Abandoned Hut

ridley075

So, basically I'm attempting to create a 3D version of Mats Minnhagen's Abandoned Hut. Original concept is posted below. The 3D version is in the Unreal Development Kit, posted below the concept. All textures are hand painted (so far there hasn't been a need for photo-source, so I thought I'd give the entire thing a go). The terrain is not finished yet, need to add some vertex painting to get some variance in the texture. Just want to get some critique as I go through the project. Thanks!


Concept:


3D:

SHEPEIRO

are you going to do it from a fixed camera?

the reeds are too dark atm and cause too much contrast, it would also look really cool to fake the transmission lighting ( or SSS), you can do this in many ways quite easily

GarageBay9

SHEPEIRO wrote: »

are you going to do it from a fixed camera?

the reeds are too dark atm and cause too much contrast, it would also look really cool to fake the transmission lighting ( or SSS), you can do this in many ways quite easily

I'm seeing the same thing. With some faked SSS or just some strong rimlights on the fern blades, it should fix that pretty well. Also, the individual blades are wider in the concept, versus the thin lines in yours.

If you look at the original source, there's a lot of edge highlights and light bleeding through the patches of reeds, and that prevents the darker color of the plants themselves from building up too much contrast. Part of that may be that the light angle is relatively high in the concept. Looks to be about 30-45 degrees.

Rurouni Strife

My suggestion is that you add some pebble photo source to the sand. Make it light but still noticeable, I think that would add to the render. I'm all for the grass being really bright too, It usually is at a beach.

Good luck with everything else though!

ridley075

Awesome, thanks for the quick critiques guys. I was little confused on what to do with the lighting, since in the concept, the sun appears to be much lower in some places than others. The shadow from the front rock structure is very harsh and the angle would make the sun pretty low, as well as the shadows in the middle of the sand, but the lighting on the walls suggests the suns higher. I think some transmission lighting would be awesome, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about it. I'm having multiple problems with the grass weeds in UDK. Mostly, the lighting and shadows appears to be only taking information from the inside of the grass (double-sided), and transfering that over to the outside. How can I get it to only affect one side, cast shadow on the other? Any help and or suggestions is very much appreciated. Thanks!

ridley075

It's been a while since I've posted, been busy with other projects and trying to get a job. Had some time to work on the high poly for the central rock structure in the foreground. Here's a screenshot from Zbrush. I thought I'd try making it look like someone made holes through the rock in order to support the wooden planks jutting from them. The concept doesn't make for any distinction of how the planks are standing in the stones, so I thought holes would work. Anyways, let me know what you think!

SHEPEIRO

its nice but doesnt have the composition of the original, the way the weight of the rocks play etc just seams lost on yours, the detail is fine but composition is all important

Timothy_graybill

COol Concept and nice model so far

ridley075

Perhaps straightening the balancing rocks and making them larger in size, will make it feel more structural? I could definitely try mimiking the original concept, but I thought it didn't look realistic. What about the wooden sticks jutting from the rock, any aprehensions about that?

chrisradsby

The concept is pretty cool, looks quite stylized though and from your work in Zbrush it seems that your tackling this with realistic looking models? I find that with some concept artists I've worked with that they create stuff looking awesome in 2d, but when re-created in 3d it doesn't work. It has a lot to do with physics and logic I'd say, like for what purpose does this stone-formation exist there, is it art?

And when you see it 3d it becomes apparent that things like that doesn't feel probable. Though if you can capture the style of the concept art stone-formation it might work. In a way you're playing with that the viewers/players are expecting, what they're expecting also changes their look on things.

Hope I could help somewhat, I don't really know exactly how you might make it look better, just sharing my thoughts about the subject, the concept is cool and I would love to see this finished. Good work so far man.

ridley075

I completely agree with what you're saying, Chrisradsby. It would be extremely difficult to make Mario's artistic style and turn it realistic. I mean, movies tried to do that a while ago, and it just sucked. People were like, "That fat, ugly guy is Mario? No way, Mario's a cute italian guy with a cool mustache!" Although the concept I chose (just want to clarify that Mats Minnhagen was the artist who created the concept) is stylized, I don't think it is as drastic as changing Mario from its stylized cartoon version to a realistic version. Some of the pieces are going to have to change slightly to make it look more realistic, but the overall atmosphere and "idea" of the concept is definitely going to be apparent and recognizable. If successful, I should be able to take my wok independently from the concept and say: "That's a cool, realistic environment, where everything makes sense." But also, when compared to the concept, people should be able to say: "Hey, that's the same thing."

chrisradsby

I hope you succeed man I'll be rooting for you eagerly awaiting the next update!

ridley075

All right, got an update on the rock structure. Here it's rendered in Marmoset, so it's not going to look quite like the concept, but wanted to show a good realistic render. What do you think?

snake85027

can you post the normal map?

ridley075

All right, got an update for the entire scene. Still trying to work out the lighting for the grass, having some wierd issues where only the front faces of the model is being lit while the back faces no matter what are in shadow, despite having every two-sided thing in UDK checked. Any ideas would be awesome. Also, got the normal map for the rock structure for Snake85027. Normal map is 1024 size.

Snader

I think you'd have a lot of benefit of adjusting the camera/viewing angle. The concept has quite the fisheye look which is missing in your renders. Increasing the viewing angle should make it feel a lot more like the concept, and make it easier to get it 'right'.

ridley075

Okay, took another screen with a slightly different position and fov. Looks a little more like the concept. Anyone an expert here in Unreal? The grass is just killing the scene right now. I'm trying to get the grass to light more on its darker side, but I can't seem to get it to work.

Will Faucher

It's often like that in unreal. Look at adam's thread, all his screenshots are like that. I'm not too familiar with unreal yet so I don't know if this is avoidable, but it would definitely look better with anti-aliasing.

PredatorGSR

I think you have to be in DX10 mode for AA, not 100% sure though.

Will Faucher

True. I've seen some AMAZING renders in unreal. I'm not sure how to get the AA enabled though. This would be a question worth asking in adam's thead!

cholden

You will find that custom sculpting, uv and baking of such simple, undetailed objects as rocks and wood is of no value beyond tiling a material. Again, unless you're putting in carvings or thick, unique cracks it's poor management of time as well as a significant loss of pixel detail and additional draw calls.

Zack Fowler

Most people get around the lack of AA by just rendering out a gigantic screenshot via the tiledshot command and shrinking it down in Photoshop for a pseudo-antialias effect. For a long time UE3 did not support lit translucency (ie if you want your material to be affected by lights at all, best you can do is 1-bit hard edged alphas), and although I think that might now be possible it'd still be a bad idea to try layering a bunch of lit translucency objects over each other. Probably kill your fillrate.

ridley075

All right, haven't really worked on the project for a while, been doing other small projects and an art test, however, I did find that ZackF is right. Using the console command Tiledshot and then a multiplier will give you instant AA. Otherwise, it's probably only available through the actual UDK game. (Which keeps crashing for me!) Anyways, so that should fix that problem for screenshots.