Getting some steps and sidewalks in, very rough right now. This is going to expand the environment into the sand and give us some room to add cool stuff like flora, maybe a well or something in the city and possibly cacti in the desert, as well as just more air space for air fights and such.
Heads spinning in circles right now thinking what all of this is going to mean for the final composition, assets, terrain masks, lighting, etc, but i think it's worth it to really create a full-on environment. Should come together before too long!
Lots of changes, lots of space to fill up. Going to have to retool a lot of materials and lighting since everything's been taken apart and put back together.
Update:
Trying to push a "center of interest". Obligatory god rays to come, though most likely they will be very subtle.
Some obvious scale issues I'm going to have to address with the stairs.
I hear you nate, i definitely have some tweaks to make to the pirate ship textures, but at the same time I kinda want them to look "dirty" in contrast to the pristine desert culture that they're pillaging.
This is turning out great! I really like the smoke trails and effects you've got after the anchors.
Only thing I can think of, perhaps you can extend the city on the left side (like it was 2 images ago), since it just ends there in a strange way right now.. :poly121: Also it would be cool if that was a double moon (another, much smaller one next to the existing one), always makes moons look... dunno, cooler, right?
This looks quite interesting! Do you plan to add some more objects to the fore/mid ground area? At the moment it appears slighty peacefull with the ships playing outside the town, as the pirates aren't stealing or hurting anyone/thing.
We're brainstorming stuff for the midground, suggestions are appreciated . We actually have a decent amount of "stuff" to throw around, we just need hubs to put it around like wells, vendor shops, small garden areas, fountains, who knows, it's all up in the air.
Also keep in mind we haven't pushed the gunfire, cannonfire yet. Those explosions and impacts could really fill up the scene.
Wish i had tangible updates for the scene, but as we speak i gotta slam out another environment for another class :P, luckily it just happens to be desert, score!
recent composition is waaay betetr than the first one
Now it is concentrated more around ships and ankers.
And sparks is a nice addition btw.
Would be good to tone down red tops of towers. They kinda interfere with ships. And they look deformed... Maybe it is aliasing issue of UE though.
Regarding midground, i would not be adding tons of stores and stuff, instead i would add damages and variety to the ground.
Adding more props there might just distract from ankers. Unless ancers will be sort of dragging bunch of garbage that they hooked on their way throught he ground
Edit: btw, sails of central ship could be more translucent/brightened in my oppinion. they jusy just feel a bit heavy to me :P
This is in no way better than the old one:
But it's finally all setup and looking more or less like it used to in the old engine! Long night of work and little to show for it :P, i added some really crappy walls though, we'll probably jazz them up, or remove 'em, who knows!
The towers are still very temporary, just threw the tile mat on 'em so they wouldn't be such an eye sore. Erichs doing the revamp for the towers as we speak, once they're done the town should be lookin' good!
I'll be doing some windows, canopies, and hanging gardens. Ughhhhh, so many assets... so little time!
Actually, this is one of my favorite images you've posted because, short of the ground on the left side, it's not a huge clusterfuck of things. I've always felt you seriously needed to address the focal point of composition, but my brain would explode before coming up with rational feedback.
I've ran through all 7 pages, but didn't see anyone mention Monty Pythons Crimson Permanent Assurance - google for the video for some extra inspiration.
Meaning of life, haven't seen that one in a long time
Updated lighting, did the first full global illumination on the scene, took about 30 minutes to churn out, not too shabby. Single assets are taking about 7 mins per. Pushing for a medium between realism and fantastical lighting (basically just reduced the saturation and toned the lighting levels down a bit). Accidently left some pots in from some flora tests i was doing earlier, but i'm not about to do another 30 minute render to fix it
Got the ghetto anti aliasing going from a "tiledshot 3", then just resized it in photoshop.
Wow, thanks for your time killingpeople . Lovin' that comp shot paint over, lots of good ideas, especially like the bridge covered in tapestry and warning bells! I think there's a damned good chance those could find their way in!
That shot you singled out's been planned for our other main shot for a bit now, I've just been pulling back for an idea of what we might want our second shot to be.
Thanks for all the crits too. A lot has changed over time, but a lot of this is still very relevant and we'll use this feedback moving forward to fix stuff up!
Anyway, your post got me motivated to get in close and see how the other composition's doing. Could use some work, especially the aerial composition. It's a headache designing two compositions at the same time that both affect each other, we'll figure it out in the long run though:
I'm likin' how Erich's buildings are looking at close range with the new UDK baked lighting
P.S. those windows are super temp, only have about 15 mins put into texturing and modeling them. Just a box with a pic from google slapped on it, haha. Going to have trouble balancing scale with making them look kick arse.
Oh wow! thanks, Killingpeople! I'm super stoked that you took all this time to help our composition, which has always been a little bit of an issue. I am absolutely in love with your mock up...so Jeff and I have a bit of talking to do now and maybe moving it closer to this direction.
nothin' like waiting an hour for a lighting bake and getting this back:
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Gonna have to play with lighting. Gut tells me it's the stupid high saturation on the spec i put on the new towers combined with a couple super intesnse lights i placed near 'em for pop. This global lighting has its ups and downs, going to keep messin' with it, too burned out to do assets right now anyway, though i'll be posting an update to the hay stacks i did.
Global illumination seems pretty tricky. I'm not sure at this point if it takes into account all assets in your scene, or only the ones you've decided to bake at the time (i'm leaning towards only the ones chosen at the time). Spec makes an enormous difference i'm finding on the lighting, a high spec wont juts make an object shiney, but shoot light all around that object, same with saturation on spec, which makes sense when you think about it, just sucks having to find this stuff out one forty minute light bake at a time. It's a whole new realm of crap to be worried about . But there's over a week left and Erich's been slammin' out assets so i don't have to stress too much. I do want to finish some canopies and mountain/ rock formations in the near future though!
Thanks divi, three weeks in and i'm starting to hate this scene with a passion but i'm glad someone likes it (i kid, i kid ). I believe a lot of the issues was from having global illumination on, it was bold in the options so it seemed like the right thing to have it checked, but i turned it off and things started working again. Global Illumination I believe is when a diffuse or emisive is high enough it will start eminating light like a lightbulb, but i could be wrong, been about a year since i did this lighting stuff.
Great success:
The bad trip is over, we have splotchy lighting. Reminds me of doing advanced lighting in maya, but i really like the splotchy look, give sit a hand painted feel. And if i didn't like it, i'd say it anyway cuz it makes me look like i know what I'm doing! Seriously though, unintentional, but i like it, so F it, for now it stays until someone convinces me otherwise.
I've only focused on lighting the buildings in the foreground, though I don't expect too much extra lighting on other assets, maybe some of the towers, and definitely the pirate ship, though its composition will likely change, so not stressing it. Also shadow maps for all assets were 64 except the major assets, this was saving me huge ammounts of time while being able to debug lighting.
As promised, a close up of some revamped older assets:
Used a technique on the hay that i once tried to get a tree bark effect with but failed miserably. Just a cylinder enclosing the hay that has lots of squigly lines on it that opacity masks the illusion of straw popping out, has a psuedo 3d effect when you walk around it in real time.
Need to work on the seam transitions on the hay now that i look at it again...
For comparison here's a non LightMass build (might be missing a yellow light or two though):
P.S. I'm toying with Erich's tower tops to see if we can get a warning bell sounding off as per killing people's request. I'm liking the half open dome and fully enclosed dome, but the dome that has 4 open arches i think i'm going to scratch.
really cool to see the experiments with different lighting and styles, i ´cant really decide which one i personally like the best, but i would probably not try to make it too washed out, since the style of the objects feel like they really could use the color.
Last lighting shot i'm going to do, been spending too much time watching the bake bar slowly move across:
Also has the first iterations of drapery going into the scene. Going to work on scale issues with the folds in the sheets. The super large ones are fill ins for drapes that will be made to be that scale and angle.
Hope to get some rock formations done by the morning to fill in the outer parts of the composition.
Although the new lightmass is cool and all, I may try some splotchy light functions in the future to get the same effects, this will give me more control over lighting, give the same painterly look, but not take 50 minutes to see what it looks like.
Hey guys, scene is coming along! Looking forward to some of the background / side elements getting filled out.
Although the new lightmass is cool and all, I may try some splotchy light functions in the future to get the same effects, this will give me more control over lighting, give the same painterly look, but not take 50 minutes to see what it looks like.
I'm really curious why your bakes are taking so long. What sorts of lightmap resolutions are you using? How many bounces are you performing? Production quality?
Standard setting light bakes actually aren't too bad, clock in at about 5-10 mins. But to get the splotchy effects that i was digging, i gotta set the light map resolution to 512-1024 on the housing. Scene really starts chugging along at that point. I haven't tried lower qualities in a while, i should give that a go, I've actually got some early rock formations in i just threw together, i'll go ahead and post that soon as i do a low quality bake test.
I think it's great you guys seem to be getting back to the roots. lawl I love the notes killingpeople took. I think you guys just kept on trying to push it and lost track of composition and all that. I think you guys overworked it a bit but now that you are pulling back some I think it will turn out fantastic. Honestly it happens to the best of us.
Can't wait to see the end result! finish strong you guys.
Holy moly, that made a huge difference setting it to preview and almost no loss of quality. I'd remembered that setting doing nothing, but i should have tried it with light mass! Thanks for the heads up Tyler, changes how we're approaching lighting in the scene.
Here's the quick preview shot, going to have to tone down the overblown diffuses to tone down the red lighting and changes to rock geo and composition to follow as well:
Dudelan, it's been a long journey and thanks for the support! Workin' hard to make this sucker worth entering in the end!
Hi good job! like the perpective meaby some more perspective sky with more clouds will give you more like big clouds going to small clouds with meaby ahorizon with yellow clors , why dont you try yellos and white light with meaby some red? is like evrithing is red try diferent light to give you more tones meaby , but your entry is good like the idea , try meaby the same shot but with the camera more up and looking down and try to put some rocks or thing where you see its alone , and thansk for your comment in my work i appreciate it . keep it it up !!
Your team should really focus on making precise moves and quickly start setting things in stone. You're still making very general and broad changes. Everything is being changed. You should really start pointing out things that won't change at all, so you aren't putting in all this effort just to spin your tires. Finalize the sky, finalize the light colors, finalize something!
Finish things up...
That's the plan guys! glad you like the color scheme, because this is where I was planning on keeping it.
All the basics are now in place, just a matter of detailing it up, adding particle effects and a bit of battle damage, things should really start looking more "final" any day now. Keep the crits comin', we'll definitely keep the updates coming, thanks again!
Aye, in that shot yes. If we figure out how to get motion blur it'll make more sense. The idea is that the anchors are causing chaos as they rip through town. If in the end it just looks like a bunch of horribly placed assets. Poof! they're gone .
Here's a link to our files if anyone wants to provide us any kind of feedback or just check out the scene! Feel free to play around with it, suggest compositions, prop setups, whatever (also want to see how well the dropbox public link works). If you think we're breaking any rules or anything of that sort that would also be tremendously helpful too! That said i realize our poly count is a little over budget right now but we'll be scaling that down in the near future:
goosd job i love the gradient color of the background , one question if i end my contets image can i do another piece of diferent story? because we have left liek 10 days more
and well done!
It's comin' along. Took my buddy Yadao's advice and expanded the city a bit.
Smiljan: As far as i know you have a few days to get another entry together, but I'm not really the dude to ask. If they extend the deadline again, it could be more, who knows.
Hmm...rad. but personally I dig the daylight shots more! I think maybe we can make the rock formations shorter because the sillhoutte kind of clashes with the high towers! Sexy though.
Just looked through this whole topic, and there's one thing i'm itching to suggest. Right now, the anchors just look as though they're flying through the air, not really doing much. My idea would be to 'plant' a couple of the anchors in the ground, tearing up the floor behind them. It'd add destructive detail, and suggest a heightened sense of strength and, ultimately, danger from the ships.
Something else I personally see working with this image: a vibrant, hellish-shade-of-red sunset, with a blazing sun shining through. Possibly like this, but perhaps with less consistent red; fading out to a more orangey shade, or blue.
But yeah, good job guys, and good luck getting it all finished in time
Took your guys' feedback into account and also just wanted to try some new stuff with the sky anyway.
Here's where the scene's at right now:
Probably going to tone the sky down a bit, it's a little too "fluffy" and colorful in my opinion, kinda detracts from the warzone we're trying to create. We'll find a way to make it more sinister in the future though.
Edit: Toned down the sky, replaced the wide angle shot with the new toned-down version.
Replies
Getting some steps and sidewalks in, very rough right now. This is going to expand the environment into the sand and give us some room to add cool stuff like flora, maybe a well or something in the city and possibly cacti in the desert, as well as just more air space for air fights and such.
Heads spinning in circles right now thinking what all of this is going to mean for the final composition, assets, terrain masks, lighting, etc, but i think it's worth it to really create a full-on environment. Should come together before too long!
Ideas and comments always appreciated!
Lots of changes, lots of space to fill up. Going to have to retool a lot of materials and lighting since everything's been taken apart and put back together.
Trying to push a "center of interest". Obligatory god rays to come, though most likely they will be very subtle.
Some obvious scale issues I'm going to have to address with the stairs.
I hear you nate, i definitely have some tweaks to make to the pirate ship textures, but at the same time I kinda want them to look "dirty" in contrast to the pristine desert culture that they're pillaging.
Only thing I can think of, perhaps you can extend the city on the left side (like it was 2 images ago), since it just ends there in a strange way right now.. :poly121: Also it would be cool if that was a double moon (another, much smaller one next to the existing one), always makes moons look... dunno, cooler, right?
Also keep in mind we haven't pushed the gunfire, cannonfire yet. Those explosions and impacts could really fill up the scene.
Wish i had tangible updates for the scene, but as we speak i gotta slam out another environment for another class :P, luckily it just happens to be desert, score!
Now it is concentrated more around ships and ankers.
And sparks is a nice addition btw.
Would be good to tone down red tops of towers. They kinda interfere with ships. And they look deformed... Maybe it is aliasing issue of UE though.
Regarding midground, i would not be adding tons of stores and stuff, instead i would add damages and variety to the ground.
Adding more props there might just distract from ankers. Unless ancers will be sort of dragging bunch of garbage that they hooked on their way throught he ground
Edit: btw, sails of central ship could be more translucent/brightened in my oppinion. they jusy just feel a bit heavy to me :P
But it's finally all setup and looking more or less like it used to in the old engine! Long night of work and little to show for it :P, i added some really crappy walls though, we'll probably jazz them up, or remove 'em, who knows!
The towers are still very temporary, just threw the tile mat on 'em so they wouldn't be such an eye sore. Erichs doing the revamp for the towers as we speak, once they're done the town should be lookin' good!
I'll be doing some windows, canopies, and hanging gardens. Ughhhhh, so many assets... so little time!
Updated lighting, did the first full global illumination on the scene, took about 30 minutes to churn out, not too shabby. Single assets are taking about 7 mins per. Pushing for a medium between realism and fantastical lighting (basically just reduced the saturation and toned the lighting levels down a bit). Accidently left some pots in from some flora tests i was doing earlier, but i'm not about to do another 30 minute render to fix it
Got the ghetto anti aliasing going from a "tiledshot 3", then just resized it in photoshop.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/192198/crit_16.jpg
most recent looks nice... much better colors and composition started...
That shot you singled out's been planned for our other main shot for a bit now, I've just been pulling back for an idea of what we might want our second shot to be.
Thanks for all the crits too. A lot has changed over time, but a lot of this is still very relevant and we'll use this feedback moving forward to fix stuff up!
Anyway, your post got me motivated to get in close and see how the other composition's doing. Could use some work, especially the aerial composition. It's a headache designing two compositions at the same time that both affect each other, we'll figure it out in the long run though:
I'm likin' how Erich's buildings are looking at close range with the new UDK baked lighting
P.S. those windows are super temp, only have about 15 mins put into texturing and modeling them. Just a box with a pic from google slapped on it, haha. Going to have trouble balancing scale with making them look kick arse.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Gonna have to play with lighting. Gut tells me it's the stupid high saturation on the spec i put on the new towers combined with a couple super intesnse lights i placed near 'em for pop. This global lighting has its ups and downs, going to keep messin' with it, too burned out to do assets right now anyway, though i'll be posting an update to the hay stacks i did.
Global illumination seems pretty tricky. I'm not sure at this point if it takes into account all assets in your scene, or only the ones you've decided to bake at the time (i'm leaning towards only the ones chosen at the time). Spec makes an enormous difference i'm finding on the lighting, a high spec wont juts make an object shiney, but shoot light all around that object, same with saturation on spec, which makes sense when you think about it, just sucks having to find this stuff out one forty minute light bake at a time. It's a whole new realm of crap to be worried about
apart from the lighting errors this looks quite nice actually. i might even like it the best
Great success:
The bad trip is over, we have splotchy lighting. Reminds me of doing advanced lighting in maya, but i really like the splotchy look, give sit a hand painted feel. And if i didn't like it, i'd say it anyway cuz it makes me look like i know what I'm doing! Seriously though, unintentional, but i like it, so F it, for now it stays until someone convinces me otherwise.
I've only focused on lighting the buildings in the foreground, though I don't expect too much extra lighting on other assets, maybe some of the towers, and definitely the pirate ship, though its composition will likely change, so not stressing it. Also shadow maps for all assets were 64 except the major assets, this was saving me huge ammounts of time while being able to debug lighting.
As promised, a close up of some revamped older assets:
Used a technique on the hay that i once tried to get a tree bark effect with but failed miserably. Just a cylinder enclosing the hay that has lots of squigly lines on it that opacity masks the illusion of straw popping out, has a psuedo 3d effect when you walk around it in real time.
Need to work on the seam transitions on the hay now that i look at it again...
For comparison here's a non LightMass build (might be missing a yellow light or two though):
P.S. I'm toying with Erich's tower tops to see if we can get a warning bell sounding off as per killing people's request. I'm liking the half open dome and fully enclosed dome, but the dome that has 4 open arches i think i'm going to scratch.
Also has the first iterations of drapery going into the scene. Going to work on scale issues with the folds in the sheets. The super large ones are fill ins for drapes that will be made to be that scale and angle.
Hope to get some rock formations done by the morning to fill in the outer parts of the composition.
Although the new lightmass is cool and all, I may try some splotchy light functions in the future to get the same effects, this will give me more control over lighting, give the same painterly look, but not take 50 minutes to see what it looks like.
I'm really curious why your bakes are taking so long. What sorts of lightmap resolutions are you using? How many bounces are you performing? Production quality?
Cheers!
-Tyler
Can't wait to see the end result! finish strong you guys.
Here's the quick preview shot, going to have to tone down the overblown diffuses to tone down the red lighting and changes to rock geo and composition to follow as well:
Dudelan, it's been a long journey and thanks for the support! Workin' hard to make this sucker worth entering in the end!
(updated image)
That's the plan guys! glad you like the color scheme, because this is where I was planning on keeping it.
All the basics are now in place, just a matter of detailing it up, adding particle effects and a bit of battle damage, things should really start looking more "final" any day now. Keep the crits comin', we'll definitely keep the updates coming, thanks again!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2743/4089695949_69e754154e_b.jpg
Update to the rings, 12 hours have passed and i can't even remember what i've done, just tons of small things all over the place.
Added a moon that was way too over the top, deicded to just just run with it for a little bit.
Brought the idea of a fleet back.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2527597/UC
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2527597/ships55.udk
It's a pretty hefty download, clocking in at about 200 megs at this point.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
ehh, 2 weeks?
The deadline is this weekend...
If i understood you correctly though :P
and well done!
Smiljan: As far as i know you have a few days to get another entry together, but I'm not really the dude to ask. If they extend the deadline again, it could be more, who knows.
Something else I personally see working with this image: a vibrant, hellish-shade-of-red sunset, with a blazing sun shining through. Possibly like this, but perhaps with less consistent red; fading out to a more orangey shade, or blue.
But yeah, good job guys, and good luck getting it all finished in time
Here's where the scene's at right now:
Probably going to tone the sky down a bit, it's a little too "fluffy" and colorful in my opinion, kinda detracts from the warzone we're trying to create. We'll find a way to make it more sinister in the future though.
Edit: Toned down the sky, replaced the wide angle shot with the new toned-down version.