im so glad you are changing the style of your texturing!
i was loving it even with the couple of assets youd already done and then i saw the realistic texturing and was like Oh nooooo!
im looking forward to what you come up with!
I think the borderlands style would fit this perfectly!
Does anyone have any good shots or know of anyone that worked on borderlands that has some texture sheets or high res. shots of the textures? I don't own the game and the internet doesnt have very good screen grabs of texture to get a good overall style. The best I have to work with at the moment is TF2
I went back and redid the composition and a few of the trees to make them fit the style I am trying to go for. I also added some plants and some planes on the water for lily pads (not really noticeable since they are coplanar to the water.)
Next I just need to finalize the lightmap sets and get it into Unreal to set up the lighting.
Fantasy dreamy. Keep in mind that is not the lighting in the above render... its just ambient occlusion. The main point of this update is to get a feel for the composition and addition of the tree in the foreground and back.
Yeah I did a major overall in the posts after that with some suggestions from people. It was going too far from the original style I had. So I changed it.
New update.. Not really sure how I am going to do the background still. Any suggestions would be nice. I may end up layering different backcrops to get some depth.
i would go for something like this picture. i think you should make the background less detailed because the eye should be focused in the great foreground geometry:
I think it would look awesome if it was done similar to the image above with some nice hand painted texture like Torchlight. Great anyways! I love the design.
You need to use some soft shapes to break the hard shillouettes of the model. Also the tree should be a center point with its tecturing, i can see really sharp looking liken and moss growing on the top side, with alphad go hanging off the bottom of it breaking shillouettes.
For the bg, i would love to see just some simple fog and leafy shapes. Also if you can make dappled lighting from light shining through leaves that would make a huge difference.
No it's not the UDK.. too many issues with lighting. And yes the tree is not done. I still haven't touched texturing. Only the first props are completely done.
looks nice so far. i think the lighting works, but it is neutral lighting.(no mood either way) I would also add some more loops to the main tree, to make a better silhouette
the lighting is coming along,
but dont be hestitate to render and post some unlit mesh with texture, without fog and dof here.
so you can focus on color and texture little bit more.
^^
looks nice so far. i think the lighting works, but it is neutral lighting.(no mood either way) I would also add some more loops to the main tree, to make a better silhouette
Well I had that yellowish lighting.. but I turned most of the color off when I added the background I have now because it just doesnt fit. I would really like to incorporate a more saturated hue.. whether it be warm or cool... but I'm not sure if it will work with the fog.
So I didn't get much time to work on it tonight, but I thought I would mess with some of the plants. (ferns, lilypads, ivy) And the more I test rendered I started to see some possibilities opening up with the rich saturations of the greens. I really liked how they sort of "livened" up the more earthy tones in the scene so I thought to myself.. maybe I should add more. Since this idea with the greens... I also figured I could probably introduce some more dramatically colored lighting(similar in saturation to the plants)
Great Idea, and it is coming along nice so far!
I think your main tree there looks a bit too smooth and much less detailed than the very nicely done shack. At least add some more texture detail.
i second the hand painted textures choice especially for a scene like this one!
hand painted doesn't mean insane saturation or happy look necessarily.
The artifacts are only from low quality depth of field to save time.. they wont exist in the final thing. I'll play around more tonight and add some more plants and see where it goes from there.
I was able to texture some more tonight. There is currently a big issue with the way the transparency maps are processed over the top of the background fog... hence the alpha issue with the hanging moss, I'm asking around some technical forums to see if I can find a solution.
This gets better and better with each update. Don't abandon the idea of making a full piece as you look like you can definitely pull it off. It'd be a waste of talent to put this on a pedestal and call it done.
I really like it. Great modeling, some nice textures, good stuff all around, nice work! :thumbup:
Crits:
- The textures on the trees look a little photo sourced while other elements seem to be a bit more painterly? They could use some deeper details, they read kind of flat.
- I think you could cap off the scene by creating the illusion of a canopy layer above your swamp. It would mostly be implied by what you put in the distant background and the lighting. You could put a few swampy type planes in the background to really close in the scene and focus on the shack.
- The ambient light is kind of washing out the scene, you could turn it down a bit and focus some lights on the shack, maybe even putting projectors in the lights to break up the light.
- With the background so bare the silhouette of the trees read as pretty bare. Even if its just some blobby swamp like shapes on planes, I think it will help.
Putting something solid behind the moss planes might help the opacity blending with the fog.
Paintover for the fuckwin. The problem i have right now is that nothing is really popping. I can see what the focal point is (of course) and the model and style is awesome... but there's no... POP!
Don't really have any suggestions though so this was a useless post
(Maybe it's the textures. Maybe the colors need to be more varied and stronger)
In this kind of environment, wouldn't hurt to see some growth and foliage creeping on the bait shop so that it doesn't look out of place. When touching up fog, maybe try a yellowish color to give it that swamp gas look.
In this kind of environment, wouldn't hurt to see some growth and foliage creeping on the bait shop so that it doesn't look out of place. When touching up fog, maybe try a yellowish color to give it that swamp gas look.
I really do like that paintover... and ultimately thats what I was going for.. hence those images from the Frog Princess. But I'm in limbo right now. I've got a ton of people saying do that foggy, silhouette of the trees and leave it at that (which I just now tweaked to my liking) But the first idea I had was to do that whole (jungle-esque, plant inhabited background like the post I made 2-3 images back.) Thanks for all of the ideas
I am going to put vines and stuff on the shack... I just haven't gotten to it yet. I'm trying to think technically what the easiest way to create them would be without having to extrude along splines everytime. Once I feel settled with that I will add them.
I'm in a bit of a brain fart right now... I have the ideas and the stuff is there I just can't make them click completely yet.
So Vig... how about I finish texturing the boat and the doors/windows and you repaint over it like you did... and then we'll call it done In all honesty that paintover is really kickass for the style, but I don't forsee me getting that in the 3d version... so you make me a sad panda
I've been stalking this thread for a bit, and its good work.
I think you could push out something close to what Vig did in the po, just needs some tweaking. I mean the biggest changes that he did at a quick comparison is lighting contrast and throw in some additional interest on the ground plane with rock/shell like textures, and you could do that with a deco layer, or a material blend.
As far as the lighting I think if you dropped the overall lighting to about 1/2 of what it is now with a very subtle light blue tint, and threw in a nice mid / mid-high intensity goldish/yellow spot aimed in the same direction of your god rays, that'd really help make the lighting pop and give you the vig-po like results.
Wouldn't take long to toy with the lighting and if it doesn't work, don't save :poly136:
alternatively, you could drop the lighting a little past 1/2 but a low-middle to mid intensity spot, drop the god rays down about 30% in strength and light up the lamp you've got hanging for to add some "look at me" to the cabin.
I really like this piece and where it is headed, got work first thing. My only coments would be to add more GREEEN. right now it feels a little lifeless and dull but from the image I saw up there with green in the background I thought that it brought the composition together nicely. and add more trees to the background, or other kinds of bushes or vines. I think that will just bring this scene to life!
So Vig... how about I finish texturing the boat and the doors/windows and you repaint over it like you did... and then we'll call it done In all honesty that paintover is really kickass for the style, but I don't forsee me getting that in the 3d version... so you make me a sad panda
Meh *shrug*
Any monkey with a box of crayons can do what I did. Heh, in fact I'm pretty sure I used a crayon brush for some of it. Ha!
I don't have the original file so I recreated it (a little more haphazardly this time). Originally I skipped down to making the layer mask and went from there. But I wanted this to cover a bit more of making a background plate... kind of... hopefully...
You could do something similar on a cylinder or sky dome. Probably do a few planes like you originally thought. Gently washing them out as they get farther away from the camera.
I'm in no way a master painter so there are probably better ways to do this.
Some of the highlight tweaks I added, you can do with vertex paint in UDK. But I think it will make the biggest impact if you draw up a blobby swampy panorama.
I've also been stalking this thread for a bit so I figured I would give you my two cents.
1. The house is supposed to be the center piece but at the moment it feels a bit washed out because of so many similar tones. I would suggest following the paint over and having a darker background. An easy way to do that is make a tree and clone it over. Swamps have a large variety of trees. A good trick would be to use the larger tree trunk to the left of the house with Tupelo leaves. The tupelo is a very common swap tree and has bark similar to a pine. Swamp cottonwood is another choice. It may be a better choice since the leaves bunch together a little better and help to create an actual canopy.
In all honesty, the detail doesn't need to be too high since it's a background item. The trick is to use them in the background and make sure your spot light doesn't hit the back of the house, which is what is giving Vig's po so much life.
Tupelo
leaf reference
bark reference.
or maybe swamp cottonwood
2. One thing that bugged me from the start and may just be a personal thing is the boat. The overall composition of the shot is solid except for the boat... I would recommend turning it about 30 degrees to it's left and moving it a little closer to the water(to where the back is just barely touching the water). By doing this and leaving the buoy in the same place, it will help direct the viewer to the center piece which is, after all, the Bait Shop.
*Tips and tricks?* ignore this if you're doing multiple shots.
You can place a bunch of them in the background of your scene and hide the foreground and some midground objects(including the baitshop) and render out a background image. Then, just slap it on a plane and win(helps a lot for retouching the shot in photoshop also). You essentially create a 3d version of Vig's paintover
I really like what you have going, but to me nothing feels like it was popping. I went over the paintover that Vig did, and I ended up converting it to greyscale. I noticed that your scene was mostly in one tone, so I created a new layer and just started painting over. Here's what I came up with.
I ended up changing where your lightsource is. I felt it would be more dynamic having it come in from the left corner. Let me know what you think. Keep it up!
I really like what you have going, but to me nothing feels like it was popping. I went over the paintover that Vig did, and I ended up converting it to greyscale. I noticed that your scene was mostly in one tone, so I created a new layer and just started painting over. Here's what I came up with.
I ended up changing where your lightsource is. I felt it would be more dynamic having it come in from the left corner. Let me know what you think. Keep it up!
My lightsource is actually coming from the top left. Vig has just been putting it in the center in his paintovers. I really like that black and white version... who needs color.. we'll go all artsy with this one and make it all black and white!
I'd hate to see you stop so close of having an excellent piece here.. the difference between an ok piece and a excellent piece is about 10% more work.
I'm really digging vig's crit.. don't be afraid to also think about different atmosphere and times of day.. try a night time too would pop alot better.
Didn't really have the patience to mess with the background tonight but I went ahead and added vines to the house/tree and moved the boat 30degrees'ish to the left as well as adjusting the lighting to add a bit more contrast.
I actually got that feeling too the more I added... it's funny how something starts out with one intention and ends up going 40 different aesthetic directions lol.
- Added more vines
- Texture pass on everything but the door
- Tweaked the lighting some more
- Added more little shrubs/plants
- Changed the color on the lamp / chimney
Replies
Does anyone have any good shots or know of anyone that worked on borderlands that has some texture sheets or high res. shots of the textures? I don't own the game and the internet doesnt have very good screen grabs of texture to get a good overall style. The best I have to work with at the moment is TF2
Next I just need to finalize the lightmap sets and get it into Unreal to set up the lighting.
Keep it up!
You need to use some soft shapes to break the hard shillouettes of the model. Also the tree should be a center point with its tecturing, i can see really sharp looking liken and moss growing on the top side, with alphad go hanging off the bottom of it breaking shillouettes.
For the bg, i would love to see just some simple fog and leafy shapes. Also if you can make dappled lighting from light shining through leaves that would make a huge difference.
the tree texture looks too scale-y.
but dont be hestitate to render and post some unlit mesh with texture, without fog and dof here.
so you can focus on color and texture little bit more.
^^
Well I had that yellowish lighting.. but I turned most of the color off when I added the background I have now because it just doesnt fit. I would really like to incorporate a more saturated hue.. whether it be warm or cool... but I'm not sure if it will work with the fog.
I wanted to see what you guys thought:
I think your main tree there looks a bit too smooth and much less detailed than the very nicely done shack. At least add some more texture detail.
i second the hand painted textures choice especially for a scene like this one!
hand painted doesn't mean insane saturation or happy look necessarily.
I think you should really pay attention to that background ref posted and make the bottoms of the far tree trunks fade into fog.
It's a cool look, makes it murky, and would also hide the hard line between models and backdrop.
Crits:
- The textures on the trees look a little photo sourced while other elements seem to be a bit more painterly? They could use some deeper details, they read kind of flat.
- I think you could cap off the scene by creating the illusion of a canopy layer above your swamp. It would mostly be implied by what you put in the distant background and the lighting. You could put a few swampy type planes in the background to really close in the scene and focus on the shack.
- The ambient light is kind of washing out the scene, you could turn it down a bit and focus some lights on the shack, maybe even putting projectors in the lights to break up the light.
- With the background so bare the silhouette of the trees read as pretty bare. Even if its just some blobby swamp like shapes on planes, I think it will help.
Putting something solid behind the moss planes might help the opacity blending with the fog.
Paint Over:
Don't really have any suggestions though so this was a useless post
(Maybe it's the textures. Maybe the colors need to be more varied and stronger)
Really love the scene so far
I really do like that paintover... and ultimately thats what I was going for.. hence those images from the Frog Princess. But I'm in limbo right now. I've got a ton of people saying do that foggy, silhouette of the trees and leave it at that (which I just now tweaked to my liking) But the first idea I had was to do that whole (jungle-esque, plant inhabited background like the post I made 2-3 images back.) Thanks for all of the ideas
I am going to put vines and stuff on the shack... I just haven't gotten to it yet. I'm trying to think technically what the easiest way to create them would be without having to extrude along splines everytime. Once I feel settled with that I will add them.
I'm in a bit of a brain fart right now... I have the ideas and the stuff is there I just can't make them click completely yet.
So Vig... how about I finish texturing the boat and the doors/windows and you repaint over it like you did... and then we'll call it done
I think you could push out something close to what Vig did in the po, just needs some tweaking. I mean the biggest changes that he did at a quick comparison is lighting contrast and throw in some additional interest on the ground plane with rock/shell like textures, and you could do that with a deco layer, or a material blend.
As far as the lighting I think if you dropped the overall lighting to about 1/2 of what it is now with a very subtle light blue tint, and threw in a nice mid / mid-high intensity goldish/yellow spot aimed in the same direction of your god rays, that'd really help make the lighting pop and give you the vig-po like results.
Wouldn't take long to toy with the lighting and if it doesn't work, don't save :poly136:
alternatively, you could drop the lighting a little past 1/2 but a low-middle to mid intensity spot, drop the god rays down about 30% in strength and light up the lamp you've got hanging for to add some "look at me" to the cabin.
/wall of text
(oh and again, nice work :thumbup:)
This is all I could comprehend. :P
I can see Circarpousian swamp flies buzzing around!
Any monkey with a box of crayons can do what I did. Heh, in fact I'm pretty sure I used a crayon brush for some of it. Ha!
I don't have the original file so I recreated it (a little more haphazardly this time). Originally I skipped down to making the layer mask and went from there. But I wanted this to cover a bit more of making a background plate... kind of... hopefully...
You could do something similar on a cylinder or sky dome. Probably do a few planes like you originally thought. Gently washing them out as they get farther away from the camera.
I'm in no way a master painter so there are probably better ways to do this.
Some of the highlight tweaks I added, you can do with vertex paint in UDK. But I think it will make the biggest impact if you draw up a blobby swampy panorama.
1. The house is supposed to be the center piece but at the moment it feels a bit washed out because of so many similar tones. I would suggest following the paint over and having a darker background. An easy way to do that is make a tree and clone it over. Swamps have a large variety of trees. A good trick would be to use the larger tree trunk to the left of the house with Tupelo leaves. The tupelo is a very common swap tree and has bark similar to a pine. Swamp cottonwood is another choice. It may be a better choice since the leaves bunch together a little better and help to create an actual canopy.
In all honesty, the detail doesn't need to be too high since it's a background item. The trick is to use them in the background and make sure your spot light doesn't hit the back of the house, which is what is giving Vig's po so much life.
Tupelo
leaf reference
bark reference.
or maybe swamp cottonwood
2. One thing that bugged me from the start and may just be a personal thing is the boat. The overall composition of the shot is solid except for the boat... I would recommend turning it about 30 degrees to it's left and moving it a little closer to the water(to where the back is just barely touching the water). By doing this and leaving the buoy in the same place, it will help direct the viewer to the center piece which is, after all, the Bait Shop.
*Tips and tricks?* ignore this if you're doing multiple shots.
You can place a bunch of them in the background of your scene and hide the foreground and some midground objects(including the baitshop) and render out a background image. Then, just slap it on a plane and win(helps a lot for retouching the shot in photoshop also). You essentially create a 3d version of Vig's paintover
I really like what you have going, but to me nothing feels like it was popping. I went over the paintover that Vig did, and I ended up converting it to greyscale. I noticed that your scene was mostly in one tone, so I created a new layer and just started painting over. Here's what I came up with.
I ended up changing where your lightsource is. I felt it would be more dynamic having it come in from the left corner. Let me know what you think. Keep it up!
My lightsource is actually coming from the top left. Vig has just been putting it in the center in his paintovers. I really like that black and white version... who needs color.. we'll go all artsy with this one and make it all black and white!
I'm really digging vig's crit.. don't be afraid to also think about different atmosphere and times of day.. try a night time too would pop alot better.
here's my take..
I had a normal on it... and took it off because its calm water.. there's no ripples
I actually got that feeling too the more I added... it's funny how something starts out with one intention and ends up going 40 different aesthetic directions lol.
- Added more vines
- Texture pass on everything but the door
- Tweaked the lighting some more
- Added more little shrubs/plants
- Changed the color on the lamp / chimney