Hey guys. This is the thread for feedback and critique of environment art. Everyone is welcome to post ideas but please refrain from posting outside work if you are not currently assigned to the group.
Some of you in the chat have already seen this, but here we go. The premise is that there is a portal to hell in an old school. Since the image was taken I have remodeled the windows (so I can make them transparent and break the glass)
Things to do: Ceiling, floor debris, grime decals, misc children's toys, candle flames
This is looking way more interesting. Maybe it'd be fun to put in some little things in the background like writing on the blackboard and some flash cards or something. Little innocent things would help offset the GIANT FLAMING DEMON SYMBOL in the middle.
plyrs : As I said to you on Skype, looking pretty sweet really, you already have good lighting and its telling a bit of a story, you could try and extend this a little with the childs writing on the board, along with maybe some childs toys spread around the room to try and increase that contrast between innocence and evil.
aajohnny : Looks like a good start again, but lacks contrast and colour change which is really letting the pieces down I think.
ayoub44 : Lie I said on Skype, fantastic start, but if you wan to take it further (and I think you should ) You should adding a bit more of a chasis and add some detail to those tracks. Are you texturing this?
--
Working on a little personal project for the past week or so, not had much time on it yet. I'm sure most of you have seen this guild wars 2 concept - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6530525/GuildWars2.jpg
I've still got to finish texturing the stones, and I'm going to be adding some colour variation in the material along with some decals to get rid of the repetitive features. Which lighting do you guys prefer?
Oh and heres some shots of the assets, showing without photosource and with (note without photosource is too strong, this is so it shows through the photosource),
@ayoub: looks really cool but maybe you could go in and put a little more love into the treads. also for the cloth sim, maybe holding the corners in place so it maintains somewhat a trapezoidal structure when it falls could help. overall tho looks pretty solid.
aajohnny - I've already seen images on skype with more of this done. Your materials look amazing, just keep up the work.
ayoub44 - Your hotdog cart's cloth top looks like something threw a blanket over the top. The tops are more tailored. You can still cloth sim on something you model more of.
myles - I don't know how strongly you want to follow that concept art, but the proportions of some of the circles is off. All of yours have the same (or very nearly) inner diameter, but the concept has a lot of variance.
I prefer lighting 2, since it looks more like the concept and lighting 1 feels to dark to me.
Oniram - That is one sweet looking rifle. I notice you have a few scratches, but they are very light.
To all - More work coming on the demon school. Will post it soon, once I get a few more bits modeled.
List of things done. Edited fire particles, added new posters and children's drawings, new windows, more grime. Need new ceiling, more floor debris and probably other stuff I can't remember right now.
Igi: May I suggest either a panel with handles or a vent on the left and right sides of the indention?
Silent Hill Environment:
As a child, Silent Hill was always one of the prominent games that essentially both influenced my art style and my love of horror games. The environment itself below is only inspired by the games and is still in very early stages of development.
I started off with a modular section of the levels environment. This boosts my workflow and my imagination for the better in terms of the development. The floor and walls have a vertex shader applied, meaning I can paint on different grunge darker silent hill style textures over the cleaner tiles.
Vertex Shader:
Fences (to be textured with an alpha map):
As I said, this is a heavy work in progress, I'm going to begin by blocking out, and doing a very simple paint over of what I'd like to be in the scene.
Let me know what you think!
- Scott 'Sythen' Baker.
Sythen I like where this is going, it has that really claustrophobic vibe going on just like Silent Hill. My only critique so far would be to add some specular around the base of the tiles to give them a little more definition and hopefully make them pop more,
I remember in SH2-3 a lot of sections had a kind of wet look as if there was a fire that was recently put out there and the walls and floor are still a bit damp...
I feel bad about not posting anything at all (ever on this site )
Here is a shot of my rubbish project I was working.
The lighting was a work in progress and I ran out of time texturing... in fact I really need to do some UV unwrapping and texture painting tutorials as it turns out they gave me a massive headache.
Scene was a lot bigger... can post up some pics if you want to be tortured.
Hey Badger I'd like to see some more shots of this, what did you use to create/render? I'd also like to see it textured further and rendered out in UDK or something
At the moment I am faced with a problem. I am trying to create foliage but when I mask out things like grass, I get hard jagged edges in game and it ruins the mood. I was wondering if anyone knows why this might be? I have tried the alpha mask in both opacity and opacitymasked and all the blending modes but still come up with jagged edges at a distance or when moving. What's your process of doing things like this?
My grass (left) next to udk grass (right). See how much smoother theirs is.
Tokoya, I shall get some more pics up when I get back to my main PC.
I would like to get it into UDK at some point so I can have a wander through it etc...
However, right now, I spent quite a while doing that, I ended up getting irked when I couldn't figure out the textures
I am going to give that scene a break for now and work on something else and go back to it when I have had a breather...
well, plain and simple, your alpha has a hard edge. maybe soften it a bit in photoshop.
That, and there's also some options in the material editor / world options that you might want to play with like Modulate-Better etc...If I remember correctly that helps out with the shadows in between grass blades etc. Not sure if that'll help your situation but you can give it a shot.
Continuously working on this environment, Doors are modeled, unwrapped but not textured. And the top pillars around the walls for extra height along with the pillars over the doors are finished.
Thanks everyone for he suggestions but still am having no luck. Is there a way in matinee so when the camera is moving it produces motion blur. This is the only way I can think of "solving" the hard edges. and at least make them look decent.
And just to clarify my intentions: I'm not so sure I would post my own artwork in here as I would jsut like to join the chats/voice chats as I work. I find talking about art while making art to be enjoyable
I got my ceiling working and some debris from said ceiling on the floor.
I'm not part of the study group, but I'd like to mention that your ceiling is very odd for a classroom. It looks like tiles glued onto a very low concrete slab, which is very weird - I've never seen any class like that, and it leads me to wonder where the light fixtures would go (update: well I suppose they'd work like this). There is usually a space between the ceiling you see and the actual structural ceiling. I forget what they call it, but you've seen it. It's not a crawl space exactly, but utilities often run through there. Here's an example.
An acceptable quick fix could be if the partially tiled concrete ceiling you have were higher, with exposed pipes, vents, and light fixtures suspended below. Like this.
floating ceiling is the word your looking for, used for everything from air circulation to a place to run pipes and cabling un-seen. makes it easier to get lighting put in to.
Thanks for the crits guys, working on resizing the doors as we speak. As for the alpha love. Alpha's never been my strong point. Anyone want to give suggestions or even mini-tutorials on how I can improve my failing alpha maps on my fences? =D
trancerbot - this is supposed to be an older school. I'm using reference from an abandoned school damaged by a fire. Here you can see the ceiling is indeed made up of tiled attached to a concrete ceiling. More modern schools use the drop ceilings you mentioned.
I'm willing to change to a drop ceiling later. I did a quick test of what that might look like (i.e raising the concrete slap out of sight) and it looked good. For now though I'm going to just keep working on more stuff that isn't done yet. A lot of adjustment needs to be done after all the assets are created to make this as good as it can be.
@plyrs: The lighting through the window looks beautiful, maybe perhaps increase the lightmap on the wall with the chalkboard, looks a little broken up. It might be worth it!
Any tips with the Alpha love? I really need nail a better texture on the alphas of that fence.
trancerbot - this is supposed to be an older school. I'm using reference from an abandoned school damaged by a fire. Here you can see the ceiling is indeed made up of tiled attached to a concrete ceiling. More modern schools use the drop ceilings you mentioned.
Yeah, I was starting to realize that. Still, it could still work and I doubt many people would think about it.
floating ceiling is the word your looking for, used for everything from air circulation to a place to run pipes and cabling un-seen. makes it easier to get lighting put in to.
@plyrs: The lighting through the window looks beautiful, maybe perhaps increase the lightmap on the wall with the chalkboard, looks a little broken up. It might be worth it!
That jaggy shadow is being cast by the plants in the window. If you look at the other window's shadow on the board it is really smooth. The last thing, this is quick lighting. I haven't actually done a 'production quality' lighting build yet.
lookin pretty cool so far johnny. it actually looks a bit more like a krypt than a dungeon. but it still would be pretty cool to see some hanging chains and blood stains.
Been working on my ancients scene a little more this weekend, seems like its going on for ever! I'll post crits later tonight, im just about to head out
Replies
Things to do: Ceiling, floor debris, grime decals, misc children's toys, candle flames
@aajohnny : look great , are using shaders for rendering this ? or just max render ?
now move to an environment concept by loren broach
aajohnny : Looks like a good start again, but lacks contrast and colour change which is really letting the pieces down I think.
ayoub44 : Lie I said on Skype, fantastic start, but if you wan to take it further (and I think you should ) You should adding a bit more of a chasis and add some detail to those tracks. Are you texturing this?
--
Working on a little personal project for the past week or so, not had much time on it yet. I'm sure most of you have seen this guild wars 2 concept - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6530525/GuildWars2.jpg
I've still got to finish texturing the stones, and I'm going to be adding some colour variation in the material along with some decals to get rid of the repetitive features. Which lighting do you guys prefer?
Oh and heres some shots of the assets, showing without photosource and with (note without photosource is too strong, this is so it shows through the photosource),
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6530525/AncientsScene_TexturePainting.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6530525/AncientsScene_TexturePhotos.jpg
hope to see more about this soon
Ayoub This thing is great, are you going to make a low poly/texture?
here's what ive got. rifle finished.
with a turntable.
http://vimeo.com/24523883
ayoub44 - Your hotdog cart's cloth top looks like something threw a blanket over the top. The tops are more tailored. You can still cloth sim on something you model more of.
http://www.acewelds.com/pics_misc/hot_dog_cart3.jpg
http://obrag.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/hot-dog-cart.jpg
myles - I don't know how strongly you want to follow that concept art, but the proportions of some of the circles is off. All of yours have the same (or very nearly) inner diameter, but the concept has a lot of variance.
I prefer lighting 2, since it looks more like the concept and lighting 1 feels to dark to me.
Oniram - That is one sweet looking rifle. I notice you have a few scratches, but they are very light.
To all - More work coming on the demon school. Will post it soon, once I get a few more bits modeled.
igi Good design, I can't really think of how to improve it off the top of my head, I'm interested to see how you break it down in the low though
Silent Hill Environment:
As a child, Silent Hill was always one of the prominent games that essentially both influenced my art style and my love of horror games. The environment itself below is only inspired by the games and is still in very early stages of development.
I started off with a modular section of the levels environment. This boosts my workflow and my imagination for the better in terms of the development. The floor and walls have a vertex shader applied, meaning I can paint on different grunge darker silent hill style textures over the cleaner tiles.
Vertex Shader:
Fences (to be textured with an alpha map):
As I said, this is a heavy work in progress, I'm going to begin by blocking out, and doing a very simple paint over of what I'd like to be in the scene.
Let me know what you think!
- Scott 'Sythen' Baker.
*UPDATE*
More screenshots:
I remember in SH2-3 a lot of sections had a kind of wet look as if there was a fire that was recently put out there and the walls and floor are still a bit damp...
Here is a shot of my rubbish project I was working.
The lighting was a work in progress and I ran out of time texturing... in fact I really need to do some UV unwrapping and texture painting tutorials as it turns out they gave me a massive headache.
Scene was a lot bigger... can post up some pics if you want to be tortured.
Nice to see everyone's work coming along.
At the moment I am faced with a problem. I am trying to create foliage but when I mask out things like grass, I get hard jagged edges in game and it ruins the mood. I was wondering if anyone knows why this might be? I have tried the alpha mask in both opacity and opacitymasked and all the blending modes but still come up with jagged edges at a distance or when moving. What's your process of doing things like this?
My grass (left) next to udk grass (right). See how much smoother theirs is.
Thank you!
Zack Dembinski
also you could take a look at the udk material and see what they're doing different?
I would like to get it into UDK at some point so I can have a wander through it etc...
However, right now, I spent quite a while doing that, I ended up getting irked when I couldn't figure out the textures
I am going to give that scene a break for now and work on something else and go back to it when I have had a breather...
Edit:
Zack Dembinski
That, and there's also some options in the material editor / world options that you might want to play with like Modulate-Better etc...If I remember correctly that helps out with the shadows in between grass blades etc. Not sure if that'll help your situation but you can give it a shot.
Most engines read alphas as hard-edged, no matter how smooth you make the edges appear in a paint program.
The engines that do have alpha smoothing don't require smooth-edged alphas either, they just have different alpha rendering techniques.
The only way to get softer edges would be through the shader nodes for that material in UDK in this case.
C&C! =D
- Scott 'Sythen' Baker.
Zack Dembinski
good luck
I got my ceiling working and some debris from said ceiling on the floor.
you just using a bump offset on the different rings on the floor, or do you got a plane above it.
I'm not part of the study group, but I'd like to mention that your ceiling is very odd for a classroom. It looks like tiles glued onto a very low concrete slab, which is very weird - I've never seen any class like that, and it leads me to wonder where the light fixtures would go (update: well I suppose they'd work like this). There is usually a space between the ceiling you see and the actual structural ceiling. I forget what they call it, but you've seen it. It's not a crawl space exactly, but utilities often run through there. Here's an example.
An acceptable quick fix could be if the partially tiled concrete ceiling you have were higher, with exposed pipes, vents, and light fixtures suspended below. Like this.
floating ceiling is the word your looking for, used for everything from air circulation to a place to run pipes and cabling un-seen. makes it easier to get lighting put in to.
trancerbot - this is supposed to be an older school. I'm using reference from an abandoned school damaged by a fire. Here you can see the ceiling is indeed made up of tiled attached to a concrete ceiling. More modern schools use the drop ceilings you mentioned.
Any tips with the Alpha love? I really need nail a better texture on the alphas of that fence.
Yeah, I was starting to realize that. Still, it could still work and I doubt many people would think about it.
Yeah, that's the word.
That jaggy shadow is being cast by the plants in the window. If you look at the other window's shadow on the board it is really smooth. The last thing, this is quick lighting. I haven't actually done a 'production quality' lighting build yet.
Also steam group is up message me on steam for an invite Perfectblue. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/PolyCount_StudyGroup