Realistic Tropical Island - Aztlan -

NAIMA

Hello , as trainign , exercise , fun and whatever more I am trying to make a realistic looking tropical island by scratch in cryengine2 on the Blue Mars platform , wich use the same engine ....

I want to create all by scratch and get the same ( hopefully better ) quality of the original Crytek tropical Island Environment ....

SInce I am creating every texture , model etc from scratch I would like to use this thread to get lot of constructive feedback and sugestions , I premise I am not at all a pro or an expert so be gentle please .... but I woudl like to become one and may be you can help telling me if I could or not ...





















Here some reference photoes of what I want to try to achieve , as you can see is not just liek the crytek island but more like a "paradise " island but realistic look ....



Image References Links from Google ...

Example of Sandy shoreline
midday
http://www.emilyangelfish.com/images/maldives_20beach_1.jpg
afternoon/early evening
http://www.zastavki.com/pictures/1920x1200/2009/World_Maldives_Beach_013522_.jpg

http://leolaksi.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/maldives-beach.jpg

http://www.fabiovisentin.com/photography/photo/30/tropical-beach-wallpaper-06200.jpg

http://www.fabiovisentin.com/photography/photo/30/tropical-beach-wallpaper-06250.jpg



Example for Tree Distribution on Shore

http://www.landscapedvd.com/desktops/images/paradisestrand1280x1024.jpg

http://www.kerala-honeymoon-tour.com/gifs/beautiful_tropical_beach-1471.jpg

Example for top views

http://www.imagebookers.com/gallery/d/639-1/landscapes_desktop_wallpaper-132821tropical_island.jpg

Example for Colors and Palms and vegetation

http://5minutesguide.com/maldivestravel/maldives_island.jpg

http://mayang.com/textures/Plants/images/Trees/tropical_beach_flora_5160195.JPG

http://mayang.com/textures/Plants/images/Trees/rainforest_5151244.JPG

http://mayang.com/textures/Plants/images/Trees/palm_trees_5160264.JPG

http://thedoctorswife.co.uk/images/bigstockphoto_Tropical_Beach_1572138.jpg

Example Reference for Sand with mixed Leaves on ground

http://belizephonecard.com/freestuff/wallpaper/wpimages/scenic/beaches/lighthouse_reef_beach11.jpg

Example Reference for Algae and Seaweed dried on shore

http://belizephonecard.com/freestuff/wallpaper/wpimages/scenic/beaches/lighthouse_reef_beach21.jpg

http://www.aboututila.com/AccomInfo/Sandy-Cay/Photos/Sandy_Cay_Beach-10.jpg

Example Reference for Shoreline and water colors

http://images.nbii.gov/RFemmer/D_med-res/7%20Tortola%20-%20British%20Virgin%20Islands.jpg


Example Reference for Rock / Vegetation Clustering

http://images.paraorkut.com/img/wallpapers/1024x768/t/tropical_beach-1496.jpg

Exanmple for close sand grass type

http://www.fabiovisentin.com/photography/photo/30/tropical-island-wallpaper-06460.jpg

http://www.fabiovisentin.com/photography/photo/2/boracay_white_beach_fun_2087.JPG

How Can I reach this kind of reflection sparlking in cryengine on the wet shoreline?

http://www.fabiovisentin.com/photography/photo/30/tropical-beach-wallpaper-06194.jpg

http://www.fabiovisentin.com/photography/photo/30/tropical-beach-wallpaper-06197.jpg


EDIT:

BEACH SHORELINE

Adding A Picture that shows my current textures worked :

1 Smooth and Messy ( with small things ) comparison by close

http://img85.imageshack.us/i/37066370.jpg/


the total number of textures ( over 16 available ) tha tI want to dedicate to sand is :


1 Smooth ( wet seashorline)

2 Messy ( with small things )

3 Underwater ( ondulated by sea )

4 Messy ( clean with small higher dunes)

5 Sandy and pebbles

I was also thinking that may be are too many suggestions welcome about types....

Other Textures :

5 Sands
6 cliff rock
7 coral rock
8 grass forest
9 grass plains
10 forest leaves soil
11 river basin
12 mudd
13 coral underwater
14 estra
15 extra
16 extra

Decals

Seaweed Dried

Scattered Shells

Dried Foliage ( from trees , bushes or palms )

Scattered Sea dried elements

Shorelie Water flux carvings

Beach different messy sand

Elements to scatter on the shoreline ( physical modeled procedurally scattered )

larger shells

Random wet sea weeds ( like just arrived on shore )

random small wood dried branches

Random big Wood wind carved dried branchs

Sirdelita

Are you putting it into the engine? Or just modeling it?

Drew++

You've really done your research. This should turn out well.

As for the wet sand. I would use something fairly noisy, with good contrast to light and darks. There is some color noise too. I would assume that's from the cameras sensor. But if you're going for photo realistic, I would add the color noise.

Maybe something like this. I'll play around when I'm off work, ;D.

NAIMA

I want to create from scratch all the elements I need for making a perfect shoreline like in the pictures possibly and then put all in crytek2 engine for BlueMars platform.

Edited the main post ...

uneditablepoly

great preparation going on here, can't wait to see some work

NAIMA

A couple of screenshots about the Sand beach shore , I made 4 textures here , messy dunes messy sand with stuff , smooth and underwater ondulated , then I added a couple of decals of dirt and shells ...


What yu think?

8 in morning

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4346/sabbia1.jpg

12 in morning

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6778/sabbia2.jpg

sneakymcfox

I'd say it needs a little more saturationbut it really depends on what part of the world your aiming for.

Shogun3d

It needs some variation in saturation, where you have a darker contrast and desaturation in areas of the shoreline that are wet, to a blend in which the sand becomes softer and specular falloff greater as well as softer. Be sure to get a good angle that allows some interesting parts of your texture to catch the sunlight.

adam

Wicked first post and nice start on the sand! Can't wait to see how you tackle the water, and how those 4 textures of yours work to represent the shore line.

Subscribed!

Justin Meisse

This guy used images from google earth to create a 1:1 scale recreation of a real world island. He used to have video tutorials showing how he did it but the site hosting them went down but there might be some interesting tidbits of information in there.

NAIMA

Yeh I am using the same tutorial , but I took severallisland photoes and photoworked in PS tomake a new arcipelago with my own liking shape , I am still working on that untill I get my favoured preferencial topology ....

NAIMA

I decided to scrap the other sand textures , apart the smooth and the underwater one , I reworked the smooth , and I made a new messy moved sand for the back of the beach , here is the comparison shots what do you think? It is pretty hard to make blend in crysis the textures so that they do not look like steppy and so most of my work was to have a smoother transition between the walked sand and the smooth one .... I still plan to add again the other one with small debris to mix up .....

bringing the total number of sand textures to 4 :

smooth wet
underwater wavy
walked over
scattered debris

what do you think of the blending and the textures?

NAIMA

Hello here is an update on the grass texturess I am making , I planned a couple at least some light and some more leaves covered .....

Here is the fresh grass ....

What you think? I worked a lot on trying to eliminate any pattern repetition but its quite hard to go further in improving it without destroying much of the texture sharpness... to me at least....

here is a close and distant view I applied some displacement parallax maps ...

throttlekitty

Heya NAIMA That image messes with my eyes when scrolling.

Have you considered blending a few grass textures to break it up some? I don't think the parallax is working for you there, makes it look more like a field littered with green beans.

NAIMA

Then is good I guess, I am just right after it reproducing a good texture similar to the crysis ones...

Here I got rrid of the pattern I guess at cost of ruining a bit the crispiness of the texture by close tough ...

What you think?

Electro

You could address the tiling patterns but manually painting out the dominant details in those mipmap levels. I'm pretty sure cryengine2 would support hand created mips. That way you don't really need to butcher your closest views of the texture.

Noren

Perhaps you can build a tiling grasspatch in 3d? Shouldn't be too hard and you get heightinformation on the fly. Not sure if it would work that well with parallax anyway but perhaps with a bit of alphagrass on top.

NAIMA

Hey that idea of mip map direct editing seems interesting .... I never tried neither I knew it could be done , but for now I think I am pretty much satisfied by the last result .....

Here is a "small bush" Of course this is at maximum detail closeness possible to approach in teh editor ..... How does it look ?

I added 2048 diffuse , 1024 normal 512 specular and opacity , plus a 1024 detail bump .... I coul dprobably reduce after the dimensions of the textures , but I usually like to start big ...
How does it looks? I am trying to fgo for a similar Rainforest in Crysis , but possibly more alive , more dense and bit more bright .... looks good? Suggestions on how to improve? Couse if the texture is fine I ll make more bush shapes for that....




I want to make a tropical Rainforest , I woul dlove to model a Banyan tree once I am done with te bushes , small trees and details around ....

this is my first time making Crytek assets ... or "trying to get closer to a "pro" level content creation , since Iam just an amateur ...

michi.be

I think 2k texture size for such a small vegetation model is a "bit" to big.

NAIMA

That was more or less imitatingthe crysis bush polygons display but I think that the plant I chose may be wasn't much adapt for this shape so I remade the shape in another fashion , what you think now?

Harry

that's awesome, ive always wondered about the structure of the crysis plants mesh-wise but never been inclined to buy it and take a look

NAIMA

Ok SO far I was experimenting in creating the terrains , plants , understand the crysis asset etc , so I didn't spend much time in creating actually a island shape , I just played on a sort of sandbox.... now I was trying to make out a shape for this Crysis Ambient , For it I decided to go for a 4kmx4km area size , instead than a 2km x2km, I know that the best woul dbe a 8x8 area size but I fear that this would ask to much to the server and be too much heavy also consuming too much resources that I need instead for detailing the island , ( in terms of MB allowed to Uplad on BM servers)
SO this is the Island handpainted out ..... of course a very rough shape still but I think could be functional ......

The problem is I never did b4 Crysis levels or thelike so this is my very first time and I am not sureof the "liveability" the ambient is enough large and spacious to not feel to be like in a fish tank?

How is the layout landscape in general?

My main points where to have a sandy beach area very much tropical flat sand and palm trees , then a rainforest area with mangroves and intricated jungle , then a very beautyfull waterfall place , river basin , some cliffs on sea and some peculiar thailandese like limestone rocks in sea on the rocky area .....

What do you think of this area?

Please give me suggestions and feel free to paint over my map to give may be your ideas if you want ....

I am mainly concerned about the habitat and walkeability of the areas , I fear is may be too much mountains?

the top height is around 600 m ....

The colors mean more or less Green jungle / palm trees and broun nude cliff rocks or mixed with some vegetation ....

I need opinions on level design / ambient usability wise ...

Minos

Hey you can blur lower mip-map levels to get rid of long distance repetition patterns!

Michael Knubben

Mino: If you're going to blur them anyway, wouldn't it be an idea to just get rid of that one and use the lower one?
Depending on how strongly you blur them, ofcourse, I imagine you wouldn't blur them that much. Anyway, whatever works, I'm just +1-ing the practice of hand-editing mipmaps!

Kitteh

Those mountains are really unnaturally high.

NAIMA

Still working on them , anyway I want to justify a big waterfall .... Here is a new picture with some work on topographical aerial maps ....

Titus S

Kitteh wrote: »

Those mountains are really unnaturally high.

They're fine...

http://www.asiatravel.com/malaysia/gifs/mountains.jpg

http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/GuateBeachMountains01.jpg

http://www.lostvirtualtour.com/lost/filming_locations/waikanepier/8770d_large.jpg


At OP...

Looking forward to a couple more posts to really give a good critique.

NAIMA

Here is a new test I made on texturing cliffs and 3d textures in crysis .... I have made two texture types one for very far mountain cliffs and one for more close cliffs , the central little island here is with the second type while the mountain in the background with the first .....
what do you think ?

I have mismatched the two textures on the top of this small bay island also , I used some painting for darker areas etc.....

I am not sure of the result so I ask you experts .... I was wonderring that may be I shoudl add rocks on all around the small island to put a further distance between the people and the texture ....

Id say that I 'd call those like texture level 1 , 2 and 3 , with the first beeing the more far and the closer beeing the modeled rocks that will be in prominence view tothe players....

Opinions cryticism ? I am not at all a pro and this is my first time so be gentle .....



I would like it to look extremely realistic possibly so this is my exercise goal ..... and for that I would like all cryticism ....

NAIMA

My first , Endependant from Crysis or BM palm....

I know it sucks ... but at least I got to understand how the layout of the palms work and the materials , I count to improve soon after this one , just I would like if someone knows a may be trick to setting up plants and palms like those in 3dsmax to save time and work , after a while adding lot of transparent planes or alpha or whatevewr becomes messy and is hard a, at least for me to understand what is what and work well placing the planes with the leaves...

Also I have to add vertex painting tothe leaves , this do give the bending detail to wind etc but I was wondering if I can place it befoure on a leav and only after clone this around with the same vertex painting and eventually at the end attach them all to the main root trunk , would I loose the vertex painting? Or I should cut from the plant and readd only after but then It woudlnt make much sense no?


Any ideas or tips?

here is my first palm Wip ....




Also here is the texture work I did on the palm , I tried to imitate the crysis one but I dunno if I had success , I made them by scratch taking a leave and then modifying , distorcing etc rearranging all and coloring manually , here is a sample of the texture , what do you think ? thanks a lot for any constructive criticism ....
I realy want this palm to look like or better than the crysis ones ....

NAIMA

Here the update work on the palm ....

Harry

this is a pretty epic undertaking and it's sad that it seems to be getting such a tiny amount of attention. I'm really interested in the theoretical side of the plants' construction, you should be posting wires, i'd love to discuss

NAIMA

Thanks , here is the palm with the new bark , how's the bark?

NAIMA

Ok here is the final , I think m version of this palm .... At leastI can reuse the materials on the others now , I added speculars, normals , diffuse , transparency for Sbusurface and some detail bumps....

How it looks?

total vertexes 1200
polys 700

Harry

looks awesome naima, i honestly cant fathom why more people arent responding to this

marq4porsche

I love this project so far. That palm is looking awesome, I love the textures for it.

NAIMA

Thankyou I am just a mateurish and I wouldlike to make a Pro level work so please shot it down ....

n88tr

Have you posted this in Crymod too? I am working on some Crysis levels myself... I can't ever get the textures to look anything but blotchy. Any tips for me? Ty

NAIMA

blotchy means?

n88tr

It's not a smooth consistent texture like those grass examples... this isn't my mapping computer so I can't post images but later on I can w/o a thread hijack.

NAIMA

Ah you mean the transitions between a texture custom and the other that doessn'0t blend so well like the crysis ones?

I have managed to blend my custom textures better by working them really " A LOT " in the tuning the similar tone color of the texture among imilars like sands and then work a lot on the colors and the hardness and the lightning of the texture setting ingame , also adding a detail or a normal sometimes may resultin steppy look , as well as having a low resolution map , but I 'd say that almoust 90% of the work is how is made the texture....


Here another update I made now a young palm ...

NAIMA

I tried to make a small work with the Voxels ... but I have a weird problem , whenever I make a voxel object out of the terrain it happens that the terrain and the voxel have a zflickering , like if I cansee both under ... or other times the voxel looses the texturring done on it ,plus if I make a hole inside it I can't enter with the camera inside .... Any idea why that's happening?

3DRyan

Hmmmm. This may just be the angle, but the wood on the boat looks a bit warped for my tastes. The trunk on the tree looks a bit irregularly shaped as well. Seems like the texture on it is a bit stretched too. Just iron out some of the details, and this can be a good portfolio piece.

NAIMA

Some new Bushes ...

Dino

The tree base, palm fronds and the trunk look good, but placing seed pods would give a greater realistic feel. ( http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/coco-frt.htm ) top and second pictures. :thumbup:

NAIMA wrote: »

Ok here is the final , I think m version of this palm .... At leastI can reuse the materials on the others now , I added speculars, normals , diffuse , transparency for Sbusurface and some detail bumps....

How it looks?

total vertexes 1200
polys 700

NAIMA

Ok now I decided to complete all the whole set of textures of the Island , filling it up to 16 , I guess this is the limit right? I hope they will be enough ...

here is the "hard" , for me , Work at making blendeable and smooth transitional textures , what do you think of them ( in blending and transition and eventually the look of them ? )



All textures are custom made .

NAIMA

Ok today not really a problem but a request of open opinions ....


This is the grass I have been making the last days , I must say that this , altough it may be seeming easy , is what really gived me the biggest problems to get a proper look , I remade textures by scratch at least five or more times , I even downloaded a pay site a texture to check how is done , and finally I decided to go for a personal drawed solution , like I did for the palms ... the problem is that ingame the grass just looks desaturated , light and looses much of the colors , also this coude I add the get color by the texture and then I adjoust the texture blending to 0.5 , wich appears to be the minimum in the settings of the material ... I then copied all settings by crysis , but I still get a difference , in Crysis the textures look more colored and seems that the texture passes more thorught the color filter of the game , while mine altough is very much more saturated , and at Traits I can say it looks better than the crysis texture , it doesn't get out so realistic , or may be I am just pretending to make it too much similar to the crysis grass that I am loosing the focus on mine? May be mine looks enough good but just different?

I have no idea but its the thing that took me the most of the time so far now and I still not yet sure if it looks good or not and if there is a way to improve it ... may be the problem is the way of the texture blending alpha threshold or what?

Anyway enough talking now here is the picture so you can tell me ....

on left there is one single patch placed , on right there are like 5 patches placed in similar place to increase density ....

the informations ofr the model are:

Polys: 1280
Vertices:2008
Textures:1024x1024 tif made by scratch hand drawed nad a bit of pictures

michi.be

From this low angle it looks a bit desaturated but this can be easily adjusted in Sandbox.

I think with some more mixed up ground plants and colors it will look better. Add some random heightness to the gras blades too.

They look very nice from a distant position I guess.

NAIMA

I tried that , to increase saturation etc , but in PS is there a way to make it in Sandbox too? in the settings I used a gray desat color over it so that the grass can be placed almoust on any texrture , it gets the color from the color layer but if I saturate too much then the grass under would look weird , I coied same setting colors in crysis but for one reason or another I dont knwo it doesnt look the same much ....

mikezoo

I think your grass looks great. It does not though, seem all that realistic though, sorta stylized. Perhaps find some reference images to overlay?

Another suggestion or actually more of a question; does this grass texture have a normal map? Adding a normal map/ spec/ subsurface/bump might really help sell it better. If you don't have one already! Your other foliage looks really beautiful.
I wouldn't try to match 100% the crysis look/style. Make it your own and you might come out with a stronger pace than before!

NAIMA

actually the grass don't have anything else than a diffuse , I am not sure if it would look better with normals or bumps , I may try , I just saw thatthe crysis one doesn't have...

mikezoo

well from reading your posts below, you do have other maps imputed into your other foliage, yeah? And those assets are looking pretty slick. I would mimick whats allready working good. I think with a good spec/nrm the grass would look alot different than it is now.