Highpoly environmental doodles

teaandcigarettes

Hey guys

I have decided to work a little bit on my hardsurface skills and hopefully make some cool stuff I could put into my upcoming portfolio.

I'm currently doing some futuristic/victorian column and I thought it would be nice to show you some progress. Crits are welcome; though it's still very wip so keep in mind that I will be adding more details later. I would love to hear any ideas and suggestions though

I will be posting more highpoly stuff here once I'm done with this piece.

MoP

Nice, looks like a good start. A fine mix of low/mid/high frequency detail.

(Geordie?)

teaandcigarettes

Cheers. I will be certainly adding more complex details once I figure out how to use splines properly, haha.

(Geordie?)

Nope Actually I'm Polish; just studying in Newcastle.

missberetta

Chain smoking Polish ey? I like it! Victorian yet futuristic? Can I suggest that you go for a less shiny look. When I think of Victorian times, I think of slums, opium dens and prostitutes. Also, you might want to look into a more steampunk look, with brass and generally a bit rugged. Just some ideas for later!

Bobby J Rice 3rd

ohhhhhhhh Fancy. I like this.

For some reason i wanna see the primary column twizzle down like a sprial pattern.

Nice Job

teaandcigarettes

missberetta: Thanks for the ideas I might render the ending result in Zbrush with some brass mat-cap; but I doubt I will be texturing it. This is merely a high-poly exercise

Crazyeyes: Cheers I had this twisting pattern previously, but I didn't really like the results; felt a tad too simple compared to the rest.



Here's the update; I've been working mainly on the details whilst trying to figure out how to make the base. I want to completely cover the main column with these thin patterns, so it's going to take a while





Looking forward to your crits.

Thewiruz

Is that in zbrush or another 3d app?Looks fantastic!

Im also working with a column but i cant get the stencil wrap around my column like you have

very nice!!!!!

teaandcigarettes

Thanks Everything was done in Max so far.

If you are working with cylindrical shape then play around with Bend modifier (or Path Deform) and use Array (or shift+rotate if your pivot is at the centre) to duplicate and rotate your shapes.

Other apps should have similar functions.

teaandcigarettes

Phew, this is coming up together rather slowly; I've been having a major headache for days and my uni-related work doesn't help either.

Anyway, just started working on the base. After some playing around I have decided to go with simple round shape; I will add some ornaments later.
I have removed those long ornaments from the main column; they looked a tad out of place. I will probably go with simple bevels, cut it into blocks and bring it into Zbrush to add some surface details.



What do you think guys? Crits will be greatly appreciated.

etb342

I'm digging your thought process on the base since you want to pull the eye up to the high detail stuff. I would make the column's body ribbed as well so that it will reinforce your form since the details are also verticle in nature.


something like this?

throttlekitty

Good call on not going overboard for the whole column. No real crits other than it looks great.

killingpeople

I think it looks great. Anymore detail in the center would be unnecessary, imo. Detail the bottom and lets see a nice texture for it.

Mark Dygert

A little detail around the base wouldn't hurt, but it depends on the texture, that detail could be painted not sculpted. I'm not a fan of adding Greek pillar ribs on this one. Nice smooth pillar, reminds of the Pompey pillar in Egypt or other middle eastern influenced pillars.

Karmageddon

Very intricate. I like where this is going a lot.

EarthQuake

Nice clean detail, one thing i think you should watch is the scale of some of these little bits and edges, as some of this stuff may not read well depending on what resolution you use when you bake to normals.

teaandcigarettes

Cheers everyone Really happy to hear positive comments.

Not sure if I will be texturing this piece anytime soon (mainly due to lack of time); I would prefer to do more highpoly pieces in similar style. Maybe I will create a scene out of them once I'm less busy.

I was planning to include the ribs at first, but KillingPeople and Vig made valid points that they might not be necessary.

I will also try to increase the size of those small details a little bit; EarthQuake’s concerns are right.

Thanks once again guys

teaandcigarettes

Small update, I thickened some of the details a little bit; though I'm sure I could still improve some areas. I have split the main column into segments and tomorrow I will try to bring one of them into Zbrush.



Looking forward to your comments guys

BradMyers82

looking great dude!
I'm curious what render setup you have been using. Is that a mental ray AO overlay?

vj_box

Clean and neat!

John Mason

Amazing...Really love what you have done with it!

Could I ask how you go about making those patterns on the column?

Kevin Johnstone

Great stuff, it looked like you were pushing too much hi frequency detail through the patterns at the top and bottom at first and you sounded like you wanted that level of detail all over so I was kind of worried how this would go.

Taking a step back, leaving the moddle section as open as you have and also, a key point here is that you made those super thin horizontal extrusions into the pillar and thus demonstrated scale and construction really help to sell this piece.

I would still remove the flowery trims you have above and below the dagger like leave deco you have that transitions into the plain central section, they will be lost ingame and muddy the bold forms and transitions from the deco stuff at the base and top as they blend into the plain center.

Other than these little nitpicky suggestions this is a very strong piece, its always the bold designs that work best, well played!

teaandcigarettes

Brad: Thanks mate
I have used Scanline with Light Tracer, 3 point lights (weak orange rim-light, fill with spec disabled) and a Skylight.

I used X-Convict's material setup and did some post-work in Photoshop (level adjustment and colour balance; cool shadows and warm highlights). Pretty cool results with minimum effort, though I does take a while to render :P

vj_box: Cheers

John: Thanks! I've made the patterns using Splines with Bend and Path Deform Modifiers. Other details were poly-modelled. Hope that helps

Kevin: Thanks It's always great hearing feedback from you, especially because your work inspired me to start this piece.

Thanks for reinforcing my belief in removing some of the details; I started this piece with no clear idea in mind and experimented a lot with different kinds of ornaments, I felt that I started loosing consistency midway through. This piece took me a lot of time so far, but I have learnt a great deal about hard-surface modelling, detail distribution and design. I'm really satisfied with how it's turning out.

You have a good point about those flowery-trims, as now they seem slightly out of place. I still can reuse them later on, while making other pieces, so no effort wasted.

I'm still thinking about taking it into Zbrush to add some subtle surface detail; I don't want to destroy this piece with random noise and cracks, so I will try to be careful with sculpting.




I'm considering doing a scene with similar themed pieces. With some proper planning it might not take me too long. I'm getting more free time on my hands. Since I have put my other project on hold it would be a great chance to make a nice portfolio piece and learn UDK (finally :P).

teaandcigarettes

Phew, I have finally found some time to do some work on this piece.

I went with Kevin's suggestion and removed those thin-ornaments. I added subtle Zbrush pass to the main column; it probably could use some tweaking, but I would like to make a test bake first. In case you don't see any significant problems, I'm calling it done - at least for now Time to move to another piece

throttlekitty

Nice job!

bbob

Looking ace, can't wait to see the bake..

Joshua Stubbles

The detail frequency is much better now, looks great!
Depending on he resolution you bake at, I'd be concerned about the wavy-bits on the pole's vertical actually coming out clean.

vj_box

Just wondering,the lower section(base)of the pillar is not as details as the top part. Is that a design choice? coz ATM,it looks a little bland in the bottom,or may it could benefit from subtle weathering.

[HP]

It's good stuff indeed, but...
Do you really need those kinds of small details? I mean, imagine that prop was for a game, where your making small tinny picky littly winny details, but the end result will be a shitty 512*512 or even 256*256, all that would be lost.
I of all people understand you tho, lol. I always get carried away with small details that no one will see or even not even bake into the final normal map, but I'm a detail whore myself and beauty is in the details. On the other hand, this is a portfolio piece so fuck it, use a 2048*2048!

Just a heads up, cheers bro and keep up

teaandcigarettes

throttlekitty: Thanks Glad to hear you liked it.

bbob: Cheers, I can't wait to see how the bake turns out as well, though it might take a while

Vassago: Thanks. I was concerned about those wavy bits as well; even on the render they don't look clean. I will probably replace them with some bolts, or spheres aligned along the spline; that should work better.

vj_box: Cheers. It was more of a design choice I would say. I decided to make it less detailed in the end because typical columns are usually simple around the base.
I will add some weathering later, but I'm not sure what kind of material I want to achieve. I thought about going for bronze, but I will see what works better.

HP: Thanks mate I get what you mean about going overboard; more so I kind of wanted to push myself this time
However, I never intended going below 1024 with this piece. It will be a focal point of the scene I'm intending to create, so I think I can spare 1024 or even 2048 as you say.
With some proper UV’s (mirroring and resizing the uv’s of base and top) I could get out much more details out of it. Then again, I did no planning whatsoever, so I will see how it turns out. I doubt the first bake will be satisfying though.

cloakingturtle

Very nice piece

metalliandy

Fantastic work man!

teaandcigarettes

cloakingturtle, metalliandy: Thanks guys

I have started working on another piece which will be a part of the scene. It's a border piece which will separate the walls from the floor.



I'm looking forward to your crits guys

metalliandy

Ahh nice job man...very clean work!
Apart from maybe you dinging up the edges a little, i think its looks great.
Depending on the LP, I think you could maybe extend the tiling horizontally and match it up a little better so you can really fill the texture up.



Im stoked to see more (and that promised bake :P )

teaandcigarettes

Thanks metalliandy; why didn't I think about this before :poly124:
I will certainly look into it, but I'm concerned about the tiling.

I wanted to use rectangle UV space at first and fill the gap with a second border piece, but your solution is worth looking into.

Keep in mind however, that this piece won’t be completely flat (I shouldn't have made an orthographic render, I guess ) so UV shell will be slightly bigger. (Though the idea of baking it onto a flat plane is sooo tempting...I'm a lazy fucker).


Also, your paint over gave me an idea of realigning the bricks, so that they match the ornaments better. I will look into it later.

Oh, and bake. I WILL do it, I just don't know when

metalliandy

You should be able to get away with quite a bit of variance in the depth of the model with only a tiny amount of stretching.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2057427/Tea%2BCigs.zip

Obviously that's just a guess though, as im working from a flat image :P

System

Attractive looking pillar, well balanced detail The next piece doesn't appear to have much depth in the middle where the picture frame things are, how about making that recessed slightly and maybe plonking a low detail plaque in there or something?

teaandcigarettes

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've been thinking of adding some sort of plaque, or decorations in the middle, but I would prefer to sculpt the bricks first, and see what ornaments work better.

Thanks for the files metalliandy. I'll look into them later this evening.

I will have to avoid posting orthographic renders in the future . Here's a different one; I hope it's better at showing the overall shape of the model.

Ignore the borked edges , I quicksliced them for rendering purpose.

teaandcigarettes

Hey guys, I'm pretty much done modelling this piece; I figured it would be best to keep it simple.

Here are the results:







Looking forward to hearing your crits and suggestions

shinobix

This is really coming along well!! Glad you roughed up the edges on the wall piece a bit. Can't wait to see more!

capone

Nice work, that's all!

Oniram

looking really nice. im wondering if we could see some close up detail shots on this piece as well as the pillar.

Thegodzero

looking good! But remember most hipoly is used for bakes, and that means you should always be wary of making small details with fast changes in normal orientation as it wont translate over.

JasonLavoie

I definatly liked it without the weird middle metal pieces... but either way overall this is some really great stuff man, the detail is nice and crisp, but for the most part will read well if and when you do normals.


I love the little ornaments on the corners of the stone, really nice.

Thegodzero wrote: »

looking good! But remember most hipoly is used for bakes, and that means you should always be wary of making small details with fast changes in normal orientation as it wont translate over.

What areas are you looking at specifically? (this will help me as well)

Thegodzero

The main thing i see is the flower ornamental detail, but a good number of the other details will also not translate as well. Remember most games a one wall height(2-3 meters) is a 1024 or less in most games. That to me looks like it would be about a meter tall so the max texture height it would get is a 512, but more than likely a 256. So at that res how many pixels would make up the space of the detail? Do you have geometric detail normal changes that happen in side of those single pixels? If so then its wasted detailing time.

JasonLavoie

Hmm good point... be cool to see some quick renders at both 512 and 256 and compare (just for shits and giggles).

Thanks for the quick lesson Brandon

teaandcigarettes

shinobix: Thanks mate Really happy to hear you liked it.


Capone: Cheers!


Oniram: Thanks I will do some once I make bake them down and make final adjustments; the take so much time to render I would like to avoid this at the moment.



Thegodzero: Thanks for taking your time to type all this down. That's much appreciated. You've made some really points.

I have resided some of the details a little bit, scaled them on Y-axis and pushed them out of the surface a little bit more. I hope that this will make the change in depth between those ornaments and surface more apparent, and will result in better bakes.

Keep in mind however, that I've decided to push the limits a little bit higher, for portfolio purposes. I'm planning to go with 1024x512 for this piece. If that doesn't produce satisfying details, I will try to adjust the details, or go with metalliandy's advice and increase the tiling.

I will try to bake it to a flat plane later this evening, to see how the details translate into the normal map.

I hope this makes any sense; if there's anything I should be aware of I will be happy if you could let me know. Thanks



Jason: Thanks I have removed those metal pieces in the end. Looking at it today I have realized that they looked somewhat out of place, and messed up the scale.

metalliandy

Nice work mate!
I cant wait to see more

[HP]

Good stuff.

Question (I'm sorry if you mentioned it earlier already) did you ran it through zb?

Thegodzero

Glad i could help.
BTW when you do your bake, please make sure to put some horizontal slices in it to keep the shape of the piece. Ten extra edges should get you a nice profile to bake on to. No reason to waste all that detail to a single polygon.

teaandcigarettes

Sorry for late replies, this has been a busy week.

metalliandy: Thanks mate

HP: Cheers.
Yes, I have done a Zbrush pass, though the details are very subtle. I might have to change the intensity of my layers in Zbrush before I do
the bake.

Thegodzero: Thanks once again.
I wanted to bake it to a plane to make sure that all details will translate correctly. So no worries, I will be making proper lowpoly.


Anyway, here's the last version of the previous piece.




And two new pieces:






Thanks for comments and suggestions, guys!

DarthNater

I like how you're work is used, but not overly destroyed. Your bricks are really nice too

How did you do those little swirls in the corners of your panels? I really like those and would be interested in seeing your workflow for things like that...