Syndicate Environment
interpolator
My goal is to create a fully finished environment in the UDK inspired by the old syndicate games and general cyberpunk awesomeness.
I havent done any finished environments for my portfolio so thats the aim really, that and to have some great fun making cool stuff and learning more about the UDK.
so onto the details.
my reference comes from both syndicate games as well as blade runner and appleseed/ghost in a shell. Watched blade runner recently for some fantastic enviro inspiration
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Heres a basic plan of what I hope to have in the environment, I have done rough perspective sketches of this layout to get an idea of what the camera view would be like and used those to plan this layout.
I also sketched an idea for the church of the new epoc building at the back of the area.
Asset List:
floors:
at least 2 tiling floor textures
concrete tiles
metal grid
road:
1x junction piece
1x straight
1x floating ball
walls:
brick walls
corregated iron
windows:
at least 2 varieties of tiling rectangular window layouts
roof:
2x roof sections
walkway:
1x tiling metal grid walkway
Doors:
1x sci fi door
stairs:
3x stair sets for the steps
- a middle, a left and a right
light tower:
lights seperate from tower
generator prop:
1x half sphere scifi generator thing
lots of screens/tvs:
3 varieties of screen with attached wires
to be placed around the scene on towers
or buildings
Church of New Epoc:
get to this once the others done, unique hero building
heres my progress on the light tower high poly model. I plan to divide this into 2 parts - light and fittings/bracing, and the tower itself. This way I can reuse the lights on buildings etc.
I havent done any finished environments for my portfolio so thats the aim really, that and to have some great fun making cool stuff and learning more about the UDK.
so onto the details.
my reference comes from both syndicate games as well as blade runner and appleseed/ghost in a shell. Watched blade runner recently for some fantastic enviro inspiration
.Heres a basic plan of what I hope to have in the environment, I have done rough perspective sketches of this layout to get an idea of what the camera view would be like and used those to plan this layout.
I also sketched an idea for the church of the new epoc building at the back of the area.
Asset List:
floors:
at least 2 tiling floor textures
concrete tiles
metal grid
road:
1x junction piece
1x straight
1x floating ball
walls:
brick walls
corregated iron
windows:
at least 2 varieties of tiling rectangular window layouts
roof:
2x roof sections
walkway:
1x tiling metal grid walkway
Doors:
1x sci fi door
stairs:
3x stair sets for the steps
- a middle, a left and a right
light tower:
lights seperate from tower
generator prop:
1x half sphere scifi generator thing
lots of screens/tvs:
3 varieties of screen with attached wires
to be placed around the scene on towers
or buildings
Church of New Epoc:
get to this once the others done, unique hero building
heres my progress on the light tower high poly model. I plan to divide this into 2 parts - light and fittings/bracing, and the tower itself. This way I can reuse the lights on buildings etc.
Replies
Syndicate was really ahead of it's time. The light post looks really cool, good distribution of detail. I dig the idea of making modular lights. There's lots of fun stuff you can do with an environment like this if you're not burnt out by the end.
Relevant quote from Syndicate Wars is relevant.
"Poor workers blame their tools. Good workers build better tools. The best workers get their tools to do the work for them."
cool how far did you get? would be fun to make a syndicate mod some day or something.
thanks for the encouragement Matt and Rooster I loved the syndicate games your right they were way ahead of thier time wish there was a new one with fully destructable environs like bad company 2
heres the lowpoly for the light tower, bear in mind pieces of this are going to be duplicated alot so the final tower might be about 14000tris...is that too much? seems ok to me as these are gonna be a large part of the environment.
The only things which are a little too high poly are the wires hanging there they are about 2000 tris but I cant find any easy way to optimise them - maybe remove a few edge loops
ah I see what you mean but Im actually intending to do this like its a syndicate fps...think counter strike but cyberpunk agents and add a healthy dose of fully destructable environment and npcs to "persuadertron". I cant achieve all that myself so Im just making the environment as I imagine it would be in a game like that
brought it down to 7000 tris by removing lots of loops from the wires and they still look fine
heres the lowpoly of the tower with the bake in xnormal. Its made of 3 re-usable meshes, the light+lightfittings , the wires and the pillar itself. At the moment this is 3 maps pillar = 2048x2048, light+fittings = 1024x1024 and wires = 1024x1024. Ill see if I can keep these texture sizes or not later when its in engine. 5808 tris
shaping up real cool. : ) definitely an all-time fav. series of mine
Im currently learning about lightmap uv channels and how to create them without losing your other channel.
I recommend checking this thread out if your using max to create lightmap uvs as it clarified alot of things for me: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=52648
Ben Apuna's advice and links on this page are very useful indeed http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=67290&page=26
Ive got the tower pillar part pretty much done and spent some time testing in udk to see how lightmaps work - theyre a tad messy :P.
I just need to do the light fittings and wires textures next.
Other than that it's awesome.
Cheers for the approval guys heh
thanks for that doeseph I had it more weathered before this and toned it down but maybe toned it down too much.
gotta make a floor tile soon, I want it to have variation textures like the unreal floors use in thier material setup but I dont really know how that works.
Awesome work so far Ged
Awesome work.
no problem its a setup done by a polycount member hes got a great tutorial on his website http://www.artemstudios.com/2010/updates.htm
yeah I got my mom to buy me syndicate wars when I was about 13 used to play syndicate plus before that lol, megabiv I plan on putting screens in there but I dont know if I can get away with putting those in although that would be cool haha.
thanks warby and creation oh and electro
to play syndicate you might need the application dosbox for windows, dont know if it will work.
1 question - I created a tiling static mesh in max that is 128 wide but when I bring it into udk by right clicking and going add actor->staticmesh it always seems slightly off the grid and cant be aligned with anything properly, what have I done wrong?
Also sometimes if you right click there's the option to 'snap to grid'. I'm not sure why this appears for some meshes/brushes and not others, though.
*edit nope the mesh still isnt aligned to the grid properly even with its axis set to 0,0,0
The only other thing would be to ensure that it is certainly 128 generic units wide/high. You might want to try setting the mesh so one side runs along 0 on the x axis and one at 0 on the y axis. If that doesn't work I guess it could be just to do with the size of the grid you're using, try a smaller grid. Personally I've been working on a 1x1 grid!
Im starting to think that floor texture Ive got is too "in your face" and I might make something a little more like standard concrete tiles.
are you being sarcastic? haha Im not great yet, merely average by my standards, well I guess we are all trying to constantly improve.
thanks samson teaandcigs and mattbradley! I have another art test to do so might not get much time for this for another week.
things Im working on.
1. default brick wall textures
2. improving post processing and bloom
3. making windows for buildings
Because the first syndicate games had some good feel for colors as well:
Instead of a cold warm (blue / orange) color palette back then distinctive color areas were used. Like the one I posed is more greenish with a hint of violet and lots of dark gray. But others use lots of sand tones, orange with a great mix of black and dark gray.
Maybe study some of the color choices of the original game as well and not just the designs of the shapes. Because I think the use of colors was a major part of what described the art and design direction back then and why it still looks good these days.
Thanks Renderhjs I havent got around to post processing the colours or choosing the correct lighting yet those shots Ive showed so far are just shots to show off what Ive got in engine, I dont intend to go for an uber colourful retro look but I do want it to have a bit of a bladerunner vibe. When I mentioned Improving post processing and bloom I meant - just figuring out how it all works, So yeah Im thinking muddy greens and violet and purple/blue screens on tvs in a night time or dusk environment. Thanks for the input it will come in handy when I do get around to that stage of the project.