[UDK] New Mexico Desert

Zipfinator

After a summer of not getting much art done and after procrastinating about applying for the ArenaNet internships for a few weeks I've decided to put together a quick desert scene alongside working on the art test to submit as my portfolio. I was inspired a few weeks ago by some of the desert views shot in Breaking Bad and started working on the scene a few days ago.

Here are a few of my goals for the scene.

• Learn new UDK foliage placement system
• Learn new UDK terrain system (Depends on if I can figure out how to apply blend masks to it)
• Explore new methods to create foliage
• Learn to create skyboxes
• Explore new material functions such as randomizing the color/hue of foliage based on placement
• Have the scene in a presentable state before September 21st so it can be submitted as a portfolio for the ArenaNet Internships

Here's where it's at now. I'm planning to work on the house today and then start planning out the art test.





Here are a few of my references to show you where I'm planning to take it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/New%20Mexico%20Desert/ref1.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/New%20Mexico%20Desert/ref2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/New%20Mexico%20Desert/ref3.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/New%20Mexico%20Desert/ref4.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/New%20Mexico%20Desert/ref5.jpg

Please post any crits, comments and suggestions!

Vailias

Only major crit at the moment is to do some more so there is something to crit.
I can say that it really depends where you are in NM to get big chunky rocks like that. The plains don't really have them, but the foothills do, but they're also too round and soft.

Really its super early to be criting, but keep at it. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

riddlaz

I agree with Vailias on what he said regarding it being to early to critique.. My question is why did you pick these references? The flat desert references don't look very interesting. Desert in Sonora MX have interesting rock formations and plant variety.

Zipfinator

@Vailias, right now I was planning to have it be more similar to the plains. I wanted to put something in here so it's not just foliage and sand so some small boulders seemed like an obvious choice. Maybe later on I'll add in a more foothill-like part in so the rocks fit in better geographically.

@Riddlaz, maybe I did post the thread too early. I'm planning to finish this pretty fast though so hopefully in a few days you'll have more to critique. As for the references, I felt inspired to do a scene based off of these after seeing some of the open desert views in Breaking Bad. There's some more interesting foliage in some of my other reference so it won't just be straight grass like it is in those shots. I binged Sonora Desert real quick and the results I got looked somewhat similar to the New Mexico deserts, just with a lot of cacti and hills.

Vailias

the terrain near Sonoma is very similar to much of Northern New Mexico. There area right at Sonoma has more interesting sand and wind blasted rock formations.

The terrain of new Mexico varries a lot. If youre wanting to keep the breaking bad vibe then you're going to want lots of scrub brush, some sage, the occasional cholla cactus (pronounced choy-ah) or small yucca, and prickly pear. The soil can be rocky but not usually large visible rocks. The floor is not often sand but more dirt and clay dust, ranges from the redish brown to mud brown.

The real plains of NM are to the far east of the state by the west Texas border, and aside from the occasional hill, are indistinguishable from west Texas.
For good reference google "northern chihuahuan desert" the biome is a bit different than the Sonoran desert which is to the west and covers most of Arizona.

Not that most people would care or notice mind you.. I just spent 25 or so years living there.

Zipfinator

Vailias wrote: »

the terrain near Sonoma is very similar to much of Northern New Mexico. There area right at Sonoma has more interesting sand and wind blasted rock formations.

The terrain of new Mexico varries a lot. If youre wanting to keep the breaking bad vibe then you're going to want lots of scrub brush, some sage, the occasional cholla cactus (pronounced choy-ah) or small yucca, and prickly pear. The soil can be rocky but not usually large visible rocks. The floor is not often sand but more dirt and clay dust, ranges from the redish brown to mud brown.

The real plains of NM are to the far east of the state by the west Texas border, and aside from the occasional hill, are indistinguishable from west Texas.
For good reference google "northern chihuahuan desert" the biome is a bit different than the Sonoran desert which is to the west and covers most of Arizona.

Not that most people would care or notice mind you.. I just spent 25 or so years living there.

Thanks a lot for the info! I had no idea what half of these plants were called. Knowing the names of the yucca and the prickly pear will help a lot when gathering more reference. As for the rocks, I'll probably end up keeping them. As you said, not that many people will notice or care that they're not actually there in the New Mexico deserts. I won't place too many of them though.

I'll post back in a few days with an update on the house and some foliage.

Vailias

oh hey, just remembered I have a few pix left I took for reference years ago for just this sort of pursuit. May be at least enough to be a texture base for you. This is more foothills than plains, but it should be within about 20 miles from the Breaking Bad pics you posted. (hard to tell exactly.. a lot of that part of the state looks really similar)









OH also.. since you mentioned "learning to create a skybox" one of the most outstanding things I remember from living in NM was the sky. Amazing cloud formations, or just the most pure blue clear ever. Here's some cloud/sky reference.. no photoshop in these btw.. #4-7 were on opposite sides of the highway in the southeastern part of the state.. very heaven and hell looking. (pardon the blur.. those were taken with a cellphone while going about 90..)

Zipfinator

@Vailias, thanks a lot for those references. They came in handy for texturing the ground. I was even able to use that top reddish one as a base for one of the textures. Those foliage shots are great too. I needed some close ups of single bushes and such.

Update time!



The building needs more medium details but I'm not quite sure what to add other than some covered up windows. If anyone has any suggestions please share them.

I also did a quick test for the grass today and I think it turned out pretty well. After I tweak it a bit more I'll put it into the scene and start on the other foliage.

Dagon

That's really cool! The grass looks fantastic and you've done a good job on the house and texturing the ground what you may need for the house is some stuff outside like a broken fence maybe or a broken child's bike etc stuff that a normal "house" would of had. I wish I was as good as you!

Zipfinator

Grass!



Haven't been able to build the lighting with the grass because it turns out all black. Should look a bit better once it stops being a nut stick.

@Dagon, thanks. I was thinking of doing a broken fence a while ago but that might look a bit weird having a broken wooden fence right next to the wire fence. Maybe I'll be able to do something with a wooden fence once I expand the house area a bit more.

SouthpawSid

loving it. keep going

ZacD

needs more variety in plants, and more scale and color variation.

Joopson

I'd love to see a screengrab of the grass material set-up in the editor. I can never get my grass looking that bomb-diggity. Great job so far; I'll be keeping an eye on this for some inspiration, no doubt!

Zipfinator

@Sid, thanks!

@Zac, that's probably next on my list. I need to get this at least presentable so I can submit some pictures of it as a portfolio for the ArenaNet internships and foliage is definitely more important than a few extra building details.

@Joopson, the grass is literally just a texture with alpha on it. I spent a lot of time getting the texture right though. If you want I could do a little write up on how I painted the grass clumps.

Joopson

Really? What does the mesh look like then? My grass always ends up with very harsh shading on one side, unless I do some shader genie magic.

Zipfinator

Joopson wrote: »

Really? What does the mesh look like then? My grass always ends up with very harsh shading on one side, unless I do some shader genie magic.

The mesh is just 6 triangles jammed together with two straight up in a plus formation and the other 4 angled in a square formation. Want me to do a little baby tutorial on how I did the grass?

Joopson

I would really appreciate it, actually, if it isn't too much trouble! Because it sounds similar to the setup I have, but mine doesn't look nearly so good.

Jessica Dinh

I second the request for a baby grass tutorial!! x]

erroldynamic

Sweet! I live in New Mexico so this is really cool. Your doing a good job so far. Some prickly pear cactus would be perfect, you can do it without the fruit to keep the dried up look to your scene. you can make a really interesting sky too similar to the refs Vailias posted. Maybe you can add something rusty as well like a water troff, plow, etc...

Zipfinator

@Joopson & Jessica, I'll write up a small tutorial sometime over the next few days and post it in here.

@Rion, I was planning on doing some prickly pears and probably some yucca too. As for something rusty, I think I'm going to do a windmill-like thing. I'm not sure what it's called specifically but it's made of metal and looks like a windmill!

I really like some of Vailias' sky pictures too but I'm not sure that they'll fit the scene. The lighting is pretty bright and crisp and you don't get that kind of lighting with cloudy skies like that. Maybe I could do a few different types of skies though and take pictures with each one at different times of day so there could be a cloudy one like Vailias' for morning, a clear one for afternoon like I have now and a night one all with their own lighting settings.

Pixelz

grass planes are huge !!

ayoub44

hi man , you did a great job at this . cant wait to see more ...
i have a liitle question your lighting is simple? are you using just direction light ?

POFFINGTON

Feels like home, and by that I mean Texas. I like where this is going keep up the good work

synergy11

I want baby grass tutorial as well. mmkay

Zipfinator

@Pixelz, I scaled them all down a bit and added a bit more variation in size in certain areas.

@Ayoub, right now there's just a Dominant Directional Light in the scene.

@Poff, thanks!

@Synergy, info on the Grass Tutorial below!



About the grass tutorial, I'll try to get around to it sometime this week but I'm trying to get this more presentable and finish the ArenaNet art test in the next 9 days so it might have to wait until after that.

Amadreaus

A lot of your ref is full of vibrant color and great tonal range, which isn't coming through in your shots at all. I'm thinking that the light is washing everything out, and you could use more contrast in everything from the plants to the groundwork. It's coming off as glaring bright and monotone when it should read as rich and interesting.

Zipfinator

Amadreaus wrote: »

A lot of your ref is full of vibrant color and great tonal range, which isn't coming through in your shots at all. I'm thinking that the light is washing everything out, and you could use more contrast in everything from the plants to the groundwork. It's coming off as glaring bright and monotone when it should read as rich and interesting.

Yeah I'm going to try painting more variation into the grass texture and set up a material function that will change the hue based on the placement. There should be more range once I get some more foliage in there too.

Vailias

I like this. Looks a lot like south-east New Mexico/ West Texas. More to the west texas side with the lack of variation in horizon. Still need far more variation on the vegetation, (SAGEBRUSH!) but you're working on that. Light level looks good, could even go brighter if you want.


The grass is a good height though. Stuff gets thick.

Habboi

That last shot is a better angle. Keep it. Some mountains on the left will look nice.

Zipfinator

I've slowly been continuing to work on this over the last 2 months and thought I'd post up some new pictures. I'm planning to finish up the scene over the next few weeks and get started on something new.

Vailias

sweet.. Move the post process out of the pink and more bright white yellow and you'll be really selling it.

Ged

looks really good but yes too much pink, could use some slightly darker dirtier browns on that road to mark out churned soil maybe, perhaps just a little more texture variation?

PixelMasher

right now its way too red. it looks like you nudged your monitor cable and one of the color channel pins is lose. here is a quick adjustment of one of your older images to show how to maybe make it feel hot while retaining color and detail. also, look at the colors in breaking bad for awesome desert scenes like you mentioned and try to match those.

MaD

try indeed to get it a bit more vibrant, did a quick color correction myself

SirCalalot

That is looking wonderful, Zipfinator - although I agree with the others about the scene looking a bit odd with the pink overtone.

I find that the colouring and lighting are the hardest part to get right in a scene, keep up the good work!

Stromberg90

Agree with what the others have said, did a quick color correct myself, just to try out something different with it, not saying that it is any better, just a variation

XenoKratios

The scene looks great Zipfinator, my only suggestion is the tree infront of the shack. It's too lush and thick for the season.

Might I suggest studying this (and More.) picture for some ideas on post processing and color variations in textures.

More. More.

Zipfinator

Thanks for the comments rascals! I'll mess around with the color correction more and see what happens.

@Ged, I've been thinking of doing some more decals for the ground to get a bit more variation but there's so much foliage that I didn't think it'd be that noticeable. I'll work on the blending a bit more so that the grass and sand textures are a bit more interestingly spread out and maybe do a few more large decals for the more open areas.

@Pixel, that color correction reminds me a lot of Breaking Bad and the picture Xeno linked. I'll definitely try something like that.

@Mad, That's a nice color correction. I'll get a bit more contrast in there and mess with the lighting some more to get some deeper shadows.

@Xeno, thanks for them links. I like that first one a lot. That's more what I was planning when I started the scene but just started messing around on my own and landed on the red/pink post process. Also I agree about the tree. I'll remove some of the needles from the texture and that should help a lot.

Tom Pritchard

What you have at the moment reminds me of this wallpaper I have:



I like the colours but like everyone else is saying, it's a tad flushed out.

erroldynamic

Wow, this is coming out great! Can't wait to see the finalized version.

Zipfinator

Nt nt nt.

Zipfinator

Been working on the post processing more and redid the mountains to be more New Mexicoey and appear further away. I'm also nearly done with my matinee setup so I will have a nice video to render out when it's done.

WetWired

Man I can just picture Walts campervan parked out in the middle of that.

Nice work!

Ged

lookin good

SirCalalot

Looking very swish.
What you have done with the mountains is subtle but very effective.

Zipfinator

Well after my winter break I finally finished this up over the last few days. There were a few other things I planned to do but I'd rather just move onto a new scene after messing around with this one for so long.











I'll post a few asset breakdowns and a video (If I can get UDK to stop being a dick) over the next few days most likely.

Leodido

great job, love your scene

jonas-144

wow love it! . great colorgrading

Vailias

you nailed it. Nice work. As the first image was loading I was like "oh he got new reference material" then I saw the cg-ness of it and smiled.

Its a bit hazy for NM, but it helps sell the brightness.

marq4porsche

This looks amazing. I do want to see the sky some though, it's very overblown in some shots.

Habboi

Well done Zip, it's a strong piece. Honesetly there are moments when my eyes are telling me it's a real picture.

And I have to say I lol'd when I saw those older pink pictures because it reminded me of your Japanese scene. I was starting to think your monitor was broken