Hey guys, here's some more. I'm currently working on some lavender flowers. Gotta redo it though, cuz I made some bad early decisions and gave this particular asset way too many tris haha. There are 180 tris, while my cypress only has 500, and this flower is only about half as tall as the cypress trunk! Even though I made an alpha card version of the flower to put at distances, the detailed mesh for up-close shots is still too tri-heavy I think. I'm gonna combine some petals together on bigger planes instead. Thought I'd post anyway though, for critique and comments as I continue to work:
3pt. lighting! (Does it look right?)
512 here for your viewing pleasure, but it's actually 256:
Hi Jessica! Cute flowers. I think you could make the petals even more varied in color. The purple and blue one don't look a whole lot different. And where the petals and stem meet looks like they aren't really attaching, like the flower is just floating on top. I know this isn't really the same, but maybe add those leaf-like things where they would attach?
Hey thanks kelli! I will add those leaf thingies on the bottom - I see what you mean about the flower looking floaty. As for the color variation, are you looking at the model or my color map? In that render I only used the purple petals because I was just setting up a quick composition and lighting test - hadn't gotten around to playing with the uv's yet, all the petals are still stacked on purple. The render does have some blue areas though, because one of my lights is blue.
Ah ok, sorry about that, I shouldn't have posted an unfinished setup. But hopefully the model will look a little more colorful when I actually have all my colors in it haha
Guess it's mostly personal preference but I think handpainted work looks best presented at 50%~ Self illumination in viewport shots rather than offline renders.
Yeah, I am still searching for the best ways to present my work. Usually I just take a printscreen from the UDK viewport, but that is probably the worst of all ways to do it haha. Are you saying that hand painted textures look better when you turn up self-illumination on the material, rather than setting up lights? Or do I still set up lights even with the self-illumination on?
I usually just take my screenshots in the 3DS Max viewport, with 1 light source (to direct the shadow) with the material set to 50%+ (the number is not really set in stone, you'll have to play with the number) self illumination. You could try adding more lights if you want, with self illum you shouldn't need a fill light though.
The issue with letting hand painted textures full-shadow themselves is that you end up with black areas (like in your renders) because there's so much lighting info already painted into it. Sometimes this is alright but your textures are really colorful so I don't think that's what you want. Plus since there's no normal map, the gouraud/phong shading makes textures look really flat if the shading is too strong.
Best I could suggest is just drop a light source into your scene and start toying with the self-illumination til you get something you like then experiment with more lights, different colored lights/self illum, etc.
The lights need to be brighter or placement adjusted some. For models it seems like showing things off with some sort of lighting is nice. These are small enough that you might be able to get away with self illumination.
So I'm gonna come back to that lavender for sure, but for now, here is my corkwood tree. It's about 1000 tris, and I still plan on attaching the branches. There is also my updated texture sheet with both trees on it now (gonna fill that empty space with some cypress foliage variation). Critique and comments welcome!
With 50% self-illumination, a directional light, and a backlight - I'm loving the self-illumination a lot
In your textures for the tree it looks like you are using the same leaf painting with two slightly different hues? If your simply doing this for variation, i suggest using vertex colours
Thanks guys! GoSsS - I would love to see you do some handpainted things And if I ever do a high poly scene I will have to take a few cues from you
gilesruscoe - Hm, I will look into vertex colors, I don't really know what that is haha.
Here is a sunflower. These will be about the height of a person. 256 x 256, and 80 tris, although sunflowers at long distances will have considerably less tris, somewhere more along the lines of 6 or so. Also I just realized the flower part is too big which makes the whole thing look kinda small, gotta change that. Critique and comments welcome!
This is looking fantastic! I'm totallly falling in love with your painting style.
If I had to point something out, I'd like to see you maybe work a bit on the presentation, as of now it doesn't serve your work justice. Your sunflower has beautiful colors and saturation, but the shadows and light makes it feel a bit more dull. I guess they are either 3Ds Max or Maya screengraps, if so, I would make the material a bit self illuminating(something like 40-70%) so your colors and textures pops more :-)
Thanks Zpanzer! Yes, these are Max renders, and I agree with you about my presentation - now that I look closely, I see that the renders aren't matching my texture very well. I have 50% self illumination at the moment, but perhaps I need a little more! *sigh* presentation is harder than I thought haha.. in the end I will have to go back and render all my stuff again correctly!
Looking good! There's a visible edge in your tree canopy where the texture is being clipped off though.
In regards to your presentation yeah, mess with the self-illum it's not an exact science :U It'd probably also be worth it to turn off shadow casting from your back light.
Also fwiw, on small ground objects like flowers and grass I usually tweak the vertex normals so that the normals are facing more upward, that way they get more light. Otherwise when you put them on the terrain they'll clash with the floor because they'll be lit wrong.
If you're using 3DS Max just apply the edit normals modifier to your editable poly then grab the blue sticks and rotate them so that they're facing more upward (probably dont want them to be straight up tho). Make sure you've got a light source in the scene so you can tell what's going on.
Ah! I didn't think anybody would see that leaf!! But looks like you saw it easy so I better go back and fix it xD Also, thank you for the explanation and tip about the normals, I didn't know about that!
I'll turn off the backlight cast shadow too, if you guys think that's better. I kinda thought the double shadow was cool :x
Looking great as usually Jessica. When is the full scene coming together? Just wondering how it'll all look since you're doing pieces individually. You might want to see how it's all coming together as a scene.
I know what you mean about seeing the full picture - I really did just get too excited about the assets first :P . . . I will have the full scene roughly set up and posted here by the end of Monday. Then I will continue working on the rest of the assets and editing existing ones accordingly!
I've been enjoying watching you progress on this. Love the style of you textures and how you carry that into the shapes of the model. It all comes across as very well thought-out.
AyalaN3D: Each texture is different, for example, sand took about half as long as grass or pebbles. But in general, I'd say about a full day + (as in 24 hours or more) per texture. I feel that's pretty slow, but I think if I keep making these I can get faster!
Will post a block-in of my scene in a couple of hours.
I'm currently slapping my head against my keyboard practising hand painted textures. I have been trying with a mouse, but I have ordered a wacom tablet. This thread is incredibly useful/inspiring/intimidating I adore your style, you have a great eye for colours in particular.
B8MaN! No slap head against keyboard! xD I can't believe you have been trying to texture with a mouse haha. I think you will have a much easier time when your wacom tablet arrives :] :]
Thanks dinfet, that is encouraging ^_^
dll, I've raised the normals on my grass to about a 70 degree angle. Here's a before and after shot - I can see how the grass gets a little more light now!
This is my new render of the sunflower, with fixed proportions. Does the presentation seem better to you guys?
Okay, here's what I have so far for my scene. All my terrain textures are in, as well as the cypress tree and 2 variations of sunflower. For now, I just have a textured plane in place of water. I plan to add actual cliff meshes for the overhangs in my concept, as well as rocks and boulders. In addition to that, still need to put in:
great start! Can't wait to see more! try to add in that road into the distance- background aswell (sure you were planning on it, but it looks so awesome in that concept ) Good luck with the project
Thanks for the critique guys! I will add in the road, and model the cliff silhouettes in max for import into UDK. I also feel like my grass is way too saturated so I will be changing that, as well as tryinig to get a little self-illumination working on all my materials. I also feel that the viewer is a little too far from the scene, so I'll try pushing the foreground hill further in and lower.
Awesome! At least your time spent in painting gets you more familiar of how those textures should be! Great practice for sure!
Overall, your scene is coming out nicely. Like what has been said before bringing some more form and silhouette to those hills like your concept will definitely give it a much better feel. And of course bringing them closer to the camera which will fix the perspective or camera view.
Vertex painting will help you as well as in blending in textures where you need it in your scene! great job so far though!
Hmm, I did some research on vertex painting and I think I'm getting the general idea of what it is, but so far I've only seen people use it on meshes and not terrain. Is it possible to vertex paint on Terrain or Landscape? Both? Neither? I am actually using Terrain edit for this scene because my lights were building really weird with Landscape and I had a hard time figuring out how to create materials for it
EDIT: SCRATCH EVERYTHING I JUST SAID - I am currently reading through the most enlightening tutorial thread ever (Swizzle!!! I love you!)! I believe I will be starting fresh on Landscape instead, so I can put all my textures on one actor. Currently I have 2 terrain actors just so I can hold more than 4 textures for my entire scene. It's kindof ridiculous lol . . . I'll be back with a new scene soon, considering this one ^^ practice I guess!
According to the tutorial, vertex painting is possible on Landscape. I have yet to figure out how to implement it for Landscape, but I think first steps first . . . gotta figure out how to use the very basics of Landscape before anything fancy haha . . .
BTW I forgot to build lights! Sorry... next update !
... This makes me sad.
Could definitely use some more light. More bright greens and yellows like the concept. Maybe some god rays coming down... And couldn't hurt to rotate those trees a bit or make some variations that way they aren't all bent the same.
Great work so far! More updates (with you lights built!) >.<
Looking good, but grass is kinda weird. It reminds me of traditional oil paintings It works, but I think you can do even better. Here is some pictures, these are NOT MINE! though they might help.
its a big article, regarding environment art direction for Allods Online. Quite interesting read, but sadly, only in russian. Some pictures are self explanatory, and I guess google translator can make some sense of it.
gold! shame it's in russian, the translation very likely does not do it justice!
Awesome, nice to see all these excellent pieces start to come together.
On-top of what the others have said. In your sunflower texture, try adding a bit of a gradient to the stalk so it's darker towards the bottom, it should help "root" them to the ground better.
wow wow wow!! one of my new favorite artist!! I love this style of art work! never been big on doing it myself, but I LOVE looking at it! keep it coming!!
Jenn0_Bing - I see what you mean about the stalk gradient, I will definitely implement that.
So this week I finally got landscape to work and have been sculpting it out, trying to get it back to the progress I made with terrain. Nearly there...
I've also been working on my presentation some more (internships are opening up soon, so I figured I'd better get cracking on some good layout). Branches and roots are attached to the corkwood now, and I've made a variant. I forgot to change up one of the foliage clumps so that the two are not identical (besides a slight difference in color), so I will have to do that later and rerender haha. In the meantime I might as well put these up for critique!
I've also revisited my concept in hopes of giving it a better sense of travel and direction. Specifically, i've been thinking about the structures I want to add in. I don't have a lot of time left before the end of the semester (even though I will continue working on this project past that point heh), so I'm gonna try my hand at kit-bashing and tileables as opposed to all unique construction and texturing.
I want to make a little villa or two, and perhaps put together a small town on the distant hill, for which silhouette will be the most important thing since I'm gonna have a lot of fog back there. I'm abandoning my wells, because I thought about it and I think it's kinda stupid to have a well next to a lake ahaha. So yeah, this week is going to be dedicated to creating the tileables: stucco, cobblestone, and roof. Let me know what you guys think! Thanks in advance:
Sorry the corkwood images are pretty compressed, not sure how to fix that.
Replies
3pt. lighting! (Does it look right?)
512 here for your viewing pleasure, but it's actually 256:
Thanks,
Jessica
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Lavander10_003.jpg
Guess it's mostly personal preference but I think handpainted work looks best presented at 50%~ Self illumination in viewport shots rather than offline renders.
The issue with letting hand painted textures full-shadow themselves is that you end up with black areas (like in your renders) because there's so much lighting info already painted into it. Sometimes this is alright but your textures are really colorful so I don't think that's what you want. Plus since there's no normal map, the gouraud/phong shading makes textures look really flat if the shading is too strong.
Best I could suggest is just drop a light source into your scene and start toying with the self-illumination til you get something you like then experiment with more lights, different colored lights/self illum, etc.
So I'm gonna come back to that lavender for sure, but for now, here is my corkwood tree. It's about 1000 tris, and I still plan on attaching the branches. There is also my updated texture sheet with both trees on it now (gonna fill that empty space with some cypress foliage variation). Critique and comments welcome!
With 50% self-illumination, a directional light, and a backlight - I'm loving the self-illumination a lot
Thanks
Jessica
I'll work on a hand painted scene soon and this thread will help me a lot
Love this entire thread, your kicking ass can't wait to see what ever environment your making.
Keep going.
gilesruscoe - Hm, I will look into vertex colors, I don't really know what that is haha.
Here is a sunflower. These will be about the height of a person. 256 x 256, and 80 tris, although sunflowers at long distances will have considerably less tris, somewhere more along the lines of 6 or so. Also I just realized the flower part is too big which makes the whole thing look kinda small, gotta change that. Critique and comments welcome!
Thanks,
Jessica
If I had to point something out, I'd like to see you maybe work a bit on the presentation, as of now it doesn't serve your work justice. Your sunflower has beautiful colors and saturation, but the shadows and light makes it feel a bit more dull. I guess they are either 3Ds Max or Maya screengraps, if so, I would make the material a bit self illuminating(something like 40-70%) so your colors and textures pops more :-)
In regards to your presentation yeah, mess with the self-illum it's not an exact science :U It'd probably also be worth it to turn off shadow casting from your back light.
Also fwiw, on small ground objects like flowers and grass I usually tweak the vertex normals so that the normals are facing more upward, that way they get more light. Otherwise when you put them on the terrain they'll clash with the floor because they'll be lit wrong.
If you're using 3DS Max just apply the edit normals modifier to your editable poly then grab the blue sticks and rotate them so that they're facing more upward (probably dont want them to be straight up tho). Make sure you've got a light source in the scene so you can tell what's going on.
I'll turn off the backlight cast shadow too, if you guys think that's better. I kinda thought the double shadow was cool :x
I'm looking forward to seeing this environmental piece put together! Keep at it! Love the hard work here!
AyalaN3D: Each texture is different, for example, sand took about half as long as grass or pebbles. But in general, I'd say about a full day + (as in 24 hours or more) per texture. I feel that's pretty slow, but I think if I keep making these I can get faster!
Will post a block-in of my scene in a couple of hours.
Thanks dinfet, that is encouraging ^_^
dll, I've raised the normals on my grass to about a 70 degree angle. Here's a before and after shot - I can see how the grass gets a little more light now!
This is my new render of the sunflower, with fixed proportions. Does the presentation seem better to you guys?
Okay, here's what I have so far for my scene. All my terrain textures are in, as well as the cypress tree and 2 variations of sunflower. For now, I just have a textured plane in place of water. I plan to add actual cliff meshes for the overhangs in my concept, as well as rocks and boulders. In addition to that, still need to put in:
-more cypress variants/saplings
-corkwood + variants
-lavender
-grass
-wheat/canola
-fallen leaf clutter (possibly)
-some man-made structure
BTW I forgot to build lights!
So yeah, tons of work to do still, but this is my rough start (sculpting is hard!! haha). Critique away, please!
Thank you,
Jessica
The wavy tree texture seems a bit different than the rest. Not sure it's blending as well as it should. I think it might be a smidge too saturated.
Overall, your scene is coming out nicely. Like what has been said before bringing some more form and silhouette to those hills like your concept will definitely give it a much better feel. And of course bringing them closer to the camera which will fix the perspective or camera view.
Vertex painting will help you as well as in blending in textures where you need it in your scene! great job so far though!
EDIT: SCRATCH EVERYTHING I JUST SAID - I am currently reading through the most enlightening tutorial thread ever (Swizzle!!! I love you!)! I believe I will be starting fresh on Landscape instead, so I can put all my textures on one actor. Currently I have 2 terrain actors just so I can hold more than 4 textures for my entire scene. It's kindof ridiculous lol . . . I'll be back with a new scene soon, considering this one ^^ practice I guess!
According to the tutorial, vertex painting is possible on Landscape. I have yet to figure out how to implement it for Landscape, but I think first steps first . . . gotta figure out how to use the very basics of Landscape before anything fancy haha . . .
For anyone interested, here's the tut:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88347&highlight=vertex+painting
... This makes me sad.
Could definitely use some more light. More bright greens and yellows like the concept. Maybe some god rays coming down... And couldn't hurt to rotate those trees a bit or make some variations that way they aren't all bent the same.
Great work so far! More updates (with you lights built!) >.<
gold! shame it's in russian, the translation very likely does not do it justice!
and Jessica, love your style.
On-top of what the others have said. In your sunflower texture, try adding a bit of a gradient to the stalk so it's darker towards the bottom, it should help "root" them to the ground better.
Jenn0_Bing - I see what you mean about the stalk gradient, I will definitely implement that.
So this week I finally got landscape to work and have been sculpting it out, trying to get it back to the progress I made with terrain. Nearly there...
I've also been working on my presentation some more (internships are opening up soon, so I figured I'd better get cracking on some good layout). Branches and roots are attached to the corkwood now, and I've made a variant. I forgot to change up one of the foliage clumps so that the two are not identical (besides a slight difference in color), so I will have to do that later and rerender haha. In the meantime I might as well put these up for critique!
I've also revisited my concept in hopes of giving it a better sense of travel and direction. Specifically, i've been thinking about the structures I want to add in. I don't have a lot of time left before the end of the semester (even though I will continue working on this project past that point heh), so I'm gonna try my hand at kit-bashing and tileables as opposed to all unique construction and texturing.
I want to make a little villa or two, and perhaps put together a small town on the distant hill, for which silhouette will be the most important thing since I'm gonna have a lot of fog back there. I'm abandoning my wells, because I thought about it and I think it's kinda stupid to have a well next to a lake ahaha. So yeah, this week is going to be dedicated to creating the tileables: stucco, cobblestone, and roof. Let me know what you guys think! Thanks in advance:
Sorry the corkwood images are pretty compressed, not sure how to fix that.
Count the cows!