I think the tiles look pretty good myself. I think the main difference is that the stucco has more 'noise' whereas the tiles are much 'cleaner'. The shading on the tiles is made up of really smooth consistent lines.
So next to each other there might be a bit of a break in visual style.
I don't know if that's bad though. Stucco is a really rough surface, and clay roof tiles are very hard and smooth.
Kozak - I agree this thread has become quite the encyclopedia of info - everyone has been truly helpful so far and put a lot of effort into the feedback
MeintevdS - I know what you are saying about the stucco haha. I did use some fancay custom brushes for the drippy grime, and motion blur too :poly122: , which, in itself is not bad, but I agree it's not matching with the style of the rest of my stuff. I will go back and make it good ol' handpainty again!! Thanks for the critique
Felipefrango - hehe, I'm gonna watch these vids while I wait for crits here xD I will let you know what I think. This vertex stuff is new to me - seems interesting so far!
Stromberg90, jeffro, Baddcog: Here are my reworked roof tiles. Did a little blending between values, threw some greens and other details into my shadow areas, and played with a yellow highlight color - let me know what you guys think! Personally I feel pretty happy with the changes you guys suggested, although I am still iffy about how I made some of the tiles greenish to break things up - although that could be my timidity for color variation.
Your texture looks really good so far. I suggest you to carry forward the scene building . It is better to tweak the textures once yu have everything Tight together cause you can really understand what works well and what need reworking.
Felipefrango - amazing vids, esp. the lava one :0 I'm gonna try to learn this vertex painting to use on my landscape specifically. Plus, I picked up a cool tip from that vid - I didn't know you could set hotkeys for your viewport cameras!!! Stoked.. :poly124:
Kuki - Will do! After I make a decent pass at my cobblestone texture (the last tileable required for my building) I will begin modeling and testing my textures there for further tweaking.
But yeah, overall, I do need to get back to sculpting and arranging my scene as a whole. I just get reallyyy absorbed in making the textures lol . . . you guys need to slap me upside the head sometimes :poly142:
Those textures look really great, looking forward to seeing them on the building itself. For the tiles, the last thing I might do would be to add some darker colour variation to a couple of the tiles, pushing them slightly towards purple. I think the would fit well with the green and orange you already have.
Jessica, nice work on those roof tiles, but there is little something you might want to consider.
Here is your concept, enlarged to full HD. I think its pretty safe to assume that if you keep that composition, amount of screen space for the roofs will be almost the same. Now, 1 and 2 is one copy of your texture, applied as if it was for real.
As you can see, color variation is barely visible. And thats just one copy. No tiling.
This is not bad of course. Just a point to consider. Personally I have nothing against brown roof
Jenn0_Bing, linkov, Stromberg90, jeffro - thanks for the pointers and comments (and little mock-up picture xD) about my roof tiles - I will take them into consideration after I've applied my textures to my model for further scrutinization.
Dan! - You will have to settle for a 3D interpretation xD hehe
Here is my cobblestone texture for the bottom half of my villa. Tomorrow I has hw for another class, but on Tuesday the modeling commences. Critique and comment away!
Oh right! I still wanted to tell you off for being so lazy and copying that cow Making such awesome stuff and then copying the same cow 4 times. TSK TSK!
Huge improvement on the roof tiles btw, at first I didn't mind the big steps in the gradient, but after seeing the improved version I'm glad you spend more time on it.
Cobblestone is a good start, but something about it bothers me... problem is .. I'm not sure what it is... I think it's because it feels to neat and perfect. The often the stones will have imperfections on the edges that will be filled up with grout, breaking up the shape of the stone, and with your version it seems to fit perfectly around the stones.
I guess it might be a personal thing, but I'd expect cobblestone to be slightly less perfect and clean
Keep up the great work and +1 for taking all the criticism like a boss and applying it to your work.
The house model is looking good. You could make just a few tweaks to the silhouette and add some things to break up the straight edges and it will help a ton. I did a PO of what I mean.
Design-wise, the windows are spread out really unevenly. Not sure why you've got the lanterns everywhere around the building. They're not in the concept, suck a lot of polies, and they are kinda squished in. I'd say bin the two besides the windows, and possibly try to optimize the others a pinch.
The entire left side of the tower is super plain. Not sure if it's supposed to ever be seen. But if it is, you'd do well to add some things there. A cellar window, perhaps, and some bushes. Maybe a stovepipe.
Your large barrels have less triangles than the small ones - even though they're kinda hidden I think they need more love. And the narrow 'garage' arch is much blockier than the wide ones. Similarly your round windows are more blocky than the doorways at roughly the same size. I'm not sure if you should use the round windows anyway, your concept seems to have none.
You could lose a loop in the top half of the tower, and two on its chimney. You could probably drop a side on both of them, too. You could optimize the roof supports a bit: welding the invisible vertices together gives you 2 tris per thingy, still about 150 tris total.
I'd make the glass parts of the windows a single quad, rather than 4. I'd also get rid of the bottom-centre loop on two of the windows, because those loops are hidden by the plants and as such don't do a whole lot.
You could also give it only 3 sections instead of 4, this would save you 4 extra tris, or 300 total. Added together. this is a savings of about 8 percent of your whole budget, just by optimizing the supports.
Lastly, I'm not sure what's going on with your round stairs. It would be much more efficient to make the top of it like cake slices. Just have a cylinder with some extrusions, then select a quart-circle and delete the faces.
In terms of work vs budget vs visuals, the most important tweak is fixing the roof supports. Quick job (if they're instanced it can be done in 10 seconds), no visual change and a sizeable saving.
I absolutely love this thread and watching your scene progress
One small crit I would have on the villa is with the plants in the window boxes. It seems strange to me that vegetation would only spill over the front. Maybe angle the side leaves a bit so it spills over the corners too.
Jernej - I'm kinda nervous to start the texturing, I still have to figure out how to give different parts of the model their own uv's and stuff haha. But I will get it done!
felipefrango - Thank you! Once I get this model all fixed up, it'll be time to bake that ao :0
jeffro - Ooo, helpful paintover - I like all of those suggestions, especially the slight curve in the roofs.
Snader - Wow, thanks! I placed my windows like that because in many of my villa references, the windows are kinda random, and I think that adds to the cuteness haha. But I see what you mean about the lanterns, maybe I went a little crazy with them - I will remove the two next to the windows and try to optimize the others. I will add some stuff to the left side of the tower - I like the idea of the cellar window and stove pipe, and once this whole building is in my scene, there will be bushes, grass, and flowers everywhere to help fill any emptiness.
I will give the hay bales (they are not large barrels, get it right Snader!) some more tris, as well as the narrow garage arch and round windows. Even though my concept does not have round windows, I was kindof improvising as I modeled wherever I thought I could add more interest. Imo the round windows are a nice contrast to all the square ones I will optimize the chimney, tower, and roof supports especially - those really are sucking up a lot of tris huh!
I don't know what's going on with the round stairs either. Will fix that lol.
Tigerfeet - Thank you You are right about the vegetation, I will see to it.
If you plan on baking AO to the vertex colors, do some tests before unwrapping stuff, cause AO detail is dependent on geometry complexity, you'd probably have to change the model a bit, add a few loops here and there. If you try to bake AO to the model as it is you'll see what I mean, specially on the middle and right buildings.
Are you certain that you are going to do vertex based AO and not a second uv channel that is also and option, just saying
There is a trade off, add a bunch more geo to get a good vertex bake and trying to keep it consistent.
Using a second uv channel there will be one more map of course, but it will have consistent quality all over.
I have really no idea about optimization so don't take my word for it :P
Nice optimization! Just a thought, though, when optimizing I often find that selecting a ring and collapsing it can retain the silhouette a bit better than selecting a loop and removing it. There's uneven spacing where you removed the loops now. On the chimney, for example, if you had selected the middle ring and collapsed it it would leave a loop in the middle and averaged out the silhouette instead of a short segment in the bottom then a long one at the top. Again, just a stupid nitpick, won't save you any extra tris, but it's useful at times to retain the shapes.
Oh wow! Lots of tiny little changes, but combined together they really make a big difference
Another tiny thing from me, but I think your door handles might be too high. If I were to approach that door they'd be about chest-high to me, I think door handles are closer to waist or hip height.
Also, completely unrelated, I really appreciate you moving to posting your images on imgur instead of imageshack. Now I can see them during my breaks at work!
Nice optimization! Just a thought, though, when optimizing I often find that selecting a ring and collapsing it can retain the silhouette a bit better than selecting a loop and removing it. There's uneven spacing where you removed the loops now. On the chimney, for example, if you had selected the middle ring and collapsed it it would leave a loop in the middle and averaged out the silhouette instead of a short segment in the bottom then a long one at the top. Again, just a stupid nitpick, won't save you any extra tris, but it's useful at times to retain the shapes.
I have never used this collapse function before as I have never noticed it...it is a huge time saver thanks felipefrango!
felipefrango - omggggg, awesome tip xD no more deleting loops, then scooting the other ones up and down to try and find the shape again!!!
Tigerfeet - moved the doorknobs down (p.s. your avatar makes me lol for some reason, I like it xD)
katana - Thanks! I did try what you said about the roof supports, but it turns out they don't look very nice fat and sparsely distributed, so I think I'm ok with the way they are now.
Here's my villa with the tileables all set up! There are 5 material ID's, 4 of which are my tileables, and the 5th being the blue areas that still need to be unwrapped and uniquely textured. When this is all done I'm also gonna go in and pop out some cobblestones and roof tiles for added silhouette. I still plan to improve the tileables in general, and I just now noticed that the cobblestone is much darker than in the concept - but for now, here they are! Critique and comments welcome:
i think the upper part of the walls lacks in detail, it looks like an uniform color to me (i know its not) but some more details wouldn't hurt. Looks awesome btw!
I think the stucco and roof tiles look really great - there is some weirdness with the UVs on the lower roofs where the tiles start but that's easily fixable.
I'm not feeling that cobblestone texture, though - doesn't seem to be up to the quality of the rest of your textures (which is very high!).
Any critique from me is just nitpicking, looking forward to seeing this progress even more.
Paunescu.Daniel - I will try upping the contrast of the stucco.
BrontoThunder - Thanks for pointing out the roof!
SupRore - Ah yeah, the back corner does need a trim, and I should add some between the rock and stucco too, right now it looks weird and straight haha.
mheyman - Yes, I was actually considering going for more of that flattish stone you've shown - villas don't really have those bubbly ones, I will definitely revisit this texture soon xD
lol, thank you Jessia I'm glad my avatar made you smile!
I'm not so sure about the top chimney should be stucco. Was stucco ever applied to chimneys? I really don't know myself. I just usually expect them to be stone, brick, or metal.
Hmmm, thanks Tigerfeet, I will look into chimneys some more!
Thanks JFletcher - I love your work btw, your portfolio is so incredible 8]
Hey guys, noob question: is it ok to have inverted faces in my uv's? I'm trying to stack some shells and I need to invert some of them to do it. I'm not talking about my 2nd uv channel for lightmap/ao map, I know there shouldn't be overlapped/inverted faces there. I just mean in my main uv channel (hope my question makes sense haha).
Havent checked this thread in a while. Great progress! I feel the lower most roof with the tiles, the L shaped roof, could use a beam going down the corner like the rest of the roof tops. Right now, the texture just cuts and it looks weird. Also, Im not a fan of how you laid out the UVs on that particular one. Seeing as it only shows 2 shingles all the way across, the variation in size is a little much for me on the front side. The right side of it looks good, and has a more straightened and even shingle placement.
Hey guys, noob question: is it ok to have inverted faces in my uv's? I'm trying to stack some shells and I need to invert some of them to do it. I'm not talking about my 2nd uv channel for lightmap/ao map, I know there shouldn't be overlapped/inverted faces there. I just mean in my main uv channel (hope my question makes sense haha).
Hm, yeah, it should be alright. It becomes a bit problematic when dealing with normal maps and baking stuff, but there are easy workarounds for these situations as well. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but for diffuse only stuff you should be alright. :thumbup:
Also glad the collapse thing helped! Removing loops is equaly useful, I find that they're fit for different situations.
You should also check out the Modify Selection tools in the Graphite Tools tab, I personally love the Dot Ring and Dot Loop functions:
The opposite is also useful (Dot Ring, selecting loops and removing them)!
Everyone else gave pretty solid crits... I don't think the cobbles are not as good as the other tex, I quite like them, but they probably are more fitting for the ground.
The Chimney seems a bit off to me though. Stone /brick makes more sense. But the shape is really over the top compared to the rest imo. The whole building has a bit of 'flair', but it's not really so overdone. But the chimney seems very overdone in shape/style comparatively.
slipsius - Thanks for pointing the roof out - fixed!
felipefrango - You're just a bag of tips, aren'tcha? xD Thanks for clarifying the inverted faces for me too, and I will def read up on Paroxum's link. He makes some insane stuff, there's lots to learn from him 8]
Klumpmeister, Tadao215, chrisradsby - Thank you
UNCCheezy - Made the stones smaller, yeah they were too big.
Baddcog - Scaled the chimney slightly down and straightened it out a bit. Thanks!
Ok guys, thought I'd post my progress so far! Things still to do: Roof sides and ends. First story railing. Lanterns, ivy, and other individual props. Cobblestone texture work. Arch cobbles texture needs to be darker (and better in general, right now look like crap haha). AO. Roof support and rooftopper thingies need texture work.
I think it looks really good, what are you using to show of the model?
As for right now I don't have many critics, but one thing that stands out is.
I think the stone bricks in the arches don't have enough contrast to them, push the highlights and the shadows a bit more to get some depth, the also seem to have got the least amount on polish on them(I might be wrong)
Keep on going, will be an awesome scene in the end
Replies
So next to each other there might be a bit of a break in visual style.
I don't know if that's bad though. Stucco is a really rough surface, and clay roof tiles are very hard and smooth.
MeintevdS - I know what you are saying about the stucco haha. I did use some fancay custom brushes for the drippy grime, and motion blur too :poly122: , which, in itself is not bad, but I agree it's not matching with the style of the rest of my stuff. I will go back and make it good ol' handpainty again!! Thanks for the critique
Felipefrango - hehe, I'm gonna watch these vids while I wait for crits here xD I will let you know what I think. This vertex stuff is new to me - seems interesting so far!
Stromberg90, jeffro, Baddcog: Here are my reworked roof tiles. Did a little blending between values, threw some greens and other details into my shadow areas, and played with a yellow highlight color - let me know what you guys think! Personally I feel pretty happy with the changes you guys suggested, although I am still iffy about how I made some of the tiles greenish to break things up - although that could be my timidity for color variation.
Kuki - Will do! After I make a decent pass at my cobblestone texture (the last tileable required for my building) I will begin modeling and testing my textures there for further tweaking.
But yeah, overall, I do need to get back to sculpting and arranging my scene as a whole. I just get reallyyy absorbed in making the textures lol . . . you guys need to slap me upside the head sometimes :poly142:
Here is your concept, enlarged to full HD. I think its pretty safe to assume that if you keep that composition, amount of screen space for the roofs will be almost the same. Now, 1 and 2 is one copy of your texture, applied as if it was for real.
As you can see, color variation is barely visible. And thats just one copy. No tiling.
This is not bad of course. Just a point to consider. Personally I have nothing against brown roof
Dan! - You will have to settle for a 3D interpretation xD hehe
Here is my cobblestone texture for the bottom half of my villa. Tomorrow I has hw for another class, but on Tuesday the modeling commences. Critique and comment away!
Huge improvement on the roof tiles btw, at first I didn't mind the big steps in the gradient, but after seeing the improved version I'm glad you spend more time on it.
Cobblestone is a good start, but something about it bothers me... problem is .. I'm not sure what it is... I think it's because it feels to neat and perfect. The often the stones will have imperfections on the edges that will be filled up with grout, breaking up the shape of the stone, and with your version it seems to fit perfectly around the stones.
I guess it might be a personal thing, but I'd expect cobblestone to be slightly less perfect and clean
Keep up the great work and +1 for taking all the criticism like a boss and applying it to your work.
Incredible thread - one of the best.
Pls more, MORE!
I see what you mean about the cobbestones though. I will def go back into them later - thanks for the crit!
chrisavigni - Thank you lots ^_^
Here's my villa model. The whole scene here is approximately 5.5 k tris. Critique and comments welcome:
Thanks!
Jessica
The entire left side of the tower is super plain. Not sure if it's supposed to ever be seen. But if it is, you'd do well to add some things there. A cellar window, perhaps, and some bushes. Maybe a stovepipe.
Your large barrels have less triangles than the small ones - even though they're kinda hidden I think they need more love. And the narrow 'garage' arch is much blockier than the wide ones. Similarly your round windows are more blocky than the doorways at roughly the same size. I'm not sure if you should use the round windows anyway, your concept seems to have none.
You could lose a loop in the top half of the tower, and two on its chimney. You could probably drop a side on both of them, too. You could optimize the roof supports a bit: welding the invisible vertices together gives you 2 tris per thingy, still about 150 tris total.
I'd make the glass parts of the windows a single quad, rather than 4. I'd also get rid of the bottom-centre loop on two of the windows, because those loops are hidden by the plants and as such don't do a whole lot.
You could also give it only 3 sections instead of 4, this would save you 4 extra tris, or 300 total. Added together. this is a savings of about 8 percent of your whole budget, just by optimizing the supports.
Lastly, I'm not sure what's going on with your round stairs. It would be much more efficient to make the top of it like cake slices. Just have a cylinder with some extrusions, then select a quart-circle and delete the faces.
In terms of work vs budget vs visuals, the most important tweak is fixing the roof supports. Quick job (if they're instanced it can be done in 10 seconds), no visual change and a sizeable saving.
One small crit I would have on the villa is with the plants in the window boxes. It seems strange to me that vegetation would only spill over the front. Maybe angle the side leaves a bit so it spills over the corners too.
Keep going! I can't wait to see this finished!
felipefrango - Thank you! Once I get this model all fixed up, it'll be time to bake that ao :0
jeffro - Ooo, helpful paintover - I like all of those suggestions, especially the slight curve in the roofs.
Snader - Wow, thanks! I placed my windows like that because in many of my villa references, the windows are kinda random, and I think that adds to the cuteness haha. But I see what you mean about the lanterns, maybe I went a little crazy with them - I will remove the two next to the windows and try to optimize the others. I will add some stuff to the left side of the tower - I like the idea of the cellar window and stove pipe, and once this whole building is in my scene, there will be bushes, grass, and flowers everywhere to help fill any emptiness.
I will give the hay bales (they are not large barrels, get it right Snader!) some more tris, as well as the narrow garage arch and round windows. Even though my concept does not have round windows, I was kindof improvising as I modeled wherever I thought I could add more interest. Imo the round windows are a nice contrast to all the square ones
I don't know what's going on with the round stairs either. Will fix that lol.
Tigerfeet - Thank you
I will update sometime today!
Are you certain that you are going to do vertex based AO and not a second uv channel that is also and option, just saying
There is a trade off, add a bunch more geo to get a good vertex bake and trying to keep it consistent.
Using a second uv channel there will be one more map of course, but it will have consistent quality all over.
I have really no idea about optimization so don't take my word for it :P
Update. With all the changes made, I actually saved 300 tris! Woot xD
Ok, back to landscape sculpting!
great lookin' stuff!
Another tiny thing from me, but I think your door handles might be too high. If I were to approach that door they'd be about chest-high to me, I think door handles are closer to waist or hip height.
Also, completely unrelated, I really appreciate you moving to posting your images on imgur instead of imageshack. Now I can see them during my breaks at work!
I have never used this collapse function before as I have never noticed it...it is a huge time saver thanks felipefrango!
I also use the collapse function all the time as felipe say's, it keeps the shape while removing one or more loops.
Still it's nice to see a model from you...you continue to inspire.:)
felipefrango - omggggg, awesome tip xD no more deleting loops, then scooting the other ones up and down to try and find the shape again!!!
Tigerfeet - moved the doorknobs down (p.s. your avatar makes me lol for some reason, I like it xD)
katana - Thanks! I did try what you said about the roof supports, but it turns out they don't look very nice fat and sparsely distributed, so I think I'm ok with the way they are now.
Here's my villa with the tileables all set up! There are 5 material ID's, 4 of which are my tileables, and the 5th being the blue areas that still need to be unwrapped and uniquely textured. When this is all done I'm also gonna go in and pop out some cobblestones and roof tiles for added silhouette. I still plan to improve the tileables in general, and I just now noticed that the cobblestone is much darker than in the concept - but for now, here they are! Critique and comments welcome:
Thanks!
Jessica
I'm not feeling that cobblestone texture, though - doesn't seem to be up to the quality of the rest of your textures (which is very high!).
Any critique from me is just nitpicking, looking forward to seeing this progress even more.
BrontoThunder - Thanks for pointing out the roof!
SupRore - Ah yeah, the back corner does need a trim, and I should add some between the rock and stucco too, right now it looks weird and straight haha.
mheyman - Yes, I was actually considering going for more of that flattish stone you've shown - villas don't really have those bubbly ones, I will definitely revisit this texture soon xD
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
I'm not so sure about the top chimney should be stucco. Was stucco ever applied to chimneys? I really don't know myself. I just usually expect them to be stone, brick, or metal.
Thanks JFletcher - I love your work btw, your portfolio is so incredible 8]
Hey guys, noob question: is it ok to have inverted faces in my uv's? I'm trying to stack some shells and I need to invert some of them to do it. I'm not talking about my 2nd uv channel for lightmap/ao map, I know there shouldn't be overlapped/inverted faces there. I just mean in my main uv channel (hope my question makes sense haha).
keeeep it up!
Hm, yeah, it should be alright. It becomes a bit problematic when dealing with normal maps and baking stuff, but there are easy workarounds for these situations as well. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but for diffuse only stuff you should be alright. :thumbup:
Also glad the collapse thing helped! Removing loops is equaly useful, I find that they're fit for different situations.
You should also check out the Modify Selection tools in the Graphite Tools tab, I personally love the Dot Ring and Dot Loop functions:
The opposite is also useful (Dot Ring, selecting loops and removing them)!
Great job!
http://usethesnap.blogspot.com/2011/11/quickie-01-building-village.html
The Chimney seems a bit off to me though. Stone /brick makes more sense. But the shape is really over the top compared to the rest imo. The whole building has a bit of 'flair', but it's not really so overdone. But the chimney seems very overdone in shape/style comparatively.
slipsius - Thanks for pointing the roof out - fixed!
felipefrango - You're just a bag of tips, aren'tcha? xD Thanks for clarifying the inverted faces for me too, and I will def read up on Paroxum's link. He makes some insane stuff, there's lots to learn from him 8]
Klumpmeister, Tadao215, chrisradsby - Thank you
UNCCheezy - Made the stones smaller, yeah they were too big.
Baddcog - Scaled the chimney slightly down and straightened it out a bit. Thanks!
Ok guys, thought I'd post my progress so far! Things still to do: Roof sides and ends. First story railing. Lanterns, ivy, and other individual props. Cobblestone texture work. Arch cobbles texture needs to be darker (and better in general, right now look like crap haha). AO. Roof support and rooftopper thingies need texture work.
Critique and comments welcome!
Thanks,
Jessica
As for right now I don't have many critics, but one thing that stands out is.
I think the stone bricks in the arches don't have enough contrast to them, push the highlights and the shadows a bit more to get some depth, the also seem to have got the least amount on polish on them(I might be wrong)
Keep on going, will be an awesome scene in the end