I'm guessing the clumps on the ground are meant to be snow? For me, they don't seem to work. Maybe because there's no specular hits off it - something just doesn't feel right about it.
We're just about ready to post some new scene stuff. Just a few tweaks left. In the mean time, I've begun to re-work the foreground walls (again, yes). More cracks, photosource, and some better blending where the wood meets the wall is on the list. Some more silhouette addition in the low are coming too. Crits welcome.
hmm, I wouldnt have thought to use zbrush for a flag..then again I dont think ive ever made a flag...now I know
Once you've got a good workflow for getting in and out of Zbrush, doing things like a flag, or even smaller, are quite quick. A lot of the stuff we are doing we quickly sculpt in Zbrush then export and bake in max.
im still figuring out how to bake high polys onto low polys in max(as in I havent tried it yet) i usually just generate the normal map out of Zbrush. Do you do a bake because of preference or is there a significant bonus to simply generating out of Zbrush?
@albino_goldfish - It's a work flow preference for me. I don't like going back and forth making changes and I've used the bake tools in max for so long I know what I'll get consistently. It also means I can bake sculpted and non-sculpted bits at the same time in max and get my normal, ao, and mask maps.
Alright, so this is where we are at heading into the weekend. The lighting, post and detail bits are in flux and are what we'll be focusing on all weekend. Our second shot will be complete soon and posted for feedback.
Please please please, tear this $hit apart. We need tough crits to tighten this up into a solid entry!
Looks amazing indeed! Looks like a painting (in a really really good way)!
The wall on the left, tough... it's taking a good part of your image, but in reality is just a plain wall.. I guess you're going to do sth more interesting there, right? Perhaps some flags/ropes hanging on those poles (which will also hide the fact it is a mirrored version of the one on the left).. Also, there is something about the scale of the stones, they were better in post #105, imo, but that's really not a big of an issue, just a pref. I was also liking that subscattering on the cloth, even the tiny rays. They are barely noticeable now.
Again, really good job on this, definitely among the top.
If it's not too late to make a suggestion, I'd make those wooden posts a bit larger to hide the fact they are coming out of the rock, just match them up a little better in your viewport to the bottom of the rock brick base
But that's really nitpicky, looks awesome! Good luck!
I think it is too warm overall. The ground doesnt seem very snowy, more like sandy... or sandish, whatever, i am not an englishman. Snow really likes blue shadows!
I would have loved to see a city behind those archways. The eyes are led towards the background but I can't find nothing there. Ya... donnow, should have sorted my thoughts before writing along...
No no no, I think you guys are pushing in the right direction, don't add mindless clutter that creates confusion in the piece or disconnects visual flow. The foreground is excellent, and the wall detail looks fantastic. The only thing I would suggest is perhaps using decals to blend the areas where the wooden beams extrude out of the wall.
The banners hanging from the top in the foreground are identical and the right hand banner clips visually with the midground arch elements. Perhaps cut it up a bit towards an upward angle?
The Warm lighting is good, but with snow and clear skies, I suggest pushing some of the blue "bounce" values up a tad.
I like Killingpeoples idea of adding some foliage to the left to blend the wall and snow.
All in all though its inspiring work and clearly ace, I hope my crits raise some ideas and proves helpful. Good luck guys.
Smart-ass remark out of the way, there's a recurring theme amongst our entries this year which is concerning. I would love to see something more unique for the background, other than shit crashing to the planet. Both for my own selfish reasons, but also to allow your scene to stand out amongst the crowd. Perhaps a proper weather effect that screams 'End Game' and not meteors or whatever those are?
nice entry. That red post is reaalllyyy saturated, tone that down. And I agree to push the blue in the scene overall to give it that 'cold' feeling *shivers*
For the sake or argument, I actually love the saturation on the red when its compared to the rest of the environment. The red & white values tie it together, almost gives it an Assassin's Creed 1 vibe.
Smart-ass remark out of the way, there's a recurring theme amongst our entries this year which is concerning. I would love to see something more unique for the background, other than shit crashing to the planet. Both for my own selfish reasons, but also to allow your scene to stand out amongst the crowd. Perhaps a proper weather effect that screams 'End Game' and not meteors or whatever those are?
Thunderstorm, tornado, etc..
Considering the above statement I thought of doing a quick comp/over for a possible disaster change idea. The following is a supercell.
Here is the comp over I did, obviously the lack of color correction is an issue but it'll serve to present the idea.
Scene looks great, but a bit of texture repetition is bothering me. All 4 red posts have the same texture repeated with the same tiling and position. You could duplicate the mat and offset the tiling and position just a smidge to fix that up and apply each unique material to each post.
Same with the two flag up top, Maybe adjust the opacity mask % for one to change up the tears a bit and flip it horizontally. Maybe even try tiling the opacity mask by 1.5 along the U direction to give it a really unique bottem tear.
Lookin' good guys, i'm sure whatever you decide to do with the sky it'll be great.
i think this one is pretty awesome , altho you lost the contrast you had with the lightning, sunlight plus the red tint . but thats just me , this is fucking solid
Thanks for all the feedback! As for the giant vortex storm thing, I really think its a great idea, but not sure we'll go that route this late in the comp. We'll discuss it tonight after work and see.
Smart-ass remark out of the way, there's a recurring theme amongst our entries this year which is concerning. I would love to see something more unique for the background, other than shit crashing to the planet. Both for my own selfish reasons, but also to allow your scene to stand out amongst the crowd. Perhaps a proper weather effect that screams 'End Game' and not meteors or whatever those are?
Thunderstorm, tornado, etc..
I really like the meteors in the background it really makes the scene pop!
Hey guys, just a quick hokey paintover for some ideas.
I felt like the background could maybe be a little darker. When a huge meteor shower like this hits, I would expect there to be plenty of dust and fallout already in areas in the distance. If this were a "get out of dodge while the rain is fallin" sort of thing, you might see darker dust clouds in the distance, and perhaps the currently falling meteors are "cutting" through the dust as they fall. Just an idea.
The pots along the top archway don't feel lit well enough to stand out.
Some more decals or projectors with grimy "whats-its" down the sides of the archway would be expected if it supported buildings and people. Lots more runnoff might stand out, especially on a lighter colored surface like these.
You have called out the boards jutting out from the rock as something that needs to be fixed. Definitely agree there.
The red boards to me should be segmented more as well. That would have to be one badass tree to get a perfect 200 foot tall straight cut board out of.
I felt like the foreground props could be a little bigger and closer, for scale and to add interest to the front left of the scene.
I upped the scale of the fountain by a bit as well and it felt more grand in my mind. It might feel off scale if it got too big, but adjoining props and objects might make it feel like a more majestic piece.
I think it would also be cool to see a single white stone or two modeled out and popping out of the wall surface in various places just to give it more depth to add to your paralax/normal trickery.
Just some thoughts. Overall looking dope and really impressive how far you guys have come on this beast.
Alright here is the latest on both shots. We spent the day getting a solid lighting pass and the second shot flushed out. Tomorrow we will be tightening things up, so any more feedback would be great!
very cool! Love all the detail everywhere . No too sure about the cracks you put on the textures, they look maybe a bit too painted? Maybe they can have a more stronger normal map so it looks more geometric, right now its a bit too much as if someone made black lines with a marker.
Thanks everyone! We're getting close to snapping our final shots and wrapping up our entry!
No too sure about the cracks you put on the textures, they look maybe a bit too painted? Maybe they can have a more stronger normal map so it looks more geometric
@Peris - the decals are 128x128 with no normal maps. Could not for the life of me get static lit decals to work! I'm all ears though if you or anyone has any ideas!
First and foremost - big thanks to Snight and Asa. It was a BLAST working with these dudes! And all you PC'ers, great feedback, low blows, stabs, and critiques! You were that little bit of extra push we needed!
In 26 days, we busted our ASSES to get this scene done. We sincerely hope you enjoy!
Replies
I'm guessing the clumps on the ground are meant to be snow? For me, they don't seem to work. Maybe because there's no specular hits off it - something just doesn't feel right about it.
Cheers!
im still figuring out how to bake high polys onto low polys in max(as in I havent tried it yet) i usually just generate the normal map out of Zbrush. Do you do a bake because of preference or is there a significant bonus to simply generating out of Zbrush?
Please please please, tear this $hit apart. We need tough crits to tighten this up into a solid entry!
The wall on the left, tough... it's taking a good part of your image, but in reality is just a plain wall.. I guess you're going to do sth more interesting there, right? Perhaps some flags/ropes hanging on those poles (which will also hide the fact it is a mirrored version of the one on the left).. Also, there is something about the scale of the stones, they were better in post #105, imo, but that's really not a big of an issue, just a pref. I was also liking that subscattering on the cloth, even the tiny rays. They are barely noticeable now.
Again, really good job on this, definitely among the top.
But that's really nitpicky, looks awesome! Good luck!
I would have loved to see a city behind those archways. The eyes are led towards the background but I can't find nothing there. Ya... donnow, should have sorted my thoughts before writing along...
The banners hanging from the top in the foreground are identical and the right hand banner clips visually with the midground arch elements. Perhaps cut it up a bit towards an upward angle?
The Warm lighting is good, but with snow and clear skies, I suggest pushing some of the blue "bounce" values up a tad.
I like Killingpeoples idea of adding some foliage to the left to blend the wall and snow.
All in all though its inspiring work and clearly ace, I hope my crits raise some ideas and proves helpful. Good luck guys.
Smart-ass remark out of the way, there's a recurring theme amongst our entries this year which is concerning. I would love to see something more unique for the background, other than shit crashing to the planet. Both for my own selfish reasons, but also to allow your scene to stand out amongst the crowd. Perhaps a proper weather effect that screams 'End Game' and not meteors or whatever those are?
Thunderstorm, tornado, etc..
nice entry. That red post is reaalllyyy saturated, tone that down. And I agree to push the blue in the scene overall to give it that 'cold' feeling *shivers*
-Snight
Considering the above statement I thought of doing a quick comp/over for a possible disaster change idea. The following is a supercell.
Here is the comp over I did, obviously the lack of color correction is an issue but it'll serve to present the idea.
Scene looks great, but a bit of texture repetition is bothering me. All 4 red posts have the same texture repeated with the same tiling and position. You could duplicate the mat and offset the tiling and position just a smidge to fix that up and apply each unique material to each post.
Same with the two flag up top, Maybe adjust the opacity mask % for one to change up the tears a bit and flip it horizontally. Maybe even try tiling the opacity mask by 1.5 along the U direction to give it a really unique bottem tear.
Lookin' good guys, i'm sure whatever you decide to do with the sky it'll be great.
i think this one is pretty awesome , altho you lost the contrast you had with the lightning, sunlight plus the red tint . but thats just me , this is fucking solid
@killingpeople - lots of great details you added that we'll certainly incorporate into the scene. Thanks for taking the time to do a paintover.
Back to work!
I really like the meteors in the background it really makes the scene pop!
I felt like the background could maybe be a little darker. When a huge meteor shower like this hits, I would expect there to be plenty of dust and fallout already in areas in the distance. If this were a "get out of dodge while the rain is fallin" sort of thing, you might see darker dust clouds in the distance, and perhaps the currently falling meteors are "cutting" through the dust as they fall. Just an idea.
The pots along the top archway don't feel lit well enough to stand out.
Some more decals or projectors with grimy "whats-its" down the sides of the archway would be expected if it supported buildings and people. Lots more runnoff might stand out, especially on a lighter colored surface like these.
You have called out the boards jutting out from the rock as something that needs to be fixed. Definitely agree there.
The red boards to me should be segmented more as well. That would have to be one badass tree to get a perfect 200 foot tall straight cut board out of.
I felt like the foreground props could be a little bigger and closer, for scale and to add interest to the front left of the scene.
I upped the scale of the fountain by a bit as well and it felt more grand in my mind. It might feel off scale if it got too big, but adjoining props and objects might make it feel like a more majestic piece.
I think it would also be cool to see a single white stone or two modeled out and popping out of the wall surface in various places just to give it more depth to add to your paralax/normal trickery.
Just some thoughts. Overall looking dope and really impressive how far you guys have come on this beast.
Alright here is the latest on both shots. We spent the day getting a solid lighting pass and the second shot flushed out. Tomorrow we will be tightening things up, so any more feedback would be great!
Shot#1
Shot #2
Awesome Job!
@Peris - the decals are 128x128 with no normal maps. Could not for the life of me get static lit decals to work! I'm all ears though if you or anyone has any ideas!
-Tyler
Thanks!
First and foremost - big thanks to Snight and Asa. It was a BLAST working with these dudes! And all you PC'ers, great feedback, low blows, stabs, and critiques! You were that little bit of extra push we needed!
In 26 days, we busted our ASSES to get this scene done. We sincerely hope you enjoy!
Final shots, submitted and done:
Done! Time to play games!!!