[ UDK ] Shady Dealings.
polycounter lvl 14
Hey all, thought I'd post up one of my main environments for exterior eyes and feedback, to make the scene the best it can be
Shady Dealings is one of multiple environments I'm creating for my graduation portfolio come May 2011. You can catch me posting on WAWYO for the other ones now and then, but I figure this will be more of a main piece on my folio'
I have some WIP shots, the main concern at the moment is the Lighting, and adding contrast.
OLD LIGHTING
Prop sheets [WIP]
Shady Dealings is one of multiple environments I'm creating for my graduation portfolio come May 2011. You can catch me posting on WAWYO for the other ones now and then, but I figure this will be more of a main piece on my folio'
I have some WIP shots, the main concern at the moment is the Lighting, and adding contrast.
OLD LIGHTING
Prop sheets [WIP]
Replies
Great start tho.
Thanks Rooster, the Dumpster is a bit behind on the asset development at the moment but I'll be bringing it up to quality ASAP. The environment is modular hence why some of the pieces look a bit consistent. I'll be vertex painting the modular pieces but I'll also take a look at other possible features I can add to the buildings to break it up.
Cheers.
I agree with what Rooster said about adding in some variety.
Heres a couple images I found that might give you some ideas.
As far as lighting goes. I think I prefer the first attempt. However, is both cases I think they are a bit extreme. try toning back the color a tad. In the second attempt, you would likely only get a blue color like that during night time hours, which contradicts the bright sky you have.
Anyway, just some things to think about. Looks good though!
Added some piping from the references and the highpoly of the air vents for visualization and to help break up the modular pieces.
Here is another lighting concept, sundown with orange lighting from light sources / lit windows. I think it reflects more of the "Shady Dealings" title with shady lighting and what not, and adds a bit more contrast, just need some outside eyes on it before I consider doing any light-meshes to emitt the light.
Also, the lighting has me a little confused. You are calling this sundown, but the bright light just peaking over the wall isn't giving that impression. Also, the sky looks quite overcast and cloudy so you might want to revisit how your shadows are casting in the scene. Usually with a cloudy sky the light will diffuse a lot more and cause very soft shadows.
looking forward to seeing where you take this!
Feedback changes
- Brought van closer for focal point and composition.
- Opened garage door further for more light
- Taken out white sun bloom to show more of sky
- Toned down brick highlights
I would also suggest breaking up that tileable brick texture with some vertex painting of some plaster or cement. Anything to help break it up and make it not look so tiled.
Looks really cool so far. I love the lighting coming from the half opened garage door. Love where it's going.
And a quick air vent texture job, the normal map Isn't done, going to heightmap the fan borders into a normal map so they benefit from the lighting / spec. Also going to add water damage and tone down the metal.
I would also change the direction of your Directional Light to get rid of that overcast look; the godrays aren't doing your scene any favour anyway.
Hope that helps :thumbup: Keep it up man.
Also, that barrel in the bottom right, while it looks nice, it doesn't make sense. If those barrels are valuable and what they're stealing/trading or whatever, why is there one just sitting there?
I would also suggest putting some smoke stacks in the bg to make it feel more industrial.
Personally, in my opinion, you should stop working on lighting for the moment and go back and finish your textures on the truck and I don't think you have a spec for the dumpster yet. Also add more props, like 1-3. Move things around, try to help the viewer by creating lines that point to your focal point.
What is that thing above the roll up door, is that the air conditioner? Move that, it makes no sense there. Put some kind of light fixture there instead.
You can also stack those pallets to take up space, and put the barrels on pallets and make a pallet jack.
I would first figure out where you want the point of focus of this scene to be. Once you know what that is, you can light the scene based on that. I prefer to light from dark to bright, that way it's easy for me to gauge which areas are fighting for attention. It's great when you're open to feedback but sometimes it can also be very confusing. Looking at your wip shots I'd say you should already know what you're aiming for in this scene.
I totally agree with the lighting feedbacks, It's hard to notice it yourself which is why this feedback is helping me along. The yellow dots is where the main light sources will be coming from, with light fixures.
I currently have a directional light for the main fill light then a series of point and spotlights for the orange lighting.
Started on the highpoly of the Jack Pallet thingy, learning quite alot about the highpoly workflow even if It's on a basic level. Props to the gentlemen who suggested I do one as a prop, It'll add great composition.
Haha too right! My friend told me off about that since I never got my hands dirty in a warehouse job. I will be adding a handle to the Jack Pallet aswell to the top of the steering thing, I think It's a steering wheel? FML...
I have been learning more about the highpoly topology and how important it is, I've also been attempting to improve my highpoly rendering in maya. I would love to go back to the truck and redo the front as the topology is horrid due to it being one of my first highpoly items, but for now I'll bake it down and if I have time between deadlines quickly fix it.
Truck textures still WIP, pretty much baked most of it down. Depending on how much I push the textures over the next few hours I'm currently saying in a proper game this would be a foreground asset, even background. I'd throw alot more polys at it if it was for an FPS, It's currently sitting at 2600 triangles, which will probably go up to 2800 once I model the basic back interior.
After that I'll start composing assets with the pump truck, once I bake that down.
Still working on some of the feedback changes but starting to see this shape up.
Some of the major things to work on is the dirt variation for the walls and floor via basic vertex painting shader and breaking up the tiling on the windows.
Look on the left of this building, the light from the moon is lighting that area. You have some nice backlight on the light blues. Maybe on your env you can have some of that light as a directional light that casts a shadow of the building on your left to the building on the right.
I had to do a paintover to illustrate what i had in mind. hope it helps.
I agree with glottis8, at the moment your lines of perspective and the angle of the truck draw the eye towards pitch black! A little fill light would go a long way.
Shady Dealings is about 98% done, a few texture errors from re-imports to sort out, crates and pumptruck are UV'd just need a texture on. Added back lighting and general ambience, tested it on a vary of monitors around University too.
Cheers for all the feedback, anything I do now will be most likely placement changes, so any final feedback would be greatly appreciated, seeing as I couldnt of got this environment this far without you guys.
Usually the platform is tread plated so it wont be slippery. Also the support on the side that brings the platform up and down on the truck can be a different color just to break it up, from a distance it will just all mesh together and it would be hard to tell if there is actually a lift mechanism.
Overall its looking good.
I'm doing a similar scene haha.
your is coming out great man, keep it up!
cheers!