Left side is starting to look awesome, right side needs some holes filled in (top right corner) and something to fill in the bottom right for composition (probably just more large rock shapes).
I was posting updates to this scene in my portfolio thread but this revamp is getting so comprehensive it's probably best to ressurect the original pimping thread and post here.
So I've redone all the masonry assets. One reason is that the meshes were pretty messy and another is that they didnt match the concept very closely. I've also spent a few hours doing a much nicer version of the warrior monk statues. I've tried a different approach with the flag stones and used the grass differently. Each small grass clump is 40 tris (LODs to 10). It's pretty good with mesh instancing (40 effective tris) but not to bad uninstanced either (15k for all of them together).
I've revisited the water, trying to make it more efficient and more true to the concept.
I've also added some Ivy from the concept as well as the root to the side of the door.
I still want to improve the vegetation a bit more and I'm going back and forth on doing the angel figure. It's not clear to me whether that's a character or a statue. It's also proven to be a pain in the ass for me to do since character modelling really isn't my strong point.
Loving it! Have a play with that entrance, maybe theres a cold light coming out of it and pouring down the stairs, or maybe its a warm light? MAYBE THERE'S SOME EVIL EYES IN THE DARKNESS!
P:S The black thing is putting me off in the sun, that black blurry dot.
Here's a quick paint over to try and give you some ideas, i think you could use the door for sure. It gives the eye a place to look at IMO.
@saso_chicken: Thanks! I'll throw some blue in there. It's pretty white cos the concept water was VERY white. But it could probably stand some variation. I'll try to add some more detail to the sand. I'll what what I can do about adding some more wetness to the assets!
@Mr Bear: Glad you like it! I did experiment a little with placing a light in there but it was a departure from the concept. What I might end up doing a little later on it putting a bunch of different lights in there and posting them up for people to see what different colours look like The black dot was over-zealous opacity on some scrolling fog that made the god-rays dance a bit. Already scaled it down.
Ok, I found your thread
I like what I see but I think you need more specularity on your rocks. They need to look wet. Also the grass and stones on the bridge don't seem to cast any shadows?
Keep it up!
@Goraaz: Hi! I really didn't want that thread to be a secret advertisement for this thread. Glad you found this one anyways! I'll boost the spec on the rocks for sure. I probably dont have enough lightmap resolution on the bridge for it to pick up the shadows from the rocks and the grass enough. I could put it up, but shoouldn't I be worried about memory constraints? Can't put 128x128 lightmaps on EVERYTHING.
In my opinion the mossy rocks over the entrance is lighter then the other rocks on the sides, it looks kinda wierd, but its good. Idk if its just me though.
i love the yellow one , because will get some great result with that blue . and give some good color balance , good luck and don't forget that other statue on the left ^^
It's looking good so fra Echoing uppying the wetness of the rocks though, take a look at Epics GDC 10 map and look at the rocks with the waterfall.
Notice it has a dry area and a wet area, try incorporating something similar to that on your scene (making areas that would get sputtered more by water wetter and areas that would dry in the sun faster, dry/drier)
I'm sure you could accomplish this using vertex/mesh painting, HOW you use vertex/mesh painting in UDK is not something I know though :P so that might be a terrible suggestion, but they have a tutorial up for grabs on 3dmotive.com
Keep up the good work!
You should also sharpen the sand and rock texture a bit as they seem overly blurry right now, try using a diffuse or normal tile map to add detail, but be careful with it as it can quickly look noisy :P
Thanks for the advice skam! I'm already using vertex paint all over the place! I'll have a look at the GDC 10 map and see what I can learn. Will see about some detail normals.
if you want to make something look wet you need to crank the gloss, not the spec. cranking the spec on a dark object, (like your rocks) will create a metalic/chrome look with a high spec and high gloss- so you need to have a dark-ish spec, a dark-ish diff, and a cranked up gloss map.
essentially the idea is water will smooth out all the little pits and grainy stuff on the surface of the rock, making it so your cube maps reflection is less broken up resulting in a crisp reflection, which is what happens when things get wet. Crisp reflection is what you want- all a gloss map does is control the blurryness or sharpness of the cubemap
Have you tried adding a texture in the Specular Power slot? It will gloss things up a bit. Make it seem more wet, and partially take the metallic look away!
Okay, so I've taken a few days to do the damnable angel statue. I't not perfect but, to be honest, from the angle it's being viewed at and with the lighting and the fog, I doubt many people will notice or care. (Famous last words - I live on the edge, baby! *dons shades*)
I also made the rocks shinier. More in line with what you guys wanted?
im guessing its a viewport screengrab, right? why dont you make a full res high setting grab, with lightmass allowed? guess it would come out pretty neat
I can do a much higher rez screenshot with tiledshots, but when you use tiledshots you lose the god rays. I'll probably try doing by just changing the resolution of the window sometime.
But, uh, yeah. That's just a viewport screengrab! :P
I think you should have the light hit the bridge and the rock head on. that way it would bring some orange into the scene and have it interact with the water in interesting ways.
also, you need some mist rising up from the waterfall spray.
rooster: I'm not sure what you mean by head on. Straight down the door? There's alread some rising mist but its pretty subtle. I might need to maybe a more obvious version.
trevor: Thanks! There's already a link to some video just above rosters post. Here it is again:
Okay, been AAAAGES since I posted up progress on this because of some terrible computer issues I've been having! I've done a little tweaking on the lighting, redone the trees and adding some fog sheets. Will have more updates soon! (Famous last words! :S)
This is a very nice composition and like everyone has said, great pick on the concept art for a simple yet beautiful scene. I actually read through every post made to this thread which is something I never do so you've obviously caught my attention.
Let me be the first one to say though, the waterfall looks serviceable in still shots, but in motion it actually looks terrible because you can see where all of the individual particle emitters start and end and the water looks grainy. In fact it looks more like snow falling from tree branches than it looks like water.
I don't know if its possible to do an area specific motion blur effect with UDK as I haven't used the engine for long enough, but if you could apply a motion blur only to the particles, it would really help blend them into each other for a much better and less obviously computer simulated look. You could also remove a bunch of the emitters if you can do this which would speed up your frame rate. Maybe try by using two post process volumes with heavy motion blur, one on each side of the doorway?
@TorQue: Wow, thanks! I really appreciate that! I definitely agree with you about the water and that it needs to be blurrier. In fact, the water really needs to be re-done again. I'm just going to keep hammering away at it until it looks good. I'll try and see if I cant find a good way to blur the water particles. Failing that, I'll just blur the textures they use in photoshop before importing them.
Particle Systems to appear to have an option for scaling the motion blur applied to their particles (which is perfect) but it appears to not work (less than perfect).
lol isn't that always the case. So I've never played with UDK's particle system, but don't they just use a single texture sprite and then animate them? If this is the case, then changing it from a square texture to a very long vertical rectangle might actually do the trick without motion blur.
The reason I was suggesting motion blur is because its a trick to make a good blood spurt effect out of blob meshes. Originally the meshes are very sphere like in shape, but because of high amount of motion blur, it causes streaking which makes it look like a spurting effect.
Thanks for the tips, Torque! This is the particle I'm using at the moment (ignore the fact that it appears red here):
You can definitely do a motion blur with a post process chain, yeah, but isn't that a scene wide effect? Or is it possible to apply post process chain stuff to a single object only? :O
Hey man, great stuff so far! I'm digging it. Its making me want to step away from characters after I finish my reel and start working on an environment.
Few points
Most if not all of your assets look like AO Bakes and untouched photosource. I don't know if you are going for realism or a painterly look that matches the concept art but I think some edge highlights would go a LONG WAY. I didn't read -every- post so far but I did skim each page so if you already addressed this please ignore me.
I do like how close you have gotten to the concept so far, I just think you could really bring it to life by wearing it in a little by adding those contrasting shadows/highlights to your textures.
The bridge specifically has a few bumps or blocks on its railing that help break up the straight line silhouette. Try adding these in (they'll be easy) It also has a bit of damage on the right outer side near the door that breaks up that large plane of green/brown/gray. Not sure if you've UVd everything for painting or if you are using tiling textures but I think adding that in will really really take this to the next level.
You can definitely do a motion blur with a post process chain, yeah, but isn't that a scene wide effect? Or is it possible to apply post process chain stuff to a single object only? :O
Not that I know off though probably someone better experienced in post processing UDK might know. Yeah would just suggest doing a blur on your texture.
@esquire: Thanks for the compliments! I have a lot of edge highlighting in there, but it may be too subtle. I have something of a problem with over subtlefying things because I hate it when you get overdone effects. Here's part of one of my textures. There is a stone photosource in there but theres a lot of other stuff layered on top of that:
@r_fletch_r: Thanks for the tips, implemented 'em!
I swear, every time you post an update on this (at least with recent screens) I think it's 2d work instead of a UDK scene. crazy!
Your progress is solid right now, but I'd be careful about the lighting on the doorway. That area might be getting lost in a bunch of median shades and, seeing how it's the focal point, I feel like there needs to be a bit more visual interest and contrast to really pull your eye to it.
Water fall mist is a compound problem. You have only solved part of it with your solution.
In order to get it to better read as "waterfall mist" you will need to add:
Bands of value change (areas that are whiter and areas that are darker). Right now you only have blocks of high contrast value change where the rocks stick out of the white.
A fall off in the transparency of the mist as it floats away, and thins, from the base and surface of the waterfall (more mist at any point the water impacts something. Think about how the water hits surfaces). This would probably be accomplished best by adding additional "fog" particle(s) that drifted outward from your the streams surface.
Nice textures, you are right, I think its just that from a distance its hard to catch some of those edge highlights AND you are right, its a very fine line between subtle and over done, I think the key is contrast in the edge highlighting, some large and noticeable some small and subtle to keep it interesting instead of just one thin white line around everything.
Good job so far, take a look at the bridge concept really closely and think about those little pieces that break up the straight line the bridge creates.
It definitely looks a LOT better with motion blur, but it almost looks like there's too much in there now. The trick is to be able to get some obvious streaking lines in there too cause water won't ever be completely blurred. Did you end up doing the blur on the particle texture or post process? Adding the motion blur to the post process chain would still work even if its full scene cause it only blurs movement and the only thing appearing to move (at any great speed anyway) is your waterfall so it shouldn't affect anything else overmuch.
I'd go with something like this for your particles but maybe even more streaking...
Replies
Edit: Close up that's not from BlurryHell
So I've redone all the masonry assets. One reason is that the meshes were pretty messy and another is that they didnt match the concept very closely. I've also spent a few hours doing a much nicer version of the warrior monk statues. I've tried a different approach with the flag stones and used the grass differently. Each small grass clump is 40 tris (LODs to 10). It's pretty good with mesh instancing (40 effective tris) but not to bad uninstanced either (15k for all of them together).
I've revisited the water, trying to make it more efficient and more true to the concept.
I've also added some Ivy from the concept as well as the root to the side of the door.
I still want to improve the vegetation a bit more and I'm going back and forth on doing the angel figure. It's not clear to me whether that's a character or a statue. It's also proven to be a pain in the ass for me to do since character modelling really isn't my strong point.
Anyways, here's my progress shot:
P:S The black thing is putting me off in the sun, that black blurry dot.
Here's a quick paint over to try and give you some ideas, i think you could use the door for sure. It gives the eye a place to look at IMO.
@LRoy: Thanks!
@Mr Bear: Glad you like it! I did experiment a little with placing a light in there but it was a departure from the concept. What I might end up doing a little later on it putting a bunch of different lights in there and posting them up for people to see what different colours look like
I believe the rocks on the walkbridge should be maybe half the size or so? Hard to tell since your composition is more zoomed in.
I like what I see but I think you need more specularity on your rocks. They need to look wet. Also the grass and stones on the bridge don't seem to cast any shadows?
Keep it up!
@Goraaz: Hi! I really didn't want that thread to be a secret advertisement for this thread. Glad you found this one anyways!
And some lighting tests:
Normal
Yellow
Red
Green
Blue
I find that if I increase the shinyness anymore the rocks start to look metallic.
you sure? Used cubemaps for a car shader and it worked.
Notice it has a dry area and a wet area, try incorporating something similar to that on your scene (making areas that would get sputtered more by water wetter and areas that would dry in the sun faster, dry/drier)
I'm sure you could accomplish this using vertex/mesh painting, HOW you use vertex/mesh painting in UDK is not something I know though :P so that might be a terrible suggestion, but they have a tutorial up for grabs on 3dmotive.com
Keep up the good work!
You should also sharpen the sand and rock texture a bit as they seem overly blurry right now, try using a diffuse or normal tile map to add detail, but be careful with it as it can quickly look noisy :P
essentially the idea is water will smooth out all the little pits and grainy stuff on the surface of the rock, making it so your cube maps reflection is less broken up resulting in a crisp reflection, which is what happens when things get wet. Crisp reflection is what you want- all a gloss map does is control the blurryness or sharpness of the cubemap
I also made the rocks shinier. More in line with what you guys wanted?
im guessing its a viewport screengrab, right? why dont you make a full res high setting grab, with lightmass allowed? guess it would come out pretty neat
I can do a much higher rez screenshot with tiledshots, but when you use tiledshots you lose the god rays. I'll probably try doing by just changing the resolution of the window sometime.
But, uh, yeah. That's just a viewport screengrab! :P
http://vimeo.com/23186655
also, you need some mist rising up from the waterfall spray.
Are those particles? is it animated? i would love to see this in motion. you should record a quick shot of it.
trevor: Thanks! There's already a link to some video just above rosters post. Here it is again:
VIDEO
Thanks for the compliment on the water!
Let me be the first one to say though, the waterfall looks serviceable in still shots, but in motion it actually looks terrible because you can see where all of the individual particle emitters start and end and the water looks grainy. In fact it looks more like snow falling from tree branches than it looks like water.
I don't know if its possible to do an area specific motion blur effect with UDK as I haven't used the engine for long enough, but if you could apply a motion blur only to the particles, it would really help blend them into each other for a much better and less obviously computer simulated look. You could also remove a bunch of the emitters if you can do this which would speed up your frame rate. Maybe try by using two post process volumes with heavy motion blur, one on each side of the doorway?
@TorQue: Wow, thanks! I really appreciate that! I definitely agree with you about the water and that it needs to be blurrier. In fact, the water really needs to be re-done again. I'm just going to keep hammering away at it until it looks good. I'll try and see if I cant find a good way to blur the water particles. Failing that, I'll just blur the textures they use in photoshop before importing them.
The reason I was suggesting motion blur is because its a trick to make a good blood spurt effect out of blob meshes. Originally the meshes are very sphere like in shape, but because of high amount of motion blur, it causes streaking which makes it look like a spurting effect.
[ame]
So theoretically if you apply the motion blur to the actual particle sprite it should have the same effect.
Also with a quick search, apparently you can apply a motion blur to the post process chain and this will do the trick too. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PostProcessEditorUserGuide.html
You can definitely do a motion blur with a post process chain, yeah, but isn't that a scene wide effect? Or is it possible to apply post process chain stuff to a single object only? :O
Few points
Most if not all of your assets look like AO Bakes and untouched photosource. I don't know if you are going for realism or a painterly look that matches the concept art but I think some edge highlights would go a LONG WAY. I didn't read -every- post so far but I did skim each page so if you already addressed this please ignore me.
I do like how close you have gotten to the concept so far, I just think you could really bring it to life by wearing it in a little by adding those contrasting shadows/highlights to your textures.
The bridge specifically has a few bumps or blocks on its railing that help break up the straight line silhouette. Try adding these in (they'll be easy) It also has a bit of damage on the right outer side near the door that breaks up that large plane of green/brown/gray. Not sure if you've UVd everything for painting or if you are using tiling textures but I think adding that in will really really take this to the next level.
Keep up the good work!
This kind of stuff has a fresnel type reflection, so having strong 0 degree reflection will look wrong.
what are you using the lerp for? cant you multiply the reflection by the specular map and then pipe it into the emmisive.
Not that I know off though probably someone better experienced in post processing UDK might know. Yeah would just suggest doing a blur on your texture.
@r_fletch_r: Thanks for the tips, implemented 'em!
@salami: I think it's pretty much a no go.
Quick Update, blurred water particles, added a bit of fresnel to the specular on the wet rocks:
Your progress is solid right now, but I'd be careful about the lighting on the doorway. That area might be getting lost in a bunch of median shades and, seeing how it's the focal point, I feel like there needs to be a bit more visual interest and contrast to really pull your eye to it.
Keep it up. This is turning out nicely.
In order to get it to better read as "waterfall mist" you will need to add:
- Bands of value change (areas that are whiter and areas that are darker). Right now you only have blocks of high contrast value change where the rocks stick out of the white.
- A fall off in the transparency of the mist as it floats away, and thins, from the base and surface of the waterfall (more mist at any point the water impacts something. Think about how the water hits surfaces). This would probably be accomplished best by adding additional "fog" particle(s) that drifted outward from your the streams surface.
Ref you may or may not have already seen: http://www.google.com/search?q=waterfall+mist&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1600&bih=854Nice textures, you are right, I think its just that from a distance its hard to catch some of those edge highlights AND you are right, its a very fine line between subtle and over done, I think the key is contrast in the edge highlighting, some large and noticeable some small and subtle to keep it interesting instead of just one thin white line around everything.
Good job so far, take a look at the bridge concept really closely and think about those little pieces that break up the straight line the bridge creates.
I'd go with something like this for your particles but maybe even more streaking...