WIP Mountain Relay Station

Tavor

Hello guys, I’ve been working on this scene for some months, and I’d like to get some additional input. It is for my portfolio, and it’s also for me to learn the ins and outs of UDK and sub-d modeling.

The story behind this scene is that it is one of many military relay stations in a mountain range. On one side of the mountain is a desert, and on the other a jungle, where different outposts are.

I went back and forth between blockout and making assets, but I think the blockout is almost finished, which is why I am posting. The door at the end is based off of a Paul Richards' concept.























Only when I put these two separate pieces in game did I realize that I should have probably made just one piece, but then again, it would allow for some more variation. Also, since I'm a noob at this stuff, I was wondering, when you have these big bulky shapes that don't fit neatly in a power of two texture, what do you do?










I'm cutting the tri count on this piece because I think the normal maps could do more.

chrisradsby

Hey there mate, I feel like you need to spend some more time on the lighting, right now it's not working in your favor, the scene is too dark. You also need to do something about the instancing of all your stuff, right now it's super-easy to spot the tiling of models, and I would say that 3000 tris is a lot for one piece of flat rock.

Looking forward to more progress mate

mkandersson

I like where the scene is going GJ so far. Though you could make the floor panel into a single plain or box and just bake the highpoly details on a normalmap. Your rock barrier looks good but is too flat imo.

SHEPEIRO

did you use reference for your rock? looks like you need to...kind of blobby scult at the mo...

Tom Ellis

This:

chrisradsby wrote: »

I would say that 3000 tris is a lot for one piece of flat rock.

And this:

SHEPEIRO wrote: »

did you use reference for your rock? looks like you need to...kind of blobby scult at the mo...

Check out this awesome thread filled with lots of little bits of useful info on creating rocks:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50160

And also Adam has a very good method for creating some nice looking 'cliff' type rock faces:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69345&page=3

If you wanna go the 'sculpt & bake' route though, I'd suggest retopologizing them by hand rather than just crunching them. You could probably get that count down to under 1k and still have a decent looking rock.

For example the rocks I created a while back, they're not perfect but they were done quite quickly using ZBrush, and then Topogun. They are about 700 tris each, also notice the silhouette on the left is much more prominent than the one on the right, my first attempt which looked a little flat. I got some crit on here and tried to push the shapes some more.

Tavor

Thanks for the feedback and links guys; got some good ideas and inspiration. I'm going to try and cut the tri count on the flat piece and see what I can do about the blobbyness.

As for reference, I was trying to follow this guy:

cholden

You'd be better off with a tiling stone material in this case. Custom sculpting that stuff sounds hot, but then you see it in game lower rez and of no higher quality than a tiling material. I'd attack this with a solid organize mesh for all of the cave, tiling a rock across it, and using a blend material to remove any tiling and making it seamless with the floor.

Tavor

I think the blockout is finished. I don't want to make this project more massive than it already is. Still working on the silhouettes a little more, specifically the large cylinder in the back, as well as the framing going around the terminals.
Does it feel too busy? I'd really like to get some feedback.

@chrisradsby: I tried using your advice for the lighting. I am going for a darker scene, but I am going to keep tweaking. I also broke up some of the tiling with that ladder in the middle of the dugout.

@cholden: I'm not sure what you mean by "organize" mesh. I assumed what you meant was just one simple mesh that can be instanced everywhere without any really obvious tiling. So, I tried that.