Station / Laboratory 3D Environment
polycounter lvl 9
Hello everyone. I've been pretty much a lurker around here so I
decided it was about Ike I could get my own thread for my school
project. Now, I actually had one or two other threads that didn't end
very well because of different issues but this time I will be here to
stay and hopefully some of you guys can help me out!.
As for the project itself, it's meant to be an environment (will talk
about it later) playable on a very bare-bones FPS mode in Unity3D.
However, i'm still on a very early stage of the project so I might
switch to UDK (gotta love the light engine, particle editor, etc..),
but i don't wanna spend much time getting used to yet another
application.
The settings for the environment is basically a laboratory station in
the middle of the ocean, without humans living on it for the last 5
years, and based on the year 2199. That is, 189 years from now, and to
make it even better, on a human colony on another planet (with similar
Earth conditions, so no worry about that).
Here are some old sketches I did:
The thing is, I noticed the environment wasn't very well
self-contained and didn't have many interesting areas. In fact, didn't
have any actual focus area, so I've been sketching a few ideas on paper (will scan those later). The environment will also feature some plants that have been growing wildly around the laboratory, so this will be my first time doing vegetation too.
Now that I've got the basic environment set up, I will just start
working on it piece by piece. Until now I've been doing
my normals out of the diffused via Crazybump, and I dunno how long
will that work, so I will need to move into doing high-poly versions
of the models in Zbrush.
Detail-wise, I plan on doing something realistic like Modern Warfare 2, but until I don't start working on it, I don't know how detailed I will be able to do it.
Anyway, I will start working on the very basics, that is, getting the
other walls done. I will keep this thread updated every time i finish
something or got some question, so hopefully you guys can help me out
(Sorry for the text walls. I won't post them anymore, or at least not
very frequently!)
PS. Here are a few other links to sketches and other stuff:
- Some of the more "unique" plants in the laboratory.
- The weapon showing in first person (no textures yet, model not fully done).
decided it was about Ike I could get my own thread for my school
project. Now, I actually had one or two other threads that didn't end
very well because of different issues but this time I will be here to
stay and hopefully some of you guys can help me out!.
As for the project itself, it's meant to be an environment (will talk
about it later) playable on a very bare-bones FPS mode in Unity3D.
However, i'm still on a very early stage of the project so I might
switch to UDK (gotta love the light engine, particle editor, etc..),
but i don't wanna spend much time getting used to yet another
application.
The settings for the environment is basically a laboratory station in
the middle of the ocean, without humans living on it for the last 5
years, and based on the year 2199. That is, 189 years from now, and to
make it even better, on a human colony on another planet (with similar
Earth conditions, so no worry about that).
Here are some old sketches I did:
The thing is, I noticed the environment wasn't very well
self-contained and didn't have many interesting areas. In fact, didn't
have any actual focus area, so I've been sketching a few ideas on paper (will scan those later). The environment will also feature some plants that have been growing wildly around the laboratory, so this will be my first time doing vegetation too.
Now that I've got the basic environment set up, I will just start
working on it piece by piece. Until now I've been doing
my normals out of the diffused via Crazybump, and I dunno how long
will that work, so I will need to move into doing high-poly versions
of the models in Zbrush.
Detail-wise, I plan on doing something realistic like Modern Warfare 2, but until I don't start working on it, I don't know how detailed I will be able to do it.
Anyway, I will start working on the very basics, that is, getting the
other walls done. I will keep this thread updated every time i finish
something or got some question, so hopefully you guys can help me out
(Sorry for the text walls. I won't post them anymore, or at least not
very frequently!)
PS. Here are a few other links to sketches and other stuff:
- Some of the more "unique" plants in the laboratory.
- The weapon showing in first person (no textures yet, model not fully done).
Replies
Alrighty, for now and before I do all the blocking, I will just work on the flooring and give it a texture as well. It usually helps me get some better ideas for the environment if I have something already "done".
For the floor I've googled laboratories and whatnot, but most are plain white floors. I will rather go with some sort of tile and a bit mechanical, but not overdoing it. Will edit this post with the results (I'm starting it right now).
Believe it or not, this is the first time doing High Poly to Low Poly normal baking. I still need to learn a few things, but following some videos I found online I made this:
I will do the diffuse and specular, and then start blocking out the whole environment. Wish me luck!
And this is how the texture looks, and the layers I used for it. I learned about this process from some link I found around. Pretty good way to keep it all tidy and clean.
- Check my next post for the pic, or click here for the older version -
Critics and comments please! I have had class between the last update and now so that's why I've not been able to work as much as possible, but I'll fix everything I might need to, as soon as I get back home.
Uhm, I wasn't really sure and thought it could be me because I had been looking at it for like an hour, but it seems it wasn't just me!.
The black (well, dark brownish gray) horizontal line is meant to be the part with bolts (though they are hard to tell) that hold the main metal bars.
I will make it a bit lighter so it blends better with the rest of the texture. Also, I just noticed it's lacking a bit of worn on some borders? I don't wanna overdo it, but I guess I will add a bit more.
I'll edit this post as soon as I'm done with it.
Thanks a lot for the comment and hopefully see you around here some other time :P
EDIT - I'm fixing a few other things. Right now it looks an awful lot like wood rather than metal. Trying to give it a bit of an extra metal look.
EDIT 2 - Here it is. Changed the border, the center texture and added some worn around the corners and borders.
Alright. I started today the block out for the stage. I will first decide the size of the level and where everything should go. Each one of the small squares there is about 1.5m. The roof is 6.5m tall but there might be a taller (or maybe shorter) roof on the right area. The small room on the right is for small cargo storage. There will be also small tables on the center and sides of the rooms, and a shutter in-between the two thick columns, and a small door between one of the thick columns and the thin column next to it.
BTW, there _will_ be windows on the sides and whatnot, so worry not!. The roof will be pretty much the same as in the sketch I first posted.
Anyway, it’s 4am here right now so I will (hopefully) finish the blocking step tomorrow. After that, I will start with the modeling.
As always, any critic and comment is welcome, so if you've got the time, please post around here!
I've been at school talking with a couple teachers after I finished the first blocking and we got to the conclusion that the building was way too... squarish. This was the day after I updated this post.
Anyway, since then I decided to move onto other school stuff I had to do, while searching for more inspiration for this project.
I've been playing Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST and got some ideas from it, so I'm blocking the stage again with some more curves, though the very basic layout won't change all that much.
This is a rough layout of what the environment would look from above:
The blue areas are other rooms and corridors that would lead to new environments that I would like to make if I have the extra time for them.
The red areas are not quite important right now. This project will be playable as an FPS and I thought about having flying enemies enter the room through windows, so they would enter through those red (broken windows) areas.
Anyway, I'm with the blocking again. Will edit this post whenever I'm done.
This piece is the center of a circular room connected to another room. There will be some objects in the center, and slightly covered in plants that have outgrown all over the place.
All these screens are taken from the viewport using Xoliulshader.
This is the part Im working on right now.
Its the bottom of 2 parts that will become a window set. As you can see, I plan on just making one and copy&paste-ing it 3 more times to cover the circular wall. The basic mesh is almost done (it only needs one or two extra details). After this I will dive into the high poly model and bake the normals.
I will also most likely need some support once I start baking the normal, as I'm still kinda new to it and I dunno what would be the optimal way to do it for this window. I will first give it a few tries, if I can't get it to look correctly I'll post around asking for some suggestions!.
Also, I've not been updating much recently because of all the revisions, wondering around and all that. But now that I got the visuals decided I will be updating much more frequently.
You mentioned in one of your post about your floor that you used some tut video to get the high to low poly normal mapping done. Do you mind if I ask you which videos you watched. I am trying to get some to improve my technique as well.
I will keep checking this thread for sure. Keep up the good work :thumbup:
For the floor, this is the tutorial I followed:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/
The actual tutorial shows you how he bakes the normal maps for a completely different objects, but the basics are there and you can apply it to everything.
I think I'm mostly done with the high poly model. And it's probably not even that high poly (close to 4k tris), but it should do the trick. The small metallic bump will be added afterwards. The problem now will be to do the actual normal map out of this object, seeing how it's my first time I work with this kind of shape. Hopefully it's not very difficult!.
bracing for win....
The normal is almost done!. But its almost 7AM here and I need to sleep asap. This is what Ive done so far. I worked a bit on the diffuse just to take a break from the normal map. That thing was killing me softly
And this is how it would look when put together and around the circular base. I put two rows one on top of the other to show one small issue I have. I want rounded corners because it looks nice but if I do that, I get funny shadowing on some areas. I guess its an issue with the smoothing groups, but Ive tried a few patterns and no luck.. I will try more tomorrow.
The non-smoothed version doesnt look bad either, so I can always use that in case I cant fix the shadowing. But I think I might know how to fix it
The big area is the laboratory itself. Or, well, a part of it, at least.
Btw I just came back so I'll continue working on this thing now. For now, here is a close up of the texture I'm doing for the wall:
It might be too dirty, though. I will clean it up a little bit later.
I would like to add some open storage but dunno which would be better. Also please notice that both versions are not fully open.
Nice work so far btw.
If you look at the overall shape, you will be able to notice that it's curved. So when you put the whole curved panel like A, there are some awkward holes around that don't look very good.
I'm modelling both versions right now just to have them there and be able to decide on which one to use.
EDIT - Both versions modelled:
A) This version has many objects that are fairly hard to reach because the panel is just too big. It also requires more small parts to build. The good thing is that I can place objects inside and give the environment a bit more realism.
EDIT 2 - I think I will just go with B (the freezer-like one). The other one just looks like something that would be getting on your way all the time.
It seems like A would be better for some sort of non-regular access. Something like a maintenance panel. It starts to fold down and then is lifted out of the bottom and removed completely.
If you are worried about A's corners and B's inability to see inside, why not consider a 3rd option. A sliding set of panels. Something like this shower door.
In the end I went with the freezer-like shape. I will give the metal some brushed metal-like reflection once I load the models in Unity3D, so right now the inside looks a bit dull.
As for the objects inside, I will fill the space after I start working on small props, so until then it will be empty.
Yep. I did only 1/4 of it. Also the outer ring that's cut in half is the same as the inner grill ring. It uses the same UV as the inner ring (in the second UV channel ready for lightmapping, it's obviously separated).
Btw I've been doing some sketches and whatnot for the details of the next object I will work with. But now I need to go to sleep so as soon as I wake up I will post the finished wall/window and start working on the next object.
EDIT - Good morning! (evening already.. ugh)
This is the final model:
Any critics or comments? Things that look off, or something?
I will start working on the next part now.
PS. I hope it's ok to be posting all these screenshots even if there isn't really all that much improvement.
I still have not made screenshots for my blog (that's from where I'm taking the pics that I post here :P), but I made this animated gif. If some of you see some step that's "weird" or that should be done in any other manner, please tell me!
EDIT-
It’s separated in 3 parts, being 1
Not the best screenshots ever but it's 6AM and I just wanna go to sleep now!. I will post more stuff tomorrow!.
Also, this environment needs some more color!. I will start making some more variated props soon.
I like the idea of having the storage draws, makes it seem like a tangible object rather than just a generic wall. Like you said some added colour would be nice, but the colour pallet you've got going works in bring you different props together.
BTW sorry for the lack of updates in the last two days. I've been busy with other school stuff that I wanna get off my way earlier so I can spend more time on this project. I will continue doing stuff today and hopefully today or early tomorrow I can update with more stuff that I'm working on.
Thanks everybody for checking this out and commenting!.
Finally I ended up the whole week busy with school stuff, and next week I will have more, but I've planed a better schedule to be able to keep up with both school and this project.
I’m finishing the texture on the newest piece so meanwhile I will just post a prop I did at school:
I've closed 3DSMax already but the polycount was somewhere around 130 tris for each tank. The texture is 512x512 for each map (dif, spec, normal). I wanted some more color on my level, so stuff like this hopefully helps.
I did this following one of PhilipK tutorials. I don't have the link around right now but probably all of you guys already know what tutorials I'm talking about.
This is the result:
I wanna make it dirtier, with some moss and whatnot. I don't know if I should do the moss as a separate texture to put around the base mesh, or paint on top of the current texture...
edit //
I ended up doing two versions. One with moss and one without it. The moss one will be at the bottom.
edit 2 //
And here you can see a half turntable of the wall, to see how the light affects it. BTW, after making this I noticed the dark spot on the left side that makes the tiling so much more noticeable, so I will work on this now.
http://mik2121.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/rotating_wall.gif (only the link because it's 1.8mb)
edit 3 //
I redid part of the textures to fix the dark spots and the tilling feel:
What do you guys think?
I'm working on the floor tiles right now. BTW, back when I re-started this thread I said I had a new block-out that I did but didn't upload. Yesterday at school I spent a bit of time setting it up on Unity3D and uploaded it to my website:
http://mik2121.com/portfolio/3d/virtual-world
There were a few areas that I didn't make because I wasn't sure about how to get into them, but I will come up with something soon.
I also took away the circular area that I already modeled, and used my own version, but forgot to make a step so right now it's sort of intersecting other parts of the level.
I've been working on stuff like floor tiles and smaller details.
Right now I was working on the table stands where I will put the plants for my stage. You can see the original basic shape on the link I added on the last post.
Anyway, here is the model with normal map. The diffuse and specular are still not ready so I will get at them tomorrow morning: