Taiga First Encounter of Alien Ruins - Warcry Extermination - enviroment

disanski

Hey guys. I am part of the Dream Powered Games team and I started working on a environment piece.
Concept by Steve Goad :





and here are my first steps in to it :







and a very quick block out of the whole scene.




I have been mostly working on characters so far so this is very interesting for me. Any comments and critiques are very welcome

Here is one more concept from Steve Goad so you can get the feeling of the rest of the environment :



This is our Facebook page where you can find some more info about the game and the team.
And I just wanted to mention that we are still looking for environment artist so if anybody is interested feel free to leave me a pm.
Thanks in advance guys.

Darkmaster

Beautiful concepts. I really would like to see more of the environment, however. The statues look "other-worldly" and the piece looks really fun. Can't wait to see it fleshed out!

disanski

Thanks Darkmaster.
I worked some more on the statues :

jimmypopali

Looking great, keep it up.

disanski

Small update

disanski

I have some more updates.
I think I am done with the overall forms and now i have to start working on the fine details ( cracks, chipped edges of the stone and so on) Somehow it still does not look to much of a stone to me. I know after I add the small details will be better but I feel like I am missing some medium details but I am not sure what they would be for now.
I made some parts a bit ticker and sharper. Worked on the hands and the helmet.
I also made the bottom of the legs a bit taller and bigger. I think it gives him better, stronger stand.
Here are some pictures:

disanski

After little absence I spent some more time on this trying to get it look as stone- this ended up being not as easy as I expected it. This is what I got so far and probably I need to add a bit more grunge to it? Does it look anything like stone?

chrisradsby

It's really hard to imagine a mask of stone looking like that, you'd expect bigger statues to be carved out from big chunks of stone. But yeah it kinda looks like stone, the top of the mask looks way to soft. I guess it kinda depends on what you do with it later. Good work so far!

disanski

Thanks man. Yeaa the top is way too soft but that is all covered by the helmet. I tried few different approaches but this one above is the one i like most so far... I also did this - just testing but I did not like it -



When you say bigger chunks, do you mean something like my last image - bigger separate blocks?
Thanks again.

disanski

I added a touch of noise and I am not sure what else to do to it.

disanski

So slowly moving ahead with this Tweaked a lot of things and polished the body. Also had to retopologize the hands and torso so I dont have to go to crazy subdivisions.
Started on one of the weapons. Here is where I am at now :

Sliterin

I have one question. How you do slashes like that:
Link

synergy11

Nice work.

Can you talk about your technique for sculpting the cracks in the helmet?

Thanks.

disanski

Hey guys. I am really not very happy with how it looks yet. I will have to add a lot of more smaller cracks to it but I will see if I will do this everywhere because it might not be very visible up near the head (it will be very tall statues)

The technique is noting complex. First i make sure i have enough subdivisions and because my computer is kind of old and I can't really go as high as I would i try to follow the edge loops most of the time for sharper result. I even had to take it back to max and retopologize it. After that I use the damian standard brush, that comes with zbrush 4 and it is located under the lightbox, brushes section. I modified the alpha that comes with it , here is a link with it - nothing special just made the edges on the top sharper. Once i have the cracks i use trim dynamic brush to make it wider at some spots and narrow at others, and after that I run hard polish brush on top of it both in the crack and on the border. All of this is done on separate layers and I keep one clean layer under everything so I can go back to it save morph target and use the morph brush to bring some of the flat areas back. What is important too is to make the crack narrow at one end and wider at the other as if it is fading off ( as it does in the nature)
I actually got out and took some rocks and now they are here surrounding my desk
Not sure if all of this makes any sense but I hope it was helpful even a little bit. Let me know if you have more questions

disanski

So I managed to find some more time to work on this. The rest of the weapons are done ( just without the damage and stone look on them)

Btw I have a question if somebody could help me with - when I started this in zbrush from zspheres it was all very small and i did not bother scaling it up on the time. Now I am going to need to scale it all up and I was wondering what would be the best way to do it. Can I trust transpose master or is there better way. I can't bring the high poly to max - the file is near 50 mil polys.

Anyway here are few images - any c&C are very welcome
Thanks for stopping by.

disanski

Started on the columns and I just can't decide if this is too boring of a shape for the columns ( of course the will be heavily damaged).

disanski

Some more stones



and a short video of me making some of the cracks :
How does that look so far?

http://vimeo.com/24564166

jordan.kocon

I really like the last 2 pictures, lookin really nice! It's just hard to imagine how that rock would balance on top of the pillar, could just be me though

BIGSOG

awesome! i love the design of that mask! makes me wish i had a wacom

disanski

Thanks guys. Those big stones on top of the columns will be nested in the main big rock and that will be holding it to stay at that position.
Here is also a short video of me working on one of the columns .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQMCcXXmW3o&feature=youtu.be

some updates :

Razgriz

The method you're using to sculpt rock is looking great, but only on a macro level - the soft noise isn't doing enough in my opinion to give it a natural look. The edges are extremely sharp - I would try to add some medium detail inbetween the large cracks and soft noise to chip away at some edges, make a few more dents, and give it more of a worn-down look.

Skillmister

Really like the sculpting so far. I agree with raz you need a bit more median detail but other than that its looking great

disanski

Thanks a lot for the critiques guys - really appreciated. Those are some great points. I will make sure to give it another run.
Thanks again.

disanski

Just about done with detailing the rest of this.

nordahl154

Holy crap bro, thanks for the awesome videos. :poly139:

disanski

So after a decade not working on this I have completed the lpw poly and all the uvs
everything is a bit on the dense side of polys but those will be huge in game so I think it might be ok. How does it look?

Butthair

I agree with what radsby was saying earlier. However, the attempt you did was, I agree, not looking right. Take a look at egyptian and mayan statues. They have a certain style to their sculptures and the placement of stone is planned out. Bricks will vary in size and fit towards the shape of the statue. They wouldn't necessarily create it off a grid of bricks, but create each brick for that exact part.

From beginning to now, you've come a great way. It's looking really nice. Different to see some alien stone statues. What kind of stone is it? Great looking statue, keep goin.

(I thought they were made of metal from the concept, but it'll be interesting to see how it works in stone)

disanski

Hey Butthair thanks man. To be honest I am not sure what kind of stone this will be. I just went outside and grabbed bunch of images and also brought some rocks with me home so I have no idea what kind it was.
I am trying to bring it close to the concept and keep it realistic in the same time and I am torn up between the two. I was playing with overlaying different images to get good base but somehow it is not going where I want it to so next I am going to try to use just simple kind of clean image for base and the rest I am going to try to paint by hand... lets see how that goes.
Done with all the baking , here are few images with the progress - first with just the bakes and after that with what I will use for base for my texture.

defco

Those pillars look awesome!

disanski

Thanks defco.
I did some more tests and this is more like what i was looking for. Now i just need to add some more variations of green lichen and it should work

disanski

I am kind of done with texturing those Critiques are very welcome.

Lucas Annunziata

Really digging the concept and execution. Very nice work.

disanski

Thanks darbeenbo
I am almost done with those. The big rocks I made for the game had some limitations dor polycount and textures so I made another set of those cliffs for my portfolio and for a short video we are making right now.
C&c are very welcome thanks.