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Manitoba crash site - UDK env

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polycounter lvl 16
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Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
I have a problem, Polycount. I always start vehicles, intending to do an environment for them afterwards, but when the vehicle is done, I just quit and move on to the next one.
So here's a thread about my attempt to do it right. First enviro, then maybe vehicle (well, probably).

Subject is a crash site near Churchill, Manitoba. It's a Curtiss C46 Commando that has been lying out there for decades, mostly stripped by now:

c46-churchill-lambair.jpg

Current:

ManitobaWIP13.jpg

ManitobaWIP11.jpg

ManitobaWIP12.jpg

Here's what I've got so far in UDK:

http://www.laurenscorijn.com/wipdir/Manitoba/ManitobaWIP1.jpg

http://www.laurenscorijn.com/wipdir/Manitoba/ManitobaWIP2.jpg
Plane will be somewhere on the left top part of the hill.

Please, let me know what you think. I think I like where it's going, but maybe I gotta stick more to the ref with the green terrain and greener shrubs. On some pictures it's more autumn-like, but I might have gone a bit too much brown-orangish.

Also, I have a question/problem;

My grass and shrubs look really bad on the side that isn't directly lit by the sun, they're just pure black:

http://www.laurenscorijn.com/wipdir/Manitoba/Vegetproblem.jpg

->fixed by adding somme emissive in material

I've always struggled with this in UDK, any tips ?

Also, next question;
Is there any way to do full random rotation with decolayers? It always keeps Z-up, which is good for vegetation, but sucks for rocks. The ones that are close in view are all hand placed, but it really takes a long time to do those. Or is there something like advanced painter in Max, I just brush and rocks appear fully randomized ?
-> fixed by doing things in Static mesh mode.

Replies

  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    nice so far

    colour wise i would stick to the colours in the ref IE grassy mossy ground mostly green palnts with the odd brown one, the ground here kind of looks like its crawling up the side of the stones giving a very unregular soft silohette this is nice

    trees are looking a touch nuked green get a less saturated deeper tone to them...could we get some close ups
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Thanks man. You're right about the grass and moss crawling up the rocks. I think I'll try to do that with vertex painting too (the orange moss on the rocks is vertex painted already). It's gonna be so much work to do every rock manually though lol.

    Oh and I fixed the shrub lighting already, went to the UDK thread to ask the same question and someone had just posted a fix there, how convenient!
    I also adjusted the spruce color (easy fix, should've done it sooner), so here's some closeups;

    http://www.laurenscorijn.com/wipdir/Manitoba/ManitobaWIP3close.jpg
    http://www.laurenscorijn.com/wipdir/Manitoba/ManitobaWIP4close.jpg
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    cool they look a tad heavy on the polys... trunk wise..as you have blended each main branch in...but its probably not a big problem so i wouldnt change.... the fronds look a bit strnage though...as though theyre not quite pointing the rightway...some even look like theyre pointing backwards...
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    They're speedtree trees. I set them up myself, but they're still not all done as they don't hold up too well from up close. There's just so many settings (too many) in that program to figure out. I'll get back to it after I do the ground textures.
  • Contrails
    So what was the lighting fix?

    And I might be being a bit nit picky but trees on mountains tend to grow the opposite of how you have it now... as you go higher, the trees become more stunted and they disappear - you can see this in the ref too ;)

    Out of curiosity, what happened to the plane? Doesn't look to be too bad of a wreck.
  • SouthpawSid
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    SouthpawSid polycounter lvl 7
    yes please do iterate on the lighting fix with the shrubs. I am having the same problem, lol. Also, this scene is looking great. is that unreal terrain that you are using? If so, how high are the terrain setting to get such nice shadows like that in the UDK?
  • rasmus
    So far I just want to say that you're definitely doing the right thing going for more realistic contrast - at a glance it already captures a "photo" feel. Also certainly an original enviro :) I have a feeling you'll compliment the rather barren rock landscape with closeups of the aircraft though. If you're going for matching the photo inch by inch, the rocks are not grey enough (hence the nice white moss isn't showing up the same as in the photo), and the ground needs moss/greenery stuff. Keep it up.
  • disanski
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    disanski polycounter lvl 14
    This is looking cool already :) In max 2011 there is this OBJECT PAINT that would paint objects and it could be very random as well is that what you are after? here is a video i found some time ago on you tube
    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwHJgfdOFDw[/ame]
  • breakneck
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    breakneck polycounter lvl 13
    for painting down the rocks more randomly, have you tried:

    http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/StaticMeshMode.html
  • Shogun3d
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    Shogun3d polycounter lvl 12
    Xoliul, a note for the lighting issue with foliage as well.

    This is another method I use that works well for me with lighting vegetation. When you place your decals the normals are perpendicular by default and thus can cause lighting to affect it at undesirable times. If a decal is placed on the ground perpendicular, you can face the normals for the decal up towards the sky or light source depending on the angle of terrain. This will allow smooth lighting transition.

    If the decal is placed on a 45 degree angle, for example, and the decal is 90 degrees, have the normals pointed at an angle adjacent as well. This will help catch the lighting based on when the hill receives lighting.

    I've got a great script i'll have to share that allows you to select a number of meshes, then select the source terrain, and it will automatically adjust normals based on relative angle and position of terrain its on. Its real quick and easy and helps a lot. I'll get it up tomorrow.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Contrails wrote: »
    So what was the lighting fix?

    And I might be being a bit nit picky but trees on mountains tend to grow the opposite of how you have it now... as you go higher, the trees become more stunted and they disappear - you can see this in the ref too ;)

    Out of curiosity, what happened to the plane? Doesn't look to be too bad of a wreck.

    The lighting fix was really easy, just put about 10-25% percent of the diffuse into the Emissive channel. Amount depends on brightness of the textures.

    And hmm, I know what you mean, but these aren't really mountains. They're tundra plains by the ocean, I think it's at most 50m anove sea level. I don't know if that would happen here as well ? I'll see about changing it, I like the contrast it gives.

    edit: I checked; http://maps.google.be/maps?q=N%2058%B0%2045.622%20W%20094%B0%2005.228
    It's because the rocks are too close to the surface, not because of height I think.
    yes please do iterate on the lighting fix with the shrubs. I am having the same problem, lol. Also, this scene is looking great. is that unreal terrain that you are using? If so, how high are the terrain setting to get such nice shadows like that in the UDK?

    It is Unreal terrain, but the shadows aren't really to my liking yet, but I am using 'Is Overriding Lightmap Resolution", which changes the behaviour of the StaticLighting Resolution setting, allowing you to go higher than the ugly standard lighting. Also the terrain has been subdivided 2 times in the Terrain editing window, this makes a big difference too. The shrubs shadows your are seeing are dynamic btw, they fade in the distance. This is the default behaviour.

    Rasmus; thanks a lot man! I actually wanna have white moss on the rocks separately, as a vertex paint layer. Just gotta do the texture and add it into the material

    Disanski, sort of yes.

    Breaneck, wow thanks man, that's exactly what I need. Can't believe I never heard of that!

    Kab, i've thought about that too yes. Isn't the problem with that you can't have a darker and lighter side? Since the normals are uniform. And is this script for Unreal or ?
  • SouthpawSid
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    SouthpawSid polycounter lvl 7
    Xoliul wrote: »
    The lighting fix was really easy, just put about 10-25% percent of the diffuse into the Emissive channel. Amount depends on brightness of the textures.

    Friggin perfect! :poly136:
  • Shogun3d
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    Shogun3d polycounter lvl 12
    Xoliul wrote: »
    Kab, i've thought about that too yes. Isn't the problem with that you can't have a darker and lighter side? Since the normals are uniform. And is this script for Unreal or ?

    Yeah man, it only works for materials that are masked and set to receive lighting. You won't have this issue now since you are passing through emissive, but you will still have a darker and a lighter side, just a lot more subtle and will receive lighting the same time terrain around you does. The script is for max yes.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Hmm but all my grass is placed through decolayer in Unreal, doesn't seem viable to export that back to max.

    Here's an update;

    ManitobaWIP5-500x281.jpg

    ManitobaWIP6-500x281.jpg

    ManitobaWIP7-500x281.jpg

    Env should be almost good. Still some tweaks here and there, optimize the trees. And the background terrain is almost untouched. Gotta add some better materials (scale is wrong) and an ocean waterplane.
  • Shogun3d
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    Shogun3d polycounter lvl 12
    Sweet never mind then, Decolayers it is! =p Lookin' good!
  • tyl3r
    Ha, cool, I'm actually from Saskatchewan (province to the left of Manitoba in Canada), I've never actually heard of this in Churchill, but it is a great concept for an environment.

    Absolutely love your environment thus far Xoliul! Would there be any chance of a tutorial for say either the rocks or the trees? How do you get them to look so crisp and sharp? 1024 texture? Or Higher?
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    third shot is lovely worth sticking a simple painted ground plane in the background for the sea/lake and marshy area
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Shepeiro, do you mean like a matte background, or project a painting on to a horizontal plane ?

    Tyl3r; I'd go visit that place lol. But then again, i live in a country where the national border is only a 4h drive at most, I understand that can be different in Canada :p
    To answer your question quickly; Trees are 1024s, but it's an atlas made by Speedtree. the main fronds do stretch acorss 1024 px. The rocks are one tiling 1024, but with tons of tricks like vertex painting like Uncharted, detail normals, world-space dirt overlay, etc...
    I do want to make a small rundown afterwards of how I did most things technically (since modeling and texturing was pretty easy compared to what I usually do), it's the cool shader tricks and so that make things interesting.
  • Tea Monster
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    Tea Monster polycounter lvl 15
    It sounds silly to say, but your UDK scene looks MORE realistic than the real photo. The rocks are much more detailed and realistic looking than the ones in the photo.

    Looking good!
  • JonMurphy
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    JonMurphy polycounter lvl 18
    Colours on the vegetation have pulled together lovely. Looking great
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Teamonster, hah that is a big compliment :) Thanks dudes!

    I spent a lot of time tweaking the surroundings:

    ManitobaWIP8.jpg

    I know it's kinda barren, but there aren't even any trees near the coast there usually.
    I spent like 2 hours trying to optimize the trees, but it's not making a whole lot of a difference. LOD'ing just doesn't do a lot. Epic's GDC demo has even more tri's in total and also has shader complexity all the way up in the red, yet it still runs better. I don't get it.

    Probably gonna start on the plane next, should be fun, I wanna do this in a really efficient way with textures & modeling; I will try to map as little stuff as possible uniquely, reuse mesh parts etc. Like that crashed C130 in MW2 if anyone remembers.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Wow, this is looking great! I love the consistency and colours of the textures. Really makes it feel believable.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Trees normally grow in clumps, don't they?
  • Lonewolf
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    Lonewolf polycounter lvl 18
    wow

    keep going.. popcorn1.gif
  • leidan_37
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    leidan_37 polycounter lvl 8
    The hillside (first bunch of screenshots) is gorgeous! Keep up the good work!
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    wow thanks guys. MoP, I must've spent more time tweaking colors than I have been modeling and texturing things. Glad it pays off.

    Here's the plane so far, basic shape done:

    CurtissWip01.jpg


    CurtissWip01w.jpg

    Don't look at the counter, it's only 3650 tri's for the moment.
  • Mistry10
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    Mistry10 polycounter lvl 8
    looking great man !
  • JasonLavoie
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    JasonLavoie polycounter lvl 18
    Really excited to see how this grows Laruens, can't wait to see what you do with that plane (really pumped to see the texture phase).
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
  • tyl3r
    Xoliul wrote: »
    Tyl3r; Trees are 1024s, but it's an atlas made by Speedtree. the main fronds do stretch acorss 1024 px. The rocks are one tiling 1024, but with tons of tricks like vertex painting like Uncharted, detail normals, world-space dirt overlay, etc...
    I do want to make a small rundown afterwards of how I did most things technically (since modeling and texturing was pretty easy compared to what I usually do), it's the cool shader tricks and so that make things interesting.
    Awesome, I look forward to that rundown, i'm sure I will learn loads! Keep up the good work!
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    get the roughed out plane in the scene quickly...seams a bit stumpy at the mo but could be the angles
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Yeah I'm gonna work on the BG a bit more. Still not sure about the scattered trees and so. I'll see.

    Here's a little teaser update:

    ManitobaWIP9.jpg

    Looks ok at a glance but there's tons of stuff wrong. The plane's full of unwrapping errors; only the main hull is decently unwrapped (the cockpit door isn't even touched for example). But at least it's a proof of concept that the tiling texture + decals approach is working :) That plane wreck is on of the most challengine objects i've tried to create until now, so at least i'm learning something !
  • EMC3D
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    EMC3D polycounter lvl 14
    What about putting that red strip on the diffuse map instead of floating it as a decal? I dunno. It's looking real nice esp the foliage and stuff. Maybe you could break the plane up more and have the wing seperate as debris sticking from the ground, give it a bit more character since it's broke / in a crash-site status.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    I updated the image, fixed the decal already. Maybe it's a bit too dark and metallic now, but better than the ugly unlit look. Can't put the red stripe in the diffuse btw, since the plane is textured with a tiling texture.
    And the plane geometry is totally WIP, there's gonna be tons more details on it. It's just a bit of a new workflow for me; modeling/unwrapping and texturing are getting mixed up. I actually made the current tiling texture before I unwrapped it, for example.
  • EMC3D
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    EMC3D polycounter lvl 14
    Ah cool i get ya with the tiling image and decal, can damage it up in the material editor with grungemaps if need be, since udk is pro and lets you do shader tricks.

    What's your workflow for trees and stuff, is it somewhat along the lines of cylinder as branch, then alphas for the leaves? I want to get into making some myself, but not had prior experience with making them.

    Good work!
  • TrevorJ
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    TrevorJ polycounter lvl 14
    Oh man i thought i saw a fellow Manitoban on polycount! Turns out your Belgian, well interesting that you found this nice reference anyways, it's looking really good. keep at it.
  • vahl
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    vahl polycounter lvl 18
    Laurens : you can actually create a second UV set and add the "decal" there, using masks, etc, that way you have perfect control over the looks/specularity, etc of your decal and get much more resolution, actually you should add any written text that way, so that even upclose, the text reads well and looks good :), hell you can even add normal map details that way, think about an unique unwrapping /bake and a tiling metalplates texture. the unique unwrapping gets the unique normalmap, AO and the decals/unique details while the other uv with tiles get detail normals, tiling details. and you can still use a third uv for the lightmaps.

    so you may say it's overkill but the plane is the centerpice of your scene, and as this role, it HAS to look better than anything else in the scene and ge tmore attention, because, well while your landscape does look awesome, people will look at it as a landscape, but the plane, will be the center of interest and people will want to look at it in details :)

    unless that's what you did, of course :) I personally used this a lot in the past and it definitely proved to be effective.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    thats looking good, will be waiting for all those details...vahls idea to use two uv sets would be great..means all those dents and tears can be Hp'd while keeping nice tight detail up close...atm your using one type of panelling i would have a seperate shader with alot of detail strips, individula panels etc that you can break up the main texture with, it could share the same 2ndset of uvs n textures for the large details/colour changes

    are you using a realtime or env map...if your using a map chuck it through ati's cubemap filterer to create a nice soft one for the main brushed metal will look a ton better...if your using a realtime map...can you not use a lower mip
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    The second UV is a good idea. I was already thinking about doing a second uv for opacity, so i can detail the ripped metal edges more. I can just combine this. Could even throw some normals in then.
    Shep, for the dents i was thinking about vertex painting a tiling crumpled texture, it's gonna allow more control than baking. I do want to overlay some larger scale detail, but in general these planes are kinda uniform. This is the best picture I found of a C46's fuselage metal:
    http://images3.jetphotos.net/img/2/6/5/9/56712_1183714956.jpg
  • Zack Fowler
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    Zack Fowler polycounter lvl 11
    Something to consider when using additional UV sets for material effects is that UE3/UDK bases the normal map calculations off of the base UV set only, at least to my knowledge. So any normalmap information that uses additional UVs will still use the rotation of the base UV set.

    In other words, anything other than the base UV coordinate set is like rotating and transforming a normal map image using standard Photoshop transformation tools; rotate by 180 and it will appear inverted.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    I have an update. I've spent hours and hours on the plane already and it's still only halfway there. But I think i got the material definition mostly right now, and the decals on second UV channel are working.
    Positioning on the rocks is still wip, It's just thrown in there to see it ingame, I'll place everything carefully once the plane has progressed far enough.

    ManitobaWIP10.jpg
  • Xendance
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    Xendance polycounter lvl 7
    Did you vertex paint the rocks in Max or in the UDK editor? Also, how is your FPS?
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    are you using addative reflections?
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Just painted them in UDK, Max vert paint is awfull.
    Shep, yes, but it's not a cubemap anymore. It's a procedural sort of reflection (as in my shader), which looks a lot more matte. Maybe it should be a little bit stronger if you can't really tell it's reflecting.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    no thinking you should blend between reflected colour/spec and diffuse not add to... gives much better colours etc without overblowing the values, and seams to work way better for these sorts of reflections...
  • teaandcigarettes
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    teaandcigarettes polycounter lvl 12
    Looks pretty damn nice Xoliul. Huge improvement on the plane.


    One thing I would like to point out are your rocks; at the moment they really stand out as being terribly lowpoly. In fact, it looks like the plane doesn't really fit in there.

    Did you think about sculpting them perhaps? You could easily get away with using 2 well sculpted rocks. As long as they look different on each side it's really hard to tell that they are being reused.Moreoever, you can always vertex paint them to add some unique details. I feel that with a little love your rocks could bring this scene to a whole new level.

    Keep it up :) I will be following this thread.
  • roosterMAP
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    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 14
    id like to see more stuff happening around the plane. by itself, it looks frozen in time. in order to make it look like it crashed in a living breathing world, maybe add a bird or two pirched on the tail of the plane. or something like that.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Shep, hmm, it's actually just lerping with white based on the fresnel and so on. I don't really see how the grey hull would benefit from colored spec, and the red paint is very dull in spec and reflections as it has worn over the years.

    Tea; thanks. I can sort of see what you mean with the rocks, but do the really look that lowpoly? They're like 1800 tri's each. I know they look smooth, but these are glacial rocks that have eroded to such a smooth shape by the ice.
    And you know, part of the reason I do this project, is to get away from highpoly and baking a bit, after half a year of just that. I wanna focus more on efficiency and having tricks with shaders, post-processing and smart modeling & texturing, do a lot of work for me. So I don't know if I'll get to sculpting.

    rooster, yeah I'll dump some more stuff around it, and i thought about birds. I shouldn't get lost in making them too detailed but they should be doable. I just don't know about animating them, that could be a bottleneck.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    sorry not coloured spec...

    if you lerp between the diffuse and the spec/reflection with fresnel it gives you a much more metal like material... dont add it blend it basically

    kind of going on the basis that reflection is focused light bounce...the more a material is focused the less un-focused bounce light there is...this equates to diffuse and ref maps in our simplified terms so dont add them but lerp between them

    this doesnt work brilliantly for every material but fot most (inc this) it will...its like a simplified energy saving bdrf
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 16
    Still pluggin'. Mostly tweaks all over. The last hour or so, I've been changing the colors pretty drastically. It's really driving me nuts, I'm having such a hard time trying to hit the right note with the overal tone.

    ManitobaWIP13.jpg

    ManitobaWIP11.jpg


    ManitobaWIP12.jpg

    Feedback on colors and general mood is greatly appreciated.
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