[UDK Environment] - Dharavi slum WIP
polycounter lvl 15
Hello vertex translaters
I'm currently working on a small environment inspired by the Dharavi slum in Mumbai (No, sadly I haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire nor read the book yet, but I have read the awesome book Shantaram) and I saw this as a great opportunity to finally learn the Unreal Engine 3 while working on an interesting looking environment.
I haven't gotten really far yet, finished a concept, roughly blocked in the buildings in Maya, watched 3D Buzz's UDK interface tutorials and read up on epicgames UDK docs. The work to be done includes modeling and texturing of the environment and as many props I can get in there until deadline in april (school project).
I am looking for any kind of tips, feedback and ideas you can think of when it comes to environment work and UDK, I want to learn just as much as I possibly can.
Concept:
and some references:
I'm currently working on a small environment inspired by the Dharavi slum in Mumbai (No, sadly I haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire nor read the book yet, but I have read the awesome book Shantaram) and I saw this as a great opportunity to finally learn the Unreal Engine 3 while working on an interesting looking environment.
I haven't gotten really far yet, finished a concept, roughly blocked in the buildings in Maya, watched 3D Buzz's UDK interface tutorials and read up on epicgames UDK docs. The work to be done includes modeling and texturing of the environment and as many props I can get in there until deadline in april (school project).
I am looking for any kind of tips, feedback and ideas you can think of when it comes to environment work and UDK, I want to learn just as much as I possibly can.
Concept:
and some references:
Replies
What are you planning to do with the bottom right of the composition? another mass of structures facing the main one? or street? or support structure for the bridge thingy? it's looking a bit empty over there right now.
Get your blockout/layout scene into UDK as soon as possible.
You might want to check out adam's Mod Facade Challenge thread (or the condensed version) for good tips, guidelines, and workflow ideas that might work well for your project.
Unfortunately due to time constrains I had to severely cut back on objects in this project, we're starting 4 new courses soon and weeks will be packed. But these few buildings should def be finished! Still to add:
More wooden boards and corrugated metal paneling all over. More tarps. A lot of props.
Does anyone btw happen to know how UDK handels instanced geometry? Since my wooden boards and corrugated metals have 3 dif versions each, exporting them already placed in Maya Im sure wont work the same way.
So here's the update:
@Ben Apuna: Oh so that's why you said that, I'm going that route for sure, thanks
@Mistry: Have to love all the textures from those areas, and the shacks! Beautiful.
@paulsvoboda: Im jealous. I def would like to go there, India in general, Sri Lanka too for that matter.
Update!
Finished modeling some props to be placed around the environment. Ive made a list of about 2 times as many props, but time constrains time constraints (same word btw?)
These are the once I deemed most important/fun to do.
About 80% UV'd so far, I'm not sure how to approach texturing, I'm thinking of ripping Adam's strategy, going with one 2048x2048 map with the bottom half separated in half for two horizontal tileble building textures and the rest of the space for the props. Thoughts on that?
C&C/general tips still wanted!
Keep your tiling textures separate from your non-tiling ones. So if I understand you correctly, two 2048 x 512s for the building textures and one 2048 x 1024 for the props. It should work fine that way, though I'd say you can use larger textures if you want/need to.
I thought about normal mapping them, but I did that on another project a while ago and the result did not come out that good, might have been to poor normal mapping skills or low res though. I think Ill give it a try.
Im a little puzzled which way to go with my textures right now, this is how I first imagined it:
Im becoming more and more unsure that the props area will be sufficient? Besides you told me to keep them separated from the tileble textures, why is that btw?
Right now I'm thinking of changing to 2048x2048 for the brick wall texture (left building) and another 2048x2048 for the right building.
Im not sure that kind of resolution is necessary though since the walls will be heavily covered by paneling and clothing, especially the taller extended building part of the left building. What say thee?
Also I don't think you can tile a quarter of a texture in Unreal without getting some really bad mip map errors.
Most of the time you will only need a alpha and/or glow textures on a few props. With everything combined you would need to give everything a alpha and/or glow texture, that's a big waste of texture memory.
For the same reason you might be able to save some texture memory on things that don't need specular maps.
You might want to blend textures with a material like this using techniques discussed here to really help hide the tiling nature of your textures, in which case I think they would need to be separate.
Unless you're making an iPhone game (or something with similar draw call restrictions) there's really no reason to combine all your textures into one giant texture.
If props can conceal the tiling nature of smaller textures go with smaller textures.
You should get this stuff placed in Unreal and do some tests.
Since I had that texture layout in mind from the start I modeled the buildings in a way that splitting them up wouldn't cause a problem, also I figured I could use the props to cover up the tiling. Im glad the strategy Im used to turned out to be the way to go.
Ive imported the meshes in the editor regularly and soon I will do a phase1 texture pass too, I will be making 2048's but also check if I can get away with 1024's.
Im not experienced with vertex painting and blending textures/materials, and since Im such a VERY non-technincal guy (really wish I werent) Im having a hard time understanding it, I have a strange need to dig deeper than just the superficial HOW you do it to fully understand it.
I sadly dont think I have the time to learn it during this project.
Thanks a bunch mate
As a general rule just don't model them at 90° angles to the surface, which is a natural and common mistake to make on those kinds of things. They should be modeled more like _/¯\_ or ¯\_/¯ not like _|¯|_ or ¯|_|¯ on your high poly so that they will bake better onto a flat surface plane's normal map.
@Ben: Ay, I am aware of that normal thing, I dont remember what caused my normal map problems back in the days, I might not have known about that then.
@Vofff: tack for the link mate
This is not as much an update as it is a post of thoughts and questions.
How do people go about creating a tileble brick wall normal map? Ive read some actually model each brick, to me that doesn't seem like the typical workflow. If one were to go that route however, how do they then texture the wall? You would have to mask out each brick somehow using the normal map as template right?
Thinking further it doesnt really seem like you can get away from masking each brick out whichever strategy you choose, I based my brick wall normal map off of my color texture which meant I had to manually paint in the spacing between the bricks. And my bricks are not straight lines so it took some time. Having a messy medieval kind of brick wall makes this even more painful! Is this a well practised workflow in the industry?
I came across this program called "Bricks'n'Tiles" (www.bricksntiles.com) which Ive seen before but never paid any attention to before, does anyone use this?
And another question Ive been thinking about for a long time: xNormal doesn't accept ngons. Everyone seem to prefer xNormal before any 3d app such as maya when it comes to baking, does one have to settle for maya transfer maps if one models highpoly model with ngons there? Or should I simply leave Maya when it comes to highpoly and always go with ZBrush, using that to generate normal map?
So on to a UDK related q:
Ive been working some on my laptop at home and some at school which have caused problems for me transferring stuff between the two workstations. Is there a smooth way to transfer map layouts and materials and what not from one PC to another?
I would be oh so delighted to receive some answers to all of my mumblin.
And here's the smaller update, unfortunately I only have the finished materials at school, but youll get a general feel of it all. I havent positioned anything seriously yet either, anyway, enjoy:
Have like so many tabs open thanks to ben :P
What others tell you about instancing etc is correct so i won't expand on that. I will tell you a few things about the feel of what you are trying to make.
I live for the last 3 years in Mumbai and been around Dharavi many times.
It is a huge huge huge area hard to miss.
your textures look too clean and bright and the bricks too new and solid
post #3 looks like the closest to the real thing.
the one in #9 if textured properly could be the thing
but break the symmetry and even feel of it all.
http://www.sephi.com/uncategorized/not-all-slumdogs-are-millionaires/
http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/267564
http://www.airoots.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dharavi2.jpg
http://cambridgeforecast.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/dharavi.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asia's_Largest_Slum_-_Dharavi.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1303/661532928_799ba682b0_o.jpg
Modular brick wall tiling questions, glynnsmith made a great example in there.
Also somewhere in the awesome UT3 & Gears Environment Art thread Kevin Johnstone goes over how he makes brick walls.
I think it was something like:
1. Model a few high poly bricks.
2. Optimize them using poly cruncher (or mesh lab or zbrush decimate).
3. Bring them into Max and create a tiling wall with instances.
4. Render texture to a plane.
5. Use deformation and modeling tools to create new shapes out of that plane, like columns, corners, etc...
As far as moving stuff in UDK from one PC to another is should be easy. You should have one map file and one package file where you store everything else (models, materials, textures). Store those two files in their own folder. Place that folder in the [noparse]C:\UDK\[/noparse]UDK Build[noparse]\UTGame\Content\[/noparse] folder. Then all you need to do is move that folder back and forth.
@yiannisk: That's why it's so interesting and fun to do. Actually I am most satisfied with the third version, but it was assembled in Maya before I gave instancing any real thought. I did not want to import the whole thing as one object because of instancing so I had to replace everything in the editor, which proved to be heavily painful! Probably because I could not use the snap to grid option. I def learned to create modular building parts. I did a lot of stuff wrong in this project but I def learned from those mistakes. The #9 post was only to show of the props they were not intended to be placed that way
@Ben Apuna: totally missed that thread, glad you pointed me towards it bud! But at your point 5, wouldn't the use of deformers like bend mess the uv's up?
I thought I was using packages but I wasn't using them the right way, did it the right way and it worked like a charm! Many many thanks.
Project finished, not with a personal satisfaction, but at least I managed to pass the course... Figured I should post the finished result anyway as I can still learn from peoples thoughts and pointers, so feel free to tear this apart.
All that said, good work. Keep going.