David's Modeling and Environment Art

Razgriz

Hey everyone - Instead of starting a new topic every time I have a project I'm working on, I figure I would post unfinished projects of all sorts here in this thread. I greatly appreciate anybody who wants to jump in and give harsh critiques, rip my work to shreds, or ask questions.

I'll start with pieces for a sci-fi room I'm working on. It's my first time dealing with metal textures. I'm relying heavily on reusing models and UV space as much as possible, and I started by building a large collection of pipes that will be running throughout the entire room, and in many of the meshes.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment!

snake85027

you need to bake out an ambient occlusion for the bottom piece.

Razgriz

It's in there, with a pretty faint opacity. I'm going to rely a lot on screen-space AO because of the way I'm sharing lots of asset pieces with each other to build the level.

Shiniku

Nice work! It really seems to be coming together. I'm sure it will look even better in-engine. Look forward to seeing more!

Whoever did the concept for that piece is more than likely extremely handsome.

Razgriz

No, I know the guy in real life and he was hit with the ugly stick at conception. He's got a pretty scary face.

Finished the wall-panel, the modular pipes, and threw them into UDK for some testing.

Cap Hotkill

You should try to avoid the "Rorschach" effect, by making the textures around the zones were the pieces meet less pattern like, otherwise it looks like a tilling of repetitive pieces.

roosterMAP

Looks good. But ur gonna need several completely different wall panels to break up the tiling.

jimmypopali

This almost looks like a 'feature' piece of wall. Either that or have this in an engine room.

geopixel

Your work is getting better every time I see it. I agree with braking up the repetition and baking in some AO. Otherwise This looks really good. Reminds me a bit of HR Giger without all the genitalia.

Razgriz

Thanks Hector! I appreciate that. I'm glad that your getting a Giger vibe from it, I used many of his paintings and Aliens work as a base for the art style, at least, for the piping and tubes. And yes, with significantly less robotic pornography.

I'll try to do something about the obvious repetition, I'm hoping to make a smaller texture map to have some little metal assets I can plaster all over the place to add randomness.

Razgriz

Updates time, guys! Critiques appreciated. It's slow going, but I'm planning on building a set of metal "pieces" that I can use to construct platforms, fill holes, and break up repetition. I'm aware that right now with only two pieces, it looks very dull. There are also a couple lightmass issues I need to sort out - I was too quick on the second set of UV's, they need to be fixed.

toxic_h2o

wow looking good dude, I think the white part on the wires feels a bit bright in some areas where it would seem to be in shadow. Other than that no complaints here

Razgriz

Thanks man! Yeah, I think that's partly because of lightmap issues on the 2nd map channel, but also because I need to adjust the specular map for the pipes/wires, since they are referencing a separate material.

Alberto Rdrgz

I'm Loving these pieces man they fit together nicely. Only Crit is something you've addressed already but i think making the Specs more subtle will make that metal look a bit more natural. Great Progress so far tho!:)

nordahl154

Looks cold and heartless, I love it!

HughieDM

Great work so far
I know your making a bunch of other pieces but may be make a panel that crosses over into the other panel/panels by having some of those wires or something conect into the panel next to it
keep it up cant wait to see more

Razgriz

Thanks guys. Alberto, I'll keep adjusting the specs. They look better in viewport shaders, I think, and I haven't done any lighting or material work yet. I don't know if it needs UDK fiddling, or serious readjustments. I still might go back and make major changes once the environment starts coming together. Hughie, I'm planning on doing just that - maybe with wires, but definitely with panels of some sort. I'm going to make a seperate sheet of metal pieces that I can build variety into the level with.

Third asset done - It tiles... well, I didn't count, but I think it's at least a twelve-way tiling with mirroring.





Please, please crit if you can. My specs look pretty good in the max nitrous viewport, but they're starting to feel a bit off in UDK. I feel it might be the lighting setup.

I'm also having normal problems with the floor tile. They show up perfectly in the max viewport (Which I knew was an issue with previous versions, but thought it had been fixed by 2012), but they aren't shading well at all in UDK. They were baked with Max's RTT. There is plenty of geometry to use one smoothing group for the entire mesh, but I think I might get a better result if I flatten the top down onto one smoothing group. Any advice?

Thirdly, though I'm not even seriously at this stage yet - mirroring seems to cause all sorts of weird lighting problems on the instances. Normal?

cdavidson

any chance of posting some high and low wires chap? i just like to see how stuffs done

Shiniku

Wow, fantastic! You know my love for that second wall-piece you did (came out very nicely) and I think the floors look pretty good too. It looks really good and the tiling isn't as bad as i feared, you definitely made some smart changes from the concept.

dogzer

amazing! what's your inspiration?

Alberto Rdrgz

Dood this is awesome! i love that floor piece, the tiling came out great! Are you following a concept?

linz1010

Wow, you finished it early! It looks really good, fits in just right with the other assets.

n88tr

they looks more like clunky robots than wall panels

chriszuko

Man this is going to be detailed when its finished. Good stuff so far. My one complaint is that everything has the same color.. even on the emissives. Maybe an orangish type color for the floor and the same red you have there for the walls. I am just concerned about all of the colors blending in too much.

yodude87

yea, adding a bit of color variation would do it only good. but good work so far. congrats.

Rhoutermans

nice stuff! Try to break it up a bit more, bakes look great tho

Razgriz

cdavidson, I will once the environment get's a bit more complete. Everything is wayyy to rough right now, and needs a lot of optimization. But I'll get around to posting wires eventually.

dogzer, the inspiration is all from concept art done by Luke Brubaker, aka Shiniku. I'm doing many of these assets for a class we're in together. http://www.shiniku.com/

Thanks, Alberto!

Chris, I'll take that into consideration. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do for a lighting source other than having tiny emissives everywhere - and at the very least, I'll probably have a couple material instances to bring in some different colored emissives, like blue or orange.

Here's my latest update. I redid the normal and smoothing groups to fix the errors I was getting, threw some rough light map UV's on it, made a gloss map (which I'm not happy with), replaced the large pipes with something cleaner, and plugged in a post-process chain for kicks and giggles. I'm still not happy with how the materials are coming off, but I think I'm getting closer.

OBlastradiusO

This is looking great. Keeping my eye on this.

re.wind

reminds me of the general style Cybrans use in the supreme commander series. I think its the black and red combination.

chrisradsby

That looks really awesome, great work on the design and the specular

sketch81

Looks sexy, love the floor pieces. Subscribed!

roosterMAP

I am loving ur shapes. Really nice. I hope the scene doesnt look too dark when u put it in ur scene. Its allready difficult to differentiate between te dark blue and the dark grey. Try brining out the dif in the spec, or add a gloss map.

Razgriz

Here are some high poly's for the assets, including some new ones that I'm working on, as well as concepts for the assets that were done by Luke Brubaker. http://www.shiniku.com/

dang87

Loving those textures. Any tips on how you went about making them?

Quack!

Your material definition on that last shot is fantastic.

Razgriz

dang87 - Most of what I learned about metal texturing came from racer445's and PhilipK's tutorials, with a couple tricks of my own. I work layer by layer, so I can individually create the spec and normal maps based on what material is in the texture.

chaosquack - Thanks! Still some finagling to do with the gloss maps.

Here's the latest! I'm starting to think about scene composition and level design, so any crits in that area are appreciated. Still a very early build. I built a mesh that I could specifically use as a lighting source other than the red emissive - I don't know if I like the look of it. I can't decide if I want a yellow or blue-ish hue overlaying the scene.

ZeroStrike

The tiling on the central floor piece is really nice. It was hard for me to find the tile. For the walls I would add in a breaker wall piece to help break up the repetition of the wall. The pieces are very well done. I also like the glowing accents. What's this project being made in besides UDK? It would be very cool to get a pulse on the glow map. Make the environment come alive alittle.

Computron

Damn, thats some nice spec. anyway, the floor looks hard to walk on, you'd probably trip.

Razgriz

Thanks! And I assume the aliens that built this ancient sci-fi hallway are so nimble that they have no need to keep things tidy, or they float 2 feet above all floors, or something like that.

Razgriz

Our school forces everyone to make a demo reel before graduation, so I'm just going to have a few turnaround of my high-poly models. I went back and touched up old work, and made a pretty little setup to animate everything in.

LlamaJuice

Super crazy sexy work man. The environment you're working on is a huge inspiration! Keep at it!

I'd also would like to see wires of your stuff sir!

chrisradsby

Looking really nice, really nice modular set-up, a tad repetative though but I know you know that already

Looking forward to more !

Garcia3D

Solid work! I would go ahead and invert whichever layer you have your scratches on in your spec map/ detail normals. Right now they look like they are coming outwards instead of receding in some areas.

Razgriz

Thanks again guys. Hopefully this update solves the tiling and repetition problems, or is at least helping. I finished the strut/support asset, and I'm in the process of putting pipes everywhere.

I seem to have my emissive bleeding into my lightmap channel? There is plenty of padding, weird. It might just be an AA issue.

I greatly would appreciate harsh critiques on the composotion and lighting. Level design is one of my weak suits. Light-shafts, yea or neigh?

Razgriz

I think I found a good solution to close of the environment with the assets I'm using. I'm still having major lightmap issues, those need to be taken care of, and the lighting and post-processing will probably be drastically revisited. It's blowing things out and not turning out how I'm wanting, other than breaking up the scene with the orange-blue-red scheme.

Alberto Rdrgz

This turned out pretty sweet!!

mxb8924

:0 Fantastic work dude, its a real inspiration!

toxic_h2o

Very very kewl dude. I love the blue light filtering down in the first shot.

You really need to get some steam/smoke/fog or something along those lines coming out of those wall panels it would be so sweet.

Razgriz

Finally got the lighting where I want it, I think. Toxic, I'm definitely planning on doing that - I'm not too experienced with particles and materials in UDK, so I'm still learning as I go. I just added some dust particles and a little fog - smoke is next.

Still getting weird lightmapping issues!

Illusive

the emissives in this are bonkers dude! *subscribes* can't wait to see it finished

n88tr

Looking better and better
just don't ruin it with big light shafts