Environment graduation project

Rhoutermans

Hi all,

Here's some screens and two vids from my graduation project gamedesign and development. Textures are handpainted, learned a lot more since these screens but more next project . This is the first environment that I actually somewhat finished. I learned a lot the last few months and now have a clear vision of what I need to learn next.

Some sort of 'Making of' video;
http://www.vimeo.com/25346151

and the actual graduation video;
http://www.vimeo.com/25327076

And some screens.







There's a lot that can be added/pushed more in this style, and I would like to continue this project after a little break I'd appreciate any feedback and comments for when I'm going to push this environment more. Can't wait to start my next project after my graduaction exam tomorrow

Greets

PixelMasher

interesting environment man, just by looking at it I can see that it was built with gameplay in mind. nice presentation in the videos as well.

I would say the textures and lighting are holding it back the most. the lighting is really whiteish with black shadows which always tends to look bad. I would add a saturated cool blue for the ambient shadows, or color pick from your skybox. also the sun could be a bit more saturated like 10% maybe.

on the texture side of things, unless it was mandatory to have 100% "handpainted" textures with no photos involved, I think it would benefit you to use photos for overlays/edited for your textures. those wood planks look really weird and not really like wood at all, it looks like texture streaking. the plaster textures lack major detail/variation found in most photos of plaster as well, making things look a bit flat.

looking at the screenshots, there s a weird sense of blotchyness going on that makes it hard for my eyes to focus on anything in particular, this could be caused by lowres light maps or are things being vertex lit? its most noticeable with the rooftops and some walls.

the scene looks promising man, I would go back and redo some of the textures, if you are using tiling textures in most places like an environment like this should, you could change your main 5-10 textures and just reimport them and it should make a world of difference.

this is a nice sized environment man, pretty impressive. was it just you making this or a small team? keep up the good work!

Rhoutermans

Thanks for the feedback PixelMasher! I was able to build this playable map for my graduation, as well for a local company who were looking for an environment artist that could help out building a map for a prototype

I still have a couple of days before my contract ends so I will be working on the textures as you suggested. I got a cloud texture going over the map, but that textures needs some attention as well.

to do;
* Take a look at lightmap res
* Fix texture details
* Fix cloud texture
* Ambient Shadow color
* Add some more background buildings

And yes it was just me working on the environment. I'll implement your feedback and see what happens! More updates incoming.

Gooner442

Nice environment, sort of reminded me of Assassins Creed at the first look.

Looking at your mood boards you were going for an aged look to the buildings but they look too clean and it needs to be broken up a bit. The roof tiles really stand out, my eye was bouncing from one rooftop to the other so try to break that up to, good stuff though, I enjoyed watching the breakdown too.

Rhoutermans

Thanks Gooner442,

Fixing the texturing is my no1 priority, need a more dirty look overall. More material variation for the rooftops is a nice idea, adding it to the list

to do;
* Take a look at lightmap res
* Fix texture details
* Fix cloud texture
* Ambient Shadow color
* Add some more background buildings
* Break up roof materials