Wow. That ceiling looks nearly identical to the one I am making for my own environment. Once you get the brick in that is. It's pretty ridiculous. For those ribs, did you go about making a unique texture for them? Or did you make a single rib brick and have it tile along?
haiddasalami: Thanks! I would love to get some more info on this. I'm not too good with the technical stuff but it would be great if I could understand how it's done.
aww man totally forgot. Will do either today or on friday before I reformat my computer. New scene is looking wicked and cant wait to see the updates
Thanks for the replies guys. I'm glad to hear some positive comments
Regarding the dark areas; I will try to play around with my Lightmass settings and reduce my ambient occlusion. If that doesn't help I will add some more lights here and there as suggested.
Prophecies; Yeah, I scultped a bunch of bricks, baked that onto a plane and tiled it across the ribs. I might have to add more weathering though since all those chipped edges turned out to be much smaller than I thought.
duxun: My fog has a slightly blueish colour; I felt it was necessary to kill off those overpowering red hues in my previous updates. I have also changed my Indirect Lighting settings, which in fact are the major culprit. However, this turned out as I wanted it to; I felt that my walls were far too bright in my previous updates.
I really like the new ceiling, looks great. The lighting is really nice as well - great contrast.
The open door is interesting too, maybe you could dress it up some how.. have a body or something laying in the shadows? I don't know, just something to give it some sort of story rather than it being just a cellar.
Other than that, I don't really have anything to crit... maybe the light emitting from the torches is a bit too yellow? As opposed to orange or red.
Thanks for the replies guys. I'm glad to hear some positive comments
Prophecies; Yeah, I scultped a bunch of bricks, baked that onto a plane and tiled it across the ribs. I might have to add more weathering though since all those chipped edges turned out to be much smaller than I thought.
I don't think extra weathering would be necessary. The cellar is indoors, sheltered and everything else seems like it is in good condition. Extra wear wouldn't make that much sense in my opinion. Looks awesome though! Keep it up!
Here's a small update; I've been working on a brick texture which will be blended with the plaster. Highpoly sculpt is pretty much done; I only have to fix some minor tiling issues.
Brandon, Prophecies; thanks for the replies, guys. I will write you a proper response once I wake up. I am afraid that I'm far too much tired to do it now.
Wow that texture came out good. However the lights are so bright I'm not really buying the pitch black shadows. Could be just too much AO?
Ceilings look great. Really nice environment so far.
Cheers Skayne!
I still have to fix some minor tiling issues. Does anyone have any tips on creating tilable normal maps in Zbrush? I've been generating displacement maps, removing the seams and displacing my geo back again before baking it down. Unfortunately some seams are still visible; I could easily edit my normals in Photoshop but I would like to know if there is a faster way to do that.
AO is something I still have to work on - Lightmass settings are giving me a headache. I will spend some time with Visualize Ambient Occlusion turned on and see what can be done. I've been playing around FullyOccludedSamplesFraction and OcclusionExponent before, but all I have managed to do was killing my lighting.
Really gorgeous, one thing is that I feel more could be done with the cobblestone floor, doesn't feel like it's at the same fidelity level as the rest of the piece (please forgive me if this has already been covered, I didn't read all the posts).
one question though the brick textures on your floor,ceiling, and walls i feel like you could give them more color variation because right now their all gray.. im pretty sure thats not the color your gonna stick with but just wondering if its final...
James9475: I see what you mean, in fact it was starting to bother me as well; that texture does seem a bit out of place. I'll see what can be done, perhaps I will simply replace it with some bigger stones encompassed in dirt (kind of like here)However, I will also have to tweak my other floor texture; the stones look a bit too clean at the moment, I will try to get back to my HP and beath them up a bit more.
duxun: Thanks
While the ceiling is pretty much done, the walls need a bit more love; as you noticed, the bricks have the same values as the plaster. This is only temporary as the whole material has yet to be finished.
I have managed to tweak the lighting a bit; been testing different Lightmass settings for the whole day and I believe the scene looks a bit better now. Will post an update tomorrow, once I replace that floor texture.
Mr Bear: Cheers
To some extent, almost all assets in the scene are using normal maps baked from HP meshes. Some of them have unique UV's and were baked directly from HP's (barrles, trims, pillars), while the rest uses tilable normal maps that were extracted from the meshes sculpted in Zbrush or Mudbox. I will post a more detailed breakdown once I'm done with all major props. I'm still planning to put some smaller props here and there, but these will probably use tilable textures.
Hey guys, thank you for all replies and my apologies for the horribly late reply. I've been terribly busy over the past two weeks and didn't have the time to work on this scene until now. I'm still keeping your suggestions in mind, though I'm not sure if I will be able to include all of them before I leave on holidays next week. Nevertheless, as soon as my PC arrives, I will continue pimping out this scene.
Here's the progress I've made during the past few days. I have decided to redo my lighting, replaced that cobble stone texture with something more fitting, added door and remade my LUT file. While I know that many of you complained about the insanely strong AO, I couldn't get rid of it without making the scene look too flat. Instead, I've changed my approach a bit and added more lights; I've been trying to get a better contrast between lit and shaded areas, without overblowing the latter. Hopefully, with some nice suggestions I will be able to push the lighting even further.
Here are the pics. I hope they're not too dark - my monitor is quite light.
I dont know what else needs fixing. Theres some good contrast and loving the purple hues in the scene. My only crit ould be toning down the blown out lights on the wall. You dont even see the fire anymore.
Hey, I was wondering how you achieved that really intense glow you had going earlier. I'm currently at the lighting stage of my scene, and I'm trying to figure out how to get a nice glowy light effect. Not bloom, but a glow where the light source originates from. Any hints?
haiddasalami: Cheers, you've made a good point. I will tone down those lights a little bit. Also, I think that the light coming through the window needs to be toned down as well.
Prophecies: There's not much to it really; it's a combination of bloom and colour grading. Try to bump up your hightones a little bit and see if it helps.
nice BUT... not feeling the lighting...looks good...but to me it sells it as fake, as though its lit by electric torches not flame....
the strongest light should be the daylight by quite a bit (but maybe not so saturated and not so purply a touch more green...the torch light shouldnt be quite as strong the flames should be visible ontop of the most lit bit of wall...ATM i think its too yellow maybe more like this
and those flames are a bit cacky deffinatly turn the brightness down to get better colour...and the torches look like cement (untextured) make em dark with a good spec
I really liked the way you had light coming from the door ages ago...it provided a strong rim light ESP on those nice cobbles and really helped give the scene more focus...tell a story...would be cool if there was maybe an abandoned item/s on the floor that would be a clue...say a couple of glasses an empty bottle of wine and some discarded clothes
Wow Shepeiro. The quality of your critiques has always impressed me. And once again, I agree with you. The flames seem too white to me, it gives off a cold bleak feeling, as opposed to a warm cozy feeling. Of course, that depends on the look you want, but it seems to me like the scene is washed out in a sense. It just seems to lack those vibrant colors. Then again, it may be what you are going for.
duxun: Thanks duxun, some webs would be a great touch and I have thought about this before. Unfortunately, I don't know if I will manage to do them by the end of the weekend (I'm sending my PC home soon) so I might have to leave that until later on.
Torrrtilla: Cheers!
roosterMAP: That might be a good idea; I've been thinking of adding some green tones to the scene, banners might work well for that.
SHEPEIRO: Thanks a lot for the crits, you've made some great points about the lighting.
I've toned down the lights coming from the torches and scaled them down a little bit more. I've tweaked the flames as well; they should look a lot better now.
I've also played around with the window lights; they've been giving me a headache for a while now, since I've had problems with getting the settings right. I didn't intend it to be a sunlight but moonlight. However, I see now that the way it looked was suggesting the former. I've done some tweaks to it today; made it stronger, but slightly darker and more saturated. I'm much more happier with it now, though there are some nasty artifacts I have to get rid of.
You're right about the focal point, ever since I removed that old door the scene has been lacking in this area. I will either change the composition or add a little bit more junk to the scene; probably both . Unfortunately, that will have to wait until I get my PC back. For now, I would like to get the lighting right and finish the remaining, untextured assets (torches, bags).
haiddasalami: Nice idea A highly reflective decal would do the trick.
Wow, amazing progress since i last peeked in on this thread.
You might consider playing with the light coming in through the bars from outside more. You can take a screenshot of one of the windows head on, isolate the the open areas where light comes in within a black and white image and create a light function out of it so you have some bluish light pouring in. Think of 'em as a decal only they're layed on by actual lights.
Here's a tutorial on light functions if you want to check it out, they're pretty easy to manage if you've never tried them before, just make sure you enable light functions on the light properties:
I have experimented with something like this before; placing a spotlight close to each window has given very similar results. I liked how it looked, but wasn't sure how realistic it would be to use Spotlights for a moonlight (as opposed to using Directional Light) . I will play around some more tomorrow and post the results; I can easily revert back after all.
and yeah, sacks have to be replaced; I've already done the highpoly, but I have yet to get off my lazy ass and do retopo
Hey guys, this project is back from the dead - I've been planning to make an update before , but since I'm chilling out at home at the moment my work has been rather irregular.
Here's the latest progress on the scene; I'm pretty much done with it though I would like to hear some final suggestions before I call it finished.
There are some wierd splotches of light here and there (the ones above the window are the most noticable ones); any tips on how to get rid of these will be greatly appreciated. They don't appear when I zoom in, so I take it's a mip-mapping issue.
Are you building on production? If not that could help get rid of any artifacts in lightmaps.
I think you should add a hint of fog in the room, it would help add depth to the scene, It should be super faint but something to just grey out the distant walls slightly.
It may be tricky but it'd be cool if you could emphasize the moonlight bouncing from the floor by increasing indirect lighting scale on that light.
Jordan: Thanks! Yeah, the bake was done on production which is why it's odd I'm getting these sorts of issues. However, I did a second bake with Use Two Sided Lighting turned on for that mesh and most of these splotches have disappeared.
I added some fog as you suggested and I'm currently playing around with the moonlight. I will post the results later on.
Here's an updated version, I have managed to remove all the lighting errors and added some subtle fog. I have also increased the Indirect Lighting scale setting. I could bump it even more, though it's set to 3 at the moment and I'm afraid that taking it further may affect other lights too much.
Thanks Prophecies I can't really say what more I want to add; I've been doing this piece for ages now and I would like to move on and try something new. I'm getting sick of it to be honest, haha.
I've been thinking of adding some grunge and other subtle details; small stones and bits of plaster laying on the ground, cobwebs, piles of dust, etc. I also want to work on the material definition some more.
Apart from that I need to play around with the assets I've got so far and use them to create a few more shots.
Ok guys, I've decided to call this piece done. As much as I would like to pimp it out a little bit more, I think it will be better if I move on and try out something new.
Overall, I could say that this has been time well spent; I'm quite happy with the results and I have managed to radically improve my high-to-low workflow; almost all objects/textures were baked down from highpoly meshes.
However, I have also noticed some issues regarding the way I work. As soon as I move past the blocking-out stage, I spend far too much time working on individual assets, ignoring the big picture. For instance, those cobblestones have went through five (or even more) iterations before I decided to use the final sculpt. Likewise, I had to go back and forth and improve some of the assets to maintain a stylistic consistency.
While this approach is not wrong in any way, I would like to avoid it in the future. More planning during the blocking out stage, should allow me to carry on my work much smoother.
Sorry for this rant, but I hope that my discoveries will help someone as well.
Thanks for all the help guys! I truly appreciate it
Replies
aww man totally forgot. Will do either today or on friday before I reformat my computer. New scene is looking wicked and cant wait to see the updates
Regarding the dark areas; I will try to play around with my Lightmass settings and reduce my ambient occlusion. If that doesn't help I will add some more lights here and there as suggested.
Prophecies; Yeah, I scultped a bunch of bricks, baked that onto a plane and tiled it across the ribs. I might have to add more weathering though since all those chipped edges turned out to be much smaller than I thought.
duxun: My fog has a slightly blueish colour; I felt it was necessary to kill off those overpowering red hues in my previous updates. I have also changed my Indirect Lighting settings, which in fact are the major culprit. However, this turned out as I wanted it to; I felt that my walls were far too bright in my previous updates.
I really like the new ceiling, looks great. The lighting is really nice as well - great contrast.
The open door is interesting too, maybe you could dress it up some how.. have a body or something laying in the shadows? I don't know, just something to give it some sort of story rather than it being just a cellar.
Other than that, I don't really have anything to crit... maybe the light emitting from the torches is a bit too yellow? As opposed to orange or red.
Great work non the less
I don't think extra weathering would be necessary. The cellar is indoors, sheltered and everything else seems like it is in good condition. Extra wear wouldn't make that much sense in my opinion. Looks awesome though! Keep it up!
Brandon, Prophecies; thanks for the replies, guys. I will write you a proper response once I wake up. I am afraid that I'm far too much tired to do it now.
Apologies for not posting any updates, but I have been extremely busy over the past week.
Anyways, I have finally baked some bricks and messed around with vertex blending on the walls and ceiling.
I will try to finish that door over the weekend.
Cheers Skayne!
I still have to fix some minor tiling issues. Does anyone have any tips on creating tilable normal maps in Zbrush? I've been generating displacement maps, removing the seams and displacing my geo back again before baking it down. Unfortunately some seams are still visible; I could easily edit my normals in Photoshop but I would like to know if there is a faster way to do that.
AO is something I still have to work on - Lightmass settings are giving me a headache. I will spend some time with Visualize Ambient Occlusion turned on and see what can be done. I've been playing around FullyOccludedSamplesFraction and OcclusionExponent before, but all I have managed to do was killing my lighting.
one question though the brick textures on your floor,ceiling, and walls i feel like you could give them more color variation because right now their all gray.. im pretty sure thats not the color your gonna stick with but just wondering if its final...
James9475: I see what you mean, in fact it was starting to bother me as well; that texture does seem a bit out of place. I'll see what can be done, perhaps I will simply replace it with some bigger stones encompassed in dirt (kind of like here)However, I will also have to tweak my other floor texture; the stones look a bit too clean at the moment, I will try to get back to my HP and beath them up a bit more.
duxun: Thanks
While the ceiling is pretty much done, the walls need a bit more love; as you noticed, the bricks have the same values as the plaster. This is only temporary as the whole material has yet to be finished.
Edit: Saw your first post :P, could I see some texture flats whenever you get time? Looks truly amazing.
I have managed to tweak the lighting a bit; been testing different Lightmass settings for the whole day and I believe the scene looks a bit better now. Will post an update tomorrow, once I replace that floor texture.
Mr Bear: Cheers
To some extent, almost all assets in the scene are using normal maps baked from HP meshes. Some of them have unique UV's and were baked directly from HP's (barrles, trims, pillars), while the rest uses tilable normal maps that were extracted from the meshes sculpted in Zbrush or Mudbox. I will post a more detailed breakdown once I'm done with all major props. I'm still planning to put some smaller props here and there, but these will probably use tilable textures.
Are you going to add a 'boss' where the ribbing intersects? Example
Keep it up!
Got my computer to work (YAY) Now that I look at my hackjob think I can improve on this/ start again. Anywho:
Here's the progress I've made during the past few days. I have decided to redo my lighting, replaced that cobble stone texture with something more fitting, added door and remade my LUT file. While I know that many of you complained about the insanely strong AO, I couldn't get rid of it without making the scene look too flat. Instead, I've changed my approach a bit and added more lights; I've been trying to get a better contrast between lit and shaded areas, without overblowing the latter. Hopefully, with some nice suggestions I will be able to push the lighting even further.
Here are the pics. I hope they're not too dark - my monitor is quite light.
Looking forward to your comments guys
Prophecies: There's not much to it really; it's a combination of bloom and colour grading. Try to bump up your hightones a little bit and see if it helps.
have you considered adding webs all over the place to give this a cellar an aged look ??
im still getting and overall gray color for your ceilings ,walls, and ground.. would like to see more color variation ... IMHO...
Cheers...
the strongest light should be the daylight by quite a bit (but maybe not so saturated and not so purply a touch more green...the torch light shouldnt be quite as strong the flames should be visible ontop of the most lit bit of wall...ATM i think its too yellow maybe more like this
and those flames are a bit cacky deffinatly turn the brightness down to get better colour...and the torches look like cement (untextured) make em dark with a good spec
I really liked the way you had light coming from the door ages ago...it provided a strong rim light ESP on those nice cobbles and really helped give the scene more focus...tell a story...would be cool if there was maybe an abandoned item/s on the floor that would be a clue...say a couple of glasses an empty bottle of wine and some discarded clothes
AnimeAngel: Cheers mate.
duxun: Thanks duxun, some webs would be a great touch and I have thought about this before. Unfortunately, I don't know if I will manage to do them by the end of the weekend (I'm sending my PC home soon) so I might have to leave that until later on.
Torrrtilla: Cheers!
roosterMAP: That might be a good idea; I've been thinking of adding some green tones to the scene, banners might work well for that.
SHEPEIRO: Thanks a lot for the crits, you've made some great points about the lighting.
I've toned down the lights coming from the torches and scaled them down a little bit more. I've tweaked the flames as well; they should look a lot better now.
I've also played around with the window lights; they've been giving me a headache for a while now, since I've had problems with getting the settings right. I didn't intend it to be a sunlight but moonlight. However, I see now that the way it looked was suggesting the former. I've done some tweaks to it today; made it stronger, but slightly darker and more saturated. I'm much more happier with it now, though there are some nasty artifacts I have to get rid of.
You're right about the focal point, ever since I removed that old door the scene has been lacking in this area. I will either change the composition or add a little bit more junk to the scene; probably both . Unfortunately, that will have to wait until I get my PC back. For now, I would like to get the lighting right and finish the remaining, untextured assets (torches, bags).
haiddasalami: Nice idea
You might consider playing with the light coming in through the bars from outside more. You can take a screenshot of one of the windows head on, isolate the the open areas where light comes in within a black and white image and create a light function out of it so you have some bluish light pouring in. Think of 'em as a decal only they're layed on by actual lights.
Here's a tutorial on light functions if you want to check it out, they're pretty easy to manage if you've never tried them before, just make sure you enable light functions on the light properties:
http://book.hourences.com/tutorialsue3lightfunction.htm
And a quick paintover:
Would help break up the flat browns a bit.
Killer stuff! oh and give those sacks some more love of course
I have experimented with something like this before; placing a spotlight close to each window has given very similar results. I liked how it looked, but wasn't sure how realistic it would be to use Spotlights for a moonlight (as opposed to using Directional Light) . I will play around some more tomorrow and post the results; I can easily revert back after all.
and yeah, sacks have to be replaced; I've already done the highpoly, but I have yet to get off my lazy ass and do retopo
Here's the latest progress on the scene; I'm pretty much done with it though I would like to hear some final suggestions before I call it finished.
There are some wierd splotches of light here and there (the ones above the window are the most noticable ones); any tips on how to get rid of these will be greatly appreciated. They don't appear when I zoom in, so I take it's a mip-mapping issue.
Thanks!
Nice work!
I think you should add a hint of fog in the room, it would help add depth to the scene, It should be super faint but something to just grey out the distant walls slightly.
It may be tricky but it'd be cool if you could emphasize the moonlight bouncing from the floor by increasing indirect lighting scale on that light.
Jordan: Thanks! Yeah, the bake was done on production which is why it's odd I'm getting these sorts of issues. However, I did a second bake with Use Two Sided Lighting turned on for that mesh and most of these splotches have disappeared.
I added some fog as you suggested and I'm currently playing around with the moonlight. I will post the results later on.
Here's an updated version, I have managed to remove all the lighting errors and added some subtle fog. I have also increased the Indirect Lighting scale setting. I could bump it even more, though it's set to 3 at the moment and I'm afraid that taking it further may affect other lights too much.
I've been thinking of adding some grunge and other subtle details; small stones and bits of plaster laying on the ground, cobwebs, piles of dust, etc. I also want to work on the material definition some more.
Apart from that I need to play around with the assets I've got so far and use them to create a few more shots.
Overall, I could say that this has been time well spent; I'm quite happy with the results and I have managed to radically improve my high-to-low workflow; almost all objects/textures were baked down from highpoly meshes.
However, I have also noticed some issues regarding the way I work. As soon as I move past the blocking-out stage, I spend far too much time working on individual assets, ignoring the big picture. For instance, those cobblestones have went through five (or even more) iterations before I decided to use the final sculpt. Likewise, I had to go back and forth and improve some of the assets to maintain a stylistic consistency.
While this approach is not wrong in any way, I would like to avoid it in the future. More planning during the blocking out stage, should allow me to carry on my work much smoother.
Sorry for this rant, but I hope that my discoveries will help someone as well.
Thanks for all the help guys! I truly appreciate it