meh, he's still setting up chris, I know its important to get at least some "feel" of the scene through atmosphere, but maybe he's wanting to get all the content done, then work on the presentation and lighting etc.
Alright big update. @ cholden followed your tut in full. The light shafts impress me the most. The level looks best while in game. so i will be making a vid. I have herd bad things about fraps any one have any other in game recording soft ware suggestions. I still have not finished all the textures in the level but i am really close
oh yeah the water fall, The background green lights, and the Rings animate. I guess you'll just have to wait for the vid to check that out
Consider adding a slight emissive glow to the textures, or even a rim shader. Shadows are a bit heavy and not really representative of a game from that era.
Look up Cholden's master material tutorials for UDK (He's at the top of this page). If you're really going to get into texturing and getting things looking right, it might be a decent idea to setup a material and get close to the desired results before you do the whole thing.
Yea, you can look up that. My material section shows how to setup a fresnel. Also, set Environment Color, and brighten your main light a lot. Reduce the SSAO (all of this is in that scene setup I linked earlier. Get rid of all the solid black.
Thanks the settings have been tweaked a well be tweaked some more. But im looking at this on the monitor at work and its much darker then the images on my monitor at home. The one thing that annoys me about digital art every one having different monitors making what ever u do look totally different. ill probably have to change the monitor settings a bit then try out those changes to my materials
What you can do, instead of fighting with monitors is look at the actual color values, levels, histogram in Photoshop. These don't lie.
But at the end of the day, getting your monitor right is super important for painting textures and getting your scene correct for everyone else. Because your settings must be way off. If you changed that sky to a night scene, I'd still say your lighting was too dark because of the excessive solid black shadows.
Well i have a small understanding of what rim shader is now. Its a Pixar ish drop off glow that is created throough the use of the fresnel in your material. a great example of its use is in mario galaxy, i will use it as refrence
every thing needs to be softer, the lightings fall off, The edges of all of the materials.
I made the mistake of deleting my level after upgrading to the new UDk but i kept my package. which mite of worked out for the better. I brightened it up. Now having issues with the shadows. Trying to make them smoother. also issues with the movers in my level casting shadows through things go figure. Agin it looks better while in game, as the water fall and the rings are moving.
I gotta be really honest. When I first saw your concepts I was like "meh, where will this go" but the first 3dmockup without textures looked very promising. Then the first texture pass was another letdown for me, personally.
But with the fancy shading it looks actually really really cool. I could never play the level, as it looks highly busy and confusing, but the artstyle you accomplished looks very nice to me. From a compositional viewpoint it's not too well put together. You could push a lot more, from my impression - each piece for itself looks cool but I can't imagine an actual character running around in there without players to get furious cause they can't see him anymore. There are certain paths that I can recognize but I think you could push it a lot more to guide players through the level.
A flythrough with how you imagined it to be played might work wonder
Very very cool overall, still ! Great improvements everywhere !
Thanks allot for yor honest critique. Well when making this i never really thought of it as playable. I just wanted it to look pretty for my portfolio. But seeing as its in UDK and its a level inspired by a game, it probably should at least feel like it could be played. Then people who played the old game could then get excited by seeing it. But again cuss i never thought of it as a level designer(only a environment artist), the flow of the piece is very static. You can only look at it but not imagine its use. I guess even if you dont plan on making a level playable it should still feel as such
Well i was going to post and ask how do u make Shadows a bit more dramatic then i noticed that i didn't have cast shadows on. Well any way i was thinking of expondeing upon the level with more assets particularly with this long ramp
and these moving platforms that made sonic feel very platformey
i was wondering what you all think i could add to the level to make it feel more like an entire level then just a simple set
Quite simple really, that last picture above me (or on the previous page?) shows a nice backdrop of hills and further behind that, sea.
You want to make it less like a set then add more of those blocks and place them so they go beyond what we can see. That way it tricks us into thinking the level is bigger than it is.
Finally that grass texture bothers me. I think it's just a tad too dark still and could use some brightening up. Oh and spread some lovely flowers on the top of those grass surfaces too. Looks too empty.
But to tell you the truth I was meh for the first few pages but I knew you could do it. The latest pictures show you've improved lots. Good job.
P.S. After looking at it one last time I feel the rim shader needs to be toned down on the grass sections. I seem to be picking on your grass XD
That's looking better for sure. The lighting and material adjustments really helped.
Like some of the others have said, the composition isn't really where the scene needs to be. I'd also look at putting together some foliage samples and perhaps a tiling painted backdrop to add some dimension to the scene when you look at it from the front.
These games generally have several background elements going on in order to give you the sense that the level simply isn't floating in space. I'd say that's really the biggest thing you need to work on eliminating.
The vid is kind of low quality so i got u guys some high quality screen shots Ill make a higher quality vid later. Over all it was a great learning experience. Every one who has posted has pushed me to not settle for that i thank u all. But i am fully aware that i still have a long way to go. This definitely will not the last thread i'll be posting
Wow, it's cool how you just kept improving a lot with every update. I can't really remark much on that final update anymore, you pretty much nailed it there.
Funny, I remember thinking how you were probably a joke with that silly poll in your first post. Nice job proving me wrong!
I still think for that first picture that you need to copy/paste some of those hills and have them go outside of the screen so that it appears bigger than what is shown. At the moment it's more like a bunch of props all centralised in the middle.
We should be thinking of it as a level or better yet a "world" but right now it's more like a model showcase.
I got an idea. I can't be bothered to paint it in but it's not hard to explain.
This is a good angle for overall presentation. You see to the right that you have a green hill that slopes downwards and outside of the screen. That's a good idea but it's background. You should copy the foreground and make a sloping version.
well i had planed on painting some hills in the background. After a few attempts i noticed my background painting skills were not on par with my texture painting. therefore i created the little cylinder hills. That helped allot but i still have to continue practicing painting.
Replies
oh yeah the water fall, The background green lights, and the Rings animate. I guess you'll just have to wait for the vid to check that out
But at the end of the day, getting your monitor right is super important for painting textures and getting your scene correct for everyone else. Because your settings must be way off. If you changed that sky to a night scene, I'd still say your lighting was too dark because of the excessive solid black shadows.
every thing needs to be softer, the lightings fall off, The edges of all of the materials.
But with the fancy shading it looks actually really really cool. I could never play the level, as it looks highly busy and confusing, but the artstyle you accomplished looks very nice to me. From a compositional viewpoint it's not too well put together. You could push a lot more, from my impression - each piece for itself looks cool but I can't imagine an actual character running around in there without players to get furious cause they can't see him anymore. There are certain paths that I can recognize but I think you could push it a lot more to guide players through the level.
A flythrough with how you imagined it to be played might work wonder
Very very cool overall, still ! Great improvements everywhere !
u live and you learn
and these moving platforms that made sonic feel very platformey
i was wondering what you all think i could add to the level to make it feel more like an entire level then just a simple set
You want to make it less like a set then add more of those blocks and place them so they go beyond what we can see. That way it tricks us into thinking the level is bigger than it is.
Finally that grass texture bothers me. I think it's just a tad too dark still and could use some brightening up. Oh and spread some lovely flowers on the top of those grass surfaces too. Looks too empty.
But to tell you the truth I was meh for the first few pages but I knew you could do it. The latest pictures show you've improved lots. Good job.
P.S. After looking at it one last time I feel the rim shader needs to be toned down on the grass sections. I seem to be picking on your grass XD
Like some of the others have said, the composition isn't really where the scene needs to be. I'd also look at putting together some foliage samples and perhaps a tiling painted backdrop to add some dimension to the scene when you look at it from the front.
These games generally have several background elements going on in order to give you the sense that the level simply isn't floating in space. I'd say that's really the biggest thing you need to work on eliminating.
Looking quite nice though.
I love the style man!
Keep it up!
[ame]
Funny, I remember thinking how you were probably a joke with that silly poll in your first post. Nice job proving me wrong!
We should be thinking of it as a level or better yet a "world" but right now it's more like a model showcase.
I got an idea. I can't be bothered to paint it in but it's not hard to explain.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5286/5249621614_6665714d37_b.jpg
This is a good angle for overall presentation. You see to the right that you have a green hill that slopes downwards and outside of the screen. That's a good idea but it's background. You should copy the foreground and make a sloping version.