Deus EX Scene - Download + Sources
polycounter lvl 18
Hi guys,
a few months ago, I did this Deus Ex scene to stress test my workflows, and see how many corners I could cut while still maintaining fidelity to the concept and good enough quality, it also helped me nail down a few things, to make sure my workflow was efficient enough and eventually add/change a few steps.
After Jordan released his Bathhouse, and talking about it with MoP, I decided to release it publicly, with some of the sources (max files, PSDs)
clearly it's not as polished as jordan's scene, and has way less techy bits, but I think it can serve a different porpose and show how by focusing on the right things, you can obtain decent results in a minimum amount of time.
here's the original post :
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73450
the reasoning behind it :
I decided to create a one week stress test to evaluate the quality of my workflows and how fast I could get a full environment done, what I would have to sacrifice to go faster and yet maintain a decent look. Mainly because if you take months to create an environment, you don't evaluate your mistakes and can keep repeating bad workflows all the time without even noticing there's something bad. the rules were simple :
-no more than 10/20 minutes struggle on a problem, if it takes more, it either requires a super complex solution, or is a bad idea.
-keep texture quality as good as possible, yet try to spend as little time as possible on them, focusing mainly on color and value, if it reads as wood, it's wood, no need to slap in noisy textures to make up for bad base values.
-use the 3 point shader as a base for the texturing process, meaning I don't have to go back and forth between UDK and max/ps (avoiding to re import textures as much as possible)
-create all the shaders from scratch, yet try to use as many material instances as possible, shaders must contain the same qualities as the 3 point shader since I want a predictable look.
for the TL;DR : I wanted to see if I could do it in a week.
Video on the tv screen and background music are from the E3 2010 Deus EX Human Revolution Trailer
pretty pictures and videos after the TL;DR
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He_drnRKmBg[/ame]
please keep in mind it's a 1 week work, so I didn't go for full quality/optimization, cut a TON of corners and cheated a lot to get it done on time.
I used the 3point shader with max 2009, some other plugins and photoshop CS2, nothing should prevent you from opening the files even if those are missing.
The UDK scene was built with the march UDK, rebuilt for this with the july UDK
a few months ago, I did this Deus Ex scene to stress test my workflows, and see how many corners I could cut while still maintaining fidelity to the concept and good enough quality, it also helped me nail down a few things, to make sure my workflow was efficient enough and eventually add/change a few steps.
After Jordan released his Bathhouse, and talking about it with MoP, I decided to release it publicly, with some of the sources (max files, PSDs)
clearly it's not as polished as jordan's scene, and has way less techy bits, but I think it can serve a different porpose and show how by focusing on the right things, you can obtain decent results in a minimum amount of time.
here's the original post :
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73450
the reasoning behind it :
I decided to create a one week stress test to evaluate the quality of my workflows and how fast I could get a full environment done, what I would have to sacrifice to go faster and yet maintain a decent look. Mainly because if you take months to create an environment, you don't evaluate your mistakes and can keep repeating bad workflows all the time without even noticing there's something bad. the rules were simple :
-no more than 10/20 minutes struggle on a problem, if it takes more, it either requires a super complex solution, or is a bad idea.
-keep texture quality as good as possible, yet try to spend as little time as possible on them, focusing mainly on color and value, if it reads as wood, it's wood, no need to slap in noisy textures to make up for bad base values.
-use the 3 point shader as a base for the texturing process, meaning I don't have to go back and forth between UDK and max/ps (avoiding to re import textures as much as possible)
-create all the shaders from scratch, yet try to use as many material instances as possible, shaders must contain the same qualities as the 3 point shader since I want a predictable look.
for the TL;DR : I wanted to see if I could do it in a week.
Video on the tv screen and background music are from the E3 2010 Deus EX Human Revolution Trailer
pretty pictures and videos after the TL;DR
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He_drnRKmBg[/ame]
please keep in mind it's a 1 week work, so I didn't go for full quality/optimization, cut a TON of corners and cheated a lot to get it done on time.
I used the 3point shader with max 2009, some other plugins and photoshop CS2, nothing should prevent you from opening the files even if those are missing.
The UDK scene was built with the march UDK, rebuilt for this with the july UDK
Replies
And, amazing idea with the stress test! Gotta try something like this myself.
P.S. The scene looks great.
would love to have seen two shady characters have a conversation in there!
And why do you add vertex colors to the dif slot in some of the high polys?
Thanks again dude.
the vertex color thing is actually missing the tensionmod modifier (http://rpmanager.com/plugins/TensionMod.htm) that I use to bake curvature information ( though I now use a much faster solution ) you can see the result in the various PSDs I provided (concavity and convexity) and how i use them.
Unfortunately the dropbox links are dead
Looks pretty damn awesome m8, ill wait when the link comes back up
You know you have a damn good scene when the only thing to complain about is a poster on the wall, lol.
Good work.
BTW, Bradler, the poster has folds
I honestly cannot see them at all, maybe make them more defined?
Again I think its funny I am nitpicking a poster, lol.
I mean...uhhhhhh
great work
seriously youve been yipping at me about that RGB selection sets for a while...you never mentioned you were doing it this way -_-
If I could internet suplex you I would for not explaining that!!
lol sef, wth, I showed you on screenshare...
Excellent work, great texturing and lighting in your interpretation.
+1
I believe that what is the most important in the scene in general is layout and overall balance of shapes, colors and lighting. A scene can have the best and most detailed assets ever, but if they r put together without any logic - it fails.
Here it is a good example of how even relatively simple assets put together in a thoughtful way make a good looking setting
Nice bladerunner homage with the Cini Boeri whiskey glasses :P
No chance you could share the name of the tool your using to get convexity data faster than tension?
for anyone who is interested I have a little helper script which makes the diffuse label material and puts it in the material editor.
saves a few minutes work
( multimat = multimaterial() multimat.numsubs = 8 multimat.name = "Diffuse Label" colourNames = #("red","green","blue","cyan","mage","yellow","white","black") colourValues = #(color 255 0 0, color 0 255 0, color 0 0 255,color 0 255 255, color 255 0 255, color 255 255 0, color 255 255 255, color 0 0 0) for i = 1 to 8 do ( m = standardmaterial() m.diffuse = colourValues[i] m.name = "Label:" + colourNames[i] multimat[i] = m ) meditMaterials[1] = multiMat )Also, I wouldn't consider myself a noob with photoshop layers, but your photoshop files showed me something I've not seen before, those little down pointing arrows next to the layer, what the hell are these and how do I make my own? Google couldn't help me, but then again I don't know the real name for them,
Thanks a lot!
Matroskin, HP : thanks guys, yep that was totally the point of the project, I can make super highly detailed props, but in the end, what is really important is the big picture, because one doesn't make a game out of a single prop. only have a week to allocate to this, so corners had to be cut
Myles : are you talking about clipping masks ? press alt between 2 layers to attach them, now the transparency and masking of the lower one will affect any layer attached.
r_fletch_r : I have it set up in my maxstart.max
ivars : totally watched blade runner JUST before starting
as of now so do I, nice idea man, cheers
This is really good.
LOL INTERNET SUPLEX!
but seriously, thanks for the scene. I'm sure i can learn a thing or 2 from it!
Would ve liked to see how you used the gloss map in the alpha of the specular map in the shader network...any chance to access it?