Bioshock Inspired Lounge

Dragan

hey everyone, so i have been checking out a lot of the work on polycount for awhile, and this is going to be my first post on this forum. The following image is a Bioshock inspired Lounge. I was thinking of putting this into UDK afterwards, but i was wondering if i could get some advice that will help improve this piece, or that could help improve my assets for future projects.

anyways, hope to hear from you guys soon

here's what i have so far.

S2Engine

Nice! Bioshock is definitely coming through. Although it fits the mood, I think it's a bit too dark. Also your textures seem a bit blurry; try an Unsharp Mask pass on them? Finally, small nitpick, but I think you could get away with just listing tris, without polys. Just my opinion, take it or leave it. And definitely do yourself a favor and get this into UDK, it'll look great!

sltrOlsson

Overall, really good! I like the mood, but yeah maybe a bit to dark..

The doors lower part i kinda strange, or the normal map is. Try to mask it out more before going through CB or nvidia plugin or what ever. You can save 25 triangles, i know crazy amount , on the door by cutting down the round hole in the mesh.. Like this.. or yeah, more even. But you get the basic idea..

warby

if there ever was a prop that shouldn't have been made with a none overlapping normalized uv map and a unique unsharable none tiling texture this is it ! ( do these kind of unwraps/textures have a name ? )


i would urge you to make this prop with a tiling texture some more/clever geometry cuts and vertex colors ! and than reuse that texture/material/shader (and method) on 99% of the geometry of your scene so that not every single prop is its own material and is totally unbatchable at the end.

save your unique texture memory for gameplay relevant objects like weapons / characters and important story related props.

Rob Hutcheson

I like it a lot Dragan but it's too dark. Bioshock is dark so, yes it does match the look of the game, but you're losing a lot of the work you did to some deep shadows in there.

A few of the textures are a bit washed out as well.

Modeling wise I think you did a great job setting up the scene and even though you did make it a bit too dark too see everything, it does feel like Bioshock.

My crit about the shot I gave you before still stands. I feel the shot you picked could be stronger. You have everything pointing at the door in this shot, but the door is blocked off from our sight and nothing is happening there. I'd like to see a spooky light in the window just to add a little more appeal.

Good stuff Dragan, keep me posted on yer next set over the summer.

Dragan

@ s2Engine - hey, so i tried out the unsharp mask and it worked out great. I noticed that it was a bit blurry before, but the mask really did help my diffuse a lot. Thanks a lot for telling me about that.

@ sltrOlsson - Thanks for posting that image, i really appreciate it. I cut my geometry as much as i could without actually destroying my door. I'll repost. Let me know if it's a lot better.

@ warby - I appreciate the comment on my prop. i made some adjustments to the geometry. Would it be possible to maybe send me an example of what you mean, so that i could get a better understanding of what you mean for future props?

anyways, here's my repost for the prop. Let me know what you think!

update!

sltrOlsson

Yeah, what did you do You should make the window frame into a floating object and let the dor be "jagged" behind it..

Dragan

@ sltrolsson - oh well I did the unsharp mask which made my texture a lot less blurry and more clear. . And yeah I jut kinda realized that it didnt really change anything... Blonde moment. But yeah, I'll change that ha.

Also, when it comes to showing off assets, is there a shader you recommend trying??

Mistry10

check this out dude.
i'm sure it'll help
brighten that stuff up, and some cooler colours.
btw you owe my another burger !!!! hehehe

Mistry10

you should hand in this on to Paul,
and add both are names at the bottom haha !

Dragan

Ha, god damn that looks good. Lol this means war..
I hope the next burger you eat falls apart..

But yeah, that helps a lot actually! Thanks mang!

Baddcog

You could just make the window alpha, and the door itself would then only take 2 tris.

Still keep the frame for the window, but no need to go around the window unless of course you just have to recycle a glass tex used elsewhere. Still in game probably best to just have one tex with alpha on the door to cut down draw counts.

The scene does look pretty cool though. Would be nice to see polys and tex for all objects.

Mistry10

really look over what i did.
starting w/ cooler colours, moving your eye into the mid ground w/ brither warmer lights.
Show this to Paul, i wanna know what he says

Paul: " WTF, that Hiten kid doesn't know shit"
lol

Mistry10

study more of their lighting styles !!

Dragan

Thanks for the advice on the lighting. I'll be sure to change and repost!

S2Engine

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4678 - Some really great stuff in there (note there are two pages). I think tip number 4 has some good advice for Unsharp settings.

TheCrimsonKing

You said you were thinking about putting this in UDK afterward, what program is it currently in?

Dragan

@ s2Engine - Thanks for posting the texture advice link. I checked it out, and picked up some really useful tips. I'm going to go through my textures and use the unsharp mask to make some textures more sharp.

@ TheCrimsonKing - Yeah, i was thinking of putting this into UDk after fixing up as much as possible in regards to textures and stuff. it's currently rendered out from 3ds max with some post production work done in photoshop. I'm still trying to work UDK, so i'm looking for some good tutorials. The set is built modually, so hopefully it all works out. =]

Dragan

soooo i fixed up the poly's in the window frame so that it's not as many polys.
here we go!

Dragan

i also added alittle more blue's to my lighting as well as some glow around the ceiling lights. I'm thinking of using the unsharp mask on my textures to ensure that they are all crisp . but here's the small change!

DDuckworth

Hey Dragan, the way you did your door it looks like you created some N-gons, the suggestion worked fine, but you could always just use a plane with transparency for the window and not worry about cutting out a hole at all with the geo

sltrOlsson

Hmm.. I'm a bit confused. Do you know what triangles and polygons are? And the difference between them. Cause it still looks like you just toke the edges away from that door leaving a bing ngon. Did you split the two meshes up?

Jeff Parrott

I think you can still push the lighting more than you currently are. Try getting some atmosphere in there too. Like light beams or fog.

System

The scene looks great and the lighting too If there's one tiny thing I would change, it would be to add an extra pool of light in the middle of the scene in that same desaturated orange/yellow to create more of a focus point.

Great work!!

@Mistry10 the paintover you did is totally oversaturated overkill, it's the first thing you have done that I don't like and I thought you were joking at first Wait, were you joking?!

Dragan

@DDuckworth & sltrOlsson - yeah i kinda realized that i have been approuching the door in the wrong way entirely. I think i'm just going to take your advice and use just a box rather than actually doing all the geometry. Thanks for giving me the advice and everything. i really do appreciate it

@ jeffro - Yeah i just kinda noticed that. I made the beams and everythign a little more obvious, so hopefully it adds to the atmosphere more.

@ GCMP - appreciate the compliment. I notcied that my scene was a bit washed out, so i used the unsharp mask on each of my textures. It seemed to make things more clear, so Thanks for the link S2engine!

anyways, there isn't a huge change, but the scene is more clear and not as blury as it was before.

Thanks for all the advice though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

c0ldhands

Looks great man, I would throw in some old vintage posters since this is a lounge but you pretty much nailed the Bioshock vibe

Dragan

@c0ldhands - Thanks man, and yeah i'm thinking i'm gpoing to add couple more posters and pictures in the background. but there is some in the back of the lounge

Alberto Rdrgz

The lighting is coming along but i would brighten it up a bit more, it looks like it needs more contrast.

Dragan

also, if i want to add some realistic water into the scene (kinda what they had in bioshock), what would you think would be the best approach to doing so?

Dragan

@ alberto Rdrgz - really? i guess i'll fool around with the contrast and everything a bit more to see what i can do. Thanks for the advice though

Alberto Rdrgz

i think adding bright, bold, solid colors like they did in bioshock would also help you a long way. and playing around more like you are with warm and cool colors as well.

yodude87

what do you think of some pipes? that let some water flow around, forming puddles, or similar?

you could also make some glass walls, that would let you see the outer scene: the ocean. this would also give a nice vibe.

SergioSantos

it's looking great,
maybe some particles or fx would add some more mood.

whats_true

More colors!

Serp

The light doesn't seem to come from the light sources like in the bioshock screenshot.

Dragan

@ Alberto Rdrgz - Yeah i see waht you mean, i'm jsut really worried about washing out the scene too much. That's the only reason i haven't really made the colors too bright. I want don't want the textures being blury or too much in the background.

@ yodude87 - that's a pretty cool idea. I was thinking of doing that, but i figured it would take alittle too long, but instead i tried giving the impression as if the windows might be behind the scene where you can't see, which is why the scene has the turqoius lighting to it.

@ SergioSantos - What kind of particle fx did you have in mind? i'm not too comfortable when it comes to particles, so if you have some good tutorials, i would love you forever!!!

@ dustinbrown - Thanks man, i really do appreciate the critism. I'm going to look into that, and try to change things around. If i don't do it to this scene, i'll be sure to do it for the next scene. I'll adjust the hue though becasue i just noticed it too.
that's some really good advice though!!!!

@ Serp - i tried to replicate as much of the lighting as i could similar to the game, but i think the lighting might work better once i have it in UDK. I'll see what i can do to make the lighting seem more fromt eh lights similar to the bioshock screen shot.



Thanks for the advice though guys, it's really helping me out!

System

Congrats on a great looking scene Personally I would call it final from your last render, as it looks like your at that point where adding anything more would be like adding noise.

ps: this should be featured.

Dragan

@ GCMP - Thanks a lot man. yeah i have bene trying to do some more tweaking, but i think i'm at the point where i don't want to look at it anymore hahaha. i'm just kinda rendering out different parts of the assets to feature them on my site. I really appreciate the advice you gave and stuff earlier.

also, what did you mean "this should be featured" hahahaa. i'm new to this polycount thing still