Temple Angkor Wat
polycounter lvl 12
I keep putting off displaying any of this stuff, because I keep seeing things that I want to fix before I show anything; but at this rate, I won’t show anything until I am completely finished, and I don’t want that because I actually want your feedback so I can improve upon what I am doing. With all that said, this is obviously still very much a WIP, but I think I have enough to start to show what I am doing. This started out as a test for a company (please don’t speculate – I’m sure many of you can figure it out). It obviously wasn’t successful for them, but I really enjoyed making it, and I wanted to go through the process of sculpting several of the pieces and texturing them.
The meshes that still have the default checkers on them will be replaced by modular static elements. I also want to add in some more plants (and more vines/plant life hanging from trees and on the mountains), and build out a top spire piece for the roof.
I am using a few tiling textures from the UDK source files right now: the moss and the tiling mountain textures that are Lerp’d with my own textures. Also, the water and the skybox are default right now as well.
I am also showing one of the pieces in Zbrush. I’ll probably show a few more of them off as I get more done (I've got to redo the texture on my column to match this wall base). A big part of what I am trying to improve on is my Zbrush to lowpoly and texture workflow.
So, please let me know what you think of it so far. I want to make this as good as I can.
The meshes that still have the default checkers on them will be replaced by modular static elements. I also want to add in some more plants (and more vines/plant life hanging from trees and on the mountains), and build out a top spire piece for the roof.
I am using a few tiling textures from the UDK source files right now: the moss and the tiling mountain textures that are Lerp’d with my own textures. Also, the water and the skybox are default right now as well.
I am also showing one of the pieces in Zbrush. I’ll probably show a few more of them off as I get more done (I've got to redo the texture on my column to match this wall base). A big part of what I am trying to improve on is my Zbrush to lowpoly and texture workflow.
So, please let me know what you think of it so far. I want to make this as good as I can.
Replies
As for the zbrush love it, maybe a bit more erosion in it, with a few cracks. But keep it going really like this scene you got going!
Addieo: Thank you! Yeah, I need to work on that area for sure. I need to pull that in a bit more, and pull out some more smaller roots below it. I know it's a bit hard to see from just this one angle. I need to spend more time with the UDK camera to figure out how to get some other angles. It's the first time I've messed with it.
Reminds me of my art test for ND a looooooooooong time ago.
I like your zbrush work. check this guys thread for reference and how to get the most out of your materials! http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78690
I bet you can pull something as awesome as that one! i'll keep my eye on your thread!
glottis8: Thanks! Yeah, I really like what Jordan pulled off in that scene. I used the same world normal stuff (I think) he was talking about with his plants. I've been trying to glean as much as I can from the UDK materials, because I'm not much of a shader guy. I have a long way to go, hehe.
Then select a face you want to extrude to make the toot click on the EP curve then hit extrude and whack up the divisions.
If you have used this sweet, if not hope you understand it, let me know if it works out.
Also, is this for an art test i was roaming the pimp section and someone else is doing something similar?!
This was ND art test for env artists... i remember when i put mine up for cirtique i got a bunch of people telling me i was gonna get in trouble if i went around showing this to people... but hey.. how can we make a portfolio piece if we don't get any critique?
The exposure on the first image seems really bright and blown out, I would put a bit of work into scene lighting so we can see your beautiful sculpts in their correct setting.
Can you do a quick demo of your workflow for the intricate engraving? I've got a project I'm trying to get off dead center that has a lot of engraved murals and scrollwork, but I haven't mastered the fine art of it yet in zBrush...
Razgriz: Thank you for the suggestions. You're probably right; I will need to pop out some of the normals a bit more. YEah, my lighting is a bit shitty right now. It doesn't look quite as bad when the front tree is baked properly, but it still needs a lot of work.
Garagebay9: Thank you! As for my process, I'm still figuring this stuff out as well. I can try and give you some info, and if you want something more specific just ask, and I'd be happy to go into more detail. A lot of the decorative detail is taken from alphas that I have placed using projection master. For some of the detail I couldn't find textures I wanted to use, so I made simple meshes in Max with splines and brought them back into Zbrush where I enhanced them and then made alphas out of them that I projected back onto my meshes. Storing morph targets before you use projection master is key. This will allow you to go back and add variation to the intensity of the detail, and if you already have some sculpted cracks etc. below you can erase the decorative detail to reveal the damage below. Also, using the repeat line tool (not sure what the name is) in projection master and setting the stroke repeat to about .98 or so will allow you to draw out an alpha in a line and repeat seamlessly.
As for brushes, the clay tubes and clay buildup are great, and all of the new trim brushes are excellent. I've really enjoyed using the trim dynamic, trim dynamic trail, and trim front, as well as hpolish.
Builder_Anthony: THanks! Yeah, I've been going slow alright. Hehe.
If you see anything else, please let me know. Thanks.
I know the image is small, sorry. It was too late last night for me to redo it when I realized my normal render size didn't work for this one.
Do you use alot of alphas? and how did you do the women in the last picture?
SaferDan: THanks! If you look back a few posts I went into a bit more detail about what I have been doing in Zbrush. I used the same techniques for the wall. For the woman, I used an alpha that I made from an image and projected it onto a plane. I then sculpted out from that (clay buildup and inflate) and then chiseled away certain parts. I was just thinking I could probably try and re-project that original image back on what I sculpted at a lesser intensity, if I wanted to get back some of the detail I lost when I sculpted out the forms. It probably doesn't matter though, because I want it to be pretty beat up like it was in my ref images.
You could probably take bigger chunks out of the stone structures in Zbrush.
SaferDan: No worries. If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them as best I can.
Priske415: Thanks! Trying to push my stuff to a new level. "Trying" being the key word.
If you see anything else you think I am overlooking please let me know.
Also, does anyone know why the vignetting I have in my post-process chain in UDK isn't showing up in the game viewport when I take screenshots?
Thanks!
EDIT: i need to learn to read the ENTIRE post before i make my replies.
might just be my personal taste, but this feels a bit too desaturated. a little more saturation and some splotches of additional/different color along with some lighter shadows might go a long way here.
Visceral: Hah! THanks! Yeah, I'm going to keep poking around in that chain to see if I can figure it out. I have it enable in game view supposedly, but still no dice.
Grey: Thanks! Yeah, thanks for giving me feedback throughout! It's been a big help.
snake85027: Thanks! Yep, hope to have this wrapped up soon.
Firebert: Thanks! Yeah, I've been trying to sneak some color back in to keep it from looking too flat. I should probably try and bring a bit more back into a couple of the focal points like you suggest.
"See honey? It's so immersive i technically HAVE taken you there!"
Angkor Wat is a fantastic place.
If its not too much to ask, can you post close ups and wires of your foliage and ground cover leaves?
Are the leaves hand painted in PS or did you use photo's?
Thanks!
Chris.
Aahaha, if only that where true, id have been to the moon and back on Polycount alone...
Your pillars though look a little too "perfect" and your foliage is a little over much of the same color. Add some more variation in there even if its slight tonal shifts I think it would break up the look of just green leaves. You have some nice variation between the different foliage but on the leaves and plants they all look too one color.
synergy11: Thanks! I can probably isolate all the plants in UDK and show you wireframes there. I'll try and remember to do that tonight. The textures were all taken from photos and then I painted over them.
aajohnny: Thanks! Trying to get it to that level.
Autocon: Thanks a lot, man! Yeah, I think you are right about the pillars. I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do there, because I wanted to just make one pillar, but I also wanted it to be pretty damaged in certain areas. One thing I should have done is really beat up one side a bit more, so I could have rotated them and had a more damaged version all in the same column.
As for the plants, you are right. I know I saw some kind of rgb mask (I think that's what it was) in the plant shader in Epic's Foliage Demo. I need to figure out how that was made and do something similar, because that would really help break things up a bit more.
Thanks, man! Good call on the post-process stuff. I'll bet that's the culprit. Thanks, I'll check that out tonight.
Thanks!
Btw how many textures you did and did you use any tiling? How many textures / models in total ? how many modular assets?
What texture did you use for tree a tiled or a baked one?How did you do to carve so well the statues liek a bassrelie with multiple level of heights?
NAIMA: Thank you! Wow. So many questions. Let's see if I can answer these. So, everything is modular, except for the pieces on the ground. I probably could have made those into some larger statics as well, but because the terrain was so uneven, and I wanted to be able to stack them in a few places to make the areas unique I broke out some of the pieces from the bases of my walls into separate statics. If you look at the zbrush wall base, I recombined those into different statics and made use of all of those pieces all over the scene. On the temple itself, I made one roof piece (the zbrush piece earlier in this thread), and I broke the lowpoly into chunks in Max, and made a couple static variations out of that one piece. I have one column, one wall piece, one roof divider (again with separate pieces, so I could make some variations).
I changed out the side of the roof, because I didn't feel like it was necessary after I looked at more refs. Once I got everything textured and placed, it seemed to stand up better than it had before when everything was grey.
For the tree, it is tiling texture. I used a baked texture initially, and it looked really good in Max, I thought, but it was too pixellated in UDK compared to the rest of my scene, so I redid it with tiling textures. It has two tiling diffuses combined with vert painting, a normal, and a height map. The look of it is different, but I used the shader from the tree in the Foliage Map in UDK. That's a great place to look, if you want to see how to make a great looking tree.
For the statues, I just used an image I found. I created an alpha out of it and used projection master in Zbrush to apply it to my mesh. I then cleaned it up and sculpted in additional detail. My method worked fine for this piece, but if I was going to do it again, I would do the projection in a few steps. I watched a paid tutorial on Gnomon after the fact, where a guy does this same thing in a few stages, and I think it would have been more efficient. He creates a couple different maps, one is a more blurred out version of the image to get the basic height and form without any of the detail. The second version you try and isolate just the detail in the image. It basically just gives you more control, so you don't get so much noise and have to spend too much time cleaning up your mesh using the morph brush and re-sculpting in new clean detail. It's hard to describe. It's worth it to check out the vid "Using Photos as Displacements": http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/products/tutorials/nzu_series/
Hope that helps!
I take it the tree was all done in zbrush?
Lastly your rear rock is that all sculpted in zbrush with a large normal and a small detailed tilable normal overlayed? I'll have to figure out how to sculpt rocks like that, awesome!
Sorry for wracking your brain XD, I truly am in awe.
NAIMA: You're welcome. I look forward to seeing it!
raul: Thanks a lot, man! I'm glad you like it.
The base of the pedestal also looks a bit soft in areas to my eye. They look sort of rounded and worn down in the refs, but when I try this it looks a little too bulbous to me. What do you guys think?
This isn't the exact ref I was using, but you can see the form there. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasglobal/2525099647/ Yes, the naga is different from this one. I really like this swooping form at the end of these railings, but I really like the detail from this other image I found, so I decided to go with the naga from the other image.
Front
Back
reminds me alot of
http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=naughty+dog+art+test#/d39dw4v
a naughty dog art test
AnimeAngel: Thanks a lot, man! I appreciate it.
Was all that detail in the Naga Sculpture from an alpha? Any possible insight to your workflow for that asset?