WIP UDK: Hallway From Deadspace

jocose

Hey everyone I wanted to get a nice straightforward scene for my portfolio that I could also use to learn UDK. Given the number of issues I had with lightmass its good I picked something simple to start with.

Now I want to push this as far as I can by adding in some more decals and maybe some broken glass. Might take some of the panels and pop them off and break up the space a bit more, but not too much.

I want to make sure and preserve the sense of stillness in the scene. I'm look at that as the central quality that sort of informs it all.

Temporary:

• The glass on the windows
• The rocks outside.
• The lighting (its almost done but its too dark I think, might need some tweaking

To Do/Ideas:

• Add some light rays coming through the windows
• Add some decals of bits of paper and grafiti on the walls
• Maybe break one of the windows to and bend some of the bars to suggest violent things happened here.

I would love to hear ideas about how to push this farther and make it better.

I'm looking to post it up along with all my textures I made on my portfolio so I want it to look as good as it can.


Its based on this concept:



By Ariel Alvarez


Here are my UDK screen shots:

cholden

First thing I noticed was the scale, particularly with the windows. You made your bars too thick and the windows themselves too thin. At a distance your ceiling turns in to a mass of brown instead of still seeing those nice window shapes.

Also, you didn't notice that every other bar is the break between modular pieces (where they bars double up). This is important to your composition to reduce the tiling of the bars.

The trim below the windows is planar, but concept clearly shows it as angled.


Secondly, nothing in your scene is sharp or hard edged. When using turd brown on everything, your metal had better look like metal or you end up with a scene made out of wet cardboard.

In short, you need to use specular in your materials. You might be saying "hey! I used specs." Well, you could have put cows in this scene too, but nobody can see them. For this metal, you need a strong spec with a high spec power to get hot, point point, hard edges.


Adding light rays is easy, open the properties of your dominate light and check the light shafts box

jocose

Thanks for the reply Chris,

Great feedback, most everything you said jumped out at me. The actual size of the windows though is going to be a bit off because I think the angle on the concept goes outside a normal humans FOV so your getting some perspective distortion going on on the window closest to the right side of the concept.

Other than that I can see everything you listed there.

I really need to tone down the screenspace AO I think its a contributing factor as to why the scene look so non-metalic.

However, I underscore contributing because I do agree I need to play with the spec more. I think the contrast between the panels that catch the light and the ones that don't in the concept contribute a great deal to the overall idea of the scene. I'm going to get on de-noising the texture, toning down the SSAO, and fidgeting with my spec map to try and resolve this.

I'm also going to make the bars thinner like you said. Might adjust the other disparities on as need basis though. We will see how it goes, going to post back here with pics soon.

Thanks for taking the time to write that up .

jocose

UPDATE:

Fixing up the materials proved a little more than I was expecting. I've been learning a tons.

I gutted the scene and re-did the rafters. Then I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to get the metal to work better. I ran the normals through crazy bump to try and get some of the rusty bits to look indented but I think it may have hurt more than it helped.

Anyways I still need to adjust the AO some more and fix the windows among numerous other things. I would really appreciate any feedback anyone has to offer.


I'm REALLY trying to move away from the "wet cardboard" look. If anyone has any input that would help with that please let me know.

GarageBay9

I like the pitted, rusted metal you've worked up for the lower wall panels. Really captures the feeling of a roughly finished plate that's oxidized and has a layer of rust in every indentation past a certain depth. The wide, soft spec on the face of the plate with the sharp, hot spec on the rolled edge really sell it well.

Can you post a shader / texture breakdown of that material? I'm really diggin' it.

jocose

Thanks GarageBay9, I'm going to post a texture break down later when I wrap up the scene. The shader is very simple I just have a constant set to 37 going into the spec power and a normal spec and diffuse texture. Beyond that there is nothing.

Smash

errr wow O_o I just started using UDK and I love it but I need to be this good! NEED! lol

JValencia

Your diffuse textures are looking a bit blurry. Are you using pure tiling textures or are you uniquely mapping your objects?

Could you also post your spec maps? Are you accenting your edges on them? You should probably push your spec highlights further.

I'am dying to see how your going to tackle the background through the glass =p (dying? cuz it's dead space?)


As far as pushing the concept, here is something I think would be interesting:



It would tell a story that happened in this hallway.

But yea, hope to see it finished.

ajr2764

Well I'm a big fan of DeadSpace(cant wait for the sequel). You've made some good progress on the scene. I think the idea juanitudev1 had in the paint over would work out well for this scene to give it that sense of story.

jocose

Thanks guys working on this right now. EVERYONE wants a broken window, and guess what? I had one planned from the beginning lol. So it must be a good idea.

The outside is something I'm mulling over right now. I might throw some plants in there but then again I might just leave it as rocks. It doesn't make much sense to have plants outside on mars.

We will see the important thing is that it look look spooky, still, and foreboding.

I will post my maps soon along with some anatomical updates to the hallway.

glottis8

You should spend some time sculpting that terrain out. It would be neat to see more of what is like outside instead of some generic rocks. If its desolate, to see some sand and dirt drifting from the cliff side... maybe see some nice shapes that can break up your linear composition. I'ts looking pretty cool though. Keep us updated.

jocose

Thanks for the feedback glotis8 I had mentioned in an earlier post that I was planing on sculpting some rocks for the outside but when you mentioned the terrain I realized how dumb it was that I hadn't just used it in the first place.

Time I spent on this today was mostly dedicated to cleaning things up, fixing minor issues, and coming up with a plan of attack to put all of the finished details in the scene. (more stuff to break up the space/repitition, ect)

I figure that's a better way to go so I can have a pretty firm idea of the final result before I move forward polishing the textures more.

As soon as that's done i'm going to work more on the textures and will post them, I promise. I just need to head out for today and wanted to post what I had in case anyone had any feedback.

Please give me your thoughts on the windows specifically I was having a hard time figuring out how dirty to make them.

Of course any other comments/crits are welcome as well.

Thank you so much for all the great feedback so far





Oh, and i'm also trying to think of good foreground objects, if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

cholden

First of all, good for you! Youv'e really taken the feedback here and ran with it. And, the result is looking really nice.

Something I would add would be a silhouette breaker at the end of the tunnel, like an eletrical box on the wall. Something to deviate from the the end of the hall shape from standing out so much. A collar might work well here too (break point of support beams and/or a doorway)

At this point, I feel the windwos are are subjective. Personally, I'd increase the visibility of the relfective properties (be it cube map or whatever) just to exaggerate the effect.

For presentation, the scene is still a little too dark. I'd jack up that dom directional light and nudge the environment color up a bit as well as it's saturation [complimenting the dom of course]),

GoodDreams

The broken window seems a bit odd for this type of build, assuming the enviroment is supposed to be pressurized with oxygen. Also, you'd think those windows and bars would be made of some super material from the future and unlikely to break like that.

I think it's an effective tactic for making the scene look old and abandoned, but it just sticks out to be as being odd in this type of setting.

Snader

Here's a bunch of quick crits:
The windows need less blotchy dirt, and a thicker layer of consistent, pretty light coloured dirt -> less transparent windows. Currently looks like fresh dirt splatters, while the reference is old, settled dust.

I'm also missing a lot of small details such as the bends in the pipes, holes and recesses on the lefthand panels and some lines/creases on the window pillars, righthand panels, and floor elements.

Those floor elements should be rotated 180 degrees, BTW.

The <|||||||> light fixtures on the left have the wrong proportions, with your light elements (the white | things) being far too small.

You should also take a better look at the window pillars
Your version is |><|><|><|><|><|><|
While theirs is ||>|<||>|<||>|<||>|<||
This small change leads to your version being inconsistent with itself.

The window pillars you have also have a more square-ish crossection while theirs have a more rectangular one.

You should probably adjust the lighting a bit, making it a bit brighter and a warmer tone. And you should remove the particles all the way in the foreground, because they're in the shadow instead of the light, and wouldn't be visible.

You should also add some fog in the outside world, and I think the rock above the tunnel is actually an overhang, not a distant mountain.

These are all fairly small niggles, but they add up.

CNecron518a

jocose- How did you do your windows in Unreal Development Kit? I am curious because I have not yet fiddled with vertex lighting in Unreal yet and I would like to for a swamp type environment I am re-working with multiple transparent layers of varying thickness in color and opacity on the top.

Also- I would say you have improved this a lot from your initial design but I think personally some more clutter and stuff to fill the hallway up would make this much more interesting. Right now, it's a long corridor that could be sort of boring for a player to have to walk down. Maybe you could add some crates or break up the walls even more so that they are not straight all the way down.

Foreground objects; I would try guns scattered about; maybe have one leaning up against the wall.. some bullet holes in the glass would look cool and definitely ammo crates or supply crates..heck even computer paneling and such..anything to make the eye wander to catch interesting pieces(the scenery is a nice touch but perhaps you could flesh it out even more..maybe there is some sort of installation in the distance..a satellite maybe even?)

glottis8

Well, I really like your space over all.. but the guys here are right. I guess its good to tell a story with it. Where does the grime come from? if you had dirt from the outside, then you have deposits of dirt everywhere.. specially on top of the windows where it can sit... specially close to the beams. Now... the beams, I don't know why but to me they just seem placeholderish... i like your set up, but there needs to be more detail on how they come together. Give the beams indents where the other beam would connect. Specially when they are holding glass... look at this reference. Its just nice to see bolts.. and different shapes that gives us an idea on how things are put together and not just cubes that intersect. I hope that makes sense. I think if you add this kind of detail to your scene it will make it a lot more interesting to look at. So far you are doing great. Keep up the good work.

roosterMAP

add some crates or something. there is nothing going on in this scene. do something more wth it.

GarageBay9

roosterMAP wrote: »

add some crates or something. there is nothing going on in this scene. do something more wth it.

Oh God, please... anything, anything except crates.

:poly122:

acc

GarageBay9 wrote: »

Oh God, please... anything, anything except crates.

Yeah, seriously.

Add exploding barrels instead.

jocose

Okay guys, rather than just making a bunch of random props and trying to assemble somthing out of them I'm going to try and nail a more unified concept before I move forward. I took the afternoon and started doing a paint over. I'm not stuck on ANY of this and would really apreciate some feedback.

Here is a bit of my thought process

• Everyone seams visually offended by the one point perspective. I tried to compensate by adding more focal points, but that turned out to be a bad idea. I should either embrace the 1 point or just get rid of it, so I decided to get rid of it, and introduce THE BLOB!
  
• I added a flammable container in the foreground and some crates on the lower right. (if everyone hates them I can do something else, if you have a better idea let me know, i'm more focused on getting the mood right at the moment)
  
• I added a tower in the distance on the outside, and also made the image 2 point by adding another hallway on the outside of the window going to the distant structure.

Blob In Shadow:



Blob in light:






Here is an earlier revision with out the blob, but just the tentacles. Maybe this is better?

GarageBay9

I'm getting a serious System Shock 2 vibe from those top two.

EDIT: on further thought, that blob should be eating the crates.



Hell, you could build a whole game about a blob that was eating the video game world's entire supply of powerup crates...




...:icon3:

jocose

Yeah there are things I like and dislike about the blob. If I deiced to go with it im defiantly going to look at some more ref. Probably from The THING (film).

My real concern is that 1 point perspective. Really looking for thoughts on what it does to the composition. Does it help or hurt it? Should I keep the blob but lower him a bit so we still see down the hallway?

cholden

check out the organic blob in this guy's level (about 2 minutes in)
http://www.youtube.com/user/wrazor#p/a/u/0/2IOlFErpr-8

jocose

Cool Chris, that's definatly better than what I have would be cool to animate it as well. Also looking at Akira.

I'm still wonderng what people think of the composition though. Does the bottom image look better, or is the blob, or somthing else there, look better?

Going to start working on the forground objects and maybe those crates tomarrow.

Slave_zero

Instead of a monster you could collapse the hallway at the end of the tunnel.
Also you could use the large window area to show something in the distance. Give more impression of the surrounding: A silhouette of a big colony building.


I imagine a scene where the corridor in front of the viewer is collapsed and through the windows you can see the whole facility going to hell. (explosion, smoke, a collapsed building)

Also you can improve the lighting: You have those windows - use them! Trying out different lightsetups that include artificial light within the corridor as well as natural light from the out side. (A dawn or dusk scenery could do very well)
Also it can be helpfull to add more contrast to the outside elements of your scene. I can think of a blue sky as a contrast to the brown and grey tones of the hallway. At the moment outside and inside use the same color-sheme. Which makes it look rather boring. I would avoid that, although the concept is promoting a brown in brown color selection.

Vertrucio

Having thicker and thinner segments of the latticework holding up the window will help vary the pattern, creating more visual interest.

Also, switch the lighting to something besides bright daylight. Even try something like aliens suns that have bright, high contrast lighting amongst darkness.

glottis8

I like the way you bent the corridor and you can see it from the window... the building shape on the back is a great idea as well...

about the blob...i guess i like the one that has details around.. not just a blob in the middle of everything. But hey... if you take a pass we might just find enough feedback to make something awesome out of it.

I like the detail you painted for the frames... its coming along... the idea is there. So have fun and keep us posted.

JValencia

I would skip the blob and the oil barrel. The crate too.

There was no blob or oil barrel in Dead Space.


Maybe at the end of the hallway, you could break the hallway and have it open into space? There were plenty of parts like that in the game were you would enter ZeroGravity. Here is an example:
http://www.clevver.com/games/deadspace/photos/139974/dead-space-concept-art-9.html


I would look at more Dead Space concepts and take elements from them. After all, if you show this to the guys at Visceral Studios, you want them to think "Hey...this fits perfectly into our game!"


It's great that you started doing paintovers though. Can't wait to see what you come up with!

jocose

Okay guys I'm running late so I am just going to post this and head out. I'm pretty satisfied with this current iteration. I don't think I want to tell a big story with the scene I just want to make sure its an interesting space.

The one point perspective was blatant that it made it look like I was trying to say something when I wasn't. So I curved the hallway to make it easier on the eyes and let your eyes move around the composition.

Someone had the idea of making the entire thing raised over a canyon, and I really liked the idea of showing the hallways destination out the window since there was so much space there.

I think at this point it is starting to feel better.

There is still no real sense of scale though in the scene. I tried adding some chairs but it just made me wonder why the hell there were chairs there? It seams like the kind of space where people would be moving to and from a location, not idling.

Unless anyone raises any real good points I'm going to start modeling all the changes I made yesterday, and the try and introduce some clutter after I get this all in unreal.

I don't foresee any more major composition changes, I think this should serve as a good enough foundation.

But, PLEASE, as always, let me know if you have any feedback.




OH and I'm keeping the changes to the windows I made in the earlier paint over, I just neglected to add them here.

sampson

much cooler! its improved alot over the course of the thread. those red lights in the end help to break the high amounts of monotonous colour. i would maybe try another idea to bring in some extra colour (i know its dark and murky but it just needs something to help it pop), like some lights in the bottom of the rails on the right hand side

glottis8

way better

I like it... maybe you can make it like this is coming out of a canyon.. so you can see part of the cliffs on the left side to.. so its not so empty... maybe put 2 big moons that you can see in the horizon.. there is a lot you can do.. but i definitely like the bend and the building at the end. Better than the blob haha and crates.

brandoom

This is coming along nicely Jocose. One thing you'll have to keep in mind is some sort of outside light-source, weather is be the sun or whatever. You've got a bunch of shadows right now but nothing to justify them.

One way I went about adding 'scale' to my hallway scene was throwing in small bits of garbage. It seemed to have helped.

Keep working

LRoy

Coming out nice. I remember you had blood before. Maybe add a boot or glove or something to give some scale? Some kind of debris

CNecron518a

Glad you decided to add the satellite installation in the distance..if you could get that modeled and texture out like you have in your paintover...yes..this would be very cool indeed. But agree with others that perhaps you could do more with lighting and the glass..I for one actually liked your alien blob paintover creature..but it would need to be modeled and textured good to really sell it well and I am not sure if that is your focus or not.. anyhow, I also liked the "fallout" ash effect you had in the original and I think you may be losing it a tad since then... keep working because it is...

edit: one last thing, Also really try to think of the story and where this is at..a colony planet, like the others said: What time of day could you get this looking it's best? At Dusk or Dawn? Right now it's just sorta overcast and you cannot do much with that..I agree with Slave; make some sort of interesting lighting scenario that uses the windows to your advantage..

ajr2764

I really like the new direction of the environment, adds alot more interest. Alot of good suggestions that I'd look into doing also.

Pedro Amorim

I give the best sugestions ever

jocose

Small update to the scene. I have a lot more built in max but I spent the day learning more about UDK. Hopefully have a lot more of the revisions in and an actual building early next week. I just wanted to post this so people had an idea of how it was going to come together.

Any comments are welcome. Thanks SO much for all the comments and crits so far, you guys are awesome.

glottis8

I think there should be like a bunker looking thing at the entrance of mountain side... It looks kind of funky if a weak corridor can support the weight of all that rock. So just an indication of some structure that holds the entrance. So far is looking great though. Keep up the good work.

jocose

The building in the distance is just 2 random props that came with UDK I haven't even started on the building its going to be a complete structure, a separate model, and separate shader. Need to finish the hallway before I start that project.

But, yes, the corridor will hook up to the structure in a believable way.

jocose

Had quite a bit going on this week for work but I have been working on this in what spare time I have had. I've got some thumbnails for the building on the horizon. I ran them by some people and came up with with a final one. I'm modeling it out right now, then I will do a paint over and hopefully be on route towards finishing this sometime next week.

Here are the thumbnails:



Here is a view of the block-in model I have in UDK at the moment.




I'm still very much open to ideas/crits so please let me know if you see anything that's going to be an issue. There will probably be some sort of lift that comes down out of the bottom to hook up with the corridor. I'm going to try and work that out tomorrow.

I also think I might try and extend some of the features backward now that I am seeing this in 2point perspective it looks a bit flat.

Thanks again to all those that have offered their feedback and comments. Its been extremely helpful.

GarageBay9

Only feedback I can offer is that the top shape of the tower (with the open ring) suggest more of a monument or religious statue type feeling instead of a technical installation.

One really good piece of reference I've found for designing the generic "big technical building" are old Soviet radar and radio facilities. Look up Steel Yard in particular, it was a massive installation that had lots of interesting shapes in it besides the main antenna.

jocose

Thanks for the feedback GarageBay, I completely agree about the circle the more I think about it the less it works, everyone seamed to like it in the thumbnail bit it isn't practical so its going to need to go.

GarageBay9

Of your thumbnails, 14, 9, 7, and 12 are the most attractive to me. 6 and 3 also work pretty well, they'd need to be angled correctly.

DO NOT USE 10. It's wangtacular.

Here's a picture of Duga-3, NATO codename Steel Yard, in Pripyat... better known to telephone workers as the Russian Woodpecker, and to us gamers as The Brain Scorcher. Lots of interesting interior shapes in the components that make up the array:




Here is Skrunda-1, a combined Over-the-horizon radar system:



Flat Twin, another Soviet ABM radar system.

jocose

Here is an update of my latest blockin, its taking my longer than I would like but I wanted to make sure everything read well since its such a big part of the composition now and will be my primary focal point. Also have some overlapping there and some more buildings moving around the space so it makes it feel less flat.

Threw some fire particles in there.

I'm looking for feedback tonight tomorrow I'm going to start hammering away on adding all the little details to this and making any changes anyone suggests.

Thanks for all the help so far.

cholden

Right now, I'm mostly kicking back observing the major change in the "just a hall" direction this piece previously was. As I see this large citadel in the background, I can only suggest learning as much as you can from Matroskin's work.

Nate Broach

Really nice progress Greg! I'm glad you're doing paintovers of your work. Might be pointing out the obvious but it would be really cool to have a lot of tiny lights on the citadel to really sell the scale.

Keep it up!

Edit: whoops, posted this on nate's screen name...this is Keen...

jocose

Okay, I worked pretty long and hard trying to figure out what type of building to stick outside that window. I put in a day or so teaching myself more about speed painting, architecture, research the design language of the game, and I learned a lot.






That said cholden's comment about me deviating from my "just a hall" premise is dead right. I need to finish the hallway and then I can add the view.

So that's what I went back to.

First thing I did was do a speed paint of the hallway with a better mood. I opted to use some fabric, I don't know how "dead space" it is, but it does help set the mood. I'm trying to work with the idea more and make it a it more SCIFI.

Maybe its good the way it is, maybe it needs something else, or maybe it should be scrapped. I haven't started modeling it yet and I'm open to ideas.




Next thing I did was go ahead and build the shader for the new screens. I liked them a lot and was sold on the idea so I went ahead and spent a day creating the most complex shader I have ever done, I learned a ton, and even though it sucked up a bunch of time the end result was worth it.

Although I still think it could stand to be improved/polished quite a bit. Please let me know if you have any ideas, suggestions, or better ways of doing things in the shader. Being my first real complex shader I'm sure its a bit of a mess.



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hSY0PcH0FM&amp;feature=player_profilepage[/ame]



I've done some more modeling, and changed things around a bit, but I'm not going to bother and post screen shots of that right now. Next order of business is to finalize my paint overs and wrap up the hallway so its a solid scene with a clear mood/message.

Than I'm going to get back to the building.

Any comments would be appreciated I hope to spend a good chunk of tomorrow making sure the speed paint reads well then I'm going to dive into modeling and texturing it and not look back.

Lucas Annunziata

I've been following along with this and I'm impressed with your progress since the original concept. As far as the holo screen goes, I could barely even tell there was any flickering going on. I would make that a bit more prominent and maybe even have it cut out for a split second.

jocose

Thanks for the reply darbeenbo. Yeah I know I was frustrated by the flickering. It kinda does it ever 3 seconds, and I moved the camera when it did... I need to fix that, good thing to get me started in the morning.

Really wish there was a way to make it completely random using a random node in the damn shader. having a mess of sin nodes is really annoying

haiddasalami

Just to add to the flickering comment, you dont want to overdo the flickering as then it'll seem like a rave. I've seen people use the flickering for lights and its so goddam annoying. If you make it subtle it makes it blend into the environment than sticking out like a sore thumb. really liking where the new paintover is going.