Abandoned places in the world.
polycounter lvl 19
Awesome. Some really inspirational stuff in here for environment artists.
Abandoned places in the world:
http://www.dirjournal.com/info/abandoned-places-in-the-world/
Abandoned places in the world:
http://www.dirjournal.com/info/abandoned-places-in-the-world/
Replies
Thanks
Well worth the investment.
amen.
Very true. A lot of modern 3D work is focusing way too much on the dirt and grime. What they need to focus on more is the wear and tear. This is much more of an issue in most places. Weathering is considerably more realistic than smeering dirt and mud over everything.
Yeah i'd have to agree. Way more water damage than dirt. lots of discoloration and general decay. not so much dirt.
Hey look! GREEN!!!
hey detroit!
Kowloon used to be one of the areas of Hong Kong city. By the end of 1970s Walled City began to grow. Square buildings folded up into one another as thousands of modifications were made, virtually none by architects or engineers, until the entire City became monolithic. Labyrinthine corridors ran through the City, some former streets (at the ground level, and often clogged up with refuse), and some running through upper floors, through and between buildings. The streets were illuminated by fluorescent lights, as sunlight rarely reached the lower levels. There were only two rules for construction: electricity had to be provided to avoid fire, and the buildings could be no more than fourteen stories high, because of the nearby airport. Eight municipal pipes provided water to the entire structure (although more could have come from wells).
By the early 1980s, Kowloon Walled City had an estimated population of 35,000. The City was notorious for its excess of brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlours, food courts serving dog meat, and secret factories.
In 1984 the Walled city was demolished and its inhabitants resettleed. At that time, it had 50,000 inhabitants on 26 000 m² (31 000 sq. yards), and therefore a very high population density of 1,923,077/km², making it one of the most densely populated urban areas on Earth.
After the demolition, a park was built in its place with construction starting in May 1994.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=55357
Thinking about fully accessable, streaming interiors. Some kind of procedural workflow to make it possible.
It really would, you should start on it.
A game like mirrors edge would be amazing. especially if it was a sandbox type evironment. If you started with a smallish area like this I could imagine it could be done. Would be really crazy with all the laberynth type areas though. I wish i was a good enough programmer.
Lots more of this kind of stuff for you if not.
Not the best quality, but the coolest photos of Kowloon I have seen out there. Looks like something from Blade Runner.
To be fair a post nuclear apocalyptic environment would have none of the greenery that would keep the soil on the ground making for severe dust bowl situations, so maybe a look at abandoned places in Oklahoma or Arizona, or possibly Australia during droughts and you'll likely see very different decay.
All those windy dusty conditions with more acidic rain would also cause a great deal more oxidation (though if you can dig up pictures with more metallic objects you can see it hardly needs the help) so rust would be very prominent.
Even in our current populated clean places rust springs up everywhere, just look at any car's axle or brake calipers, or if it's been sitting through even a single rain the rotors. You'd be surprised how quickly things begin to rust.
Of course you wont see so much of it where there isn't a lot of metal since plaster/wood/etc obviously doesn't rust.
I've always thought this place was really awesome:
http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-japans-rotting-metropolis/
That idea that if one piece of decay is good 10,000 will be AMAZING! They run rough shot over any key details that would normally anchor the piece and make it pop. But instead they noise the crap out of it to the point it induces motion sickness.
The type of person that if someone said "there should be graffiti on that wall" they would cover the entire 7 story wall, ground to roof. Or they make a piece of "technical machinery" and spend 8 years fleshing out micro details that read like noise when you're not zoomed on on the sub-pixel level.
If one vein is good, then an entire root system where the arms should be will be eye popping! My eyes pop alright... but only because I can't look away fast enough....
More lines = more detai... yea I can't finish it.
Minimalism b!tches, do you speak it!?
I got a little off track there with that rant... but this stuff is cool we should sticky it as some kind of thread full of reference. Where everyone can post links to ref they find. I bet it would be widely popular.
I am a complete stranger to the technical forum. Didn't know that thread existed.
Yeah I was looking at a rusted metal box today, the rust was in the expected places, but its was very clean and flat looking, and the rust was almost soft and cloudy in places, it wouldn't need a normal map, or a VERY faint one.
This sounds like you're describing one specific person...hardly appropriate to go off the handle on an entire visual approach condemning rust and wear and detail based on one or a few unfortunate individual(s)...
Is rust, dirt, or detail really to blame for the classic "sand all edges no matter what" mistake?
Maybe you could use a little less caffeine in your coffee and a little less sand in your vagina.
It's funny cause your name is Sandbag
That would explain why Chernobyl is overrun with plant life, or plant life rebounded after the initial blasts at Hiroshima? Is that why the EPA will plant trees in toxic or radiated areas because they'll just die off turn to dust and end up stuck to the bumper of a burned out car? Post apocalyptic doesn't always mean radiation sometimes its war and traditional destruction sometimes its a virus that effects only humans leaving the landscape untouched which would be ripe for plant life.
Every aircraft boneyard known to man is in a place with low humidity and very little rain fall very much dust bowl conditions and there is very little rust and very little grime because of the low to no moisture factor. Desert junkyards also do very well, so I'm not sure the "dry post apocalyptic scenario" would actually create grim on every surface.
It can go the other way too and a lot of rain can wash things off and keep bricks, concrete and asphalt pretty clean. I live in a pretty wet area it rains all the time Seattle is ranked pretty high on clean cities. Partly because we spend a lot on waste management but also a huge part of that is that it rains, constantly.
The level of rust also depends on the level of protection the object was given. Cars from 50 years ago would start to rust out in 10-15 years. Cars today last a lot longer. So in the future would protection and paint be even better? But people model out cars of today then dig up "rusty car ref" and get a bunch of rusting classics from 50 years ago.
My base point:
If there is nothing to contrast the dirt against like cleaner less noisy patches and all you have is dirt and grit. Is the dirt and grit really saying anything or is it just being drown out by all the other visual clutter?
Do you hear a single cricket in a field full of them or do they all just blend together into one cacophonous noise?
Megarust and grime are more of a trend, I think. Visual interest takes precedence to some artists, over realism. And once one person makes it look good, as a style, everyone wants to do that, or it becomes a norm; subsequently, it is done poorly, no longer looks interesting, and the trend (hopefully) dies.
The other cause of this "accident" is the huge number of people jumping into modeling and texturing without having any drawing or painting experience at all. These skills teach the eye to recognize this sort of thing, and exhibit control - realistic or overblown. Someone without any former art training will just take a picture of rust and slap put it on there. Oooh, looks detailed. Done.
I don't have a problem with that, but it's true facts.
The two effects are radically different, try doing a little research, it's actually quite interesting. As for Hiroshima the nukes used there (minuscule by today's standards) were actually less effective than the simple fire-bombs in terms of destruction, and did not have nearly the same level of residual radiation.
To try to use either of those situations as a baseline for the effects of actual nuclear societal destruction would be horrifically inaccurate.
I also specifically said post-nuclear, so obviously a viral apocalypse would have different environmental effects.
As for airplane junkyards what are airplanes mostly made of? Hmm...Aluminum and plastic. Aluminum does not oxidize the same way that steel or iron does, it corrodes but it does not "rust." Plastic...obviously does not rust
I'm not sure where the idea that modern cars dont rust as much as old cars could come from. Sure super expensive cars made mostly of carbon fiber or fiberglass with painted axles will not be as rusty since those materials do not rust, but iron is still iron and steel is still steel. Those goofy $500 undercoating fees from the dealership dont actually do anything
If you look at cars from just 5-10 years ago left out you'll see they very surely will rust up just like any other car. It's possible that what you're thinking is due to newer cars having more paint on the exterior still, and the paint would shield it from rust until it wears away, but maybe you should try crawling under a few new cars some time, it could be enlightening.
Awesome link Matabus!!
Enlighten us, I'd like to see your research! Afaik they used different substances which would lead to different falloff times. Chernobyl has long falloff time, the ecosystem actually suffers from it. But what is interesting is that it is not as damaging as human activity, so because it's less bad than the humanly populated areas around it is kind of better.
Actual-nuclear-societal-destruction as you noted seems to me caused by actual nuclear substances, so how would that exactly be really much different?
Point: Things do not rot as fast in dry arid places. They are also far less likely to have dirt and grime stick to them because of the lack of moisture. There are amazing examples of low humidity providing excellent preservation of materials like the dead sea scrolls.
Your original example and argument to add over the top levels of grim and rust, to items in dust bowl conditions, which because of the low humidity and very little rain fall would lead to better, not worse conditions. Also nuclear conditions probably wouldn't alter weather patterns.
You also glossed over the fact that rain can actually clean surfaces like brick and concrete.
I suggest research, do you seriously think there hasn't been any improvements in combating rust over the last 50 years? Some of the same improvements to keep planes from rusting... are used on cars.
Despite what you see on Maco commercials and pimp my ride shows when cars are put together their parts "hood, doors, side panels ect" are painted before final assembly. The inner parts may get a slightly less pretty finishing coat but it is still highly protective.
Also the design of cars is much more rust resistant. Classic Cameos are notorious for having the trunk rust out because of water drainage design issues. Quite a few side panels and fenders had big open pockets that would collect water, muck dirt and leaves inside the fender leading to rust. Once car makers found these issues they worked hard to fix them. To think modern cars high end or low end cars are just as susceptible to rust is a pretty big leap in logic, yet as you've demonstrated it happens all the time...
Also keep in mind that pig iron is not used in the frames of modern cars. Instead advanced metals are used to make them lighter and more rust resistant. Also great care is taken in every car manufacture to minimize noise and part friction which could lead to coatings wearing off
Most of the rust you see under your car, is probably due to salts and solvents being used as deicers as well as regular road spray being churned up under your car as you drive. That's right you're actually accelerating the rusting process by driving your car. When you don't drive the car and it sits the undercarriage actually is more protected. You would also know that if you crawled under a few junkyard cars...
Seriously you accuse me of not doing research or not being in the know about this crap but I've spent a lot of time doing just that. I love doing it and its one of the reasons it bugs me.
If you like your rust and grim and it looks good go for it. Hopefully this will cause you to stop and pause and think about the levels and possibly try not coating every last inch with noise. Who knows you might find it easier to do and actually like patches instead of blankets of rust.
I personally have had enough and like a few clean patches on things next to the decay to give it context. It reminds the player this was once a useful item and helps to add to the scenes story and history instead of just blending into the background.
I think polycount has had threads on this subject before and they where very eye opening... If I get some time later I'll see if I can dig them up, so we can skip over a lot of the junk we're starting to cover.
I'd certainly appreciate some more threads on this kind of topic. I'm starting to work harder on all aspects of texturing, and I'd be happier producing a model with a realistic texture, as opposed to a 'cool' one. Sometimes, definitely in games, realism - actual realism - isn't as graphically or aesthetically pleasing, so for people still studying and improving their craft can easily get sidetracked into adding extra rust / grime / filth for the sake of aesthetics.
I finished reading Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers recently, and it was a fantastic read. I actually didn't bother with the hands-on Photoshop stuff, and instead focused on the aspects of the book dedicated to improving a critical eye with regards to how surfaces deteriorate in their natural environments. A great book, highly recommended for anyone trying to improve the quality of their texturing work.
Your friend really doesn't come off well in that sentence, Pig.
Low humidity is a preserver for biological things far more than anything else. Of course metals as well benefit from low humidity (why people usually like to get classic cars for rebuild from states that dont see as much rain, winter, or salted roads), but it doesn't erase the effects.
I'm not sure what magical materials your car is made of, but any car will rust up in a few years without proper care. How many 1990's sedans do you see every day with the entire hood and roof completely devoid of clearcoat with the paint fading out to bunches of rust spots?
Do you live in a very wealthy area or something? Everywhere I have lived and visited these cars (which are still functional and under ownership/use) are a common sight, From N. Illinois to Arizona, California, and Texas.
Back to dry arid places; have you ever lived in one? My grandparents have a house in Arizona that I used to visit every year when I was younger and cars (and everything else) never had any trouble being coated in a nice thick layer of dust just after a few days of not being washed..The same is true here in Texas (it's maddening with a black car). That's just from a few days, left alone it's start looking like the Dustbowl effect from the great depression.
I think another critical element you're ignoring is that in the event of a post nuclear apocalypse you'd be facing 50-100 years of desolated abandoned time before it was safe to start coming back up out of shelter, so we're not even talking about 10 years of wear, I think it's very safe to say that no amount of surface treatment is going to last that long and end up looking like this:
http://blog.al.com/engine-block/2008/09/Junkyard%201%20west.jpg
Now, back to real nuclear war vs Chernobyl.
Due to the way that fission occurs in a reactor vs an explosion the type of isotopes released are very different, reactor fallout tends to be very long lasting but very low level, as many of the extremely powerful short-burn (remember this is very relatively speaking) isotopes you see in bomb detonation tend to be burned away during the ongoing power-making process at a plant.
Here is a graph showing gamma radiation fallout over the course of 10,000 days (about 27 years):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bombvschernobyldoserateinopenair.png
In this case the bomb used was very low yield compared to today's standards and it still produced substantially greater initial gamma yield. Additionally reactor meltdowns do not explode; the most destructive parts of the bomb, blast and thermal radiation (heat), are completely absent in a reactor meltdown. These two things combined with the greater initial gamma radiation yield would destroy so much biological matter in the initial few years that regrowth would take a gargantuan amount of time to spread from the extremely few areas of low impact where life still remained.
Now, this isn't even taking account for nuclear winter. Despite your brilliant hypothesis that nuclear fallout would have no effect on the weather, in the world we actually live in it would have an enormous effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
"A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 found that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario where two opposing nations in the subtropics would each use 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (about 15 kiloton each) on major populated centers, the researchers estimated as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years and could be "catastrophic" according to the researchers."
Now, this is using Hiroshima sized bombs...That's 15 kilotons, current bombs are roughly 2 million kilotons. So you can imagine there'd be a bit of an increase
At this point I have gotten kind of tired of typing, what did I miss?
edit: I should add a thank you though Vig; it's been a while since I've actually had to re-research something in a discussion like this so I take that as a show of a good debate!
soo... what I said before?
I live in a near sunless state now but I've lived in Mesa & Tuscon Arizona, South of San Diego, Minnesota, Australia and New Zealand. The last two only for 6mo each, damn visas... but the others where 2 years or more.
I don't remember a lot of rusted out cars driving around in the arid climates, some clear coat peeling due to sun damage and a lot of dust but not caked on grime. The still driving rusted hulks where by the ocean or in very snowy places like Minnesota, not really arid climates...
My grandpas truck was a 1969 chevy pick up original owner, original paint it spent its entire life outside and was washed maybe 2-3 times a year. Until I took over ownership it sat outside for 12 years being run only occasionally. Granted that isn't a post apocalyptic scenario but pretty close and it did ok in the Arizona sun, mostly faded paint and some rust in a few areas you would expect. It probably would have done better in a less sunny state that was just as dry.
Which brings up another point, in the case of nuclear winter, if there is not enough sunlight for photosynthesis then there is going to be very little sun damage?
Hello cake can I eat you?
No but you can have me all night.
50-100 years before you can go near the hot zones there could be areas where its safe to explore at a much earlier time. Again it all depends on the specifics of the game which we never defined and you seem to be building a specific case to suit your argument? I could start doing the same thing but I'll stick to my original point.
Artists tend to crapify everything and sometimes that isn't accurate and most times its a visual kill joy.
I see some shinny chrome which a game artist would more than likely crappify with the same rusty.jpg they stuck on everything else. Again a super old rusty car, which is also sitting next to some pretty untouched cars... have they not been there as long were they better taken care of? Dunno but they aren't all the same level of deterioration which is what you have in a lot of games.
Lets look at another car one that has been sitting by the ocean pounded by sea spray and more than likely submerged a few times since its been parked there. Yet some paint still hangs in there. What about adding in exposed patches of old dent fillers that wouldn't rust?
One other thing that bugs me I haven't mentioned is grungy rusty cars placed on clear pavement or concrete, would it be so hard to do a rusty overlay? Might help fake shadows too...
I'm also not making the case for pristine cars that have been sealed in a storage container for 150 years suddenly sitting out. However in some cases it might be smart to do a texture swap when entering parking garages or more well protected areas.
Just to be clear I'm not advocating for newly waxed cars. Something as little as this:
A few clear patches some rust and plenty of contrast to make things interesting. Notice little things like the different metal used in the engine compartment. Little clear patches that add little details.
Even if logic dictates that all cars must be paint less grim and rust encrusted hulks (which I'm not 100% convinced would happen) it's probably more appealing to break up the rust with a little faded paint.
Good stuff thanks for digging that all up.
Would a game area be at ground zero or even within the blast or heavy fallout area? It would more than likely be in more preserved area, with more to explore.
Metal is a sponge for radiation and it accelerates the decay process. Radioactive fallout would rain down and coat everything in age accelerating dust. Yea I missed that one too. Within the fallout area there probably wouldn't be a car to hide behind. Maybe a rusty stain to bleed all over.
Sarcasm aside, yep very informative. thanks for taking the time to flesh out some ideas and post. Thanks for bringing up some things I hadn't thought about before, excellent discussion, thankfully the thread served a purpose other than duplicating a long running sticky...
If after a week or two this thread is a ghost town I'll condense down what was posted and see about archiving it somewhere if nothing more than my own personal notes for future projects, but someone else might get some use out of a less chatty version.
Hell the only post apoc car I've done in a while had more paint than any of those (god looking back it has too much haha, and the road it's on could use some trash...not sure about a rust overlay, but I do like using stuff like watercolor/ink wash to add spotty blotchy grease grime, and it could use more of that).
Just dont forget about that acidic rain from all the carbon in the air though, that will do the job of sun-wear x2 quite nicely (thank goodness because that's a cool look for a damaged car).
So anyway I think we've come to an agreement (in our own lovingly belligerent ways).
Only problem is now I want to stop what I'm doing and do a new post apoc car...damnit...
Four seasons, and varying weather from overly wet to long droughts (they just finished a 2 year drought).
Coming from there I knew there had to be at least one guy somewhere with a crap ton of abandoned pictures of the area.
This car doesn't look too old, possibly early to mid 90s. It looks like it was burned, note the charring around the rusted areas and the paint on the front is still pretty clean. It also looks like the back bumper may have melted off. The car likely would not have rusted as quickly had the paint not been burned off.