ths is loverly but you need a little more work on the trees
-branches on the foreground tree taper much too linearly and need a better squared curve to the taper... also they way the bend doe not look natural enough to me
- more variation it the leaf colours seen in the trees, not all types of trees turn at exactly the same time and not all leaves turn at the same time....ie top to bottom of tree or branch...could be done with vertex multiplier to tint the trees
Lovely scene, lovely thread!
The only thing that really puts me off is the "this is a UE3 scene" feel all over the place, that bloom/blur is such a turn off!
I never used UDK, but I wonder why almost every single scene I see has this look to it? Is this something the artist can work around it? Mirror's Edge uses UE3 and doesn't have that weird UE typical bloom.
Other than that, It's a marvelous piece.
Simple question, may I ask you which was your workflow to create that ivy?
I love this one Nice Job.
But I have one Question: What was your Inspiration? Or what painting did you Use for Reference? It looks a little bit like a Picture of Thomas Kinkade
Thanks everyone for your encouragement.
PogoP - I mainly used the Standard, Clay and hPolish brushes, I find they are good for most things.
SHEPEIRO - Thanks a lot for the comments. And also for those two images. I love the second one and will push the colour in my trees. I had much more varied colour in them before but toned them down as time went by. I'll do another pass on the foreground tree as well and try cleaning it up.
Pr1mus - I can't believe I haven't said this yet . Benjamin Leader - A Moated Grange.
HP - I do agree with you. I think the reason many Unreal scenes feel like they are Unreal scenes is mainly to do with how easy the engine makes it to tone up these settings. I don't know. I'll try playing around with them a bit more.
As for the Ivy...
Firstly, sorry for such a late reply, school is keeping me busy with other things.
Here is the Texture (Scaled up. The final texture is a 256 Colour and 128 Normal - The empty space was filled up too.)
- I began with a couple pictures of leaves I had taken and brought them into Photoshop and removed any obvious light source.
- I then made an alpha of a single leaf from the image and saved a colour image of the leaf and a standard alpha image
- I used these images and quickly 'cheated' out a modeled leaf in zBrush - meaning, use the image as a mask and deform it from there with some use of the Move brush. I also used the texture of the leaf and projected it on to the model and then did some slight polypainting to remove artifacts, light source, etc.
- I then bring this into Maya an create a random branch structure either using PaintFX or curves or some ivy program.
- Randomly place the leaves from zBrush in different areas (thinking how ivy looks) - I think there is a tool in Max that allows you to replace meshes - if so you could just arrange planes and then replace them with the model.
- From here you can then render out any map you want - Colour, Normal and AO. I used Ben Clowards Normal Rendering Technique found here.
- Place the rendered image onto a plane and then place a few next to each other.
In the end I don't know if going through this was worth it since the result is a map which has to be scaled down quite a bit, but for the amount of time it took me I didn't worry too much.
I don't have too much to update since school is keeping me busy, but here is another section I'm working on leading up to the bridge to the house.
Whoa. That ivy looks incredible! Thank you so much for sharing! Would it be possible to see the wireframe of that? It's the only thing that I'm curious about!
Impressive work, but there is something who disturb me. I don't know exactly, maybe your lighting...
I find it's hard to locate themselves in the space, i find that in some part of you scene we don't see corretly what is it. The cause could be your shadows : you have a crepuscular sun and your shadows are very bright.
Another small update. Fixed a couple areas and had a go at fixing the tree a bit while adding to the path leading to the house. I'm hoping to have this done by the weekend with a rendered video walk through of the entire level as there are still two houses which I haven't yet shown and I've spent some time animating different things.
I'm really struggling switching between monitors and constantly getting different colours so I'm continually fidgeting with things here and there.
Thanks again for all the comments and critique, they've been a big help and encouragement.
And since I'm constantly using it and haven't exactly shown it yet, here is the High Poly of the Urn that is scattered around the level:
Thanks for posting the Ivy tutorial! I must be going stupid but I don't understand what you meant right at the very end with "- Place the rendered image onto a plane and then place a few next to each other."
And I know you're busy, but I'd love to see your process for trees!
The path looks fantastic. I like the flowers you have scattered around, but they blend in with the leaves on the ground a bit much. It would be really nice to see these flowers at a different value so they would pop and offset the scene nicely.
So I think I'm going to call this done as I really do need to move on to something else. Thank you everyone for all the comments, critiques and suggestions, they've helped a whole lot. I've learned a huge amount during this project both from trial and error and finding new things on polycount so everyone, please keep posting .
I will at some point come back to this so critiques, comments, suggestion are all very welcome. And as I promised, a video is coming .
@snow - By placing planes next to each other what I mean is putting the plane with the texture on it in different places rotated differently so that you can't make out it is just a flat plane, if that makes any sense. @whats_true, kaburan and Paraxum - Thanks a lot, I'm glad you like it. I made the flowers a bit brighter in this update. @pr1mus - The assets are made in Maya and zBrush and level constructed in UDK.
@whats_true - I'll tone the grass down and add some more to the trees and post another video (with better angles as well) now that I know how to do it. Thank you so much for all the input you've given me, it's helped a lot. @yiannisk - Thanks @Phones - They were made in a similar way to the ivy I posted a page back.
I wonder, the threes and the foliage, is those just static meshes placed in the world? I wonder since they have animation.. And i thought i should ask how the falling leafs work? (:
@sltrOlsson - The trees and the foliage are static meshes and the animation is controlled through the shader. The falling leaves are a particle system I set up emitting planes with a leaf texture.
This is one of the more solid piece of work I've seen on PC! Great job on the lighting, its nice to see some one else doing Autumn scenes! If can, and have time I would love to see a small section break down of your building. I know it is made up of tileable textures and trimsheets, but I am noticing the brick and stucco don't repeat that much. Its fascinating to me. Again excellent excellent work!
I have a question for you good sir (: What does your material for the leafs looks like, the leafs actually on the tree that is :P I can't really get it to work..
Once again, thanks guys. I had so much fun making this environment and I'm very glad you enjoy it. @kyle.rau and Mr.Bear The light setup is pretty standard but went through a lot of tweaking. Looking back, I made the mistake of trying to fine tune my lighting too early on not taking into account what I would be adding to the scene and how that would effect the colour and mood. UDK's lightmass can give you some really great results but can get really hard to adjust since every new colour you add through materials can completely change the look of the light.
I ended up using one directional light and relying more on post processing for fine tuning since I wasn't able to predict how the lightmass would work in areas and build times definitely eat up valuable time (one thing that really set me back in the beginning). After I started getting comments on contrast and seeing I couldn't do everything through post processing + one light, I began putting one or two point lights at a very low intensity around the place (high intensity point lights really make it seem like, yes, there is a point light here, so I made it subtle). Also, in the pathway I put two red point lights at low intensity to add a bit more colour.
Also, the grass setup is using a Terrain Layer and the texture is handpainted.
I hope this helps. @Kevin Johnstone and Snefer - Thanks a lot. UDK is a great engine and you guys at Epic are doing an amazing job, a huge inspiration. @Poffington - Thanks man. I'm so sorry I completely missed your previous question. THe house is very modular, I think 2 square pieces just instanced around along with a window piece, door and roof piece. The tiling was broken up using vertex painting which would remove the plaster and reveal brick underneath. Virtuosic is definitely the man to ask about vertex painting - what he has going on in his "Pit" environment is very inspirational.
Replies
-branches on the foreground tree taper much too linearly and need a better squared curve to the taper... also they way the bend doe not look natural enough to me
- more variation it the leaf colours seen in the trees, not all types of trees turn at exactly the same time and not all leaves turn at the same time....ie top to bottom of tree or branch...could be done with vertex multiplier to tint the trees
too green
bit better
The only thing that really puts me off is the "this is a UE3 scene" feel all over the place, that bloom/blur is such a turn off!
I never used UDK, but I wonder why almost every single scene I see has this look to it? Is this something the artist can work around it? Mirror's Edge uses UE3 and doesn't have that weird UE typical bloom.
Other than that, It's a marvelous piece.
Simple question, may I ask you which was your workflow to create that ivy?
But I have one Question: What was your Inspiration? Or what painting did you Use for Reference? It looks a little bit like a Picture of Thomas Kinkade
Greetings, pr1mus
This is a huge inspiration to me
PogoP - I mainly used the Standard, Clay and hPolish brushes, I find they are good for most things.
SHEPEIRO - Thanks a lot for the comments. And also for those two images. I love the second one and will push the colour in my trees. I had much more varied colour in them before but toned them down as time went by. I'll do another pass on the foreground tree as well and try cleaning it up.
Pr1mus - I can't believe I haven't said this yet
HP - I do agree with you. I think the reason many Unreal scenes feel like they are Unreal scenes is mainly to do with how easy the engine makes it to tone up these settings. I don't know. I'll try playing around with them a bit more.
As for the Ivy...
Firstly, sorry for such a late reply, school is keeping me busy with other things.
Here is the Texture (Scaled up. The final texture is a 256 Colour and 128 Normal - The empty space was filled up too.)
- I began with a couple pictures of leaves I had taken and brought them into Photoshop and removed any obvious light source.
- I then made an alpha of a single leaf from the image and saved a colour image of the leaf and a standard alpha image
- I used these images and quickly 'cheated' out a modeled leaf in zBrush - meaning, use the image as a mask and deform it from there with some use of the Move brush. I also used the texture of the leaf and projected it on to the model and then did some slight polypainting to remove artifacts, light source, etc.
- I then bring this into Maya an create a random branch structure either using PaintFX or curves or some ivy program.
- Randomly place the leaves from zBrush in different areas (thinking how ivy looks) - I think there is a tool in Max that allows you to replace meshes - if so you could just arrange planes and then replace them with the model.
- From here you can then render out any map you want - Colour, Normal and AO. I used Ben Clowards Normal Rendering Technique found here.
- Place the rendered image onto a plane and then place a few next to each other.
In the end I don't know if going through this was worth it since the result is a map which has to be scaled down quite a bit, but for the amount of time it took me I didn't worry too much.
I don't have too much to update since school is keeping me busy, but here is another section I'm working on leading up to the bridge to the house.
Looking really nice! Big inspiration fr my scene (:
I find it's hard to locate themselves in the space, i find that in some part of you scene we don't see corretly what is it. The cause could be your shadows : you have a crepuscular sun and your shadows are very bright.
I'm really struggling switching between monitors and constantly getting different colours so I'm continually fidgeting with things here and there.
Thanks again for all the comments and critique, they've been a big help and encouragement.
And since I'm constantly using it and haven't exactly shown it yet, here is the High Poly of the Urn that is scattered around the level:
Btw. is all of these scene made in UDK or are you using external Programs and imported it afterwars?
And I know you're busy, but I'd love to see your process for trees!
I will at some point come back to this so critiques, comments, suggestion are all very welcome. And as I promised, a video is coming
@snow - By placing planes next to each other what I mean is putting the plane with the texture on it in different places rotated differently so that you can't make out it is just a flat plane, if that makes any sense.
@whats_true, kaburan and Paraxum - Thanks a lot, I'm glad you like it. I made the flowers a bit brighter in this update.
@pr1mus - The assets are made in Maya and zBrush and level constructed in UDK.
Here's a video of the environment:
http://vimeo.com/14616465
And one more shot. The rest of the images are on the previous page
Also, how'd you make those lovely leaf textures?
it has a genuine painterly feel to it!
well done!
While on the other hand, grass doesnt move that much (or that wavy!)
@yiannisk - Thanks
@Phones - They were made in a similar way to the ivy I posted a page back.
It has a very Fable-esue dream sequence quality to it.
I wonder, the threes and the foliage, is those just static meshes placed in the world? I wonder since they have animation.. And i thought i should ask how the falling leafs work? (:
Great job...this looks like a picture one of my grandma's Thomas Kincaid calenders.
@BlvdNights - Ha! I'm not sure I'd recommend that..thanks.
@sltrOlsson - The trees and the foliage are static meshes and the animation is controlled through the shader. The falling leaves are a particle system I set up emitting planes with a leaf texture.
@SinisterUrge - Inspiration was from Benjamin Leader's Moated Grange Painting. A really beautiful painting if I could add.
What does your light setup look like? For the sun: a directional?...Any other fill lights or just epic lightmass skills?
Keep it up man!
*clapping hands*
@kyle.rau and Mr.Bear The light setup is pretty standard but went through a lot of tweaking. Looking back, I made the mistake of trying to fine tune my lighting too early on not taking into account what I would be adding to the scene and how that would effect the colour and mood. UDK's lightmass can give you some really great results but can get really hard to adjust since every new colour you add through materials can completely change the look of the light.
I ended up using one directional light and relying more on post processing for fine tuning since I wasn't able to predict how the lightmass would work in areas and build times definitely eat up valuable time (one thing that really set me back in the beginning). After I started getting comments on contrast and seeing I couldn't do everything through post processing + one light, I began putting one or two point lights at a very low intensity around the place (high intensity point lights really make it seem like, yes, there is a point light here, so I made it subtle). Also, in the pathway I put two red point lights at low intensity to add a bit more colour.
Also, the grass setup is using a Terrain Layer and the texture is handpainted.
I hope this helps.
@Kevin Johnstone and Snefer - Thanks a lot. UDK is a great engine and you guys at Epic are doing an amazing job, a huge inspiration.
@Poffington - Thanks man. I'm so sorry I completely missed your previous question. THe house is very modular, I think 2 square pieces just instanced around along with a window piece, door and roof piece. The tiling was broken up using vertex painting which would remove the plaster and reveal brick underneath. Virtuosic is definitely the man to ask about vertex painting - what he has going on in his "Pit" environment is very inspirational.