Still looking great, but I'd say change that third shot. The current composition feels weaker than the others, and the barrels stacked like that on the right just looks silly.
Man this brings me back. Good work so far. Your castle geo is the best. Good over all shapes and accurate theme. A few things though.
The surrounding rock/mountain shapes, not so great. The geo is flat and it's not the right Helms Deep style. If your willing to spend that amount of geo on that many boulders in the scene, i would spend equal amount of effort (or reallocate) on the surrounding mountain. Perhaps a ground level view would depict those boulders differently but the current shot makes them look like lumpy kick balls everywhere. As for the surrounding mountain rock, i would try modeling in some realistic shapes to the rock. Use polys to define rock ledges, cliffs, and rock walls. Then tile/blend, low contrast texture sets over the forms.
The shadows are too harsh. They need to be soften. If you look at environments with this time of day, the shadows over this kind of mass are never crisp. They are soft.
You need a spec pass on everything. Even rock has a subtle amount here and there.
Yo thanks everyone, cheers!
JO420: yeah, I made the small tunnel in the wall. But it's pretty rushed since it's very small in the shots. I used a modular arch before the hole and that's pretty much all of it.
Rasmus: That's the color grading, Maybe it'll look less contrasty when I push the fog back a bit.
Axios: yeah there's a weaker shot. It could be better with some mountains in the background tho.
Crazyeyes: Man thanks for crits, that's what I needed! You nailed most of the weak points I left in the final pics.
About the fog, it was stronger at the beginning but I lowered the intensity a tad more after to gain more contrast, because the scene is so big that when you take a shot of the fortress the rest is fogged in the background. I will try to fix that without too many contrast loss.
You're also right on the surrounding mountain geo. It's flat and that's mainly because I was lazy to model those details once I got everything vertex painted in UDK! I'm so lazy when it comes to re-paint the vertex color values. Sure, that's one thing I have to do next, add more rock details around the fortress.
Right about the shadows too. It's not an excuse but I guess having worked for years with the previous Editor made me hate the smooth shadows. I'll increase the softness a bit.
There's spec on everything, but you've got to see that in movement. dry stone is dry. at least for the fortress walls. I always try to be careful with specular lately as it's often overused.
About the colors not being the exact same as the film, I cheated voluntary there because too much brown grey would have made it boring to watch.
Again thanks, that really helps.:) And respect for your LOTR work man, you're so good at it.
Paro,have you read the Sillmarillion? I always dreamed of making the scene where Fingolfin fights Morgoth at the gates of Angband Thangoradrim. I think it would be so cool especially when there is no visual guide to go with,youd basically have to envision yourself.
For those of you who never read the Sillmarillion,its the war of th elves versus the demi god who was the embodiment of evil on middle earth,sauron was one of his lieutenants during this war. The eleves fought a war to retrieve 3 jewels morgoth stole and lead to a desturctive conflict which brought down some of the first and most powerful elves on middle earth.
In one of the most dramatic scenes in the book,the high Elf king Fingolfin has his kingdom utterly annihilated by Morgoth and grief stricken he put on his armor,went to the gates of Morgoths mountain fortress and challenged him to a one on one duel. Fingolfin kicked morgoth's ass for most of the fight but fatigue and injuries led to his undoing.
Wow! Thanks guys. When making it I was far to expect a frontpage. Really enjoying this moment!
skayne: I'll try to get that material screenshot as soon as possible (two, three days tho, busy with other things).
JO420: I only read the LOTR book, the bible size one But yeah I need to purchase the Simllarillion, I'm sure it's a great source of inspiration to go deeper in Tolkien's world.
You know whats missing? The Side exit The one from the Movie, where Aragon throws Gimli on the bridge. It even exist in the Books So, maybe add this little thing there on the side
Altough, it's a really great work Damned, that I can`t install UDK
First off, awesome scene. You really did an great job on it.
I was wondering if the texture sheet for this scene is just that 1 huge texture you showed earlier, or was that just a collection of all your textures and does the scene use a lot of smaller ones?
Because if it's just that 1 huge texture, then how do you get textures such as the rocks to tile?
Sorry if it's a stupid question, I've just been wondering this for a while. And it's one of the reasons I'm scared of starting an environment myself, since I have no idea how I'll manage my textures.
That's just a collection of his textures all put together.
The rocks wouldn't tile if it were just one texture, as you would be tiling that enormous texture over and over again, so you would see all his other textures all over the walls :P.
that are very nice visuals you delivered there!
the result comes out very professional.
would you mind sharing a screenie of the shadertree for your rocks?
that would be very enlightening!
thx for your detailed descriptions and sharing of your techniques!
Yeah ZacD is right, that's how I used the color chart seen in that post.
Here's the terrain shader network, that some of you asked, it may be full of uneeded nodes since I iterated a lot on it from start to finish but here it is:
Hey, man, I've just read the whole thread from the start to finish and all I can say is "THANK YOU". This is really inspirational. I've been having a bit of a trouble getting myself together to do another portfolio project, but I wan't you to know that today I'll work like hell and it's all thanks to you=)
I'm sorry I have no comments to add to what's been said already. Everything is really solid.
So thanks again, great job!
skayne: Yeah I sculpted the terrain's large scale details in Zbrush, and baked that into a quite big normal map using the re-topoligized mesh (reduced to 1024 afterward). The difference isn't that great but it adds a little more definition to the terrain from far away.
In fact that works better if used with a terrain actor when you bake your normal map on a flat plane it tends to capture all the missing depth details. But I didn't went for the terrain technique on this map.
I'm glad it can help in some way
d1ver: It's me that thank you, thanks for the comment and good luck with your projects.
hey vincent, thx for the shadertree.
i have one more question concerning the environment.
what mapping did u use, or do u apply the mapping in the shader with the texcoord knots?
or do they only function as a "multiplier/offsetter"?
did u try the terraineditor also to achieve that kind of look? because when i do so, i never got beyond the planar top down mapping for any terrainmap, leading to strechy pixels at hard slopes. i'm curious how to solve that in udk
Flats shown in the topic are just a merge of all the tiling textures It's just a way to know how much texture space has been used and a common way to show your end result.
the so called supernormalmap is just an average size normal map that you map over the terrain to gain low frequency detail over the ones tiling at higher level.
So many gamers would love to see this fortress/map in Lord of The Rings strategy games(for example The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 or Rise of The Witch-King).
So do I
Very old post but still very inspirations.. AWESOME work, liked every bit of it
I went through all the post. As a noob environment artist, I have few question, hope you or anyone could enlighten me
1> I see you aren't using UDK terrain, but static mesh from the MAX itself ... Why did you do that (why not use the terrain)?
2> The mountain rook texture looks nice and crispy,Its such a big mountain...
How did you do the UVs ?
How did you do the texturing on the mountains.
If you dint use terrain, you cant actually paint on the mountain :S umm, right ?
Can you share how you did it in detail, Pleaseee ?
3> Do you have the wireframe version of it now ?
Hi, i"m michele, i've always been this passions for the design of videogames and since I don't know how to start, i would like to ask for things. ( i have many project but i don't know how start)...
WHAT PROGRAMS BESIDE UDK YOU Use to create the helm's deep?
Thanks,.......
Replies
Very inspiring stuff man
The surrounding rock/mountain shapes, not so great. The geo is flat and it's not the right Helms Deep style. If your willing to spend that amount of geo on that many boulders in the scene, i would spend equal amount of effort (or reallocate) on the surrounding mountain. Perhaps a ground level view would depict those boulders differently but the current shot makes them look like lumpy kick balls everywhere. As for the surrounding mountain rock, i would try modeling in some realistic shapes to the rock. Use polys to define rock ledges, cliffs, and rock walls. Then tile/blend, low contrast texture sets over the forms.
The shadows are too harsh. They need to be soften. If you look at environments with this time of day, the shadows over this kind of mass are never crisp. They are soft.
You need a spec pass on everything. Even rock has a subtle amount here and there.
The colors feel slightly off. If i remember correctly, Helms deep had a more grey/brown tone rather than grey/green. The foliage was more desaturated green/brown than just green. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wetanz.com/assets/Uploads/LOTRenvirohelmsdeeplrg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.wetanz.com/helm-s-deep-environment/&usg=__zh8V6H_IyX6u8qFROxi3EC-9R1g=&h=1024&w=995&sz=129&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=Bg7c7OiMYzpQVM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=121&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhelms%2Bdeep%2Bset%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D570%26tbs%3Disch:1,isz:l0%2C133&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=480&vpy=230&dur=2216&hovh=228&hovw=221&tx=151&ty=124&ei=kCp0TNDKA4GKlwfBuvzJCA&oei=kCp0TNDKA4GKlwfBuvzJCA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0&biw=1366&bih=570
The last issue i noticed is the lack of atmospherics. You need fog, haze, and/or even layered ground fog. There's no depth or sense of distance.
Hope that helps.
JO420: yeah, I made the small tunnel in the wall. But it's pretty rushed since it's very small in the shots. I used a modular arch before the hole and that's pretty much all of it.
Rasmus: That's the color grading, Maybe it'll look less contrasty when I push the fog back a bit.
Axios: yeah there's a weaker shot. It could be better with some mountains in the background tho.
Crazyeyes: Man thanks for crits, that's what I needed! You nailed most of the weak points I left in the final pics.
About the fog, it was stronger at the beginning but I lowered the intensity a tad more after to gain more contrast, because the scene is so big that when you take a shot of the fortress the rest is fogged in the background. I will try to fix that without too many contrast loss.
You're also right on the surrounding mountain geo. It's flat and that's mainly because I was lazy to model those details once I got everything vertex painted in UDK! I'm so lazy when it comes to re-paint the vertex color values. Sure, that's one thing I have to do next, add more rock details around the fortress.
Right about the shadows too. It's not an excuse but I guess having worked for years with the previous Editor made me hate the smooth shadows. I'll increase the softness a bit.
There's spec on everything, but you've got to see that in movement. dry stone is dry. at least for the fortress walls. I always try to be careful with specular lately as it's often overused.
About the colors not being the exact same as the film, I cheated voluntary there because too much brown grey would have made it boring to watch.
Again thanks, that really helps.:) And respect for your LOTR work man, you're so good at it.
For those of you who never read the Sillmarillion,its the war of th elves versus the demi god who was the embodiment of evil on middle earth,sauron was one of his lieutenants during this war. The eleves fought a war to retrieve 3 jewels morgoth stole and lead to a desturctive conflict which brought down some of the first and most powerful elves on middle earth.
In one of the most dramatic scenes in the book,the high Elf king Fingolfin has his kingdom utterly annihilated by Morgoth and grief stricken he put on his armor,went to the gates of Morgoths mountain fortress and challenged him to a one on one duel. Fingolfin kicked morgoth's ass for most of the fight but fatigue and injuries led to his undoing.
FRONTPAGED!
skayne: I'll try to get that material screenshot as soon as possible (two, three days tho, busy with other things).
JO420: I only read the LOTR book, the bible size one
but anyways AWESOME work dude!
Altough, it's a really great work
I was wondering if the texture sheet for this scene is just that 1 huge texture you showed earlier, or was that just a collection of all your textures and does the scene use a lot of smaller ones?
Because if it's just that 1 huge texture, then how do you get textures such as the rocks to tile?
Sorry if it's a stupid question, I've just been wondering this for a while. And it's one of the reasons I'm scared of starting an environment myself, since I have no idea how I'll manage my textures.
The rocks wouldn't tile if it were just one texture, as you would be tiling that enormous texture over and over again, so you would see all his other textures all over the walls :P.
Thanks snow
the result comes out very professional.
would you mind sharing a screenie of the shadertree for your rocks?
that would be very enlightening!
thx for your detailed descriptions and sharing of your techniques!
...It would be an amazing place to game.
The setting, the lighting, the texturing it's all so smooth and so well done.
Here's the terrain shader network, that some of you asked, it may be full of uneeded nodes since I iterated a lot on it from start to finish but here it is:
Big ass image beware !
I'm sorry I have no comments to add to what's been said already. Everything is really solid.
So thanks again, great job!
In fact that works better if used with a terrain actor when you bake your normal map on a flat plane it tends to capture all the missing depth details. But I didn't went for the terrain technique on this map.
I'm glad it can help in some way
d1ver: It's me that thank you, thanks for the comment and good luck with your projects.
i have one more question concerning the environment.
what mapping did u use, or do u apply the mapping in the shader with the texcoord knots?
or do they only function as a "multiplier/offsetter"?
did u try the terraineditor also to achieve that kind of look? because when i do so, i never got beyond the planar top down mapping for any terrainmap, leading to strechy pixels at hard slopes. i'm curious how to solve that in udk
Question about the texture flats: these wouldn't be intended for realtime use due lack of spacing for mipmapping, would that be correct?
thanks and again, great f-ing work!
Sorry for the late reply :P
So many gamers would love to see this fortress/map in Lord of The Rings strategy games(for example The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 or Rise of The Witch-King).
So do I
Congratulation absolutely perfect!
I just read the whole thing, start to finish and am thoroughly inspired.
Even the thread updates are some of the best I have seen on Polycount
Great work, ParoXum.
Since It was brought back to life.
I went through all the post. As a noob environment artist, I have few question, hope you or anyone could enlighten me
1> I see you aren't using UDK terrain, but static mesh from the MAX itself ... Why did you do that (why not use the terrain)?
2> The mountain rook texture looks nice and crispy,Its such a big mountain...
How did you do the UVs ?
How did you do the texturing on the mountains.
If you dint use terrain, you cant actually paint on the mountain :S umm, right ?
Can you share how you did it in detail, Pleaseee
3> Do you have the wireframe version of it now ?
Again, Truely inspirational...
I answered about the reasons for the mesh terrain before:
It's easier to craft steep terrain with mesh. Your cliff UVs dont get stretched. Obviously this was before I knew I could make 3d materials.
Terrain geometry resemble a plane when relaxed in the uvs. So no difficulties theres.
In UDk you can paint directly vertex color on models, that's how I painted it.
WHAT PROGRAMS BESIDE UDK YOU Use to create the helm's deep?
Thanks,.......