Sewer WIP

Rurouni Strife

Hey everyone. So my not so little Invasion project is going on a little break for a bit. I'm going to do a smaller scale scene that shouldn't take terribly long to complete, and it'll give me a break from the scale of Invastion. Also, I've been wanting to work on this scene a ton lately.

Here's the concept. It's from Ben Proctor.


And here is what I have so far. It's a very modular scene, and I'm hoping to have this all done in a two or three weeks.

Rurouni Strife

FYI, I think his site is down

Moosey_G

Looks like it's coming along well so far. I suggest for you to increase the samples or final gather of your render it seams to be smearing objects and shadows, at least on my monitor.

Spatz

good start... to be accurate you should take a look at the concept ...the dimensions are not right atm... the right wall needs to be taler also the left wall is much higher...

mkandersson

Very nice and I love the concept art. I think you should add more rings/edges (don’t know what they are called) on the pipe hanging down there to the right. On the reference it’s denser/tighter then yours which imo looks better.

Rurouni Strife

@MooseyG: I will...if I make a Maya Render, I'm planning to just UDK this for now. Those renders are just there atm. But thanks for the input.
@Spatz: Will do and make a few different adjustments to the heights of the walls
@mkandersson: Good point. I will do that. I think I'm going to high poly that and try to bake a normal from it instead of hoping to use an image on it...just to see how it goes.

Rurouni Strife

I've got a progress shot for y'all. Currently in phase 1 of texturing. I'm going to get all these base textures laid out, then I'll run though the diffuse maps again with the detailed lines for the concrete and Iron, and other little things like that. Add a bit of dirt. You know.


Edit: Wow look at that pixellation. Stupid Jpeg. Though the shadows do really look a little too soft and spotty atm.

pliang

Composition looks promising, but any possibility to add some some elements to draw the eye? Concept and 3d looks nice but was thinking a beam of light at the far end would make it more interesting.

I think with some nice hard surface painting the pipes will look really good.

Snader

I think you mistook the water for a concrete floor. Look, in the concept there are ripples around the yellow tube.

kodde

Would be cool if you went for shading/rendering like the concept. With outlines and all.

Rurouni Strife

Oh snap. Snader, that's a nice catch. I thought it was an inlet for the pipe. Well, I suppose I'll have to fix that. I could also have some water flowing over a concrete floor. At any rate, I'll fix that up after I finish my first texture pass.

Kodde, I was actually thinking something similar. I wasn't going to go for a 100% toon shaded look but more of the look Adam's doing in his current project thread. I wouldn't lay it on as heavy, but a slight tinge of stylization could do this scene some good. I'll be adding lines to imply panels in the texture soon.

Mark Dygert

Off to a good start, but needs some work.

- The hose, right now it looks more like metal duct work than highly flexible tubing. It looks like you added ribs to a cylinder/spline and forgot to bow in the hanging parts between the ribs. You have the loops to do it... Most of that look should be coming from the model.

- The pieces of the tube are also evenly spaced and pretty rigid, notice how it stretches and sags in areas because its so flexible. The ribs force the cloth/plastic to hold some sort of cylinder shape otherwise it would completely collapse. Theres a bit of a struggle to keep that thing in shape and in place.
You need to dig in and illustrate that struggle especially since its a bit of a focal piece.

- You notice the cord attached to the pipe trying to keep it in place, that should help give you some idea how flexible and fragile this tube is and how hard it is to keep in place. There needs to be some pull around the place that the cord attaches, it needs to effect the model.

- This piece is a window into the larger world around this scene. It seems to be a half assed fix and with it looking like a rigid metal pipe you lose that.

- The little tanks sitting on top of the vent, you could toss two loops around their center and bow it up a little bit, it would build a little bit of style and honestly if you're hurting for the polys they could be optimized a bit to compensate.

Sorry to sound like a dick but you gotta nail this stuff.

vcortis

Vig actually gave really solid advice. (no surprise there) +1

You're missing the support beams on the right wall that connect from the wall to the ceiling. It's hard to crit anything else at this early of a stage.

I think you should check out borderlands for the style. I mean the concept screams that to me. Plus it wouldn't be a half bad idea to do a bit of a stylized piece for your portfolio since the other two you're working on are pretty realistic.

Rurouni Strife

@ Vig: Note definately taken. Here's another picture from last night just to give an Idea where it's at. But your crit still remains the same. I'll jump into that pipe either tonight or tomorrow and make the needed changes. It seems like a lot of your crit is mostly on that one element, would that be safe to assume?
And don't apologize for being an Ass. Better you crush me so I can get better than you baby me. I don't need that.

Vic, I do have them as you can see in this updated picture. I had them for quite a while actually, just out of view on accident. Style wise, I can try. I'm a little worried about execution on my part for it. I'll research some more, but I hope I can still use my image based textures.

Mark Dygert

Rurouni Strife wrote: »

It seems like a lot of your crit is mostly on that one element, would that be safe to assume?

Yea they did, but there are other things here and there that could be changed too I just didn't have time to write up more. Now that I know I'm not wasting my time or have to coddle ya, we can get down to brass tacks.

The brackets that hold the pipe on actually have a little shelf inside for the pipe to sit on.

I'm not sure why you clipped/floated the big boxy concrete support into the wall but didn't do the same for the vent. I would break the vent off and use a geometry tile for the slanted part.



I think you could work a little more modular and kick up a few variants.
The white lines are geometry seams.
Green = same base for left and right walls. The tile repeats maybe a few variant tiles or textures to help break up the repeating.
Purple = Slant tile.
Red = Wall tile, this can be used all over the place, I would actually modify the concept a little and have the lighter boarder be be in the lower green tile and the red tile would be purely concrete.
Blue & Yellow = floating bits.

If you work on a grid and snap to a grid it will make things much much easier.

The textures are a bit noisy, reading a bit more like peperoni than concrete. Imperfections are great when used sparingly especially when trying to match the concept.

The edge on the boxy concrete support could use some defining, you can do that in the texture or with supporting loops to help coral the smoothing/shadows.

The bolts on the vent in the concept are bigger than what you have, and in general I think some of the other finer details need to be larger. Try to work on a minimum detail size and don't fall below it. If its 5 units make sure the smallest detail isn't smaller than that.

Rurouni Strife

Got an update from today:


-I've removed the unique geometry wall that Vig suggested and threw a cylinder in there for the moment. It needs some extra TLC.
-Added some bowing to the two small blue tanks. Don't know if you can see it probably need another view. Or more bowing.
-Scaled up some screw sizes
-All base textures are done except for one set, which I will do after some reworks.
-Added some place holder water with a Maya ocean shader. Left in the concrete floor too, kind of like that idea.

To Do:
-Yellow Tube
-Work on and work out Vig's modular suggestion
-Finish textures and attempt a sort of style. Liking a Borderlands type idea
-Edit/redo textures to be more similar to Vig's suggestion.
-Lighting. Lighting.
-Set up a camera so I have repeated render shots instead of being a loser and using just the perspective in the viewport. Duh that takes like two second to do.

Btw, everyone who comments and crits I really appreciate it all.

Rurouni Strife

Here is an updated WIP from the weekend and this morning. Change log included. Lighting is still WIP and probably won't be fixed until I have the UDK version all done.


Changes:
-Yellow Pipe edited
-Lighting edited
-Walls now made up of tiles with changed texture sheet for variations in the texture
-Static Cameras for repeatable render results
-Wall Textures

To do:
-Still feel like I want to work on that yellow pipe but not sure what to do
-paint over base textures and finish diffuse maps
-create the spec and normals
-Exports to UDK
-Unique models

marlfox8

for the yellow pipe why dont you make it so that its nearer to the wall. i was thinking it would give it a more "stiff" feeling. Also it doesn't have that underground and dirty feel of a sewer. there should be grime and dirt in the walls, faded paint and maybe some glowing eyes of rats or something kinda like this http://www.vagabondish.com/wp-content/uploads/paris-sewer.jpgfeel the rats arent there but i think it still gives a more "dirty" feel to it. One last thing industrial lights maybe?

Rurouni Strife

marlfox8, your link is broken. Fail. Lol. I have added grunge and dirt to the textures for my next update but I also want to keep it lower than you would see in a real sewer because I really love how the concept conveys this cleaner looking environment. It's like the waste from these people isn't absolutely shit.

I will totally check out moving the pipe closer to the wall. Right now.

Serp

That's a great concept to work on. These pieces are great for portfolios. The FOV of the camera in UDK may be different from Maya so you'll have to keep that in mind when you get it in UDK. I think the FOV of the concept is different to the camera in Maya, tha's maybe why it doesn't look exactly the same.

With good lighting in UDK this can look great.

Personally I would make the water flat. The waves look too obvious.

I would get this into UDK as soon as possible. And maybe add temporary textures in UDK. The UDK textures can give you a good benchmark to aim for. For example I found my walls in my sci fi corridor scene in my portfolio looked rubbish until I applied a UDK material to it. Then I realised that it needed reflections and more spec.

Rurouni Strife

Thanks for the tip on the water Serp! And yea the FOV is totally different I feel. The one I'm using in Maya atm is 70mm camera preset. It's not by design, I felt that for the moment it looked good enough and it let you see everything better than the standard FOV. I actually have a second camera with a 35mm Anamorphic setting that I haven't rendered from yet.

UDK is actually up next. I'm going to probably bring it over tomorrow morning after I finish up diffuse textures and then I'll make a separate Normal and Spec for UDK than any Maya render I might decide to do. I've definately noticed that UDK and Maya have totally different ways of using or rendering spec and even normal maps.

Rurouni Strife

I'm pretty tired so this will be quick.


Everything is ported into UDK. I had to scale stuff up some, that's why that guy is there for. You are looking at Diffuse only textures except for the yellow pipe which has a normal map. Floor is that concrete floor from earlier. Water is much later.

There are a few obvious things I need to fix and I'll get to it tomorrow. I had a suggestion from vcortis about making this in the Borderlands style. It sounds really awesome but I have a question. Should I paint the outlines on to the diffuse, or should I use a shader technique?

doeseph

Looks good so far Rurouni. Did you have any problems with the placement of your meshes in terms of grid lock and what not? Or did you not create the assets with the Unreal grid in mind?

EDIT: I only ask because I'm going to be creating a large scene in UDK and don't know if I should design my pieces modularly to fit on the grid in Unreal.

Rurouni Strife

doeseph, absolutely create them with the grid in mind. I'd say that I had the grid in mind but I didn't quite execute it the correct way. So I've had some grid lock problems here and there. If you look up, Vig has an excellent suggestion about minimum units and I highly suggest you do that.

brandoom

That sewer pipe/vent on the left side, it needs some smoothing group lovin.

I would also start trying to think up some ways to fill space. Its looking empty.

Not bad though, keep working.

Serp

Personally I just export as much as I can at once into UDK and just use multi materials. So for my sewer level I made, I just exported the whole thing as one .obj file. For my plaza scene I broke it down into sections though because there a limite of how many tris you can export into UDK. Something like 45k tris.

Rurouni Strife

I tried that export entire scene into UDK on my Alleyway a few times, and I didn't get terribly great results. But I did export parts of this and used multi materials, such as the roof on the left side (concrete and Iron materials).

Mark Dygert

Its coming along! I wouldn't worry too much about the smoothing on the vent pipe, its probably not unwrapped yet and the smoothing is breaking where the UV seams are, once its properly unwrapped it should be ok.

Yea keeping to a grid is key. In max I snap each objects local pivot to the grid and then snap the tile edges to the grid also in 2D snap mode. I also use helper grids because max is a bitch about snapping vertically.

Each objects pivot, is the pivot point in Unreal so if it works on the grid in max, it works in unreal. I test it out by turning on pivot and grid snap and copy/move the objects around, which behaves more or less like unreal will so it makes finding the tile errors a lot easier if you don't need to export/import between tweaks.

I'm pretty sure the same thing can be set up in Maya, I've never done it tho, but the pieces are all there.

3DRyan

Needs to be dirtied up A LOT. Add some scratches, dirt, grunge. If it's a sewer, it's gonna be filthy. Also, unless you're going for a Mirror's Edge sort of style, avoid the primary colors you've got going. The modeling of it is great, you just need to support it better with some better color and detail choices.

Rurouni Strife

@ Vig: Its unwrapped. I recently fixed it by just smoothing normals. I might had to do some extra work to hide the seam in the texture but thats small stuff. As for the grid, what I thought was a object moving error was a lightmap error so that made my day! But yes, I actually turned on UV preservation in Maya and I moved some verts to make it snap to grid. And in Maya yea you can set it up the same way pretty much.

@ 3D ryan: Conceptually, it's actually a 'clean' sewer. I do plan to dirty it a little more, probably after i get the remainder of the objects created. That's actually the plan tonight after I finish up any minor errors here and there. Color wise, what would you suggest? Something more industrial?

Serp

I think it needs about 300+ floating turds. lol

Rurouni Strife

Here's a bit of an update. I ended up spending most of today moving things around and getting everything lined up the way I want it. I also got place holders in for the ends of the sewer. The back side has the same basic setup as the front.



As a matter of fact, not terribly sure you can tell right away if I actually did anything. Anyway, I'm going to put something in the middle or towards the left side (looking at it) of the sewer and I'm not sure what to do. Some sort of filtration device? Scientific looking machines in a group? A collection of terds that amount to 300?? Serp, thats for you!

Anyway, have at it!

3DRyan

I guess I don't know if sewers like the one you're doing exist. I just haven't seen one that looks like one. But then again, now that I think about it, it makes it unique. So maybe you should stick to it. I was thinking of something like a traditional new york city sewer. But, like I said it's a matter of what you're going for.

Rurouni Strife

This is just an update shot. I've gotten in almost everything that is in the concept. Texture wise, everything is still a pure Diffuse texture.

Down here, I also have a quick paint over. I've added some support pillars on the right hand wall to break up the planes and add some visual difference to that side of the wall. The black mess is a platform that would have a few controls on it. I just wanted some suggestions on what to include to break up some of the emptiness. I think the other thing swirling in my head is a sort of mechanical object that is in the middle of the water and not quite off to the side.

Anyway, comments/crits welcome!

Rurouni Strife

Ok so I've got this outline PPE going on, taken from this page: Outline and Crush and It looks pretty awesome. There are settings and such that I need to tweak and I also need to reverse engineer it so I could know how to replicate it (but damn it's complicated). My big problem right now is that I can't get it to work in the game viewer/in game preview. My screen is just black in those views. I've read about adding a kismet script but I have not idea what to do or how to do it. I'm going to keep reading on the UDN and Google and see what I can find. If you guys could help me out by pointing me int he right direction or getting me started that'd be amazing. Scripting/programming isn't a strong point of mine.

Example:

Rurouni Strife

Hey everyone. I fixed my problems and now I'm ready to roll. I know the textures (stylized in a way) and the really really stupid dark spots need some work. I plan to hit those, and water, tomorrow. As for a final object to place in the scene I'm still taking suggestions though it might be a sort of filtration substance.

Enjoy and crits/comments/suggestions very welcome!

Rurouni Strife

Hey everyone! Love the new polycount look. It's so...modern.

I'm just about done with this project. I'm looking for crits and the like right now. Here is my image. I actually have a video of this on Youtube too. I'll post the image, some of the things I did in here, and then crit away!



-Uses a 'Outline and Crush shader' that is available on these forms. It was created by Drachis. I made minor changes (mostly variable adjustments)
-Uses a Bokeh Blur shader by Drachis. It's toned down considerably but adds saturation and Bloom strength.
-Water is a dynamic fluid object. It uses normal map based distortion effects. The dynamic normal mapping is caused by a fluid normal in the shader.

Serp

Here's some stuff I think would make it look a lot better.

-Add a height fog to cover the whole scene. The concept seems to have some fog.

-Turn on scene affect and play with the scene highlights, midtones, shadows. Either click on world properties or click on your post process volume to acess this.

-I think it would look cooler if it was brighter with more bloom, while trying to keep the shadow strength. Turning up the brightness of the main light might be enough to do this.

-I would get rid of the black bits in the water, it looks preety bad.

-If any of the props are decent looking in the background I'd bring them forward more to show them off.
*Edit* Actually after seeing the youtube video, the whole scene looks to be of a decent quality. So you could just present multiple views of your scene in your portfolio. Like a second screenshot close to the back. In my scenes I make the far off props rubbish so I can't do that lol.



But if your gonna do one thing I would recommend playing with the postprocess. And the second thing would be making it brighter with more bloom.

SHEPEIRO

your missing alot of the concrete panelling from the concept

also the right hand side wall should be taller and the top should stick out some more, i think this would give you greater scale

and yeah beef the lighting up a touch

NICE

Rurouni Strife

@Serp: thanks for the comments. Will be doing most of that. The water...well thats tricky. It has to do with how the Post Process shader affects everything. Take into account the tessellated mesh that is the fluid object and walla. I think the shader also affects normal maps to a degree. I'll look into it though and see what I can do.
@Shepeiro: Thanks for the comments. I can texture that in no problem (it was my plan initially). Scale is...well balls, I was hoping that'd be ok. Will look in to it.

Keep em coming guys! I'm fixing up parts (that are fixable with a shorter time span) on my first project for today, I don't know if two works is enough for a portfolio relaunch but at this point I have to do this. Aiming for the end of the week to have my portfolio ready for you guys to look at.

Wells

Yeah, tame that dof. it's running out of control. particularly since you're aggressively blurring the focal point of the composition. everything in this image leads your eye to the end of the hallway, where you can't see shit.

if anything, i would reverse it and give the closest parts of the walls a very *slight* blur.

that water effect has got to go, as mentioned. it looks like an error and drops the quality of the entire piece. the water itself needs something - some depth and color to it. some surface reflection. looking at the image now, i wouldn't know there was water in it if i hadn't followed the thread.

it's coming along nicely, but you're not done yet!

Rurouni Strife

Thanks everyone, no work is ever truly done. I'll try to have an update tonight, depends on how much longer my alley project takes to bake lightmaps...booo!

Rurouni Strife

Here is a progress shot...but I need help. Water reflections. Not working. Like...it sorta reflects but the TextureRenderTarget2D doesn't work right? The green/default color is still present! And it fucks up my material. Also, the angle of reflection depends on the angle of the view ports camera with the scenecapturereflectactor. Any ideas? I tried cube mapping and it only reflected one wall, and a small portion of it too. I'm going to go nuts!

Oh, sorry for the size, figured that seeing my material editor would help.

PogoP

Ummm he just posted above, asking for help with that. Don't be so rude.

Rurouni Strife

It's ok PogoP, I'm pretty sure SasoChicken meant no harm. I found it funny actually. Minus you know...my frustration. On the plus side the green is gone now!!!

But my crazy ass reflection switching still remains. Why does it seem to depend on the angle of my viewport so much? I don't get it.

Rurouni Strife

Ok, heres the 'offical' update. Still have water problems but some of them are fixed.

change log:
-DoF changed to be close to viewer
-height fog
-added concrete line detail into the wall textures
-increased light intensity
-increased both normal bloom and Bokeh Blur strengths
-bringing out bright warm colors slightly more via Post Process
-Water speed, texture (there is a green diffuse and it works, might be kinda hard to see atm), specularity, and reflection
-height of right wall increased

What I still need to do as far as I know:
-fix that effing water reflection

The blackness you see in the water is 100% caused by the post process shader. Unless there is a way to set the fluidactor and water shader to ignore post process I don't know what to do to get rid of it.

SHEPEIRO

ok, new lines are bit too thick esp on left, your missing the nice panel on the right hand side and the roof things these provide nice pespective lines lightings more intense now but shadows are not deep enough its the contrast which is nice in the concept

Serp

I like the bit of the blue pipe near the screen. That looks really cool.

I just spent 15 mins adding more textures to the concrete on your image to show you that it would look better, but it doesn't lol. So I scrapped it.

Rurouni Strife

@Serp: Lolz thanks for the effort! Good to know that I don't need to add extra texturing outside of some extra detail lines that Shepiero pointed out.

SasoChicken, my water is a hodgepodge of crap at this point...in theory the shader would work right but it doesn't...I'll keep trying to figure something out but in the mean while I'll tend to the suggestions I have from you guys.

Oh and yea, I figured my lines were too thick but I ended up getting used to them. Also, I wanted to see if you guys had the same initial feeling. And you do.

Rurouni Strife

Here's a line and contrast/Post Process update. Just ignore the water still gotta figure that out. If you have any hints please please share, I'll give you cake! (Or am I lying...only you can know!!)

Jungsik

NIce!!!!!
Im weak on critique but if i see something ill let u know ;D
i gotta learn how to do that Line stuff in UDK as well