First Post & Scholar's Garden

Gcochrane

Hi Polycounters, I'm new!

I'm a game art student getting ready to graduate and I'd like to get some critiques on my senior project to take it to the next level. The concept is a traditional Scholar's Garden. Rendered in UDK.

UPDATE: new render with critiques applied. any comments on this or the prop sheets below would be appreciated!

Ott

Lookin pretty dope! Got any renders of the individual props?

Everything looks really good, but I would like to see some sort of more dynamic / interesting lighting going on. Maybe some of those red-ball-hanging-light-things have a light on in them, or a light source coming from the top of the tower-structure in the upper left. Or from inside that room on the left. Something to make me wonder "what's going on in/over there?"

I would personally scale that tree in the back up by about 25% or so just to make it stand out a tad more. The ground grass texture doesn't really seem to hold up resolution-wise IMO.

Good looking stuff. Good to hear about AISD students using UDK

andybozo

looks great! might you post a wireframe? maybe a different angle as well?

Shogun3d

Ott wrote: »

Good looking stuff. Good to hear about AISD students using UDK

A ton of us at AISD troll polycount like mad. We tried getting UDK on the computers at school but that's not happenin' anytime soon due to license costs etc.

Anyhow, hey George glad you posted up your work. The water looks dope!! I'm with OTT on the lit lanterns hanging to the right. That would be interesting, and would create some cool lighting with UDK's new emissive lighting.

System

That looks fucking awesome, id love you even more if the colours were a tad richer in places... that and a bigger picture to fap to.

Ben Apuna

Nice scene

Needs more high contrast lighting IMHO, especially the sky.

BeserK

@Kaburan: The UDK is free as far as I know.
Gcochrane: The cherry tree looks a little lost, it may not be accurate, but maybe you can bump up the saturation on the flowers, also the rocks on the left looks a little rushed, Really nice piece though! Good work!

Shogun3d

BeserK wrote: »

@Kaburan: The UDK is free as far as I know.

Not commercially however, this includes educational institutions.

BeserK

Consider me chastised.
Each student individually however, can legally use the UDK, as long as they don't charge anyone anything for what they make.
Just a sneaky suggestion!

System

Looking nice! Things I would change are the water colour, it's too saturated, the dammage on the pillars is too much, try to localise it more.
Ditto on the grass although it wasn't immediately obvious.

3DLee

This is really neat! +1 for lighting the lanterns and enlarging the tree, I think. Could we see some wires too, I've love to get a good look at your vegetation.

Gcochrane

Thanks for all the comments and critiques everyone, I'm actually playing with the emissive lanterns right now! Applying the critiques and will post some individual prop renders with wires soon as I can.

@Ott & BeserK: I'm new to UDK but between UDN and Hourences I'm loving it. A decent free engine is a godsend for students.

@Ben & Jackwhat: I actually desaturated and knocked down contrast in the post process volume but now I'm thinking it was too severe

@GCMP: You're right that water is too saturated, the pillars are actually engraved but I see they're not reading right. Did you mean the grass foliage was too saturated also?

@3DLee & Andybozo: Wireframes coming up! I'm pretty sure the vegetation tri count is too high, but I look forward to feedback on it.

@kaburan: Thanks!

System

No the grass colour looks okay - I was agreeing on Ott's comment about the grass texture being a bit blurry, the res needs attention... but... now you mention it, it could do with a bit more colour/saturation, so the opposite of what you were thinking.

Gcochrane

Ah gotcha, I missed that one - the ground mesh actually has a normal on it, I was trying to break up the smoothness but I think it's actually causing the lumpy/blurry look.

Gcochrane

Some individual props and wires. If I missed anything in particular someone wants to see I'll happily post it. Critiques please! Especially any thoughts on tri counts, I'm still not sure what sort of numbers I should be shooting for.

- the scene render is a lighting preview build, so there's some nasty shadow artifacts. pretend you don't see those...

EDIT: just realized tiledshot is not capturing the real time reflection in the water. anyone know a work around for that?

killingpeople

I feel that your water is too blue. I'd lean more towards black/green

ZacD

The water needs to be more reflective and less saturated and a darker blue green.