, got a much cleaner ambient occlusion bake from the high poly. Ropes to come at the very end once everything is in place and we know which direction to swing them in.
Thanks d1ver! A lot of art's been thrown away coming up with what we've got, it's been a heck of a journey even getting this far! As we speak i'm overhauling the anchor textures. Going to have to further touch up the pirate ship to fit the sinister feel of the anchor:
We're both pretty pumped right now, the ships are doing good enough for where we're at and word on the street is our buildings will be finished in the near future. All the cool little things we have here and there are going to start coming together in a really kick arse scene!
And now rope!
In perspective:
The high poly knot is 1400 tris yowch! I'll bring it down if we need to but there should only be a couple in the foreground. Low poly versions are 400. Just did a torus knot in max, isolated one edge loop and turned that into a spline. Then just a path deform on our old ropes. Super stoked with the result!
And yes, the knots are a little thicker than the actual rope, and that's just how it is for now, i like the look
Erich finished our first base for the buildings! He was too tired to post 'em himself but was cool with me throwin' 'em up.
Keep in mind these are just the base, we're going to be adding all kinds of cool stuff to 'em like canopies, doors, windows etc. There's some assets at the base to give you a sense of scale. The sillhouette matches some of our concept art, but we will be adding some vertical scale to the city not scene in the concept, so expect bridges and stairs or something of that nature. Anyway, enough rambeling here's the shot:
The canopies are placeholder.
Spent about 4 hours getting a start on a door for the buildings, used this photoref:
Here's where i'm at:
Pretty obvious photo reference at this point but that'll change in the future, just wanted to block it out and get the textures tiling properly, they're fairly small textures, just tiled a lot or mirrored. Going to have to carve holes into the city geo since these doors open inward.
A return to form of the original concept, FINALY... the polish phase begins!
This is a down and dirty quick 30 min composition. Tried to get more or less everything we have finished into the scene in there in some fasion, but realize now i left out lots of sand. Final comp will have more vertical scale to the city to break up the boring midground and kick ass canopies of some kind. Oh, and almost forgot, SPOLOSIONS!
It's comin' together, pretty pumped! Wish i didn't have school tomorrow but i'm hittin' this hard over the weekend! Erich's also off takin' a much needed break after slammin' out the buildings for a few days.
Here's where the scene stands now:
Got a lot of particle effects to figure out, as well as some canopies to make (nothing too crazy, plenty going on in the scene already). Skybox also needs an overhaul for clarity. A lower section of the city is going to be added in the midground on the right side with stairs and a railing. Also seriously considering putting in "hanging gardens" to get some flora mixing up the scene, some really ornate hanging vases are on the way.
looking so good fellas. So much great job done. Just a little bir more.
Maybe you could give a bit more air to the composition. A sense of space.
And the ropes reaaly add well to the composition but take them away and the shot seems pretty boring. I'd suggest you'd work out an interesting picture without the ships and everything. So it would be kick ass. And once you ad you kickass ships with kickass ropes to the kickass city it should just blow peoples socks off.
lookin rel nice as said above, maybe tighten up the composition a little...and maybe add some depth of field to really sell how far away the ships are? My eyes are darting all over the place -- focusing on one part of the composition will really make this one pop. Great job on the ships and anchors!!
Dr1ver: You make a good point, we've got some cool stuff, but it's not really the scene itself that shines right now. This is an environment challenge and we need to make our environment shine. Going to jazz up the building base and street base to make this worthwhile, was thinking of "glittering" up the sand somehow. Once these can stand on their own we might pull back on the chaos (or more likely not, haha).
R4ptur3: We've got some experimental lighting around cannonballs that are really killing the flow of the scene, at least on the ground, going to fix that up as well as add steps and sidewalks to really define the streets level. As for eyes darting around, i'm actually kind of happy with that. This is a game environment, not a painting. I think a successful game scene is one that entices you to explore, but we will do our best to create a focus. Frankly i wasn't expecting depth of field to work, I've just never been happy with it when i tried it in the past, but i gave it another go and i'm digging the results so far:
Cheers! This advice truly is helpful, fresh eyes on something you put too much time into really goes a long way.
Lots of tweaks to lots of stuff including lighting, depth of field, and various textures. Also threw in a new tower asset, just reusing textures that Erich already made. I realize the red is overpowering for the moment, but once some canopies are in that are also red they'll help bring the scene together.
The empty area on the left side is going to showcase some ornate hanging gardens in the future.
To be honest, I am having doubts about DOF.
DOF would exits only when having very close ground and very far background depth contrast.
For example when u r aiming a gun (blured gun and sharp target) or looking from up close at the spider in his web (sharp spider but blured background).
In this case blur does not make any sense. U r already looking at the "deep" scene dealing with large or extra large objects.
Instead of using blur use more "air perspective" that is fog. With the aid of fog u can create fore-, mid- and background. U have a nice background, its a pitty to blur it
The anker i guess is the one of most important objects, right? In such case dont place it against something that has same color intesity. Right now the anker blends with the crashed ship.
U can add more dust around the anker to make its silouete read better.
Small fire on top of sand pile looks like it means something special. The wall and the corner suggest that at least. U know, to me it feels like there should be a spy sneaking from behind the corner, a-la Splinter Cell situatin
Therefore i would extend the wall towards camera to get rid of that corner. Otherwise it actually feels like an important fireground area which i guess is not supposed to be so in this composition
Yeah, I am not sure about my DOF comment any more. It is blurring a lot of the nice details you have. It does help to focus attention int he foreground ... but those ships look too damned nice to be all blurry
Replies
And the wings. 512 maps.
Oh! And the ship is super tall..like 10 stories? I think. The control room is on the first tier. You can see little windows. And the guns are way bigger than a person's size, so thats where the cannons come out of. May be hard to see from a distance. =] Or I probably just didn't show scale that well. Maybe the rope is too thick. . .but that rope is just a placeholder really.
the only thing that bothers me about the ship is the wings, they look like they are just stuck into the side of the hull, almost like they wouldnt function. maybe you could great some sort of holder on the side othe the hull that the wings could adjust or pivot other than that kick ass design and looks close to being done
I spent way too much time today getting some sand kicked up and some basic building blockouts. Lots of fidgeting with the engine, lights, light channels, yada, yada. Hours can go by and you realize you've gotten next to nothing done, but knowing how engine tweaks work with your assets is invaluable if not tangible.
I know i said i'd try to post work only when it was worth posting but meh, i like posting work if i spent a long time on it, regardless of how it's coming along so here's some dirt, ZOMG:
We plan on having wind swept dirt piled up on one side of the city streets, buildings, and anything coming out of the ground really. Will use some tricks to blend it into the ground and other textures.
I like this toned down version you guys suggested a lot more. Just getting some basic detail out of a normal map. The diffuse and colors are very placeholder right now (mostly just there to help with UV layout) and a fleshed out scene will have more shapes for tarps, a color scheme that fits with the scene as well as a focus on wind speed and direction (plan on having some cool reactionary movement on cloth from canonbal impacts as well as from the gusts of wind created by the anchors moving through the streets).
Some concepts I threw together yesterday for various tarp shapes i may add in the future:
that woud be awesome - cannons that shoot angry kratoses (kratosii?) at the people......
meh i need to get out more...
nice work so far guys, keep on cracking...
Should have some sand tests in the near future, going to use the brick diffuse for a mask and try to get some extra sand in the cracks.
Update:
Some new canopies to boot
I can kinda see the kratos's hehe, but i don't think the current anchor matches his color scheme.
New stuffs
We'll put more time into making these effects "our own" as time goes by, gotta make 'em fit with our graphic style, whatever that ends up evolving to be. They'll also be toned down selectively depending on where we need interest in the scene.
We're still rushing to get to the polish phase. Erichs about to pwn some base architecture and i'll be starting on my airship in the very near future. Once those two elements are done we just need some cool stairways and sidewalks. I'd like to think we can have the main composition of the shot done by the end of the week with every main asset needed in the scene, but that maybe be wishful thinking on my part
Once that's done we can see where we stand on poly count and texture size and see where we want to push the scene. Not to mention taking into account your feedback!
Quick redux:
otherwise going nicely guys! i lik what you are doing
Quick go at the pirate ship. Silhouette somewhat inspired by the USA. Lil bit of American and Polycount pride going on. The sails will sport the green and black as well as possibly the PC logo.
For now I'm diggin' the crude assemblage of the ship, contrasts well with Erich's. This bad boy might be fun to make entirely in zbrush, excluding a few obvious assets. I think i've been inspired by ProfessorXXX.
Those tiles are huge... we'll get on that
I am wondering if that is just a plane with static texture or something more tricky than that ?
Ged good call, wind direction is something we're going to keep a careful eye on/
Uv's done on the hull, placeholder texture:
Lots of time getting some initial sails done (just normals for now) and the whole thing in engine:
Good lord, spent the past 3 hours trying to track down a light map issue, this is driving me insane.
4 hours, finally got it resolved. It was a combination of multiple issues, the biggest one being that map no longer wants to shade new objects... for some reason. Going to have to start from scratch on a new level, not a huge deal, just a waste of a lot of time and energy :P. Really wanted to get a lot of this done today but dunno if that's going to happen, just so beat and have 2 homework assignments to do.
Using lerps right now but finding it really limiting for this type of object, might overhaul the textures on the main body to not use masks and just do it the old fasioned way, will alow for much easier baked lighting and the atrocious tiled texture on the main body will simply disappear.
Future versions will be more sinister and have large rings bolted to the side that will attach to multiple anchor lines. Should be a fun asset
For shits and giggles, here's a version i thought was just too unearthly even for this challenge:
Used the light map bake to add some hue difference in the wood, MUCH happier with it at this point. Still going to tweak it, but not much, saving major tweaks for the polish phase.
Edit: First go at masts in as well as some texture tweaks, got a much cleaner ambient occlusion bake from the high poly. Ropes to come at the very end once everything is in place and we know which direction to swing them in.
We're both pretty pumped right now, the ships are doing good enough for where we're at and word on the street is our buildings will be finished in the near future. All the cool little things we have here and there are going to start coming together in a really kick arse scene!
Our sacks:
ewwwwwww...
Wasn't planning on doing a damned thing today, but then Valve delayed the L4D 2 demo :P.
In perspective:
The high poly knot is 1400 tris yowch! I'll bring it down if we need to but there should only be a couple in the foreground. Low poly versions are 400. Just did a torus knot in max, isolated one edge loop and turned that into a spline. Then just a path deform on our old ropes. Super stoked with the result!
And yes, the knots are a little thicker than the actual rope, and that's just how it is for now, i like the look
Erich finished our first base for the buildings! He was too tired to post 'em himself but was cool with me throwin' 'em up.
Keep in mind these are just the base, we're going to be adding all kinds of cool stuff to 'em like canopies, doors, windows etc. There's some assets at the base to give you a sense of scale. The sillhouette matches some of our concept art, but we will be adding some vertical scale to the city not scene in the concept, so expect bridges and stairs or something of that nature. Anyway, enough rambeling here's the shot:
The canopies are placeholder.
Spent about 4 hours getting a start on a door for the buildings, used this photoref:
Here's where i'm at:
Pretty obvious photo reference at this point but that'll change in the future, just wanted to block it out and get the textures tiling properly, they're fairly small textures, just tiled a lot or mirrored. Going to have to carve holes into the city geo since these doors open inward.
A return to form of the original concept, FINALY... the polish phase begins!
This is a down and dirty quick 30 min composition. Tried to get more or less everything we have finished into the scene in there in some fasion, but realize now i left out lots of sand. Final comp will have more vertical scale to the city to break up the boring midground and kick ass canopies of some kind. Oh, and almost forgot, SPOLOSIONS!
It's comin' together, pretty pumped! Wish i didn't have school tomorrow but i'm hittin' this hard over the weekend! Erich's also off takin' a much needed break after slammin' out the buildings for a few days.
Got a lot of particle effects to figure out, as well as some canopies to make (nothing too crazy, plenty going on in the scene already). Skybox also needs an overhaul for clarity. A lower section of the city is going to be added in the midground on the right side with stairs and a railing. Also seriously considering putting in "hanging gardens" to get some flora mixing up the scene, some really ornate hanging vases are on the way.
Any and all crits/suggestions appreciated
Maybe you could give a bit more air to the composition. A sense of space.
And the ropes reaaly add well to the composition but take them away and the shot seems pretty boring. I'd suggest you'd work out an interesting picture without the ships and everything. So it would be kick ass. And once you ad you kickass ships with kickass ropes to the kickass city it should just blow peoples socks off.
Dr1ver: You make a good point, we've got some cool stuff, but it's not really the scene itself that shines right now. This is an environment challenge and we need to make our environment shine. Going to jazz up the building base and street base to make this worthwhile, was thinking of "glittering" up the sand somehow. Once these can stand on their own we might pull back on the chaos (or more likely not, haha).
R4ptur3: We've got some experimental lighting around cannonballs that are really killing the flow of the scene, at least on the ground, going to fix that up as well as add steps and sidewalks to really define the streets level. As for eyes darting around, i'm actually kind of happy with that. This is a game environment, not a painting. I think a successful game scene is one that entices you to explore, but we will do our best to create a focus. Frankly i wasn't expecting depth of field to work, I've just never been happy with it when i tried it in the past, but i gave it another go and i'm digging the results so far:
Cheers! This advice truly is helpful, fresh eyes on something you put too much time into really goes a long way.
hope this helps. cheers
The empty area on the left side is going to showcase some ornate hanging gardens in the future.
DOF would exits only when having very close ground and very far background depth contrast.
For example when u r aiming a gun (blured gun and sharp target) or looking from up close at the spider in his web (sharp spider but blured background).
In this case blur does not make any sense. U r already looking at the "deep" scene dealing with large or extra large objects.
Instead of using blur use more "air perspective" that is fog. With the aid of fog u can create fore-, mid- and background. U have a nice background, its a pitty to blur it
The anker i guess is the one of most important objects, right? In such case dont place it against something that has same color intesity. Right now the anker blends with the crashed ship.
U can add more dust around the anker to make its silouete read better.
Small fire on top of sand pile looks like it means something special. The wall and the corner suggest that at least. U know, to me it feels like there should be a spy sneaking from behind the corner, a-la Splinter Cell situatin
Therefore i would extend the wall towards camera to get rid of that corner. Otherwise it actually feels like an important fireground area which i guess is not supposed to be so in this composition
Keep it up!
Keep pushing, almost there!
Anyone know how to exclude a sky box from being affected by height fog? It's currently getting a bit washed out, not a huge deal though.
Anyway, I'm super beat, gonna hit the hay before i screw something up big time.
Anyways,don't worry about that because the lower area of sky IS usually not super sharp due to fog.