Warcraft style Tower
polycounter lvl 11
Hi. Fairly new to polycount. Intimidated by all the fine work I see on here so haven't posted much so far.
Currently working on a hand painted style low poly building. Its the first time I've used a graphics tablet and tried this method. My photoshop skills aren't that great. But I think I'm getting somewhere now. It's still early days but thought i should post something and get some feed back.
Not sure what to do about terrain, the road, add some hills?, or add more plants and trees? (the plants aren't my textures - yet to do them).
Currently working on a hand painted style low poly building. Its the first time I've used a graphics tablet and tried this method. My photoshop skills aren't that great. But I think I'm getting somewhere now. It's still early days but thought i should post something and get some feed back.
Not sure what to do about terrain, the road, add some hills?, or add more plants and trees? (the plants aren't my textures - yet to do them).
Replies
Get some lighting in there and a better camera angle.
Shameless plug for a little write up on vertex lighting in Maya I did. That type of lighting works great with this style.
http://blog.environmentartist.com/?p=205
Textures looks pretty solid so far. The bricks read a bit better than the roof tiles and I think you can mirror the mixed brick (left texture) instead of having it be the whole wall.
Keep plugging away this is going to look real nice when it's all put together. Lighting and a new camera angle will make it start to pop.
This next bit might scare you but I wouldn't take the time to post it if I didn't think it would help. It's not meant to make you feel like crap but to help you refine what you have. Also don't feel like this is a laundry list of things that you MUST change or incorporate, it's your stuff do with it as you please.
The ivy could probably use a bit of variation to show some depth and some age.
Right now the colors are strictly relegated to their areas. The whole project should have a color pallet that clicks instead of all the separate pieces having their own unique, separate un-unified pallets. You can do some balancing later, with adjustment layers but it really helps to try and unify those colors as you create them. Old school pixel art was limited to a very tiny pallet they could use which lead them to some very interesting color choices.
I put these up on the wiki a while ago with a bunch of others, you might find them useful?
http://chrisholden.net/tutor/ <-Skip down to Texturing Single Page Vs. Multiple Materials
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/ <-general painting tips and tricks
http://www.michaeldashow.com/tips_texturepainting.html <-more general tips and tricks
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm <-absolutely must read...
The bricks seem to scale oddly, not just on the back of building, but also on the lower half of the chimney. Which leaves me wondering if you could do all of the bricks with one tile and mesh in the window frames and texture just those separately without the tan bricks?
You might want to create a strip on the brick tile that will lay against the ground, give it some dirt and backsplash from when it rains. This will help ground your objects.
Ahh but that detail will tile!?
Any tiling you do should sits just above that detail. You can add a few cuts in the geometry to help the tiling process if you need to.
OR you can create a separate piece of ground trim (mesh) and use the same texture/method you used on the roof trim?
The roof tile seems more like bricks. You need to remember these overlap, also the top row aligns perfectly with the bottom row so it breaks the vertical tile, you can see it on both roof pieces.
This is why its important to rough in the materials pattern before you get knee deep in painting details, now you either need to squash or stretch the work you've done already, which normally gets ugly, OR you could replace the lowest row of bricks with another unique texture like I mentioned above.
Keep in mind that texture space is often more precious than polygons. Most system (consoles included) have an easier time pushing a few more tris around the screen than they do loading a bunch of textures.
If you look at in terms of overall file size, textures take up a lot more room than a few tris. It's a few kb vs a few mb. A little more geometry on things like the bricks around the windows can help them stand out when players get close and if it helps you save textures, awesome!
Also I think you could exaggerate a few angles and push some stylization into the meshes. There are a lot of right angles and perfect geometric shapes.
Keep it up, its looking good!
chrisradsby-thanks
Jeffro- had a quick look at your link and I will try that out soon. Want to get nearer to completion first. I thought about mirroring the house wall textures (the ones around the windows) but where they meet at the corners it becomes large brick to large brick (if that makes sense). With a unique texture I get to have better looking corner stones.
Mark Dygert- Thanks for the info. I'm going to work on the Ivy next. You're right, I'm not good with a colour palette, to be honest I dont really know how to organise one. If you have any links or advice on what to do its appreciated.
The brick scale- well you spotted the erm intentional mistake! lol. Yeah that was poor UVs basically. Fixed now.
I thought about modelling the window frames, but they looked too blocky. Also thought about using a decal. Another reason I didnt is where the window frames overlay the tan bricks they wouldnt look like they are part of the same wall. This way I can make the tan bricks butt up against the frames. Paint in the gaps in the bricks.
I probably will add a strip to bottom with splash marks and dirt. The brick texture tiles on the tower and the back wall of the house, so can't have dirt on the original brick texture.
had another go at the roof. Trying for something like slate, but thick to make it like WOW.
Its a bit of an indulgence in a way. Slightly large and unique textures on the house. And the gate is a bit high poly for this scene (2300tris), but I wanted something to look nice.
Having troubl thinking about finishing. Starting to lose momentum and inspiration. Don't know what to about the terrain or wether to add some hills or trees? The road and grass textures are place holders.