[STAGE] Killer Instinct 2, HELIPAD, Dloud
polycounter lvl 15
Holding my spot for now.
So I'm thinking I'll take this sci-fi-ish scene with the helicopter etc and re-create it as a 1920s mill town with an early helicopter concept representative of that time period (think the wright brothers but a helicopter).
Off to collect some references.
EDIT:
Showing the most recent Image here.
So I'm thinking I'll take this sci-fi-ish scene with the helicopter etc and re-create it as a 1920s mill town with an early helicopter concept representative of that time period (think the wright brothers but a helicopter).
Off to collect some references.
EDIT:
Showing the most recent Image here.
Replies
It's a bit hard to see well. There's some stacks of barrels on the left of the stage. The corner of the building is broken apart to create a place where you can launch your opponent off. In the background are some futuristic smoke stacks (oil refineries or something?). There's also an microwave antenna array on the edge of the building.
I think I'll be able to translate these items into their 1920s equivalents of sorts.
I'm having trouble deciding which kind of flying vehicle to go for. Both shown below are representative of the time period. The one on the left is the George de Bothezat Helicopter. It was build for the United States Army Air service. The ones on the right are various Auto-Gyros and were created by a number of folks during the time period.
Which looks more interesting and will play into the scene better? Thoughts?
[ame]
Finally some KI Level art!
I'd say that anything representing WWI or WW2 would be a nice fit to the refs you've found. And you would be keeping the "feel" of the level, but in a different time.
Looking foward to this, best of luck!
So I've got kind of a rough blockout. There's a helipad roughed in a bit. Pieces may change. I haven't blocked out the aircraft either. I'm leaning more towards the Auto-Gyro though.
I'm debating on how to create the helipad given the fact that they didn't exist in the 1920s. I'm thinking a combination of I-beams and wood. Thoughts? Crits welcome of course.
I'll be using vertex painting to blend between some dirty/grungy brick and clean brick as well as tar covered boards (for the roof) and the clean(ish) boards shown here.
I'm using UDK btw. Anyone able to offer a suggestion?
For those extra pieces you move their UV's out of the rendering 0-1 space so only the tile in center will be captured when rendering. Then when you're done you delete the extra modules and export your center piece.
What this does is properly align the normals on the edges as if there was another piece there. Or to put it another way, If you bake a single piece it will shade like a single piece. If you bake with pieces surrounding your module, when you get it in UDK it appears seamless.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77539
Thanks so much for the assistance Mark. I've tried what you mentioned and am still having issues.
When Turning off the normal map in the material, the problem persists. If you look at the bottom of the image, there's a seam on the concrete piece. The material there is just a placeholder with a grey color plugged into the diffuse.
I've tried checking the vertex normals in my 3d app (maya) and they all seem to be perpendicular to the face.
Currently the only solution I can see (one I'd like to avoid) is to build the building in maya using the modular pieces and merge the verts together. Then I'd have to use a huge lightmap texture in order to get high quality shadows.
Any other suggestions?
Good start though, the rectangle blocks look a little wavy personally. Other than that keep doing what you're doing.
And yes the concrete needs a little work, I'm going to go back and smooth it out a bit.
Thanks for the help.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I currently live in the Boston area. Many of the surrounding towns were once a big part of the textile industry. Suffice it to say, I have a lot of real reference around me.
You're right about the repeating elements, they'll get broken up as well.
Good catch on the barrels. I've scaled them down a bit and dropped in some characters for scale.
Here's a couple more pictures.
I also have a vertex paint material set up to give some variety to the brick throughout the scene. I haven't painted it yet however
Also, we have barrels!
A bit noisy, but I'm sure they look pretty great in the scene. Speaking of, can we see them in there? :poly124:
IMO, the reason it looks off is partly because it's got way more color than the entire rest of the scene. I think if you add a lot more graffiti it'll start to feel less out of place overall, and it wouldn't hurt to bump up some of the color variation elsewhere too. The window frames, for example, have a really nice green, but it's barely noticeable because they're not getting much light. I'd try to increase their pop more. Also, the brick material could probably benefit from some shader-based variation. Chris Albeluhn has some good stuff on that here: http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UT3_Adding_Brick_Variation.html
The DOF is a little strong its making it look a little miniature.
What about adding some simple silhouette props to the back buildings to break up their super straight roof line? Nothing material heavy but just something like a AC unit or a water tower?
Oh man, getting down to the wire. So, my fiancee and I closed on our first house! Great news for us. However, it's put me waaaay behind on the contest. That coupled with moving and family visiting from out of town means I won't be able to push this as far as I'd like for the contest.
All delays aside, I've made some great progress in the last couple days and will continue to refine the environment after the contest is over.
Let me address a couple of the comments:
@S2Engine: Thanks for the comment about the barrels. When I was making them I figured barrels are seen in almost every FPS game out there. If I'm going to do it, they need to be sexy. Hoping to add some more color in there with some graffiti and the helicopter. We'll see how far I can go before the deadline. I also took your suggestion with the brick. It really needed some help. I followed Chris Albeluhn's tutorial pretty closely with some revisions of my own. I also added a vertex painted variation to the brick and reworked the normal map. I'm liking the results.
@Vig: Yeah I hear you with the background. I plan on throwing some of my existing assets in the background and arranging them in interesting ways. I'll also put some of the lights I have back there and maybe board up some windows, etc to add some variety. I'll have to see what I can do without spending too much time on things with the deadline coming up.
Thanks again guys!
PS. here's some more updated shots. I think I'm going to stick with these two camera positions for the final shots. Thoughts?
Overall I had a TON of fun in this competition. It's the first 3d art competition I've stuck with to the finish. I really had a wonderful time and learned a lot.
It's also the first environment I've done in UDK so it was a huge learning experience. I'm extremely happy with the progress I've made and will probably continue to work on this environment after the competition.
Thanks to everyone who commented on my thread. The feedback really helped.
Beauty Shot 1:
Beauty Shot 2:
Construction Shot:
Texture Sheet: