BEAT-EM-UP! | roosterMAP

roosterMAP

Im gonna make an environment heavily inspired by Altered Beast. It's gonna be a graveyard scene. I'm gonna divide it into 3 sections. The first piece will be a swampy forest, the next and largest part will be the grave yard, and the final piece will be a big tomb. I want people to instantly know that the character starts out by exiting the swamp and going into the tomb.

Challenges:

• I havn't looked into how im gonna make UDK render in some insane resolution so that I can get my long screen shot.
• I have NEVER attempted a night time environment. The problem is that most things get desaturated or blue shifted when night comes. So im afraid that some of my detail will get washed away.
• The tree's will be another issue. But I think I will just do a few speedtree tuts and i'll be fine.
• The last issue will be everything UDK related. I now the very basics, but I have no clue how to work complex tutorials, particle FX, and to volume lighting and such.

I am not set on the art direction I will go in. I remember beat 'em ups to be pixely and cartooni. So I'll try to work that into it without having it look like WoW are or something.

arun

Cool.... All the Best.

roosterMAP

I've gone through quite a few pics and have decided the "mood" of the scene:

http://www.searchpictures.net/holidays/halloween/misty_graveyard.jpg
http://hauntjaunts.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/bruton-parish-graveyard.jpg
http://immortalsoul.freehomepage.com/images/graveyard.jpg

instead of night, i'll go with foggy and creepy. that would enable me to have cool silhouette and stuff.

also, since this is an environment page, what the rule on making characters? can i make statues?

blendroid

I believe you can do what you want within the technical limits; it's just not required to make characters.

P.S. Wise fwom yow gwave!

roosterMAP

quick concept:

strayvert

Nice looking graveyard. I like how it looks so huge because of the buildings and stuff in the distance combined with the headstones in the immediate foreground.

The big headstone in the very front might want to get moved into the more empty space to it's right. Right now it draws a lot of attention right next to the mausoleum that is also drawings a lot of attention, then you go just a bit further right and it is pretty blank. I could be wrong though. >.>

-waiting to see some more-

Polygoblin

strayvert wrote: »

The big headstone in the very front might want to get moved into the more empty space to it's right. Right now it draws a lot of attention right next to the mausoleum that is also drawings a lot of attention, then you go just a bit further right and it is pretty blank. I could be wrong though.

Good point. I think the mausoleum will be much more powerful if the foreground headstone isn't stealing the viewer's attention. There are lots of fun ways to play with spooky light at that entrance

roosterMAP

thank you for that advice. you're absolutely right. I'll be sure to move move it way to the right so that the house area doesn't take all the attention.

today, I made all my placeholder models. and quickly put them in a scene in udk. this was mainly to help me see what models I had to make, and where I should position them. I feel that I can now start workin on my assets and such.

roosterMAP

Here is a nice little updates that I hope will generate some feedback.

I've spent a lot of time learning my materials and getting accustomed to mudbox's new pipeline. I starting to get good at it, so progress should start speeding up.



And I've worked whit a few materials. These were both sculpted in mudbox, and textured using zero pictures. (im kinda proud of that part. lol)



Advice and links to tuts I should take a look at would be greatly appreciated.

Quack!

Textures are looking damn good. How well do they tile?

PredatorGSR

Hey Rooster, stuff is looking good. The big thing that stands out is the graveyard stone has way to many chips. To get a good look you should have a couple deep chips here and there, but most of the lines should be cleaner, maybe a little wavy with small chips, but not the uniform deep chipping that you have right now.

SimonT

i like it!

naturon

looking great, the pillars are awesome as well as your textures so far.

ParoXum

All those high poly pieces are great. Nice texturing too.

Zack Fowler

Looking very nice! Glad someone is tackling a graveyard scene, it seems like such a classic env for oldschool games. One crit, and I think Predator is saying this too, is that your floor tile texture doesn't look like natural rough-hewn stone so much as intentionally chiseled to look serrated.

Did a really quick paintover to show what I mean:

roosterMAP

hmm, i think you're right. I'll see if I can do that directly to the normal map in photoshop. Thx for that great advice! much appreciated.

EMC3D

Really good Rooster. What is your workflow like to get shapes like those in the pillars? Insane.

roosterMAP

Here's a quick tut on what I do...

Non uniform shapes:
I first use the sculpt tool wth small falloff and large brush to mess up the shape of the mesh. Then I use the smooth tool the soften what I just did untill I can barely see it anymore.
Then, once I do all my crack and big detail, I use the spray tool to sculpt wth stencils. Thats another way to very slightly change the uniformity of the mesh. It gets you nice, organic results.

Realistic Cracks:
I start by using the scrape tool to flatten a hard edge. Then I use the wax tool to dig into it a little and get the chipped shape i want. Then with the sculpt tool (small brush wth steep falloff) I highlights that crack. Finally, I use the flatten tool the flatten the inside of the crack. After than, you can add detail wth the stencil brusH. Be sure not to use the same stencil for the entire model.

vahl

the watehred blocks thing looks way too noisy IMO, Zack's paintover is heading the right way but still a tad noisy, there's big risk of derailing the viewer's interest (which is supposed to be the action) because of the noise.

nice highs, watch your edge sharpness and detail angles though, it's a bit sad to lose depth on something that would otherwise look pretty kickass, especially on the door

roosterMAP

Lighting test. (only the tree's, ferns, and leaf piles are my models).

roosterMAP

scene is starting to coming together. No texturing has been done yet. Just trying to get all the assets ingame.

o, and I made a post processing material that very slightly splits the RGB channels of your scene depending on the scene depth. Far away objects are more split that close up object. The effect looks great with bloom, depth of field, and daylight. lol

anyways, here's a crappy screen:

roosterMAP

alright, i got some grass in the scene. and im finished with all the tree's. Ill soon be able to focus on expanding my scene to resemble more a BEAT EM UP environment.

also, it would be nice to get SOME feedback.

here's a few more hp models:

Polygoblin

Coming together nicely, my friend! I really love your workflow.

Your pillar should be have less and less wear-n-tear as it goes up (top is usually out of harm's way, while the bottom is constantly in jeopardy of being damaged). Right now, your pillar looks pretty uniform damage-wise.

Keep it up

Zipfinator

I like the sculpts but they seem a bit too complex/detailed in parts for no reason. The strange trims on them seem unnecessary and none of them match from piece to piece. Maybe if they were a bit simpler and based on some old gothic architecture or something they'd be better but unless you're going for some alien or futuristic graveyard then they're really out of place right now.

If you edited them to match the style you had in the previous pillars/doors I think it'd look a lot better and fit the graveyard theme more.

cholden

high detail sculpts are super cool. How's that layout coming along though? Visualizing a full blockout and camera setup might see you taking the art in a more worthwhile direction. Even in your early screens those tiny details aren't visible. A 3d scene is great, but you could have better use tons of resources making a side-scrolling scene (forced perspective, paralax backgrounds, texture pixels vs screen pixels, and so on).

Mind

The scult work is very well but you'r mixing too many different cultures styles (arabian , scify etc..) and I think it spoil the rest .

Anyway good work ,keep it up