[UDK] WW2 Carentan (Image heavy I think!)
polycounter lvl 8
Hi goobers,
First off, I've worked on this scene for a little too long, so I'm MOVING ON. I'm not happy with it at all, but I learnt a lot, so I'd love to hear feedback and will fix as much as I can, but in terms of big revisions of things, I'll just take the advice for now as I can't afford to spend any more time on this.
This scene is based off Carentan featured in Band of Brothers:[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuyXT-FCq1k[/ame]
I've made quite an extensive scene (larger then I originally though), and I definitely need to provide a fly through, which I will do soon.
Couple notes:
1. The small rubble is done as a terrain deco layer. Any rubble thats got a shadow casting on it, turns BLACK, as you'll see in the screenies. Anyone know what could be causing this?
2. I know there were no tanks in this battle, particularly UK tanks, so sorry if I offend you war mongers. I just wanted to add something to break up the buildings.
3. The back bridge crossing over is also not featured in band of brothers (that whole section isn't actually showed in the movie). Just thought I'd put something cool there. Thanks to one_richards call of duty: waw mod for the idea.
Thanks so much everyone, wish it was as grand as I originally had planned
.
First off, I've worked on this scene for a little too long, so I'm MOVING ON. I'm not happy with it at all, but I learnt a lot, so I'd love to hear feedback and will fix as much as I can, but in terms of big revisions of things, I'll just take the advice for now as I can't afford to spend any more time on this.
This scene is based off Carentan featured in Band of Brothers:[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuyXT-FCq1k[/ame]I've made quite an extensive scene (larger then I originally though), and I definitely need to provide a fly through, which I will do soon.
Couple notes:
1. The small rubble is done as a terrain deco layer. Any rubble thats got a shadow casting on it, turns BLACK, as you'll see in the screenies. Anyone know what could be causing this?
2. I know there were no tanks in this battle, particularly UK tanks, so sorry if I offend you war mongers. I just wanted to add something to break up the buildings.
3. The back bridge crossing over is also not featured in band of brothers (that whole section isn't actually showed in the movie). Just thought I'd put something cool there. Thanks to one_richards call of duty: waw mod for the idea.
Thanks so much everyone, wish it was as grand as I originally had planned
.
Replies
I now have to start watching band of brothers again this evening
Great job again!:thumbup:
The bridge on the last screen is my fav because of nice storytelling elemnt with the hole going across the bringe right into the pavement
I just find that most of architecture textures (roads,walls etc) are bit too uniform. That makes kinda clean impression. i knwo they got dirt and grunge but since they r quite uniform overall it creates this sort of clean effect imo.
U could use some vertex paint on the gound and buildings to bring more dirt variation into the scene.
Also as a minor remark, the debris is all conrete while the destroyed walls have brick. Thereofre the ruble could be better integrated by having the same sort of brick mixed with that concrete
Nice Churchil btw!
EDIT: ah, and those black bricks - did u forget to set lightmap on them or u used them as a part of new foliage paint tool (which gives thsi kind of a black lightmap problem sometimes) ?
[ame]
tekmatic - It's taken about 3 months fitting it inbetween irl work, but I've learnt so much that any future projects will be done much faster, my original optimisation and workflow was terrible and unfortunately that's carried through, but live and learn.
Matroskin - You're right about the clean buildings, I have struggled creating tilable dirty concrete that doesn't kill the eyes. Unfortunately these old french industrialish buildings don't have many trims to allow for nice horizontally tiling textures. So ihad to go with fully tiling textures. I've vertex painted some areas, also some of the plaster interpolates between a grunge texture. I may grunge up the brownish plaster a little more.
In regards to the rubble, I'm considering shrinking it and retexturing it with a more fitting texture.
Thanks
first i feel like your building could use a bit more grunge build up ( blast marks, dirt, etc...)
also for your rubble....how did you go about making them... did you just model a few and use physics in max/maya ? or hand place in udk? i noticed the smaller bricks in shadow seem to have lightmap issues or just have super harsh shadows.
keep up the good work!
mind throwing some model sheets up? textures and what not
So I guess the most obvious things that I will change are:
- Fix the rubble, smaller size and more fitting to the buildings.
- Grunge up the building textures some more.
Dan! - I tried to match the scene in band of brothers as close as possible in terms of rubble. And there's no where near that much, but you are right that I could add a lot more so I'll do that
Miller02 - The rubble was done with physics. I'll try get some textures up soon. Thanks!
GarageBay9 - That's right, carentan only had artillery damage I believe, no planes - definitely!
btw, that tank is so sick
normally this black lighting bug will move to another spot after u add/erase some of deco/foliage meshes. So it depends on current layout of those meshes - when they move around the black spot (or spots) moves somewhere too, but u never know where next :P
In your case I'd suggest just place that small rubble manually, u don't seem to have a lot of those anyways. In case if it's all single piece debris, u can unify a group of them into one mesh and place them as larger groups. It will generate less actors and save u time. Most of your ground is flat, so having predefined groups of flat lying debris pieces will work well.
I did that in my current scene I am working on - first i painted grass as a part of foliage paint tool, but after having this black lighting bug i just placed grass patches manually. To save me some time I merged few single grass meshes into a group.
Sharvo - Thanks! You are right regarding the textures and despite it being the main crit, I may come back later and revisit them. To be honest the passion for this scene has gone and I've reached that stage of "can't be bothered", which I think will only be reflected further in my work if I continue to work on this scene, so I'm just going to leave it here for now and take these crits for my future projects.
Matroskin - You're right, manual placement may just be the better option, I'm going to do that tomorrow and upload a fly through so people can see what is going on a little better.
Well, if u make the last shot as main one - u r set
Btw, any intention to post a breakdown sometime?
This looks awesome! I really like what you have going on with the lighting, feels pretty natural the way the shadows are falling. right now however it seems s like the image is a bit dull/washed out for the kind of harsh cast shadows going on.
the sky looks overcast, which would lead to a lot more ambient lighting style rather than harder shadows, ofcourse the sun could be peeking through the clouds which would be a dooooope effect if you could get it going on, look at the jungle udk example map to try and see how they did the shadows from the clouds slowly panning over the environment. the witcher 2 also had this style lighting in areas and it looks fantastic in motion.
the reason your images look a bit washed out/dull is that there are no exteme brights in most of the frames. if you look at your histogram/levels, the entire right quarter which is the brights, is almost completley flat and wasted range. if you pull the slider in a bit, it gives your image a bit more contrast and vibrance. here is an example of the original histogram and the one for the image I adjusted below to help explain. you could also try experimenting with image grain, vingette and perhaps dust on the camera lens pretty easily to get that band of brothers documentry style look.
The level looks fantastic man, these crits are mainly focused on getting the most out of your final presentation but are pretty minor in the long run. its mainly some quick 2 min fixes that will make the biggest difference for time/changes.
Cheers
original image histogram, the area in red is the section where brights appear and its almost completley wasted:
newly adjusted one to show how lighting with these harsher cast shadows would probably appear:
and here is the adjsuted image with some of the stuff I mentioned above, added some more blue to the ambient shadows. original below for quick comparison.
I'm not sure why I've lost my highlights, I think I have my tonemapper set too high, any suggestions?
Again thanks and I'll have an update at some point today as I am slaving away at the moment!
Edit: Oh sorry, did you bump up the saturation as well?
Something that I think could enhance it even further would be to get some of the smoke more dense. Maybe some more smaller props to just get that last detail layer? Cloth lines, small pots, couple of more posters. Also the rubble could perhaps do with some metal bar parts or something too? Personally I'd try and up the colors just a tiny bit too, but I know you've been going with the more desaturated feel from the clips so it's all good
Otherwise, really nice job on this!