Modular Chinese Art Deco

jacob07777

Hey guys, so this is my first attempt and making a building out of a certain amount of modular chunks. Hopefully this will allow me to build multiple buildings out of these few pieces I've made. Anyways I got most everything working correctly, but when I go to mirror the chunks in UDK they seem to turn a greyish color. Here are some screens, any suggestions?


Here are my max renders for what the building is supposed to look like





Then this is the In-game screenshot that I took in UDK




You can see those two bottoms pieces changing colors slightly and the top left pieces, maybe a few of the other guys, but I couldn't figure it out. Maybe I just have to import a right and a left modular piece for it?

A.Kincade

Turned out really nice Jacob. That's weird its changing color. Yeah maybe try bringing in the right and left side together and see if it still does it. The max renders looked pretty legit so hopefully you can figure it out. Good work man.

LlamaJuice

You're mirroring them in the UDK?

I've had problems with that where it looks like it reverses my normal map as well... so I'd assume that it's better to just make a separate static for it... but that's my take on it.

Someone else might be able to tell ye better though.

Anyhow, looking good so far :P

SnarG

Mirroring a static mesh in UE2 used to flip the mesh normals. I'm not sure if this is still the case with UE3 but there's a good chance that it is.

This looks damn cool btw; always love a bit of deco architecture.

3DLee

This is a really unique piece, I love the style! My only suggestion would be maybe add some wear decals. And did the texture come out more yellow than it should have in-game?

jacob07777

Thanks a lot guys. Yeah I think I might just end up re-importing the left/right side as separate pieces. The whole in-game shot is just f'd up lol. I still got a bit of work to fix up on this thing for sure. I haven't even made the spec for this yet so think of this as a rough draft. I'll prolly go back and rework some of the tiling too, cuz if you look close you can see some of the seems i left.

3DLee - That's a good idea, I'm prolly gonna add in a couple poster decals also. Place em around the doors on the bottom to make em look more unique n such, i'll update when I got more

Shogun3d

Hey Jacob, what kind of texture organization and size are you using? Tileables?

jacob07777

Yeah the whole building wall is a tileable texture, most of the windows have unique UV's with a normal/ao bake on em. The billboards are unique and those balcony's all have a tileable texture on em. The textures range from like 256 on the smaller stuff to 1024 on some of the larger windows n doors.

SnarG

Looking at this again and one thing I would like to see is a rounding of the corners on the central balconies; the angular look there breaks the flow across the front of the building for me.

Also, the flat central panel above the balconies is crying out for some sort of embossed or inlaid detail. Something floral or sunburst to suit the art deco theme.

Just throwing some suggestions into the mixing pot.

roosterMAP

building looks lonely. also, ground way too uneven. but u know what already.

Shogun3d

jacob07777 wrote: »

Yeah the whole building wall is a tileable texture, most of the windows have unique UV's with a normal/ao bake on em. The billboards are unique and those balcony's all have a tileable texture on em. The textures range from like 256 on the smaller stuff to 1024 on some of the larger windows n doors.

Good stuff. The architecture has good flow, even though it's not coming off as really deco to me, its subtle. Almost too subtle but it works. As far as materials, I recommend a decal sheet for grunge, damage and dirt, perhaps an atlas that covers your entire structure.