WIP - Modern Enviroment Buildings & Props

Sinqnew

Hello everybody! This would be my first sort of posting on here, I'm posting a few of my enviroment models that I have been working on in my enviroment modelling classes. The class itself is finished , but I've been working on a few more buildings and showing them on here. The theme was to go with a downtown grundgy downtown Vancouver theme, and to go with low poly modelling styles.

We had to have two buildings to hand in for the class, and I also finished another one on the side. I'll post up my props for feedback too, once I finish doing some proper renders for them to show the UV, texture map and wireframe for the props as well.

Anyhow, here's some of the buildings

This was the first assignment, we were given a more strict routine with it and told not to do anything too fancy for the modelling of the building itself, instead work on doing a personalized texture for it.



This was our second assignment, given a bit more freedom for design, I wanted to do a grundgy looking factory or warehouse of some sort, so I went with a miscelaneous designed factory I sketched out on some thumbnails and went with one. I wish I had a bit more time to work on the sincorp factory sign itself in the texture to make it a bit better.



This was another building I decided to do after the class was finished, hopefully to build up slowly my own library base of buildings so I can use them to put in for a backgrond for some sort of enviroment for my portoflio.

adam

What sort of video game would you picture these buildings in?

For Xbox 360, PS3, and PC they're too low poly for even an RTS, unfortunately. I do think, though, that this was a good exercise in texture setup for modular creation (good work) but right now they're so low detailed that I can't see them being used.

Are you using 3DS Max or Maya? Your renders are blurry.

Sinqnew

Thank you, Um not too sure when it came to directing it for a specific system or game. I really didnt like the overall fact we had to go with such a massivly low poly count, but I think I understood the main focus on it all, which was to focus on the textures and not the model too much. I actually really liked the thought of working in film, but I wouldent mind the video game industry either. I use Maya , the renders I put on HD 1080. I dont see them perhaps being used either, though I think they will make good background buildings because of their low poly nature, not the focus of the enviroment, but something to toss in the distance to spruce up the background. I'm thinking the teacher wanted us to go with a sort of GTA sort of feel to it perhaps, grundgy modern sort of a tone.

LlamaJuice

Even as low poly as they are you could have spent polies better. The left side of your first building for example, or how you have the windows connected in it. If it's going into a game the wireframe doesn't need to be pretty, it just needs to hold the shape. (especially if it's just a static mesh) I understand that you did that grid style wire so that you could have some clever UVs right? I'd look into cleaning up some of the spots where you're not really using the verts for either UV breakup, or shape breakup.

The signs that you've put on your buildings don't feel like signs as much as they feel like flat colors with text on them. I'd look at some actual signs and see how they use their space.

Goat Justice

Agreed about the signs. You'll definitely need something more than just black (Impact?) font especially if you want it to read from a distance. Since you're trying to get practice modeling, it might not be worth your time now. Before using them in a portfolio grade project, though, take some time to make real signs.

Also, the towers on the factory are not smoothed. Intentional?

Sinqnew

Thank you for the tips on the signs! I did want to make them a seperate mesh to place onto the building itself for some instances to make it feel less a part of the texture and a actual sign, though the teacher seemed vivid on making it a part of the texture.

The towers on the factory there were a bit of a muckup on my part! I went in and fixed the towers by smoothing them, but the render itself seems a bit outdated and need to fix that.

Hopefully after this class, I want to be focusing on working on more dynamic, higher poly buildings than the blockish square buildings. For the being smart with UV space, thats exactly why he did want us to do it like that! I think the overall focus was 90% on textures and UVs for that class, we didnt really get to do anything too fancy for models, we had to follow a pretty formula style.

Jeremy Lindstrom

clickie enviro wiki thread in sig. tonssssss of info on enviro modeling..

Here's the thread of a bunch of info I collected on my journey to job..

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=53002

Sinqnew

Oh totally perfect, its nice to get a bit of a library of information besides the teachers styles to work with. This info is much more helpful, the school I am at caters and focuses towards the character modellers, and only give one enviroment class and I am already finished it. So its good to see some good references and tutorials there to browse through and reference from.