Steps of Montmartre
polycounter lvl 8
Hi, my name is An-Tim Nguyen and I am currently a 3D Artist at EON Reality (we do virtual reality training applications for big companies, as well as some high-end rendering for corporate presentations... serious games and motion graphics pretty much.)
You might remember me from an old moderately successful thread that I had created while I was still a student (Sci-Fi Train Interior): not only was it a great learning experience but I've been contacted for random stuff because of it ever since. Unfortunately I never really had the spare time to dedicate to it because it was only shortly after I had graduated that I got hired as an intern at EON (I am very grateful for my friends who had recommended me there.) We've crunched a bit during that time, sometimes over the weekend whereas other times we had 15 hour shifts, but it never really lasted that long nor was it ever as intense as trying to keep up in school. I'd say that it's a comfortable gig with some really fun people, I was pretty happy when I got switched from intern pay to employee salary recently.
Still though, deep down I've been itching to do some creative work for a while: cleaning up, remodeling and optimizing the same geometry over and over again does have a tendency to drive people insane over long periods of time. :poly142: So I took a break by going to GDC last week by meeting lots of great new people and opening up to different opportunities. Something happened over there though and somebody asked me if I could model "realistic" assets after examining my sci-fi modeling: I told them that sure, it was relatively simple. But now that I really think about it, how can I be so sure until I actually build an awesome "realistic" environment? As of now I can't showcase my recent professional work due to client NDAs so I figured that I could create some personal work instead by not sleeping anymore. :poly121:
So I am back on Polycount to show my work in progress until completion.
For those who know me in person, I've been a bit of a globe-trotter while growing up: so far I've lived in Hong Kong, Vietnam, France and most recently in the US. So for this project I was thinking about one of the places I grew up in because I would actually know what the environment looked and felt like in person instead of just relying on photographs. I chose Paris because it's the foreign location I have in most recent memory. I also love the architecture and how they have tried preserving its cultural wealth while trying to adapt it to contemporary necessities. It has bothered me however that whenever someone tries to showcase a city scene in their portfolio, it ends up being an alley, a street or a corner. Sometimes there is a landmark but there is only so much that you could pull off, so I decided to try stairs.
Like anyone who has ever actually lived in a popular city, I don't think I've been to most of the tourist attractions. In this case, I think I have only been to Montmartre once but instead of trying to painfully recreate the landmark I became more and more interested in the different stairs that lead to it (since it is pretty much a hill.) I just thought that it lead to some very strong options for composition and I really liked how it offered some repeating design elements as well as a subconscious sense of human scale.
So after gathering a bunch of reference I decided to start blocking out and model some basic components, just constantly tweaking relative distances and proportions to see what felt better. This is what I have so far for today, although I am far from done:
I'm going to add some miniature balconies with miniature gardens onto the blocked-out side of the building to create blocking variation on the large flat surface, it's just that I haven't gotten around to it yet since they are more inset than outset. I also want where the side fencing goes towards the side to lead to a side entrance for one of the buildings and I might possibly add a tree or a bench for the empty spot on the ground level (or maybe just a dumpster, haven't decided yet.) I have not planned lighting yet neither but I'm thinking about making it a sunny day (perhaps around lunch time) with this small section being shaded, hopefully it will force me to learn how to create better textures.
Let me know what you guys think so far.![:\](https://polycount.com/plugins/emojiextender/emoji/twitter/confused.png ":\")
You might remember me from an old moderately successful thread that I had created while I was still a student (Sci-Fi Train Interior): not only was it a great learning experience but I've been contacted for random stuff because of it ever since. Unfortunately I never really had the spare time to dedicate to it because it was only shortly after I had graduated that I got hired as an intern at EON (I am very grateful for my friends who had recommended me there.) We've crunched a bit during that time, sometimes over the weekend whereas other times we had 15 hour shifts, but it never really lasted that long nor was it ever as intense as trying to keep up in school. I'd say that it's a comfortable gig with some really fun people, I was pretty happy when I got switched from intern pay to employee salary recently.
Still though, deep down I've been itching to do some creative work for a while: cleaning up, remodeling and optimizing the same geometry over and over again does have a tendency to drive people insane over long periods of time. :poly142: So I took a break by going to GDC last week by meeting lots of great new people and opening up to different opportunities. Something happened over there though and somebody asked me if I could model "realistic" assets after examining my sci-fi modeling: I told them that sure, it was relatively simple. But now that I really think about it, how can I be so sure until I actually build an awesome "realistic" environment? As of now I can't showcase my recent professional work due to client NDAs so I figured that I could create some personal work instead by not sleeping anymore. :poly121:
So I am back on Polycount to show my work in progress until completion.
For those who know me in person, I've been a bit of a globe-trotter while growing up: so far I've lived in Hong Kong, Vietnam, France and most recently in the US. So for this project I was thinking about one of the places I grew up in because I would actually know what the environment looked and felt like in person instead of just relying on photographs. I chose Paris because it's the foreign location I have in most recent memory. I also love the architecture and how they have tried preserving its cultural wealth while trying to adapt it to contemporary necessities. It has bothered me however that whenever someone tries to showcase a city scene in their portfolio, it ends up being an alley, a street or a corner. Sometimes there is a landmark but there is only so much that you could pull off, so I decided to try stairs.
Like anyone who has ever actually lived in a popular city, I don't think I've been to most of the tourist attractions. In this case, I think I have only been to Montmartre once but instead of trying to painfully recreate the landmark I became more and more interested in the different stairs that lead to it (since it is pretty much a hill.) I just thought that it lead to some very strong options for composition and I really liked how it offered some repeating design elements as well as a subconscious sense of human scale.
So after gathering a bunch of reference I decided to start blocking out and model some basic components, just constantly tweaking relative distances and proportions to see what felt better. This is what I have so far for today, although I am far from done:
I'm going to add some miniature balconies with miniature gardens onto the blocked-out side of the building to create blocking variation on the large flat surface, it's just that I haven't gotten around to it yet since they are more inset than outset. I also want where the side fencing goes towards the side to lead to a side entrance for one of the buildings and I might possibly add a tree or a bench for the empty spot on the ground level (or maybe just a dumpster, haven't decided yet.) I have not planned lighting yet neither but I'm thinking about making it a sunny day (perhaps around lunch time) with this small section being shaded, hopefully it will force me to learn how to create better textures.
Let me know what you guys think so far.
Replies
Looking forward to this thread.