Come to Vice City - best worst place in America!
polycounter lvl 14
Hey, what's up! Here's a little UDK environment I've been working on and off for some time now. I want to get my portfolio up and running before autumn, so the time to conclude this little affair of mine is closing.
First of all:
The most enormous Thank You goes to Rockstar North for creating this great game that I've spent month playing. No really. It's not the generic "Thank You" kind. It is from the bottom of my heart. Looking back now I can say the game didn't give me a story rich in life philosophy, as I'm used to looking for in great games now. But it gave me something else, that turns out no other game could give. A world so cosy, immersive, believable and engaging, that I could do nothing but live there for a while. Freedom could very addictive if served right.)
I even wanted to prolong the pleasure so much, that at some point in my junior artist years I was doing lousy little mods for VC=)
I have a lot of sentiment for this stuff now. So when thinking of things to do for my portfolio I couldn't help the idea. So in case someone from R* is reading this I really hope you guys don't mind me slapping Vice City name on it. I've been pretty hesistant about it and some pieces still have "Miami" on them.
Anyway a huge thank you again for a childhood well wasted and with that said we can move on.)
The postcard here is sort of a teaser for more to come. What you see on the picture are some things that are already finished. But the overall work is still in progress. There's one more building coming up, a closer look at the hippie van that you partly see here and more props that will hopefully help me convey my attitude towards the era(disco-disco). And a not so distant little location too btw.
Not only I try to make things pretty but I also try to make them smart.The main idea was to realise and implement "procedural" materials as much as possible. Fillrate being the main bottleneck in modernday engines I think that such an approach could help push realtime graphics someplace interesting.=)
Feeling a bit torn apart with polycount being my main audience and willing to learn from you guys. So I'll try not to post any wip pieces here but anything still is a subject to change for the better if you can point out what or why. So if you have something say, any comments, suggestions and crits are compulsory and very much appreciated.=)
I'm not getting of this piece till I'm sure that It couldn't have been any better so please please please...=)
Gotta go now. Tommorow I'll start doing some frellance stuff to have somthing to eat, so I doubt I'l have time for this piece for the next 4-5 days. But after that I'll be trying to wrap things up.
Here's a little something extra for you meanwile, to fuel your friday night fever
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Yeah, baby! 2 by 4 on the floor!:poly142:
Btw this picture show the original color pallete of the scene. Hope you like it.
I'm sorry for making you read walls of text all the time guys, I tried to keep it short but It just seems that I always have so much to say.
Cheers!)
P.s. Oh yeah, those little wavy lines you see somewhere at the bottom of the picture are actually me trying to make it seem like the image is distorted in the waves of hot air coming for overheated asphalt. they aren't really taken care of right now. Just see through planes with distortion applied. I'll get to them eventually.
Replies
I love the palette, the little GTA style jokes like the hotel name, and of course the modeling and texture work is great. Most of all this piece has great atmosphere.
Not sure if it's valid but the Scooter looks like it's kind of dark in that shot, for the amount of light in the scene. I dunno if somethings in front or if lightmass did it.. or it might look fine, just the image and angle of the light. Just looks a little dark in some parts underneath. Or I could be completely wrong, hehe
Anyway, incredible work, thanks for sharing
Hey, Simmo, yeah, the Scooter is pretty dark because the front part of it is in the shade of itself. It's kinda lit from the back. At first I didn't quite feel it too, but then I settled on it, since It's a nice to way separate front from the background. Background is pretty bright already so making contrast other way around could not look so good.
Btw I forgot a very important detail. The picture completely, totally lacks the 8gon lens flares!!! I promise to behave in future and not to repeat this grave mistake again.:)
Thanks again guys and hope to post some more soon!
A word of caution: this post is image heavy(~7mb). I'm planning to use this hi-rez images(around 1080p) for my portfolio, but If you think that the pictures are inappropriately big - let me know and I will resize them for you.
It feels kinda nice to be concluding a project I started back in january.) Even though most of the time I was off it, busy with some other gigs.
I never knew that I would enjoy preproduction so much but overall I think I spent about two weeks studying Vice City, Miami(mostly) and the 70-80s, browsing through tonns of pictures, wikipedia articles and google maps. I think I've acuumulated enough material to recreate about 500 square meters of Ocean Drive with the beach, the ocean and most of the objects scattered around. But unfortunately I had to be realistic about the time I'd be able to dedicate to the project and face my constraints.
Anyway enough with the chit-chat, here goes(check out the [size=+2]full size please![/size]):
Those are the Beauty Shots. I think it's worth mentioning, that many(maybe even most) of the objects you see here do not use normal maps at all. Why is that?
Because at some pont, when I was starting up this scene I rember feeling that normal mapping is a bit overused nowadays. I remember seeing guys pimping things like crates with a nice solid highpoly baked onto a 12tris box, which made it look plain bad. And bla-bla bli-bla...) So I deicided to use real modeling extensively and dump normal maps where I can. I wanted 1000-2000tri props that look better then their lowpolier normapped analogues and are actually cheaper to render.
It goes the same for vehicles. No convetual texturing, just multiple procedural materials applied, breaking a vehicle into several drawcalls by 2000~3000tris each. Something similar to what guys at R* did. The car paint shader was fun to do. Here's an example:
First of all I had to unwrap the vehicles anyway, because with just procedural carpaint the models lacked AO dramatically. Screenspace didn't help much. So I unwrapped them and baked the stuff on small greyscale AO maps. I wonder if it's just me or unreal, and whether R* guys had a similar problem. Anyway, on the left you see a Penguini T-1 van with and exaggerated tiled dirtmap added on top of the AO map. The right version uses a handpainted colored dirtmap that replaces the AO map. And you also tune down reflectivity and specularity. Funny thing is, that more of a plastic material that is used on the Fegale Scooter tend to have colored reflections on it, while shiny new cars tend to color reflections much less and usually reflect colors as is. Here's a nice thing you could do with the tiled dirtmap nodes btw:
The thing is that I don't use a full colored tiled dirt map but rather a greyscale mask to blend the color paramter. That way is cheaper and as you can see, you have more flexibility.
And here are some props:
I hope you liked what you saw. This piece is important for me. I am putting up my own site now to help me search for a job. As much as I like being stinky, unshaven and working in my underpants all day I feel like freelancing constrains me in too many ways. I want to feel like I'm a part of a project, I want to invent things and optimize them. I want to have buddies that I can talk to while working and enjoy the thing we do together, and I most definetly want to tell stories. Too bad I'm from belarus.) I feel that it reduces my chances to get a job someplace at a nice company.(pardon the rant=))) no more!)
Any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated! What don't you like about it? What do you like? What kind of impression does this piece project about me as a potential employee? Have anything you want to ask?
I'd be delighted to hear to waht you have to say!
I've got to wrap this up now. But it's not the end btw.) I'm planning on one more picture if things go nicely. In a postcard manner like the first one up here.)
Cheers! Have a great day! Whoooo.)
P.S. I know, I know, those lens flares are ridiculous) but I tried no to take myself too seirous here and mock it up.)
Whats_true, yeah, it's udk allright.) The scene has as much AO as Lightmass would give me. Vehicles have dynamic shadows so the only AO they have is screenspace. And I think I know why it is not as pronounced as it could be - I used tiledshot to render things out, so it applied SSAO proprotional to the rendered frame and when downscaled it's barely seen.
Too bad if it really hurts the eye=( If some more people mention it I might have to find away to slove this. Thanks alot for your advice. It actually got me thinking: I was aiming for a kinda openworld game look, and how much AO can you actually have there nowadays. With the dynamic Day/Night cycles and most of the props being dynamic too? For the most part it is up to ScreenSpace I guess.
However, one thing that I'm noticing is that there seems to be some contradictions in the 'era' in which your scene is set, not a major issue but a bit of authenticity would probably help a bit, Vice City didn't go for ultra realism I know, but they had it close to believable.
I'll point out what I mean;
This particular area of Miami, and in fact the Vice City game obviously screams '80's. Also, the movie Scarface, which heavily influenced Vice City was set in the 80s. You have the 80s vibe down for sure in the Architecture and feel of the scene, but then;
The VW Bus. It looks awesome, but it's not an 80s icon. It's either a 60s Hippy Era icon, or a modern day icon for surf culture which looks a touch out of place in 80s Miami.
Then you have 70s references from the John Travolta news story, and the 'Stayin Alive' street sign.
So again, nothing major and the props themselves look fantastic. But it's just these little touches and considerations which can help pull a scene together in my opinion and really make it look like you've covered all bases.
Make sure you show enough breakdowns of the technical stuff on your portfolio, prospective employers will like this. So when you talk about the cars, their polycount and shaders, use wireframes pics, and maybe even shots of you shader nods. Gotta make sure all the technical work clearly shows!
Oh and btw, get rid of that standard photoshop lens flare, anyone can identify it and it will probably reflect badly on the pic. Use something else.
Great stuff
this is so awesome. I can't wait for this game.
See you in Miami kid!
Woaah... what?
Since it's UDK you could name it DM-Vice_City I suppose.. heh
This is really great, amazing work, your portfolio is really cool too. Congrats on an awesome piece of art
I also think the textures look too flat and clean. You could use some decals here and there to break up repetition (on the buildings that is)!
I really wish Rockstar would make a Vice City HD Remix, that would rule
i want a gta vice city remake
creationtwentytwo, thanks a lot man. It's really great to see someone view your artwork not only as a set of picturees, but as a source of information too. I totally get your comment. It made me realise that I didn't really make the 70-80s, but rather made what I thought 70-80s were. And for me it was all disco=)
Hence the Saturday Night Fever(Beaver), Bee Gees and ABBA reference.
The Hippie Wagon has a bit of a backstory to it actually. It was modeled for my other personal project "Something Different" and used here to help save me some time. If I'd be doing all from scratch again I think I'd rather go for the fancy cars some hotles have there to impress the tourists.)
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/06/bd/e5/avalon.jpg
Anyway, thanks, man. I'll try to cover all the bases the next time!=)
Thanks a lot,Xoliul, those are fantastic words to hear for me!)
I'm working on my website right now and I'll definetly make sure to follow your advice, so, thanks again.
[HP],dude, thank you very much. I'm glad you're feeling it!
And yeah, lens flare seems to be a tender topic.=) I don't know why, but I have this thought stuck in my head that in the 80s people started using those corny lens flares all over to invoke the dramatic effect(whoooo). So I thought it would be more authentic if try to laught it up a bit. Sort of a "Man of the Moon" kinda gag.
Btw I tried to find out why I think this way about lens flares, but couldn't.) So I probably should give it a hard thought.
mortalhuman, thanks man! Can't wait for it either
An yeah I guess those curbs could be a bit lower.
And can't wait to see anyone in miami=) or just miami.)gotta go there someday. Though I'm not much of a clubbing/beaching kinda guy, but having worked with this piece for a while really made want to go there.)
Thanks,Simmo, you're too kind, man. I'm actually working on my new website right now, that will hopefully have plenty of new stuff, if I'll be able to sort things out with the NDAs. I'm looking forward to sharing it!:)
Hey, Minotaur0 and JO420, thanks a lot you, guys. And I get what you mean about a bit more wear and tear. I'm used to doing it myself so much, that it actually was a challenge for me to do something clean, yet likable.
But the original environment is so god damn clean it seems like it's almost sterile. And the lighting is usually so bright there that it seems like you could texture those buildings with just flat colors.And no wonder, since most of the buildings there are preserved cultural heritage of the artdeco style and are the main tourist attraction. So I guess they keep stuff pretty clean there.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/miami/miami023.jpeg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/OceanDriveSouthBeach.jpg
http://destinationbrands.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/south-beach-ocean-drive_-wikimedia-chensiyuan.jpg
But it's not like a tad of dirt would hurt, I agree.
igi, thanks man! Yeah man I want a remake too, but who nows what's R* is up to, so maybe we'll see something soon!=)
And hey, here's one vote for the lens flares.:)
Thanks again you guys! I'll hopefully be done with my site in a couple of days and will get down, to doing the postcard.)
There many sublte things you can do on a texture to improve the overall look of a prop and not have it be overwhelmingly obvious. Like if i would have made the newspaper vending machines,if they were out in the sun all day i would maybe desaturate the top part which the sun hits to simulate the bleaching effect of the sun.
Or the watch for the children sign,i can see the edges worn away in the paint and small places where little pebbles were thrown up by cars which it the sign.
Or on the chrome parts of the phone,handprints and fingerprints from times people use the phone.
And yeah the chrome part of the phone sure could use some fingerprints and scratches. But I was trying to go as much procedural as I can, so what you see here is the single chorme material used everywhere in the scene.
You've done a great job of capturing the look and feel of the environment. Roughly how long has this taken you so far?
Hey,rumblesushi, thanks man, it's nice to hear.
Kinda funny that you asked about the time because I actually tried to keep track of the time spend with the help of a MS Excel document.
But I kinda messed up in the there 'cause I used lousy cell fromating, writing the number of minutes after the comma. So the summed numbers are totally wrong.%\
I've also noticed that you have much more incentive to fill this in when you know you're doing good.) So when I messed up and had to redo work or was just too much in a hurry I neglected this thing a bit and filled it in sometimes afterwards. It still misses some things.) Anyway I think it's a nice statistics to have.=)
I'm hard at work on my website right now. But after I'm done with it I'll fill in all the gaps and try to calculate the number of hours I've put in. I hope that the overall mistake won't be more then +-20 hours.)
Hey,Zack, thank a lot for your concern, buddy, but I didn't use SkyLight. There's one DominantDirectionalLight and all the stuff except for the ones with dynamic shadows is properly lightmassed.
But I never tweaked those lightmass parameters you were doing about, so thanks for bringing this up - I'll be sure to check them out.
I'm afraid things are feeling a bit washed out because I used postprocess to aid the feeling of a bright sunny day. I tweaked the highlights channels for the overall brightness and some shadow channels to blend a bit of this greenishyellow into shadows.
I'll have to be more carefull with it in future. Thanks for noticing.
I'm sorry that it takes me a day to answer you guys. I'm busy with the whole html thing right now. But there's some good coming out of this. I've made a couple more pictures to help show the technical side of the project. So here's my Car Paint Shader Instance controls. All car paint variations vere made just tweaking this values.
Here's per material mesh split of the scooter. In case someone's interested.
Thanks once again you guys for all your kind words. They mean something to me.
Sorry for lateness.
I have a strong feeling Vice City is the next GTA installment.
many many clues from rockstar.
Seagull theatre "liberty city, it's over!"
ballad of gay tony colors remind of this image of miami, notice the cranes which are technically useless in liberty city aside from a mission in ballad:
http://hr.fiu.edu/uploads/image/rsc_Miami2.jpg
The bum who finds the diamonds at the end of Ballad goes to Vice City and opens a liquor/gun delivery service - already a mechanic in GTA IV with the gun delivery. We go to vice city, probably as Lopez (impossible trinity becomes impossible TRILOGY, where Johnny is the SA character - evidenced by his time spent in Las Venturas, the bike race patches on his jacket)
Another thing is Vesuvious Citrate: Prepare For The Explosion.
the historical events Vesuvius eruption gives us the word "victim", already the name of a clothing company in GTA introduced in San Andreas, and as such, something they have interest in, seemingly. And I suppose florida is known for citrus.
Vesuvius Citrate, VC. Find the poster in sex shops - right near Candy Suxxx DVD's!
Is it all solid? No. But this is literally just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much hinting Vice City it blows my mind :P
"see u in miami kid!" comes from the end of GTA III - both III and IV end on a note of Vice City through this!
further, niko is basically an HD claude. Where claude didn't speak, niko has trouble with english :P I really hope they are HDing the games, because to me, GTA, a game about media and society, can't take place in other places, and liberty 2008 proved for me it is far more than JUST an upres
Luis Lopez is dominican - and while that makes total sense for where he lives in "NYC" - it is also dominicans that you find in Miami
The list goes on and on :P I won't tl;dr this