Sci-fi environment again(I have an excuse, really =) )
polycounter lvl 14
Wassup, fellas, it's me again!
As some of you may already know, lately I've been given a permission to pimp some Natural Selection II stuff I textured. At that time I thought it would be nice to put up a little environment to render the assets in, so I've got to work. Later on I exported the NS II aliens into UDK only to find out that they look completely different. So I was left without my aliens, but I thought I'd still finish the environment.) I have another personal project running right now - it's my Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Environment, but it's kinda too big and I could use a sooner portfolio update to try to get better freelance gigs or well who nows, maybe even a job.
It's going to be the usual corridor with a little twist. Some years ago I realized, that making reality look good was a much more complex and challenging task for me then just making uberdetailed fantastic machinery, that hardly has much logic to it. But now I want to try to get back to it a bit. I want the scene too look very complex. I want the assets to be so detailed that your eyes explode. Because It makes a stronger first impression, that I want to have with my portfolio. The materials will predominantly be metal, rubber and plastic. I'll also try to play with fog volumes and atmosphere a bit by adding some effects that I'll crank out while learning Unreal Cascade. The list of assets is minimal:
- Wall Tile
- Floor Tile
- Wall Separator thingy
- A simple ceiling tile
- Effects of drips and puddles
- smoke
- sparks
Here's the Wall Separator thingy highpoly so far. I really hope that it will add a nice rhythm to the composition:
What do you think guys? I want to go into the overkill, but I'm not really sure if I need to add more to the highpoly. Or the textures will add enough complexity, without turning the whole thing into a mess?
Now to the sad part:
The last portfolio I put up landed me no job. I mean no job at all. Not even a reply from anyone except mailbots.
The more research I've done into the subject the more I've come to think that there are 2 factors holding me back:
I'm a mediocre artist and I'm from belarus. And I don't even know what's worse.
You can't be mediocre when you are from a place like this. Locally there are no companies that could help you grow professionally. But no one from abroad would bother hiring you unless you are really amazing. So I just wanted to tell you guys, that I'm really counting on your help. I need this stuff to turn out amazing and I can't settle for anything less. So any kind of feedback, crits or ideas you might have - please feel free to share them. I want you to really tear me apart, so I could build a better me anew.
Right now I guess I'll be getting into the block out and I'll post once I have more stuff to show.=)
P.s. Here's the Natural Selection II Alien Structures thread
P.p.s. My site might go offline soon because I'm moving to another hosting, so just in case you'll find it not working, please check it out in a couple of days.
Cheers and thanks a lot for you attention!
P.p.p.s. I've made 2 threads in Pimping&Previews in less then 24 hours.=) I'm on fire %-)
As some of you may already know, lately I've been given a permission to pimp some Natural Selection II stuff I textured. At that time I thought it would be nice to put up a little environment to render the assets in, so I've got to work. Later on I exported the NS II aliens into UDK only to find out that they look completely different. So I was left without my aliens, but I thought I'd still finish the environment.) I have another personal project running right now - it's my Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Environment, but it's kinda too big and I could use a sooner portfolio update to try to get better freelance gigs or well who nows, maybe even a job.
It's going to be the usual corridor with a little twist. Some years ago I realized, that making reality look good was a much more complex and challenging task for me then just making uberdetailed fantastic machinery, that hardly has much logic to it. But now I want to try to get back to it a bit. I want the scene too look very complex. I want the assets to be so detailed that your eyes explode. Because It makes a stronger first impression, that I want to have with my portfolio. The materials will predominantly be metal, rubber and plastic. I'll also try to play with fog volumes and atmosphere a bit by adding some effects that I'll crank out while learning Unreal Cascade. The list of assets is minimal:
- Wall Tile
- Floor Tile
- Wall Separator thingy
- A simple ceiling tile
- Effects of drips and puddles
- smoke
- sparks
Here's the Wall Separator thingy highpoly so far. I really hope that it will add a nice rhythm to the composition:
What do you think guys? I want to go into the overkill, but I'm not really sure if I need to add more to the highpoly. Or the textures will add enough complexity, without turning the whole thing into a mess?
Now to the sad part:
The last portfolio I put up landed me no job. I mean no job at all. Not even a reply from anyone except mailbots.
The more research I've done into the subject the more I've come to think that there are 2 factors holding me back:
I'm a mediocre artist and I'm from belarus. And I don't even know what's worse.
You can't be mediocre when you are from a place like this. Locally there are no companies that could help you grow professionally. But no one from abroad would bother hiring you unless you are really amazing. So I just wanted to tell you guys, that I'm really counting on your help. I need this stuff to turn out amazing and I can't settle for anything less. So any kind of feedback, crits or ideas you might have - please feel free to share them. I want you to really tear me apart, so I could build a better me anew.
Right now I guess I'll be getting into the block out and I'll post once I have more stuff to show.=)
P.s. Here's the Natural Selection II Alien Structures thread
P.p.s. My site might go offline soon because I'm moving to another hosting, so just in case you'll find it not working, please check it out in a couple of days.
Cheers and thanks a lot for you attention!
P.p.p.s. I've made 2 threads in Pimping&Previews in less then 24 hours.=) I'm on fire %-)
Replies
luke, yeah that's a good question. As I see it now, the corridor will have pretty dim lighting with some small neon stuff. And then I want a a strong light shining from around the corner, maybe making some interesting shadow, making the viewer want to explore what is around the corner. I'm counting on fog and stuff like that to make it more interesting.
But if I won't be able to pull it off I'll definitely will have to come up with something else for a focal point.)
But its worth a bake because I could be very wrong :P
I really like the detail desity on the vents at the bottom. If you changed the middle section to have about that amount of details this should be golden. Just to let your eyes rest at the center of the model for a second, and to break up the details.
Also, if you ask me, the middle of it should be more rounded, just like the vents. I wish I could do a paintover, but I don't have my wacom available at the moment.
I hope you understand what I meant!
Keep it up!
Thank you, Disting. I'll try to incorporate your feedback, but there's one thing that I also try to keep in mind. I want every single prop to really stand out on their own. I know there's a risk to go overboard, but, damn, I want some real bad-ass prop pics in my portfolio. And overboard would really be better than "underboard"=)
With all the previous environments I've done I tried to make every prop work for the environment in global and I think I ended up without any really amazing props to pimp. =(
So hey, here's a quick blockout/mockup of what I'll probably be going for:
But there's a slight concept change.) As I was going through ideas of what to do for floor tiles, I thought I'd need to have some sort of rails incorporated for moving cargo carts and things to hold them in case of zero gravity. And then... Bingo!
Remembering about zero G totally change my way of thinking so I guess the project's expanding. So much for a smaller project, but what the hell if it's not grandiose then it's obviously less fun=)
Right now I'm going for a hall from the living quarters of a space ship a few moments after the artificial gravity device malfunctioned.=) Having done some research into weightlessness left me childishly blissful, so I'm just aching to get down to an environment in zero G. There going to be quite a number of props floating around, maybe some liquids and stuff like that. The inside lighting is going to be cold with the warm starlight filling the space around the windows.
And yeah I have some really-really disturbing eclectic ideas involving wallpapers and rugs that I'd rather not discuss right now. I'll just have to see about that=)
P.S. For all you guys around Nevada, weightlessness is just 5-6k $ away)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1104337/Science-Editor-Michael-Hanlon-A-weight-mind-blasted-space.html
lucky bastards=)
Although, it looks like you're missing a piece around the narrowest part of the column, which could also be doing it.
Also, I would change the background of the presentation to a "clean one", the prop is already with lots of detail, having a busy background its a little disturbing I find. We know its sci fi, adding matrix style numbers and tech shapes its not really adding imo.
on the other side, good modeling skills! I will like to see this textured!
First of all,johnheeter, thank you, and sorry for missing you comment back there. Nah, it's pure 3ds Max modeling. Around a milliion tris per asset. But they are of course turbosmoothed with higher rendering iterations.
threehams, thanks a lot for pointing this out, man. Yeah I've got to be careful and watch out for UDKs' camera settings, 'cause I think it's them that might be causing some distortion. I'll have to look into that.
You're too kind,t4paN, I'll try not to disappoint.)
Thank you for your comment,maze. I doubt I'll change the wall support very much but yep I guess I'll try to add some width variation and maybe a curve or too.=)
And yeah I totally dislike when people are making noisy backgrounds with random shapes. I usually think, that the person doesn't find his work good enough on it's own, so he tries to make it look more complex by cluttering the presentation. Or he just tries to make it seem more complex then it is. A cheap trick that I abandoned a while ago
so here's a little update I've been cooking up lately. It's the wall segment highpoly::
Btw, just wanted to ask you guys, If someone is doing similar highpoly stuff at work, how much time does it usually take you or should it take you? 'Cause right now this stuff takes 2-3 days just for the highpoly. Although it's not the modeling that makes it slow, but rather coming up with the look as I go. But anyway, I'll be thinking about the ways to speed stuff up and something to look up to would be nice.
Up next I'll do the floor highpoly and then get down to baking/texturing. I still hope that I'll be able to provide something a bit unexpected with the way I'm about to texture it, if things turn out all right.
And then It's prop time! Hellyeah, I love the little stuff)
Thanks for you attention and see ya soon.
I am excited for more
I'd say it looks a tad noisy and some of the panels I kinda think 'wtf are those for?'
Some of those tiny details like nuts and bolts seem unnessacery.
:thumbup: good work
Very gears of war-ish.
Keep it up!
If that link at the bottom of your sig is your folio, then yes i can see why your having a lack of job offers. Youve stretched yourself across a few diff genres and none of them are what your making in this thread. My suggestion, and take with a grain here, pick a genre, and a construction style. Then do up 3 pieces per. Not just props.... prop artist is going the way of the dodo bird.... do whole scenes like you are doing here. Now what i mean by construction style is this, if your doing next gen highpoly to lowpoly stick with it. If your doing low poly citys like in your portfolio, stick with that. Youll never land a job at epic with a folio that looks like a wii game. See what im saying? Also, the extra work section...2d ect ect... if its not your focus, then ditch it. It only stands to hurt you. unless ofcourse your drawing like rembrandt =P
Hope this was helpfull, i ment it all constructivly. I enjoy your work and youve got the skills, just need to focus and present better.
samgriffiths, thanks for your opinion, mate! Luckily the bolts and stuff are easy to erase later in photoshop, so in case it still feels noisy in the end I'll be able to take care of that without much hassle.
I guess the comparison with Bioshock is a good thing, although I must admit, that to my shame I never played it. Probably just seen a review on gametrailers.)
The panels ought to have at least some sense.
-The top and the bottom have vents for recycling different kinds of gases(that obviously have a different mass) more rationally.
-Then at the bottom of the wall there's a "pack" of cables running through, with some sockets to plug in in the center.
-The are also cables at the top, but they are mainly responsible for not so common technical tasks. They come out of the wall once in a while into a special hub. That way in case of malfunction you can easily locate where exactly does the signal stop and address the malfunction immediately, since a malfunction in space might cause people their lives.
-Then there are some lamps and the other stuff is mostly decorative.=)
Hey,Grey, I don't even know where to begin expressing my gratitude for your post. Seeing you believe in me makes me believe in myself even more.
There's nothing I appreciate more=) Really. Thank you very-very much!
Disting, thanks a lot, nice to still have you here! Btw, I haven't forgot about changing the wall support I'm just going to do this a bit later.)
stimpack, huge thanks about the vent thing. You're totally correct and I'll certainly fix it!
And thanks for taking your time to go through my portfolio. I appreciate your advice. I actually tried to follow a similar pattern to what you've mentioned, but if you're interested, here's how it went for me:
I chose a direction I was trying to pursue(which you can figure out from my portfolio) but it turned out to be a pretty narrow field, so once I've got no job, I got in trouble with not being able to attract decent freelance gigs with this kind of things to show. And that's wasn't too good because I needed to put some food on my table.
So in any way some variety turned out to be good and to some extent inevitable.
I'd also like to point out that afterwards I spoke to a number of different people on the issue and I think one of the most important things I learned was that you probably could do a scene 100% the same as the studio you want get in would, but it no way means that they'll give you the job right away. Or even give you a job at all. At least if you need to be hired from abroad. I hate to be nagging about the geography issue, so I beg your pardon for doing so. But it's not like getting hired in another state. In that case, when you fit - you get the job. In a foreigner case you don't just have to fit - you have to amaze, otherwise they'll just find someone to "fit" locally.
People don't need what they already have that much. They are much more like to be waiting for a thrill, waiting to be impressed. Which of course you can do in terms of their technical style, so in no way am I arguing with you. On the contrary, I totally agree with what you say, but just wanted to bring a couple more variables into the equation.
And don't worry I always take this stuff constructively and appreciate any kind of feedback you might have. So thanks a whole lot and I'm really glad you enjoy my work!
Once again, thanks a lot for all you feedback guys! And I'll go get some sleep)
Sorry it took me so long, but I finally threw the floor together.
It doesn't read as well as I want it to right now, I'm hoping texturing will fix this.
Hey,Hayden Zammit, sure buddy, here you go:
Every object(wall, floor, pillar) is less then a million tris in the viewport. I usually leave a lot of objects with 0 turbosmooth iterations, and just crank up my render iterations, so the actual number of tris rendered should be a lot more.
And while I was doing the wires I thought I'd just make a quick picture from another angle. But I didn't actually render it - it's a screen grab, since rendering this stuff on my rusty PC is a real pain in the ass and takes forever. So pardon the quality.=(
Some objects(wall, floor and pillar I mean) don't perfectly fit together right now, but that's some thing I'm gonna tweak up next. And redo the pillar a bit. And then it's baking time. Hopefully things will go faster from here.
Hey, looks like I finally managed to make it short this time. Hooray. Less talk more work!=)
C ya=)
But the rest is just beautiful
Do you check out images in full size?
While working I look at it full screen 1920x1080 all the time and now that I think about it might not be such a good idea.=)
Even though I was aiming for this part to be more complex, I'll definitely try to make sure things read better while texturing. thanks again
I've been messing around with it a bit more and here's where I am so far.
Absolutely no texturing done. I though I'd try to concentrate on the mood and lighting of the scene, 'cause that's the part I am least experienced in.
Still not happy with a lot of things, a lot of things to fix and the ceiling is obviously missing.=) but I kinda felt like it could use some fresh eyes, so, fellas, feel free to comment the shit out of it! I would greatly appreciate any ideas on improving the scene and especially lighting. I'm looking up to all the great guys and gals of polycount to help me get good enough, and not just "good", but "I wanna hire this guy from abroad" kind of good, so no need to restrain yourself. Be harsh be productive and I'll try my best to make it work for me.
Btw, I was thinking of making any other window a solid wall at first but now I'm not so sure. What do you, guys, think?
I was also going to add some smaller props but it seems like the scene could do well enough the way it is, could it?
And here's a shot from another angle just to let you, guys, see the assets better.
a huge thanks for all your replies in advance!
p.s. now that I look at it on another monitor I think that might crank up the juiciness a bit more and make that screen-space AO a bit less prominent.
Also... your space background is contrasting with your scene in the worst of ways, I think you have every colour of the rainbow :P DOUBLE RAINBOW!
Hopefully thats not harsh, but I think you need to delete all your lights, get a base ambient in there, and start slowly adding some lights in there that won't drown your scene, but help push it.
Looking at your highpoly models I was stunned!
The lighting and texturing does no justice to your high polies.
What concerns me the most about the texture is the yellow parts. I'm not sure what material you wanted for them. Gold?
This has great potential! You just need to go back and tone things down and set a color scheme for the scene.
I was going for a Michael Bay meets young Ridley Scott kinda look. Blue shadows, yellow lights and fog on top of it. No worries about the harshness. I've got to learn from somewhere so I really appreciate all the input. I'll hear what others have to say and then I just might scrape the lights and redo them allover. And I would do it again and again until I'll manage to get it right.
And yep that yellow stuff is supposed to be gold, but as it says in the post, there are no textures yet. Those are just bakes with quick flat colors. I'll see if I'll be able to make it work once it's textured, but if not, then they'll have to go.
But yeah the lighting needs work!
and im still not sure about that floor, i dont know though maybe it's just me no one else has commented on them it just all seems a bit busy!
Like Disting said tone things down and set a colour scheme and you are good to go! I am very excited for more
TOO
MUCH
CRAP
You're overloading with high frequency detail, without any interesting medium/low frequency detail and form. It all just reads as noise, and its simply a mess. Sorry if this seems harsh but its just the way it is.
Adding more and more and more until you've worked on it for 80 hours isnt the way to make a model good, it starts up front with the design. Even a simple design executed well is always going to look better than random stuff overworked. If you have trouble coming up with good designs, try finding other people's concepts to work from.
The thing with lighting is that 90% of it should be subtle, with only the VERY occasional thing grabbing attention. In this case, I think nothing should even grab the attention as it's a relatively simple corridor.
On my blog I had a picture of my scene with over the top light rays and they just made it all cloudy. Same with yours, it's masking your details.
Next, tone AO dowwwwwwwwn.
Finally, black space. Cliche, boring? It will suit your scene. Here's an idea. Have pure black space with stars yeah but add a really large sun as your lighting source. Hell maybe a blue sun for some interesting colours. I think cool colours would suit your scene. Lots of blue.
Now I have quite a lot of thinking to do.
I beg your pardon if I come through as ignorant or arrogant at first and I hope that once you've finished the following paragraph you'll see my point and understand that I'm trying to not to be neither.
I was never good at blindly accepting what other people told me. And I actually wish no one was.
Between hearing and believing, all the information I perceive goes through cause and consequence analysis, where I try understand what led to such a conclusion and under what circumstances is it applicable.
It's necessary for me to make conscious decisions on the subject in future on my own.
I know that most of you are busy people. And I really appreciate the time you take to say, that the scene or objects are to noisy for example. But here's a point that bothers me. I most honestly don't see it that way. Because I can't make a conscious decision or gradation where "a lot" turns into "too much". It's not like I look at it, think it's bad and then go "hey, it got a couple hundreds small details, that make it look complex, so it has to be cool". I most honestly tenderly assemble this stuff piece by piece until they feel complete somewhere deep inside of me.
In no way am I trying to conform you to my vision. On the contrary. I say all this, because I want to understand, what's going on inside your heads. That is something that I lack. If someone would be able to even vaguely draw a line for me here it would be of great help, since I most obviously look at it some other way. What's "too detailed" and how could you rationalize it?
I'm not trying to cover up my poor design skills with excessive detail. It's just that at this point in time, probably, due to my poor design skills, I saw these designs fit.
Which I'll have to brush up on.
As of now I'm on the fence about getting back to the drawing board. Scraping the whole thing, and trying to strike a balance between what I want and what I think people might want to see in terms of details in design. I want something universally regarded as "good" at the very least and I'm not sure if I'll achieve it with this. I know it would've been easier to take a ready concept and would probably have gotten me a lot further by now, but time and time again the arrogant part of me so desperately wants to claim full ownership of everything I do, that I still want to try and make it work.
And yeah, too bad the lighting turned out even worse. I guess I'll have to scrape everything I thought I knew about it and try to educate myself on the subject much-much more. And your advices will play a vital part in it.
Now that i read through it I find the "getting hired" part kinda inappropriate, with the amount of things I still have to learn, but, well... fuck it. even more that I want to get out of here I want the answers to the questions that keep me from being a better artist and I appreciate all your help guys.
And yeah, special thanks to all you guys trying to cheer me up.) I endlessly appreciate you guys worrying about my motivation, but thats probably the only thing in my life I have in excess.
The detail work that you have done is fantastic, but I think from a design stand point scale is important. Look at the detail next to other detail based on size should be considered. Zoom out of one of your modules and look at it all.
hey no biggie keep it up your doin great everything is a learning experience
Thank, Hayden! I'm glad you like it. And yeah, by scraping it I didn't mean leaving it=) so no worries. I just want to iterate it till it's done right, where I can blend the detail I like(and gladly you too) with something that has more substance.
Thanks again fellas, I appreciate your posts very much.
my friend your beyond the word of skill but there is such a thing as too much detail.
no offense but i'm actually getting a small headache after seeing the last few pics @_@
they're wonderful but they're too much for my eyes that can handle.
sorry if im coming off as rude.
Red are the initial focal points, purple the secondary ones. Both these are somewhat dark environments, but the lighting just accentuates the focal points more.
The first thing you see are the exits, generally, as they're very essential to navigating the game. Then you'll start noticing smaller details such as a shadowy figure - should you follow, or not? The panel on the right and the blood on the floor also attract your attention, you don't really want to go in there.
The second image is from UT3, supposedly (I can't recall playing in this room). You can see there's a door on the far right, and something important in the middle, maybe something you need to destroy? After those two main points, there's a pretty noticable square in the foreground, a weapon spawn, or maybe an elevator.
Now why does these images work? Because of three main reasons:
-there are relatively few focal points.
-they're not too close together
-the focal points have a certain hierarchy.
Whereas your image has them.. everywhere, and all as bright as the others.
How can you create focal points? By using contrast. You can use many things to do so: Light/dark, color, specularity, detail, angles, form and animation for instance. As long as there's a small element (10% or so) that stands out from the other elements - it'll create a contrast. Combining several of these contrasts on one element of the image will make it stand out - a focal point.
As I've already said above, lighting makes a huge contribution, especially in Dead Space, where everything is mostly the same rusty metal in jagged shapes. But it's not the end-all be-all. You can use colors to indicate points of interest - red blood, yellow trims on the ball, and even the white light in UT3 differs from the cyanic ambient light. You can use different materials to stand out - a metal pipe on a brick wall has a different specularity, has reflections, different color and generally a different amount of detail. Detail can be the difference between flat plates such as the floor on the UT3 image, or intricate wiring behind that sphere. Dead space's image also has flat floors, but aside from that the details are different: the most of the walls are simple repeating elements, but the focal points are unique pieces of geometry.
Your shot has some decent (though a bit busy) geometry, the repetition of elements that make it the 90% that doesn't stand out - you just don't have any focal geometry yet. But your colours and lighting are a mess - you've got white, yellow and blue lights (and some red from the windows) right next to eachother and you've got yellow and red and several greys on every object. Try limiting the amount of different things directly adjacent to eachother.
A good idea is to have a general sketch, lineart or something, or in your case a clay render of the entire hallway, and in that scribble down where you want the focus to be. Draw in what's important, where the player needs to go, and probably you'll want to sketch in some additional elements that'll go and function as a focal point later on. A sign would be a simple and logical focal point - hence it's used so often. How about a trash disposal tube? Pay-binoculars at the window with an explanatory plaque?
One good way to test if you've got a good composition, and placement of focal points is by squinting which will make everything a bit blurry, so only the large shapes stand out. You can also use a blur filter in PS or make the image tiny to make judging general shapes easier. I think UDK actually has a 'squint' button somewhere that'll blur your viewport.
Once you've got the basic idea of focal points down, I think you'll understand the crits in the thread a lot better.
The really tricky part comes where your scene has to have focal points, but they can't stand out too much or it'll feel disjointed. We'll talk about that when we get there...
Great read.
That's not a bad thing except I was getting this...what do they call it...victorian neo...Steampunk. That's it. Anyway my point is, I didn't like it personally and prefer the typical sci-fi we see all the time.
Don't let me discourage you though. I bet you could take this style of yours and make a good scene with it.