Japanese swamp garden
Ok...so I need a big critique on this- please tear 'er apart!
Lit in -UDK,
-Around 80k tris total
Textures are generally 1024x1024, but smaller things are at 512x512
After the Dropship model I re did, I knew this was going to be my next piece I was going to push and polish even further...
I know a lot of things need work, lighting and FOV, maybe expand the work more into a "valley" type level. Also more objects and detail, overall construct the level layout better.
The idea is this was inspired by a Fantasy Action/RPG game, not any one in particular, I took some ideas from a lot of different games and mashed them together, but all in all this ideally would be for an action RPG game.
Anyways, thoughts/comments and critiques are much appreciate and needed.
Thanks.
Lit in -UDK,
-Around 80k tris total
Textures are generally 1024x1024, but smaller things are at 512x512
After the Dropship model I re did, I knew this was going to be my next piece I was going to push and polish even further...
I know a lot of things need work, lighting and FOV, maybe expand the work more into a "valley" type level. Also more objects and detail, overall construct the level layout better.
The idea is this was inspired by a Fantasy Action/RPG game, not any one in particular, I took some ideas from a lot of different games and mashed them together, but all in all this ideally would be for an action RPG game.
Anyways, thoughts/comments and critiques are much appreciate and needed.
Thanks.
Replies
I like that you took this into UDK. It's good that it's in engine for so many reasons, not the least of which is lighting which I can see you're playing with here.
The main issue here is texel density across the board. The ground and the bridge, specifically, are looking very low rez. Try giving more space to the base textures all over. More detail, just everything should look way higher resolution.
You have a good start on the colors and the layout is pretty cool too. I like the lighting, but you might get a couple of naysayers because it's so dim. I'd consider brightening up your scene somehow, but that kinda thing can be done down the line as well. It's not as critical as the resolution problem.
The lighting of the scene and the sky do not match each other at all. You could try to integrate the lighting from the sky into your scene a bit better to see if it helps. Right now it should be casting a orange/pink light from the leftovers of the sunset and the shadows should be a deep purple/blue. Though I believe the scene could be better served with a twilight/night sky + fog rather than a just after sunset sky.
As for the lights themselves I think there is too much light being cast in this scene for the visible light sources. The color of the lights seem un-appealing and a bit over saturated to me as well. Try to give them a warmer yellow/orange hue especially if they are supposed to be flame lit rather than electric lights. Electric lights on the other hand would be much whiter. I think you should make the radius of the lights much smaller so that you can get more of a dark silhouette thing going with the trees.
Well I'm probably rambling nonsensically and maybe was a bit to harsh so I'm off to sleep, hopefully some of that helped...
Nope, hey Ben! thanks for the advice about the lighting...I was already aware that something looked off...and there are a couple other things I want to add to really polish it. But as you said, lighting is an issue right now, so thank you- I will get on it and also- thanks for the great detailed feedback!
Hey buddy! good to see you on here!-solid crituqe by the way and I will go back and check the texel density and lighting some more..
What would say would be a good size poly count(tris) for trees? I am going back and optimizing alot of things and I have found my trees are way too many tris(around 4000-6000 each..
... I am curious if you(or any of you other guys
If you know of a good site with poly counts for current day games or at least talk about what is a good size for things please let me know!
No, I totally understand. I thought it was okay to give them credit though and use it? But yeah I agree.
I meant that modders do stuff where they use the ut3 props from the editor and then add their own props they did themselves.
but yeah no you are 100% right..thanks. I will need to paint my own sunset or something which shouldn't be too hard..but how to get it to look right and lit properly can be a challenge.
Any suggestions BlvdNights? Thanks by the way for helping. I see stuff and I ask around a lot but it is so hard to tell sometimes with the mod community and such. The only thing I used was the sky box; everything else was 100% modeled and textured by me. If I use any effects/sky boxes, etc, particles like fog or stuff like that I definitely give credit but I understand that this should all be 100% mine.
Texture flats in their current state. I got reference for each thing to try to make it look like what it was intended to be. Hopefully this shows, but if not please explain to me.
I have some of these textures I painted for tileable textures so as to avoid unwrapping each and every prop to conserve memory space, etc. Trees are an example, as well as the rock texture(second texture to the right from the picture upper left..and the tileable tree texture is the one on the far upper right) Landscape and swamp are also tileable.
Still WIP..I am going to hammer this thing to oblivion; I just wanted to show everyone my progress as is for now.
Look at references and try to replicate them as best you can. Don't just go and make a tree brown because you think of that color when you think of wood. Alot of trees can be white, grey, a very dark brown/grey, etc. Then move on to replicating a bark texture. Even look up what kinds of trees are typically found in Japanese gardens, and try to make that exact tree.
Now, this is a swamp garden, so I'm not familiar with the flora here, but avoid cherry trees (I know you don't have any, just saying) because most japanese gardens don't HAVE cherry trees. Simply because they only look pretty in the spring. The rest of the year, they are pretty meh.
Once you've got reference studying nailed, the rest is faily straightforward.
This scene definitely has potential! Keep up the hard work!
The tree- I agree absolutely, the major issue is varying the trees so they don't all look the same, without having to uv/unwrap each and every one individually may drive me insane. :P Plus to save memory I was thinking a tileable tree texture would be best.
As to the setting, this is now more of a swamp than a "garden". Perhaps maybe doing trees without any leaves would be more appropriate, but I definitely wanted to get the puddle areas of the swamp along with the river with tiger lilies and cat tails plants..
Prophecies- Solid advice, I am most likely going to find some better reference than what I was using.. I got a source folder of nearly every thing I could think of but I am still missing different varieties of texture reference and scene setups.
Do you feel the scale is good, or should I cut back and conserve for more detail in a smaller area? I don't feel it is intimidating given my progress so far, but I'd rather have a really good area than a larger area that is too busy. What are your thoughts?
Have you thought about using the terrain tools that are present in UDK to build the ground? Then you could make some proper tiling terrain textures and paint a few different ones down to break up all the tiling you've got going on and improve the resolution. The size of the terrain and the texture space you're giving it at the moment will never mesh with the texture size and scale of the objects placed on top of it as you currently have it. Plus, it's always good to pick-up some new skills i.e. checking out terrain sculpting and painting.
I played around a bit with the sculpt terrain feature. and I have two different terrain textures I painted to vary things up.
However, I am getting some weird seams that I can fix sometimes, and sometimes when I paint over with the other texture nothing happens. Any idea what is causing this?
Thanks.
The bridge/fence have nice efficient meshes. The rocks work OK as well, though you might want to add a single beveled vertice here and there so it's not super spiky (for instance the top of the biggest rock).
Textures aren't my forte, but I think you need a lot more AO and medium detail, and a bit less fine detail because currently it looks rather noisy.
Try looking at this http://www.chrisholden.net/tutor/ot_docs_02_setup02.htm
How about this Chris?
The scene is set at night, so I understand what you mean about pure black overall, hopefully this is more bright..
I also agree with Ampaist concerning atmosphere. Currently, it's chopping the scene right off with a black sky. Now, if this is REALLY a swamp, it's going to be a humid area, so the atmosphere is going to be thick.
Additionally, since it's a swamp, this would likely be a more rainy area so the chance of a purely clear sky are lower. While possible, this comes as conflicting.
Either way, you need something to break the silhouette of the trees with the background sky. A gradient on the sky would be nice, height fog, etc. Anyway, when has the sky ever been solid black with a few speckles? What a bout a moon? something interesting going on back there.
The moon itself IS the night time light source which is casting moon-beams in your scene. But visually, you placed it in the background in a totally different location than the source. This is a pretty big scene conflict, either adjust the light angle or move the moon.
As a light source, the moon should be glowing. It's difficult to understand how it and the clouds are placed in the scene. Are they floating planes are pasted on the skybox texture? Either way, they really seem pasted in haphazardly.
The water might be a great candidate for a reflective material. Speaking of materials, in UDK, open the GDC Features demo level. You can learn everything you need to know from this scene. Also take a look at how they use splines for tree roots. It could be really useful for you.
i think u did a little to much with the fog in the background it looks like a glow from a city or something and add some more fog into the mid and foreground
Think about adding in dust or something to the air it will help give it a sense of been more alive. u can use planers or use particles depending on what your going to do with this scene. eat 3D has a free tut how to do it in udk.. and theirs some rain tuts in udk using planers on youtube
for lighting help think mood light and look for refs for example
It'll also allow you to spread leaves more evenly, while still only having sparse leaves - like this model: