look at the rocks in the concept much better shapes than you have there more sharpeness
Agreed. Biggest issue with the start is that your rocks have become very standard, roundish video game rocks. Concept has nice angled, flatter slate-like rocks, which seems more interesting. It also allows for the water to fall off of them more interestingly, which would be nice to do with some alpha cards.
Hmm, this was a concern I had. Kinda struggling with the best way to approach those. :S I'm thinking possibly make one slatish rock and then use Mesh Inset in ZBrush to extrude some nice angular rocks from a surface. I can then use the rock I used to create the extrusions as a filler prop for the rest of the scene.
Going back and forth in my head between using alpha cards and particles for the water. :S
I would make 2 or 3 variations of a rock and just crash it through each other to get the shapes, as long as you scale and rotate each one a bit it should not be noticeable that its only 3 rocks. plus then your texel density will be a lot better than if you make one big shape thats 100% unique
Going back and forth in my head between using alpha cards and particles for the water. :S
use both, alpha'd meshes with animated uvs for the main sheets of water with particles to break up the pattern and add a touch more dynamism will give you the best result
It's looking cool so far, not much to say that hasn't already been said about the rocks..
I'm curious to see how you approach the waterfalls though, I'm currently building a scene that has waterfalls as well but I've never used particles and animated textures so I will likely be lurking
I look at this concept ,and I must say i really like the idea.However your stones could use a bit chipped shape and more sharpness.By chance I happen to have a recent model i modeled yesterday.You can see it HERE.And nice techniques to make stones I can also suggest - visit THIS blog , It has great VIDEO tutorials (linked by the right side).They are procedural stone modeling tutorials.Great job so far :thumbup:
It's looking cool so far, not much to say that hasn't already been said about the rocks..
I'm curious to see how you approach the waterfalls though, I'm currently building a scene that has waterfalls as well but I've never used particles and animated textures so I will likely be lurking
If you take a look in that GDC map in April UDk theres a waterfall in there
Okay so I made a new rock and repeated it everywhere. It looks a load better! I might do more rock meshes down the line if I feel like I need more variety.
The moss is all over the place. In the concept you can see the green colouring gravitate more toward to the top/side of the entrance and the rocks under the water are relatively clean. Great work though, keep it up!
I would make a shader that allows you to use one vertex color channel to blend some moss/alge onto the rocks for areas ouside the fall, and perhaps use another color channel to blend in areas that are super shiny/wet looking. that way you could have 3 variations in surface type for constructing the surrounding mountain too.
the wet and shiny stuff might be a bit overkill/complicated but atleast having the moss blending in there would be super useful and allow you to get more out of that rock asset.
i agree with pixel masher... also some drapped algae alpha planes will really set it off too... with some particle emmitters at the end for drops and the odd puddle on the bridge
edit you could also use the same sort of shader with an added uv scroll in the second set of uvs to acjheive the thick mist of water that the rocks inside the waterfall protrude out of
i really like this scene! I think the moss still looks a little fake on the rocks right now...I think its the harsh transition from completely covered in moss to not covered at all.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out..good luck!
I would make a shader that allows you to use one vertex color channel to blend some moss/alge onto the rocks for areas ouside the fall, and perhaps use another color channel to blend in areas that are super shiny/wet looking. that way you could have 3 variations in surface type for constructing the surrounding mountain too.
the wet and shiny stuff might be a bit overkill/complicated but atleast having the moss blending in there would be super useful and allow you to get more out of that rock asset.
why? it looks to me like his UVs on the rocks are all unique anyway, no textures would be saved by making such a shader, which is usually their point
why? it looks to me like his UVs on the rocks are all unique anyway, no textures would be saved by making such a shader, which is usually their point
there are a couple reasons, instead of having a rock diffuse with no moss, and a rock diffuse with moss, you could easily use a smaller tileable moss texture and save some memory.
but the texture saving thing wasnt the point of that shader idea, it allows you to get a lot more out of a single asset instead of having to make a bunch of variations, which saves time and it saves having to load a bunch of different models and shaders for each unique variation. basically it just allows you to make the most of an asset.
lookin cool feanix, the wet stuff looks pretty good, easily tweakable after the water fall itself is in place if it looks off. I would block in the mountain side before doing a bunch of smaller details, its the other major part of the scene. keep it up dude!
There's one trick that you might want to apply to your rocks to make them pop out more.
Take your normal map, desaturate it and apply a high-pass filter in PS. Then, adjust levels (bring the midtone slider closer to hightone slider) until you have a strong contrast between the dark tones and bright tones which correspond to your edges. Place it on top of your diffuse and set bledning mode to either screen, lighter color or color dodge. The lines will be probably too clean, so beat them up a bit with some brushes, or apply Render Clouds as a mask (and tweak it until it looks right). I usually set opacity of the layer to 50, but it really depends on your diffuse.
Oh; and good luck with this scene I like that painterly feel you've got there.
Hmm, something isnt adding up. Your rocks and props have a certain look to them and now in this pic they are surrounded by what looks like different style rocks. Are these your rocks or placeholders? If they are your rocks I like them more than the ones that are surrounding the arch and think you should try to replace them with the rocks that are on the cliffs. Really like the flow of this piece, great choice of concept, perfect to show off environment skills in a manageable scene!
@haidddasalami: Ooooh. Well, they'll be mostly covered up by water. They're meant to look wet.
Sure, they're wet. However they also just look like completely different assets (ie. you didn't just clone and reposition your original rocks but placed differently generated rock back there.) Such that your rock group surrounding the doorway don't match the style, shape, coloring, etc of it's surroundings.
I believe Grey's point was that perhaps those rocks would work better (with some tweaking) than those over the doorway. I know it hurts to throw stuff out but sometimes it's part of the game.
Or perhaps a meeting in the middle and just tweaking both sets of rock bodies to the point where they match better. You would then use your lighting to pop your area of focus.
I'll post pictures of both rocks in a second. I'm going to finish the water (it's still very much a WIP) before I start worrying about whether the rocks behind the water match up with the rocks around the door.
Yeah def see what grey is saying. The rocks that look wet are much nicer looking and if you copied that look / material to the other rocks I think it would look much nicer overall.
Sick and tired of working on the water so I switched to some of the other assets that needed doing. In this case I added the small shrub trees and a modular cobble floor asset.
they leaves could be smaller, IMO. I don't think the giant round rocks are working very well for the ground. But the scene is really starting to come together, I like the misty look of the water, but there could be some denser streams going on too.
How are you setting up your waterfall? I've done plenty of them, and this doesn't look like one. I suggest a panning water fall mesh as a base, a falling water particle at the edge of each major fall, a foamy rapids at each base coupled with a large steam particle.
That plant looks gigantic and waterfall is not convincing though. I would also breakup geometric shape of that bridge a notch to give it a bit more organic quality
Yeah, I actually have a bunch of totally different approaches going on in different areas. On the left you have pure particles, on the right you have meshes with particles added. I was experimenting to see what techniques I could use and what would look best. I am probably going to go with something similar to what cholden suggested!
Okay, worked a bit on the water. It's now mostly mesh based with a panning texture (and looks pretty sweet when it's moving). I just use one particle system at the moment but will add a wafting mist one at some point (at least).
I also changed the ground on the bridge, as you can see.
coming along quite nicely
maybe try to put a fresnel into the water material transparency so you dont see those hard edges where the mesh is viewed in profile.
Way better. I can tell from looking at it that it probably looks better in motion (being that a heavy part of the composition is a waterfall in motion). You'd be in great favor to fraps up a vid on youtube or videom so we can see it work.
The scene is really coming together and is looking great, but the waterfall is a bit odd yet. The left side is awesome, but on the right there's an emitter that just really throws the whole thing off in my opinion. The one where it looks like puffs of smoke are just coming out of the rock and slowly falling down.. and ends up taking up nearly the entire left side of the frame by the end of the video.
Seems like the big steam particle on the right is just falling, a rotation and possible scale may help. Opacity seem a tad strong but that could be the lighting. I'd also place some of the large steam particles in the lower right foreground (so a bit covers the bridge), and another on the other side as though it's the base of that major fall.
A drip particle for the entrance and rocks around would be a nice touch.
Don't be afraid to abuse vegetation to block any odd rock/water transitions.
Really coming together though,like a painting. Looking forward to see how that bridge ends up.
Okay, so I tried cholden's idea. I'm not sure if it's me implementing the idea badly or something but it's not really working for me. It costs the scene about 10 fps and makes the whole thing seem a bit more fuzzy than I'd like.
Replies
Going back and forth in my head between using alpha cards and particles for the water. :S
Thanks for crits!
use both, alpha'd meshes with animated uvs for the main sheets of water with particles to break up the pattern and add a touch more dynamism will give you the best result
I'm curious to see how you approach the waterfalls though, I'm currently building a scene that has waterfalls as well but I've never used particles and animated textures so I will likely be lurking
I look at this concept ,and I must say i really like the idea.However your stones could use a bit chipped shape and more sharpness.By chance I happen to have a recent model i modeled yesterday.You can see it HERE.And nice techniques to make stones I can also suggest - visit THIS blog , It has great VIDEO tutorials (linked by the right side).They are procedural stone modeling tutorials.Great job so far :thumbup:
If you take a look in that GDC map in April UDk theres a waterfall in there
Woah that is an awesome environment
Thanks for the tips!
the wet and shiny stuff might be a bit overkill/complicated but atleast having the moss blending in there would be super useful and allow you to get more out of that rock asset.
edit you could also use the same sort of shader with an added uv scroll in the second set of uvs to acjheive the thick mist of water that the rocks inside the waterfall protrude out of
Going away for the weekend, see you guys on monday.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out..good luck!
why? it looks to me like his UVs on the rocks are all unique anyway, no textures would be saved by making such a shader, which is usually their point
there are a couple reasons, instead of having a rock diffuse with no moss, and a rock diffuse with moss, you could easily use a smaller tileable moss texture and save some memory.
but the texture saving thing wasnt the point of that shader idea, it allows you to get a lot more out of a single asset instead of having to make a bunch of variations, which saves time and it saves having to load a bunch of different models and shaders for each unique variation. basically it just allows you to make the most of an asset.
lookin cool feanix, the wet stuff looks pretty good, easily tweakable after the water fall itself is in place if it looks off. I would block in the mountain side before doing a bunch of smaller details, its the other major part of the scene. keep it up dude!
Take your normal map, desaturate it and apply a high-pass filter in PS. Then, adjust levels (bring the midtone slider closer to hightone slider) until you have a strong contrast between the dark tones and bright tones which correspond to your edges. Place it on top of your diffuse and set bledning mode to either screen, lighter color or color dodge. The lines will be probably too clean, so beat them up a bit with some brushes, or apply Render Clouds as a mask (and tweak it until it looks right). I usually set opacity of the layer to 50, but it really depends on your diffuse.
Oh; and good luck with this scene
The normal map thing worked nicely, teaandcigarettes, thanks! (big admirer of yours, btw! you are too good to be allowed).
Here's some progress. I'm going to to the water next.
[IMG][/img]
I might add some of those towards the end, ZacD!
@haidddasalami: Ooooh. Well, they'll be mostly covered up by water. They're meant to look wet.
Sure, they're wet. However they also just look like completely different assets (ie. you didn't just clone and reposition your original rocks but placed differently generated rock back there.) Such that your rock group surrounding the doorway don't match the style, shape, coloring, etc of it's surroundings.
I believe Grey's point was that perhaps those rocks would work better (with some tweaking) than those over the doorway. I know it hurts to throw stuff out but sometimes it's part of the game.
Or perhaps a meeting in the middle and just tweaking both sets of rock bodies to the point where they match better. You would then use your lighting to pop your area of focus.
Keep up the great work.
That plant looks gigantic and waterfall is not convincing though. I would also breakup geometric shape of that bridge a notch to give it a bit more organic quality
I also changed the ground on the bridge, as you can see.
maybe try to put a fresnel into the water material transparency so you dont see those hard edges where the mesh is viewed in profile.
possible waterfall texture
another
VIDEO
Other than that though, lookin swell sir!
Seems like the big steam particle on the right is just falling, a rotation and possible scale may help. Opacity seem a tad strong but that could be the lighting. I'd also place some of the large steam particles in the lower right foreground (so a bit covers the bridge), and another on the other side as though it's the base of that major fall.
A drip particle for the entrance and rocks around would be a nice touch.
Don't be afraid to abuse vegetation to block any odd rock/water transitions.
Really coming together though,like a painting. Looking forward to see how that bridge ends up.
Cholden, I'm not sure exactly what you're suggesting with the placement of the large steam particles? Where did you mean, exactly?
ideally, the one on the right, in front of the bridge would barely peak the rail as not to compromise the composition.
EDIT: Exclamation marks!