The house textures are looking good so far. You got pretty good results for using mostly photosources. I particularly like the alpha layering of the thatched roof. The only thing that catches my eye is the tiling on the slate roof isn't great in the middle. (You mentioned it needing more work so maybe this is what you were talking about.) I like the impurity those double overlapped tiles add but right now it just looks like it's where you overlapped your texture so it tiles. Maybe if you put a few smaller tiles like that underneath other parts of the texture it'd look better.
The village looks really cool. Just having checked out your blog link, have you thought about including a building or two under construction? The thought you've given to the houses construction is great and it could be really cool to show it off in the actual scene a bit.
I personally really like how the colors of each element of the house match to each other (is this make any sense at all ? ;p).
But from close ups on your blog I can say that wood beams need more work. It lack of big details that cloud be seen, and those make it look bit flat.
I have an technical question.
How do you judged scale of you houses. I mean really. When I'm making this type of architecture, I'm always doing it with real-world scale and my buildings in game looks huge.. I mean they are realistic in terms of size, but I'm not so sure if that good from game perspective. And when I make smaller I start to think about "god damn, how those people can live is such small building, it feels smaller than my room".
On other hand, my real-world scale are to small anyway to make interiors (i tried and from inside it feels to small, especially with 3rd person cam).
@iniside: thanks for the feedback. I added another wood texture pass to my list I also went over your topic, which is cool, you did them in a more photo-realistic style. I agree about the scale of your buildings, they look very big compared to mines. I think I tried to make my houses small because it's a poor village and the area I had for it was small, so in order to give a crowded feel, smaller houses everywhere.
The problem you're refering to with 3D interiors being too small is recurrent in games. We often end up cheating on interiors and door passes. Here I voluntarily kept the size realistic, even if I never lived the medieval era, I think people could use a bed, a chimney and a table. That's maybe because of that that games like Oblivion and Skyrim have you loading separate interiors.
e-freak: yeah it just terrain at the moment =P What's so weird about it?
Jenn0_Bing: I dont know for the construction site, but there'll be similar assets soon, I'm planning at least too huge trebuchets on the walls in the village.
awesome update! but i don't really like those windows on the church... they look kinda low res compared to the rest...
Also i wanted to ask you how you make the roads and paths, are they some sort of decals?
Since the texture seems to follow the direction of the path i thought they couldn't be just vertex painted... a simple breakdown maybe?
Fnitrox: roads are made using the road decal feature on CE3. You simply draw splines and all done.
The windows are indeed lowres, not that much but still not the same texel ratio as the rest, because it's reusing the castle ones. I wonder if it's worth a new texture?
Computron: what do you want? a wireframe shot or something more precise?
I totally like the overall detail and quality of this environment. although, I feel that the style of the buildings inside the city, especially the church, does not really fit the overall design and feel of the walls and the environment.
while your environment with its lighting and the predominant colors of rocks and water remind me of the middle east or maybe the mediterranean region (palm trees!), the houses look very central europe to me.
For the houses, its the half-timber construction that makes them feel wrong. to me at least...
For the church, maybe look for reference images of the hagia sofia, if you agree...
This is so beautiful so far. Great job. I think it's a little too much of the same brown hue though, mainly the village buildings. I think it could use a little more color variation. Anyway, really great job. I can't wait to see more.
Iniside, Computron: it's a flat texture decal. I covered it here last week. It is tiling textures.
walkonsky: I totally agree with you. the differences in arch style are due to me liking both and failing hard at making the right mix.. I don't have enough time to concept something for every building and in the end it doesn't work as good as it could. Damage controlling this basically.
Great, never knew you had a blog with this!.. if you had written the link as 'My blog:Use the snap, dammit!' I would of clicked much sooner!!
The only crit, I agree with what kelli said, some more random but subtle colouring would make it even nicer, though still love it, I'm reading 'A Game of Thrones' at the minute, if you're in need of some inspiration for castles (or perhaps you're sick of them!) then look no further!
(On an unrelated note, why do crysis 2's building interior meshes get separated from the exteriors? why not import them as one single welded mesh?)
Lighting issues. Interiors in CE3 receive exactly same amount of ambient lighting as the rest of environment. This means you can't make perfectly black interior. To do so, you have to separate them and setup in editor with some engine geometry (do not remember exactly, but you got the point I hope) . Of course if your building have some big open windows it really matter, as players most likely won't notice differences. But with small windows it becoming very apparent.
Lighting issues. Interiors in CE3 receive exactly same amount of ambient lighting as the rest of environment. This means you can't make perfectly black interior. To do so, you have to separate them and setup in editor with some engine geometry (do not remember exactly, but you got the point I hope) . Of course if your building have some big open windows it really matter, as players most likely won't notice differences. But with small windows it becoming very apparent.
Ahh, so they block the interior off with a visarea for lighting?
Dang, there's so many little hacks. Their lighting, while in some respects is very impressive, is losing some of it's appeal.
Small update, barriers, messy stone meshes, trebuchet. I'm thinking of a way to make the trebuchet rotate on themselves so they don't look so useless. Don't know if I'll have time, one big week left before I call this done.
synergy11: Absolutely, both in CE3 and UDK you have decal actors and decal shader abilities.
divi: yeah texture reuse is a lot lately, helped me finishing it faster (on top of the environment being more optimized).
So, probably my second to last update here on the map! Here's the final screenshots following:
I have been rushing this last week to make smaller scale props and bits of polish here and there. It's still far from what I had in mind when I started the project a few months ago, but, meh. I don't feel like doing more work on this map as it has become too big for me to focus on every smaller aspect of it on my own.
Next update will be a recorded video of the map, and maybe some breakdowns of the assets if I have time.
Vincent this is just overall fantastic. Love the scope and scale of the level. The assets themselves look fantastic.
My one gripe with things right now is the lack of color, mainly in the town. With the rocks, the stones, the buildings all so similar in color it all blurs as a big tan blob. Love the green foliage you are using to break things up but I still think it could really benefit from a few more splashes of color. Possibly red or blue. Maybe some flags/banners taht could adorn the houses/church/walls of the place. I know its not finished and you might already have this planned, but just thought I would mention it.
Its looking great so far and I cant wait to see a fly through
didn't reply in this thread yet but followed the whole process and just wanted to say that I learned a ton of watching your progress screenshot/videos. I think it's looking great apart from the nitpicks=)
Planning on doing another project like this next year:P?
Dang it turned out beautiful! Followed it since the beginning and enjoyed every part of it.
I hope you someday let us run around in it but I guess for now I have to settle for a video
Great work man! Looking forward to follow your future projects.
jimmypopali: Almost all objects have a vertex color pass. Trebuchets do as well. It's mostly dirt/skylight lighting. I don't think a DVD for this would be worth it, the environment just feel rushed and most of the assets are not strong enough to stand alone.
mkandersson: Thank you, I don't think I will release the map to be honest, for a lot of reasons, first being it was not made on the freesdk.
kn0r: yeah, that little place could have been a single scene on its own with a lot more polish and composition, the smaller objects around those shots help a lot.
beancube: Cheers, let's bring some skyrim dragons in!
elementrix: Thanks dude, good to see it be useful to some To be honest I have no idea on what I'll be working next, the only thing I can tell right now it it'll be small, a lot smaller, to be able to polish assets to 100% quality.
synergy11: Glad you like it, the reeds are a photo from cgtexture I quickly turned into foliage texture to save time. Turns out it worked well.
Ged: Thanks a lot
Autocon: Thanks for the critique, I agree the color has been a concern on this map, it's desert-ish, with a yellow sun obviously and the rock color was red as well. From that on it's been hard to put other colors in the picture apart from smaller props, and vegetation I wont make this mistake again.
Julmust: this might be your monitor because on my primary the wall is slightly brighter than rock bu definitely keeps the same tint. But it might be just me.
Replies
More work done today, going forward on the village. Obviously lot's left to be done and have it looking alive. windows, doors, etc.
And since polycount is not your blog, I'll add a this little link to my new blog, where I go into a more personal critique of the update when I can.
Edit: updated with doors and windows
I personally really like how the colors of each element of the house match to each other (is this make any sense at all ? ;p).
But from close ups on your blog I can say that wood beams need more work. It lack of big details that cloud be seen, and those make it look bit flat.
I have an technical question.
How do you judged scale of you houses. I mean really. When I'm making this type of architecture, I'm always doing it with real-world scale and my buildings in game looks huge.. I mean they are realistic in terms of size, but I'm not so sure if that good from game perspective. And when I make smaller I start to think about "god damn, how those people can live is such small building, it feels smaller than my room".
On other hand, my real-world scale are to small anyway to make interiors (i tried and from inside it feels to small, especially with 3rd person cam).
The problem you're refering to with 3D interiors being too small is recurrent in games. We often end up cheating on interiors and door passes. Here I voluntarily kept the size realistic, even if I never lived the medieval era, I think people could use a bed, a chimney and a table.
e-freak: yeah it just terrain at the moment =P What's so weird about it?
Jenn0_Bing: I dont know for the construction site, but there'll be similar assets soon, I'm planning at least too huge trebuchets on the walls in the village.
I've probably finished the church in the village, polished the postprocess and this helps blending the picture colors together.
Still lots to do, I should be able to work at a higher pace the few last weeks of December.
You gotta show us your process for making these buildings.
Also i wanted to ask you how you make the roads and paths, are they some sort of decals?
Since the texture seems to follow the direction of the path i thought they couldn't be just vertex painted... a simple breakdown maybe?
Fnitrox: roads are made using the road decal feature on CE3. You simply draw splines and all done.
The windows are indeed lowres, not that much but still not the same texel ratio as the rest, because it's reusing the castle ones. I wonder if it's worth a new texture?
Computron: what do you want? a wireframe shot or something more precise?
Those corner decals look so fucking good.
crazy awesome
I totally like the overall detail and quality of this environment. although, I feel that the style of the buildings inside the city, especially the church, does not really fit the overall design and feel of the walls and the environment.
while your environment with its lighting and the predominant colors of rocks and water remind me of the middle east or maybe the mediterranean region (palm trees!), the houses look very central europe to me.
For the houses, its the half-timber construction that makes them feel wrong. to me at least...
For the church, maybe look for reference images of the hagia sofia, if you agree...
walk_on_sky
This guy:
Are you using mostly tiling textures with clever blending? Do you cut vertecies in to bake AO? Do you make any interiors?
(On an unrelated note, why do crysis 2's building interior meshes get separated from the exteriors? why not import them as one single welded mesh?)
walkonsky: I totally agree with you. the differences in arch style are due to me liking both and failing hard at making the right mix.. I don't have enough time to concept something for every building and in the end it doesn't work as good as it could. Damage controlling this basically.
The only crit, I agree with what kelli said, some more random but subtle colouring would make it even nicer, though still love it, I'm reading 'A Game of Thrones' at the minute, if you're in need of some inspiration for castles (or perhaps you're sick of them!) then look no further!
Ahh, so they block the interior off with a visarea for lighting?
Dang, there's so many little hacks. Their lighting, while in some respects is very impressive, is losing some of it's appeal.
Damn it, me too!
rest is of course awesome as well :]
Is it hard to place those decals precisely?
NIce work!
divi: yeah texture reuse is a lot lately, helped me finishing it faster (on top of the environment being more optimized).
So, probably my second to last update here on the map! Here's the final screenshots following:
I have been rushing this last week to make smaller scale props and bits of polish here and there. It's still far from what I had in mind when I started the project a few months ago, but, meh. I don't feel like doing more work on this map as it has become too big for me to focus on every smaller aspect of it on my own.
Next update will be a recorded video of the map, and maybe some breakdowns of the assets if I have time.
Looks great!
My one gripe with things right now is the lack of color, mainly in the town. With the rocks, the stones, the buildings all so similar in color it all blurs as a big tan blob. Love the green foliage you are using to break things up but I still think it could really benefit from a few more splashes of color. Possibly red or blue. Maybe some flags/banners taht could adorn the houses/church/walls of the place. I know its not finished and you might already have this planned, but just thought I would mention it.
Its looking great so far and I cant wait to see a fly through
Those plants growing out of the water are amazing.
It looks like you hand painted those? Or did you use photo's?
Thanks.
Planning on doing another project like this next year:P?
needs more dragonzzz haha
The scaleref objects really start to pull the scene together.
I hope you someday let us run around in it but I guess for now I have to settle for a video
Great work man! Looking forward to follow your future projects.
Oh, and you should do a DVD or something.
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jimmypopali: Almost all objects have a vertex color pass. Trebuchets do as well. It's mostly dirt/skylight lighting. I don't think a DVD for this would be worth it, the environment just feel rushed and most of the assets are not strong enough to stand alone.
mkandersson: Thank you, I don't think I will release the map to be honest, for a lot of reasons, first being it was not made on the freesdk.
kn0r: yeah, that little place could have been a single scene on its own with a lot more polish and composition, the smaller objects around those shots help a lot.
beancube: Cheers, let's bring some skyrim dragons in!
elementrix: Thanks dude, good to see it be useful to some
synergy11: Glad you like it, the reeds are a photo from cgtexture I quickly turned into foliage texture to save time. Turns out it worked well.
Ged: Thanks a lot
Autocon: Thanks for the critique, I agree the color has been a concern on this map, it's desert-ish, with a yellow sun obviously and the rock color was red as well. From that on it's been hard to put other colors in the picture apart from smaller props, and vegetation
Julmust: this might be your monitor because on my primary the wall is slightly brighter than rock bu definitely keeps the same tint. But it might be just me.