Hi-tech research facility (UDK environment)

Minos

Final screenshots:









Some of the modular pieces:


Thiago Klafke - Environment Artist
www.thiagoklafke.com

JonathanF

hey thats pretty bad ass looking... only part i do not like at all. is the ceiling. It looks like I'm going into a fancy European house with that tray ceiling style. I would nix that personally... but everything else looks great!

Bigjohn

Real cool. I love how clean it is, that's refreshing. So used to everything being super damaged like it's been through a war.

Shogun3d

I'm enjoying the design and layout for sure! The only issue I have is the sense of scale, there's nothing to compare the ceiling height, and width of wall sections to. I'm sure that'll be fine once props make their way into the scene.

divi

when i only saw the shots of the modular assets i thought that those bevels are incredibly large and would look like toys but when all put together it works rather well.
looking forward to updates on this.

fearian

That looks liuke a good start, but the you just have very strong plain shapes - you need to get in close and do the dirty work! Some more noise and variation on the walls would be good ns its screaming for a specular map. You dont have to make it dirty by adding detail, But you really need something to get rid of the doom 3 plastic wrap look!

Minos

@JonathanF @SasoChicken: You guys are right I'll see what I can do!

@divi: Yeah I exaggerated the bevels so I could have more depth in my normal maps. My previous tests with this kind of sci-fi stuff on UDK turned up kinda bad because lightmass tends to make normal maps look flat... it's either that or you crank up indirect lighting influence and get huge blobs on your lightmaps...

@kaburan: You are right, I plan to improve the sense of scale by adding props and doors

@fearian: I think it looks like doom because of the viewport shader I'm using for visualizing the mockup. I'm pretty sure it will look a lot different when I put this on Unreal. I'm planning on having some direct lighting and windows where the light comes through, and that alone will give this a whole different look I think!

Minos

First UDK test. I plan to fill this place with green and plants to give a nice contrast to the walls!

Ryan Smith

This looks good, but you should think about breaking up the repeating in your meshes with some color variation, or perhaps some signs or lights or decals. You may want to try vertex paint to discolor some of the red panels or floor.

I understand that yo may be going for a clean, new look. In which case this would look fine, but not that interesting.

The green should add a nice touch as well.

brandoom

Looks great, love the lighting. Only thing I would suggest is to increase the shadow map resolution on your walls.

Can't wait for more

ScoobyDoofus

Hey! Looks better than I would have expected for such simple textures. I think you could do with a more complex specular, which might lend some more realism to the material and scene.

Xendance

Also, you might want to consider using cubemaps ala Mass Effect, that's how they did their "reflections" on the walls.

Minos

@Virtuosic - Yeah don't worry I have a lot of props planned for this scene to break repetition

@brandoon - I'm using lower res lightmaps at the moment to keep iterations fast. The final version will use higher res maps!

@ScoobyDoofus | @Xendance - Cool! I'm planning on adding detail specular maps, just need to figure out how to make good tiling detail textures that don't look tooo repetitive from the distance. Far Cry 2 did that and it looks really good.

I also plan on using spherical maps for "reflections", but I can't seem to find any good tutorials on this. The one on UDN is obsolete Does anyone know how to do it? I wanted to make a few tests with spherical mapping before switching to cubemaps.

@SasoChicken - The ceiling holes are not visible in the screens because they are just placeholder bsp atm ^_^

Tonights update:
- New wall set
- Using placeholder plant meshes by Epic at the moment
- tweaked the floors diffuse map, which was way too dirty

00Zero

lookin sick. i like the sunlight coming in. how bout angling the light a bit so that it goes into the room a bit more?

i think the darks in the corners are a bit too dark. i dont know if thats the realtime AO or what.

JonathanF

sweet!! yeah man! looking so much cooler now! feels a lot more open! especially needed the open spice like this with the plants, nice touch! really gives it some great color. and that sun light is awesome to!

doeseph

Awesome work

Ryan Hawkins

Looks good but looks like alot of static mesh loading and less use of BSP's should probably try to mix and match brush usage and mesh usage rather then 100% static mesh level building.

SHEPEIRO

looking nice like the lighting

needs:

some signage, leaks n drip decals, moar plants (maybe a new section with a planter that stickout into the pathway some, with a nice trailing plant that could creep into the rest of the scene

Ged

I think its going well as it is saso, nice work, might look nice with a shiny polished floor using a cubemap or something?

samgriffiths

How about giving the sunlight some volume so we can see it coming through the windows

SHEPEIRO

skulburn - i find the original more interesing to tell you the truth, and more realistic...even a welll lit interior like a labs lights is nowhere near as strong as the sun
and the retaining glass for the plants makes the Env less interesting...when IMO it needs more breaking up with organic elements....SOrry dont like it

an aggressive napkin

Imo, If its a bit dark in that area, you should add some artificial grow lights or something because in that darkness I don't see how a plant could grow or germinate without that said light.

Minos

wow nice ideas everyone! Keep em coming, loving it so far

feanix

might be cool to have some tanks of blue and green phosphorescent algae and kelp instead of ferns. might lend more of a scifi feel and avoid contaminating the environment?

Minos

I'm not too worried about this area not looking too clean, this is supposed to be a corridor/lounge area (There's an area not shown on the screens where I plan on placing couches, magazines and stuff).

I might even change the theme to something else to justify all the foliage I want. Maybe some sort of futuristic residence or a human colony in a lush distant planet? hmm that would make a bit more sense considering everything I have planned for this

an aggressive napkin

Maybe some flowers, like on the movie avatar? Something that is supposed to look like a weed but has really nice blooms. I dunno when ever i look at those things i get inspired, And in a scientist's research facility, If you want plants, wouldn't you want something that inspires you? Just my opinion, Cuz the ferns look great too :P

paulsvoboda

I love what you've done so far - It looks great. You don't see many 'clean' and sterile environments and this is a nice change. The plants added a lot to it and I don't like the glass covered version (ie. paintover). Some wall panels would be nice and maybe some artificial subtle lights shining down on the plants. Otherwise - beautiful work so far.

bluekangaroo

I like what you have so far...please continue

Divine Rage

Absolutely awesome work! I'm getting a slight ME feel from this. It certainly would fit.

Shogun3d

Really coming together! I'm enjoying the lighting and the foliage is doing a great job off adding color to the scene. Really balances well.

brandoom

Nice work. Already it is really starting to come together. As Kaburan just mentioned, the foliage really helps give it some balance.

Perhaps the AO is a tad too intense for how much light looks to be coming in.

Regardless, awesome looking scene! Can't wait for more updates

Asteric

NOt to hijack, but in UDK, how do you keep those crisp highlights from the light? when i run lightmass it totally ruins the effect.

Minos

@Asteric: Crisp highlights on normal maps you mean? I toned down "DiffuseBoost" to 2.3 on lightmass settings (default is 5.0 which is way too exaggerated for the clean textures I'm using imo). Normal maps will never look as crisp as they look with dynamic lighting only though

@Brandoom: Agreed. I haven't looked into a way to tweak the SSAO effect yet. I don't even think it's possible though

@Divine Rage: Can't avoid being influenced by ME, it is my favorite game this generation

@Saso: Yep I've never really decided what kind of research I wanted this base to perform... i'm seriously considering making this a settlement instead, with rooms like kitchens, lounges, balconies and gardens. The actual research base or factory (where the dwellers work at) would be visible in the backdrop instead. Would fit the assets I have in mind for this better I think

piippo

I got that ME vibe from these too, especially after those plants were added. Really cool stuff.

Dani

Indeed verry Mass Effectish:), (thats positive btw).

So far the panels look well designed and have a unique style to them really something I've not seen before, maybe its a tad too clean (even modern/newly built stuff has some dirt in places) but it doesn't distract me too much.

Always love scifi stuff, looking forward to seeing more.:)

Divine Rage

Minotaur0, I was looking at your portfolio, and I'd definately suggest adding this to it. You also haven't updated it since march "09.

Minos

Divine Rage wrote: »

Minotaur0, I was looking at your portfolio, and I'd definately suggest adding this to it. You also haven't updated it since march "09.

Yep, my portfolio is soo outdated right now. I'll definitely update it with this scene and some other stuff I've been working on at Ubisoft (nothing fancy tho, just DS games and stuff. in fact I'm not even sure if I should add them to my folio at all lol). I also have to remove some of the older stuff like HL1 props and that crappy girly scene.

This scene still has a long way to go though. Progress has been slow this week but I hope to get up to speed again soon!

Divine Rage

Well, there's nothing wrong with adding handheld stuff to your portfolio. There's also nothing wrong with adding WIP content there, if you'll update it once it's done. I'm always intrigued by WIP's and seeing the final result.
I keep pushing people to record timelapses of their work aswell.

Anyway, you've certainly pushed me over the edge to finally do some game modelling myself. Tried out the UDK these past few days and I really like it so far.

jyandel

I really like this. Definitely add more greenery and sunlight. I would put some signs up also just to let us know what this facility is, and where it's located. For instance, is it on a ship? A moon? What is being done there?

Keep up the great work!

PogoP

Got a quick question Mino.

Did you make those texture sheets first, and then build your geometry around them? Or did you make your geometry first and slice it up onto those individual UVs?

Minos

PogoP wrote: »

Got a quick question Mino.

Did you make those texture sheets first, and then build your geometry around them? Or did you make your geometry first and slice it up onto those individual UVs?

Since I answered this in PM on another forum I thought it might be useful if I posted the answer here too:

I created the texture sheets first trying to be as generic as possible, and then reused these textures in different manners to create modular pieces. For the red panel wall I created this texture:


and then created wall units out of it:


I started this scene with unique textures for walls and stuff but that wasn't very flexible and fast so I'm sticking with tiling textures for now on, using unique textures when needed. Ex: doors, seats, signs and so on. This way I can iterate between versions much faster.

Progress on this has been slow due to Red Dead, but I hope to post updates soon, so stay tuned!

Divine Rage

Any updates on this? Such a shame to let this wither and die.

Visceral

Yeah this is amazing stuff you have here!

Froyok

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Nothing to say, it's an error, sorry.

veteehrri

looking great man, wanna see more.

SimonT

really nice so far!

Minos

Thanks for the heads up dudes!!

This scene is not dead, I've just been working quietly on it

I've also been away from my PC the last few weeks (crunching @ work and then I took a week off to pull myself together). But I'm back now. I've tweaked the modular parts and materials a lot since the last update. I just need to put it all into UDK which I hope to do soon!

Minos

A new update after so much time! I changed the theme of this scene to a sci-fi apartment complex because I think it fits better the props I have in mind for this.

Please excuse me for the horrible screenshot quality. I just can't get tiledshot to work inside UED (I can't run my map on play mode for some reason). Tiledshot looks like this for me:http://www.thiagoklafke.com/misc/temp/scifi_udkwip_tiledshot_Error.jpg Has anyone any idea on how to fix that?

New media:



I'm struggling a bit to find a good color palette for my lighting, any tips on that will be highly appreciated!

JordanFrayne

Maybe try some info lighting, exit signs or something like the colorer coding in a hospital but with lights.

nrek

Hey man, the scene is looking great so far! I like how you have managed to keep it very visually interesting without having to compromise the clean look of it. However I totally agree with SasoChicken about the blue light. Right now it is just way too blue and neon like.

And as far as the tiledshot, use tab to pull up the command prompt and not the "~" key if you want to avoid the big black menu in the screens.

Is the "Zest" thing meant to be a hologram? If so I would suggest removing the 2 wall lights above it and let the hologram itself emit the light, but only slightly. There is functionality in UDK for emissive materials to light the scene, so that would be perfect for this application. Then maybe add tiny point light type meshes on the wall behind each letter to act as the projector of the holographic letter. Something like that would help it feel attached to the scene as opposed to just floating in it. But those are just some suggestions, the scene looks great regardless : ).

PhilipK

Awesome stuff! I agree about toning down the blue, perhaps you can have some illuminated info signs or something that can emit some stronger blue. I really think you should stick to using the "sun" as your main source of light as you do, it works really well, and I love that you started to get in some material color as well

Great stuff Mino!