Subway Hub (source engine)

MikeF

Alright, been working on this long enough and its time for some crits

This is the first time i've used the source engine, all i wanted to accomplish was a nice looking mini scene for my portfolio,

here's the work in progress on the basic layout:









And here are the latest shots from where i left off tonight:







And just for fun i started messing with some ground fog on the last compile:




100% custom content save a couple hl2 railings that will be replaced this week.

C&C much apreciated!

ZacD

The plant things don't look very organic.

A-Train

SasoChicken wrote: »

Just wondering- why are there random fungus plant things in a subway?

Just wondering. Why not?

griffinax

Nice work, one thing I notice right now is, a few portions look comparatively more used up and worn out than the others which are quite clean esp. the ceiling.. just that

teaandcigarettes

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound like an ass, but wouldn't it be better to create the following scene inside UDK instead? Seems like a better choice for a portfolio.

Other than that, cool idea; although I don't know if those shrooms fit this kind of environment.

LlamaJuice

It's lookin alright, the giant white textures, and the giant orange textures look like they're severe WIP textures, because they don't look like anything other than color. Try adding some stuff to them to make them look like a specific material rather than just orange with white lines, or white with grime lines. The texture on your round pillar looks rather blah as well. I'd spend some time sprucing those up.

The light coming out of the giant fungus thing in the middle looks strange. I'd suggest playing with "fungus smoke" haha. Some yellowish fog similar to how Bungie did it in their swamp levels in Halo 2.



I'd look into adding some floating dark particles in there too for a little bit of fun :P

Right now the piece as a whole looks too clean, as if this fungus in here was just dropped in, rather than growing there. Add some grimy stuff in there around the bases of those plants to try to ground them more in the world.

Other than that... why are you using Source for a portfolio asset? As mentioned before the UDK would serve better for portfolio purposes in terms of desirability and you could make your stuff look tons better in UDK than in Source.

At any rate, carry on sir.

MikeF

Thanks guys, good crits

SasoChicken: Should have added more background around the concept. Old subway partially renovated, abandoned mid construction, alien growth takes over

LlamaJuice: Good stuff here thanks. I'l try and get a better sense of material on the white, I was going for a plastic pannel look, maybe yellowing with age would help? Unfortunately most of the detail will have to come through in the diffuse, source doesnt really do specular highlights easily, its more or less working around cube maps

And as for doing it in source as apposed to udk, I had started this prior to its release and i figured some ingame work spanning across a few different generations of engines would be a good thing to show in a portfolio since not all studios are using the latest and greatest. (or am i horribly off here and should i scrap it for udk?)

LlamaJuice

Your idea of using several engines is good, but the source engine probably isn't the best choice of engine because of how exclusive it is.

That being said though, do you have any other assets for your portfolio that are in engines other than the Source engine? Or is this the beginning of your portfolio? At any rate any future projects I'd hop into a more popular/recent engine to showcase your skills. It's all about making your stuff look great, use whatever you can to do it.

MikeF

i've got a few different pieces from low poly handheld in unity to highpoly fancy shaders in udk, so i'm thinking that should be a good assortment. Just not quite ready to put those up for crits

MikeF

alright, made a few adjustments to the textures, and environmental effects, Gonna work on blending the fungus better now





Any better?

System

Did you a paintover...




It looks like you have too many different material types so it's too busy for the eye and also too saturated. The lighting is strange, orange and blue looks cool but think about where the light is coming from, those windows are the key

edit: jesus, you posted exactly the same time i did lol

myles

To be honest, the worst problem is that it is not clear as a subway, it feels more like some sort of reception or large hallway. I think it is imperative that you have more scope on the area, perhaps adding a track or platform, stairs leading down to the hub, kiosks, signs ect.

Deathead

myles wrote: »

To be honest, the worst problem is that it is not clear as a subway, it feels more like some sort of reception or large hallway. I think it is imperative that you have more scope on the area, perhaps adding a track or platform, stairs leading down to the hub, kiosks, signs ect.

I think that there is already stairs going down to the tracks as if you look in the 5th pic it shows a stairway, most likely down to the tracks, I agree however as it doesn't seem subway like subways are usually plastered with advertising, like movie posters etc. I like the style it seems quite modern but a bit futuristic, so I kinda get a quite HL2 feel to it, but I agree with what has been said before aswell, with the fungus.