UC 2009 'END GAME' | Butter Pants | 3D

gamedev

Reserving a spot! We're joining the party late, but we'll have our mood board posted shortly! Less than 3 weeks and counting!

TEAM:
- Tyler / gamedev / 3d
- Mike / snight / 3d
- Asa / 2d

-Tyler

Snight

go team Butter Pants!

turpedo

I want to be the butter in your pants Snight.

Looking forward to see what you guys cook up.

gamedev

Time to add some meat to this thread (ok, you got us - this isn't our work, it's someone else's, but some super sweet awesome 3d is coming!!!)

The Gist:
The world is coming to an end. Snow and ice have come and meteors are raining down from the sky threatening all of mankind!

Mood board:
Main concept direction is from Jamie Jones and his vision for Guild Wars 2. We'll be taking this rather tranquil scene, adding some snow, destruction, and METEORS!!!! Rich vibrant colors with a frosty outlook!


Some paintovers and concept to come! Tonight we'll be blocking out the scene in UT3!

GO GO GO!!

-Tyler

Snight

LETS DO IT, I'M PUMPED. It just dawned on me that we hit alpha in a week, haha. Oh god...

turpedo

The moodboard and ref look great.

I am looking forward to all the effects you guys create. :thumbup:

gamedev

Alright, day one and we got our mood board done and our blockout nearly complete. We'll probably continue to work on scale, some destruction and a few additional elements, but the meat and potatoes are there.

From here, we can start to tackle assets one by one in their high res form!

Sleeeeeeeppp!!



-Butter Pants!

stimpack

YAY glade ur joining!

Wahlgren

Snow, Ni-hiiice. Eagerly awaiting your stuff. Snow rocks!

gamedev

Asa did a quick paintover for us. The snow will be scaled back a bit so we can show off some stuff. We'll also try and incorporate some richer color and accentuate the meteors quite a bit more:

Shogun3d

You guys are going to put down some seriously good work. Especially with Asa doin' the concepts Good luck!

crazyfingers

Well I'll be, good luck guys!

gamedev

We spent a good chunk today grabbing lots of photo ref for the project. Next up was some base material instance shaders for the scene so we can just plug in our maps, tweak some spinners and not waste tons of time making the same shader setups in UE3 over and over.

Terrain setup and placed in shot. First two ground tileables created and blended in. Some quick composition adjustments (lots more to come for the mid and background). Skybox and matte stubbed in. Rough lighting in for build some forms and shapes. Modular wall chunk started, though the brick look is going to get re-worked into more of a plaster over stone / brick.

Up on deck tomorrow are some architecture assets, and work begins on the fountain. Lots to do!!

Feedback and crits welcome (though everything is WIP). It's far too tranquil right now but that will change!

A little bit of scene progress:


Master material instance shader:


-Tyler

gamedev

Some small progress for today:

Walls have been re-worked, arches have started to get some texture. Trim still needs to be made for intersecting walls / arches.



-Tyler

Snight

Got the fountain started. Low and High finished. Going to take it in to zbrush for some detail and then gonna give some texture love.

gamedev

I got a few requests to share our master shader. This is a very simple setup and allows you to quickly create new material instances, plug in your maps, and tweak. Included in this simple shader is support for a color, spec, normal and detail normal maps along with any vertex color the model may have. There are also parameters for spec saturation, detail normal intensity and more.

To see it in action, check out my posts above.

Download it here:
UT3 master material instance

-Tyler

crazyfingers

Your normal map setup just changed my life, thanks!

gamedev

Hahah! I hope not, its super super basic! If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask! I may post our complex shader once its done. Supports parallax mapping and some other things!

crazyfingers

You might be surprised how hard it is to find even basic stuff out there, the main thing I'd never really thought about using was the clamp function. Had some masks that that were overlaying each other that would go over an opacity of 1 but i just never knew what a clamp was, among lots of tweaks using the power function that would always end up going over 1 or under 0. Anyway, thanks again

gamedev

No problem.

gamedev

Getting started on a base snow shader:

turpedo

Looking good guys! You're moving fast

Thanks for the shader instance!

Snight

Thanks Kelvin

vitaminwater

You guys are really plowing through this competition, but it lacks the end game quality. How will you guys achieve the end game theme with what you guys have?

gamedev

Still working on some snow and replacing our terrain w/ a mesh and lerp'd material. Squeezed this in tonight as well - some simple wood trim / beam to use w/ the wall set:



-Tyler

gamedev

Alright, calling it a night (morning?). 13 days left to get this scene into shape! Still lots of texture work to do on this piece, but the forms are blocked in:



-Tyler

Grey

Its looking good, keep on chargin' !

Snight

Working on some plaster covered debri chunks that will go around the fountain and used elsewhere. This is my first time back in zbrush in a longgggg time, forgot how fun and challenging it was! The fountain model should have a texture pass by tonight as well.

gamedev

^ ^ Sculpt that shiet!! ^ ^

Working on some snow again. Got some depth blending working and some basic snow like features. Going to tackle the ground and some frost next. Feedback appreciated!

crazyfingers

Looks a little sandy, could use a touch of white spec i think to give it just a hit of sheen, maybe add a subtle white light that affects only the sand?

It'd be nice to see a little snow in the nooks and crannies of the rock bellow too, you could export just the terrain and snow geo, bake a skylight render into the terrain and get a mask that would affect the areas just around the snow, then multiply that with the green channel of the cobblestone diffuse to fill in a bit of snow that way, that's how I approached the sand in my scene, might aleviate some of the cloudy look it has too while retaining the sense that it's sitting on top of the rock. Very solid material base .

erik!

Cool! How'd you get the red banner's color to bleed onto the wall? Some fancy trickier there I don't know about?

Snight

Transition mask and color in the material of the flag. Super simple! Kudos to gamedev on that one!

gamedev

<puts on stuffy technical uber nerd voice> "It's screen space global illumination with color transmission matrix shifting transform cogs"

Haha, naw, like mike Snight said, plug a color (slightly desaturated and darker) into transmission color and then plug a constant into transmission mask and adjust the amount of light you'd like to come through. The light on the wall in hand placed bounce light.

@Crazyfingers - yea, it's looking like sand meets Styrofoam snow. I've got some parameters for spec and reflection as well as transmission color to fake some SSS, need to tune em. I'm working on the snow in the cracks as we speak! Thanks for the crits.

Matroskin

awesome snow, makes me jelous :P
U even have sparks, lol. I did them as well in my scene but yours look more convincing.
I also had that auto smooth of the edges in the point of intersection. Looks cool, but I had problems with alpha sorting so i removed it :P

Btw, could u share later on how u did snow shader? Especially the sparks effect lpz

Keep it up

gamedev

Got a much better version of the snow after I posted last night. I'll toss something up when I get home. I've started to experiencing the depth / sorting issues you're speaking of. I'm going to try and set sorting priorities on them and see what happens.

I'll post the shader once its a little cleaner

jacob07777

Hey Tyler oh wow AND Asa, glad to see you guys joining the competition. We joined a bit late too, but at least you guys are getting some stuff into UT already that's good.

The snow texture is looking pretty good so far. It appears like it's been there a while and has started melting away, but there's no footprints or dirt on it at all. Like people have just been walking around it. Maybe try n show some more human interaction with it if the worlds coming to an end there had to have been some people that ran through it. I'll wait till you post the updates to comment more.

gamedev

Spent some time today working on a procedural snow / frost shader for UE3. The idea is we can add this to a few smaller props / objects that will be rotated and used in different ways and still have snow on the tops (whatever part of the mesh may be facing up). Combined with our existing snow / ice shader and depth bias alpha meshes, this should complete the package.

What it does:
- Any surfaces facing up (or close to 1 on the z axis) will get a blanket of snow.
- Any surfaces that are popped out on the normal will also receive some thin frost (this allows it to blend around curves subtle angles a bit)
- Parameters to control overall frost, color, opacity, angle of snow blending, etc.
- Shader works in world space, so even if you rotate an object on its side, it will still receive snow on up facing surfaces.



@jacob07777 thanks for the crits. Things like footprints, dirt, and other wear are on the list. Simple additions to the shader.

-Tyler

ZacD

gamedev wrote: »

Spent some time today working on a procedural snow / frost shader for UE3. The idea is we can add this to a few smaller props / objects that will be rotated and used in different ways and still have snow on the tops (whatever part of the mesh may be facing up). Combined with our existing snow / ice shader and depth bias alpha meshes, this should complete the package.

What it does:
- Any surfaces facing up (or close to 1 on the z axis) will get a blanket of snow.
- Any surfaces that are popped out on the normal will also receive some thin frost
- Parameters to control overall frost, color, opacity, angle of snow blending, etc.
- Shader works in world space, so even if you rotate an object on its side, it will still receive snow on up facing surfaces.



@jacob07777 thanks for the crits. Things like footprints, dirt, and other wear are on the list. Simple additions to the shader.

-Tyler

Looks really nice, is there anyway to plug in a texture to control the snow if its acting up? (snow under a roof or something).

gamedev

Looks really nice, is there anyway to plug in a texture to control the snow if its acting up? (snow under a roof or something).

For you example, there is no need. It works in world space and only positive z will get snow. The underside of say a bridge, arch or roof overhang will not get snow. It's pretty sweet!

Snight

The snow is looking dope Tyler! Finished up the color map for the fountain, the paint color is temp for now until we have the scene flushed out a bit more...easy to tune. Comments/critiques welcome! next up: spec map!

gamedev

^ ^ Mike that shit is looking awesome! Can't wait to slather my snow shader on it More coins in the fountain and some icicles!

Made some progress on the back arches and trim. Some small lighting adjustments and tons of shader work tonight on snow and frost stuff.

d1ver

Super Sweet Lighting! Reminds me of Dices brilliant Mirors Edge.

Matroskin

awesome approach to procedural snow cover

The broken fountain looks cool, but the skratched paint looks off considering that it is something "ancient" Isn't it?

Grey

Looking reallly good guys, Tyler, saw your post on the Uncharted thread with the snow shader, thats really cool, I like how you can keep the snow on parts that you decide. gtg, keep up the good work man!

Vrav

This is pretty awesome with the custom shaders! I just think the snow should be more sparkly. I remember snow and frost having little sparkles in it, due to I don't know what, chunky ice crystals or something. Up to you though.

ae.

Hey Snight,

I went ahead and did a little paint over right now theirs really no detail in the texture and seeing as how the fountain is broken shouldn't there be cracks running along the sides?

Snight

yep was actually planning on adding some, it was super late last night and never got around to it, will have an update soon! thanks for the suggestion AE.

gamedev

You guys are really plowing through this competition, but it lacks the end game quality. How will you guys achieve the end game theme with what you guys have?

Hey Vitamin! So sorry, did not see your post. To answer your question, we're focusing on sheer content creation right now and once a majority of that is done we'll begin to address the theme more. For us that means adding some destruction, skybox changes, adding our meteors, some smoke / fire fx, as well as adding some general devastation to the scene. It's much easier to add grunge / destruction than it is to reduce it if the assets have been authored that way. Thanks for the comment!

gamedev

Vrav wrote: »

This is pretty awesome with the custom shaders! I just think the snow should be more sparkly. I remember snow and frost having little sparkles in it, due to I don't know what, chunky ice crystals or something. Up to you though.

I totally agree! The shader supports sparkles right now (they may be too faint to see) and tweaking them is a pretty easy affair. We'll probably cleanup the sparkle mask though to make it more dense. The scene will get a 2nd and 3rd snow pass once some more of the architecture and props have been created. Wanted to get the snow / frost tech in though to ensure we built the assets in way that works well with it.

Cheers!

-Tyler

Snight

You and your sparkles. We should have named our team Sparkle pants! oh wait...

Snight

Finally finished the fountain! For now

Without/With snow: