Building up an environment portfolio
Hi polycounters
I will start posting my props in this thread that will eventually make up an environment piece for my portfolio. I will start with the very basic and then build up to more advanced props to make up the scene.
For today I have... [drumrolls] a crate!
Please critique my textures, wires, unwraps and anything else you can think of for a production type of environment.
please don't mind the rocks, they will be polished at a later stage
Thanks for looking
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I will start posting my props in this thread that will eventually make up an environment piece for my portfolio. I will start with the very basic and then build up to more advanced props to make up the scene.
For today I have... [drumrolls] a crate!
Please critique my textures, wires, unwraps and anything else you can think of for a production type of environment.
please don't mind the rocks, they will be polished at a later stage
Thanks for looking
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Replies
http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/materials/stoneconcrete/stoneconcrete.html
http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/materials/tilesold/tilesold.html
I just want to offer up a more efficient alternative to using UV space for making a crate. there are lots of ways to do it and these two are not the end all of all crate textures.
I think instead of mapping everything uniquely like you have, you can go a tiled route. Crates usually don't use a texture size higher than 512 and these two methods help to maximize UV space.
Both of my examples are using tilable textures. #1 is quick and dirty, #2 is a little more unique. they're basically just mapped onto your box and then use the same texture to create the floating planks. You can also use method #2 to create 4 sides to increase uniqueness. So you would have 4 times of method #2 mapped onto a 512 square. So, say you want a side with a logo, or a side with a broken part to it. The benefit of method #1 is that since its a plain tiled plank texture, it can also be used elsewhere in a environment
Hope this helps, and good luck with your folio!
Thanks for the tips Alex, you are right having every side unique for a crate doesn't really make sense. I didnt want to tile all 4 sides though because the grime and rust on top would look different then on the sides. I did the next best thing and tiled 2 sides on top of each other and the top seperate, so the looking at the crate it looks unique, but the back is the same as the front. (oh btw I am not just starting up my folio I am just adding to it, and taking out older stuff. I think last time I didnt make a proper demo for environment artist, it was mostly hard surface stuff you can see my old demo here: [ame]
also made this around new years
By myway07 at 2011-03-08
@rooster Would you mind elaborating on what is wrong with my normal please?
Anyways after some critiques changed the crate, and added in barrel. Also these are two props that I will be texturing next, first the canon then the treasure chest, please tell me if you guys can think of ways to improve the models or the unwraps so that I wouldn't have to texture it twice like I did for the crate
By myway07 at 2011-03-29
By myway07 at 2011-03-29
I tried to overlap in places where I think wear would be the same, so that I can overlap texture to get maximum space while at the same time be able to get localized detail.
Next I will be texturing the treasure chest and after that, a lamp post (wires and unwrap below)
By myway07 at 2011-03-31
By myway07 at 2011-03-31
Also I have a question about the rock wall (screenshot below). It consists of two sections basically, top and bottom, the top section is seen both inside and out so the inside is basically a clone of the outside, the bottom secion has outside only as it is covered by a cliff inside. Looking at my unwrap, is there a better way to plot my UVs? i did it this way because I wore off the edges in Zbrush, so its pretty much unique all around (well if you dont count the fact that its mirrored inside out and all around the wall.) Any other feedback is also welcome
By myway07 at 2011-04-02
By myway07 at 2011-04-02
By myway07 at 2011-04-02
I got the platform done and textured the stone. I still need to do the cliff, light the scene and polish it a bit more, so I am hoping sometime next week to have it finished, wanted to post progress shot to see what you guys have to say.
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make it a bit more during night time and use that lamp to brighten the top of the post
Your stone and wood are suffering a similar problem -- they look as if they're coming from a damp climate, but the water damage is too high on the wood and too frequent on the stones. With wood, if it's vertical, you tend to get more damage at the bottom as the water succumbs to gravity. With the stones, it looks like you're going for some slight moss, but if that's the case you've got it on too many of them. Moss tends to congregate around one spot and grow in pretty thickly before it spreads. Do a Google image search for something like "mossy stone wall" if you need some reference there. Also, in the last shot you posted it looks like it's growing from the bottom up on some of the stones. Hope that helps!
- Use less black in your textures. Right now you're getting a lot of black in the scene overall, even though it's on top of a tower outside, where there's light coming from almost every direction. Save the total black for only the most extreme dark details in your textures, let unreal's lighting do more of the work.
- Add more subtle colors to your textures. This can be as simple as grabbing a random dirty/grungy texture from cgtextures, putting it on a layer in photoshop, saturating the shit out of it and setting it to soft light at a low opacity. It seems pretty arbitrary, but trust me, a tiny little bit of red/green/blue variation in your textures goes a looong way, and using a photo will keep the distribution interesting.
- Jack up the contrast on the metal in your spec maps, and use a different noise pattern than the diffuse uses. You can pretty much use the same technique I described for adding color variation. Just snag an interesting metal photo off cgtextures or something and lay it over the metal areas of the spec. Having details that only show up when the light hits them will make it read a lot more like metal.
- Play with the stone block texture to reduce the mirroring on the ends of the exposed blocks, it's pretty noticeable.
- Take the moss streaks off the stones that have their top exposed. The moss would only grow in the cracks between blocks, the top blocks would be cleaned by rain and constant use by soldiers leaning on them etc.
- The railing rope looks pretty good, but the sagging strand at the top of the stairs needs another edge loop on the largest sag to round it off. Also, along the stairs, the rope tension is causing the ties where they meet the posts to pull up on the low end, but the other ends sticks straight out from the post, should pull those things down to go with the saggy shape the rest of the rope has.
Hope that helps! Cheers!
Anyways I lit the scene and present you with pretty much the final version, but still let me know if you guys can see anything is off and I may still fix stuff up, but for now I consider it pretty much done.
By myway07 at 2011-04-16
By myway07 at 2011-04-16
By myway07 at 2011-04-16
Next Ill be doing a speed challenge, going for something like a standard brick building because looking at enviro artist portfolios made me realize that this type of stuff is good to have to show off modular building and fast paced work-flow.
By myway07 at 2011-04-26
By myway07 at 2011-04-26
By myway07 at 2011-04-26
By myway07 at 2011-04-26
By myway07 at 2011-04-26
By myway07 at 2011-04-25
By myway07 at 2011-04-25
By myway07 at 2011-04-25