Abandoned mental institution WIP (UDK)
Hey all,
I'm creating this as a work-in-progress thread for my new UDK scene. I'm planning to post regular updates as I progress, with the goal to get crits as I proceed - I really want to knock this one out of the park for my portfolio (www.adambadke.com)
I'm building an old, decaying, abandoned mental institution. I want to set a very creepy, eerie, lonely vibe, hinting of the supernatural (undead, ghosts, zombies etc)... The type of vibe that would make you afraid to go inside of the house, but the outside environment will seem isolated and empty as well (I'm thinking "28 days later"). I plan to tell somewhat of a story with the scene, I've been mulling over the idea of having the bottom floor of the house totally boarded up, but the front door is cracked open and a creepy light can be see glowing from within. Maybe let the viewer make their own assumption as to what might lurk inside?
I'll be building the environment to be both game ready and modular.
So far, I've completed my first modeling pass of the modular building pieces and set up rough UDK scene. I'll post a WIP shot soon, but until then here is a quick mood board I threw together from some of my reference:
Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks for reading, stay tuned!
I'm creating this as a work-in-progress thread for my new UDK scene. I'm planning to post regular updates as I progress, with the goal to get crits as I proceed - I really want to knock this one out of the park for my portfolio (www.adambadke.com)
I'm building an old, decaying, abandoned mental institution. I want to set a very creepy, eerie, lonely vibe, hinting of the supernatural (undead, ghosts, zombies etc)... The type of vibe that would make you afraid to go inside of the house, but the outside environment will seem isolated and empty as well (I'm thinking "28 days later"). I plan to tell somewhat of a story with the scene, I've been mulling over the idea of having the bottom floor of the house totally boarded up, but the front door is cracked open and a creepy light can be see glowing from within. Maybe let the viewer make their own assumption as to what might lurk inside?
I'll be building the environment to be both game ready and modular.
So far, I've completed my first modeling pass of the modular building pieces and set up rough UDK scene. I'll post a WIP shot soon, but until then here is a quick mood board I threw together from some of my reference:
Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks for reading, stay tuned!
Replies
Good luck.
@ste: Wow, thats crazy man, thanks!! I actually found a lot of really comprehensive reference, and I'm just using the building as inspiration, but I'll keep that in mind. I actually thought the hospital was demolished now?
@Shoy333: The building is Cherry Knowle mental institution. Its super popular with urban explorers for obvious reasons!
I have 2 shots planned right now (plan to use 4 shots total for my portfolio), I figure I'll try and complete my first shot outright and then move onto the others. Should be nice and fast once my assets are nice and polished. Images soon!
http://abandonments.tumblr.com/
To do:
- Build bushes, more trees (lowpoly and billboard), ivy, random garbage and rubble, rags, power lines, drains/gutters, woodshed,
- Damage pass: create a damaged, collapsing version of every modular building piece to break repetition (walls, roof, edging etc)
- Replace placeholder textures
- Maybe build a fallen tree, old wheelchair, axe and chopping block.. (props to set a scene/tell a story... still figuring it out)
- Post processing, fog and lighting pass
- 2nd pass and polish pass
- lots more
Good Start!
On other news, I built a few other props today, I really wanna get this to the polish stage as soon as I can... And then onto another round of job applications - No sleep for me!
Shot 1:
Beginnings of my second shot - I plan to add a wood shed and various other props to the right side of the yard:
Still toying with the angle and framing for my third shot... Let me know if you have any suggestions
Still to do:
- Add fixed cameras into the scene for taking screenshots with. Ideally it would be cool to be able to cycle through them and take my varioius shots, so I could have perfect before/after comparisons... Anyone ever done this before, or know how it can be done in UDK?
- Build bushes, ivy, random garbage and rubble, rags, drains/gutters, woodshed etc
- Damage pass: create a damaged, collapsing version of every modular building piece to break repetition (walls, roof, edging etc)
- Update and finalize placeholder textures (pretty much another pass on everything)
- Maybe build a fallen tree, old wheelchair, axe and chopping block.. (props to set a scene/tell a story... still figuring it out)
- Post processing, fog and lighting pass
- 2nd pass and polish pass
- lots more
For the back yard, I'm leaning towards an brick shack with a tin roof (reusing my brick material) as a focal point, some sort of workmans shed.
Thanks!
Either closely copy the building (and preferably the nearby environment too), or make a really unique building.
There seems to be a few missed details that would really help this out.
The asphalt material looks really new, which isn't helping the "abandoned" part of this.
The curbs are all pretty straight and intact.
There are a lot of leafless trees but not a lot of leaves and muck on the ground. Especially around the trees. Leaves if allowed to decay stain surfaces, even with people taking care of the grounds there would still be stains after 100 years.
As things are left alone the leaves and dirt start to blur the lines between asphalt and ground. The top center image in your ref has a pretty good example of what it would look like.
Here are some more ideas:
http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/4035/PreviewComp/SuperStock_4035-352.jpg
http://brooklynimbecile.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/img_4433.jpg
http://photos.tribstar.com/2010/March-2010/Friday-March-26-2010/MET031510illinois-CTM/825690311_Yd7pe-L.jpg
The roof and bricks look pretty new, there should be a lot more water stains, moss, mold, (dead and new) sun bleaching and rot. Gutters would clog up and sprout plants and leak water down all kinds of bad places staining things.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55927440@N04/5248951224/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Check out the green fuzzy wall in the lower center.
Check out the gutters and all the staining around the drain pipes.
Check out how nasty some of the window sills are.
The trees have a lot of big branches but not a lot of little branches.
Overall I think you're off to a pretty good start but it looks more like the place did when it opened than a place that has been around for 100 years and abandoned for 15-20 years.
I'm doing my "damaged" pass right now - I wanted to get some meshes in and get the scene "presentable" so I could get crits while I worked. Still lots of meshes to come as well (Gutters etc). I'll try and post more pics tonite/tomorrow morning.
I've spent a bunch of time tweaking my UDK install for visual quality, and have also started grabbing my screenshots with a FOV of 45 (thoughts?) for a more realistic "photo" feel.
Updates include various mesh updates, I build and textured a set of modular gutters, hand painted several grunge decals (in channel textures), material tweaks etc etc. I also massively redesigned the 'back' area (that I'm planning on using for shots 2 and 3). I'm planning on using vertex painting on the driveway mesh to add some much needed leaf and grunge build up next to the gutters. I figure I'll do my best to finish the first shot (looking down the driveway to the front entrance) before I move on to the rear.
Lots more to come
With the leaf-less trres: You could try using more alpha-mapped dead branches to bring the counts down. A tree used that much should be around 800-1200 polygons. If speedtree isn't doing exactly what you want it to do in regards to the structure of your tree, edit the tree outside of speedtree for that personal touch.
I originally had trees with alpha'd branches (check out the first set of screenshots where I was first messing with speedtree). I found performance was TERRIBLE. Removing the speedtree 'fronds' and replacing them with geo (and agressive LOD settings, billboards etc) was much, much faster: over 20fps faster when viewing a forest of an identical number of trees in an otherwise empty test map. I read somewhere in the official documentation that geo was preferred to fronds, but I'm certainly not sure. Anyone have any experience with this? I'll definitely be making another pass on those trees, either way.
I think I need to re-level a bunch of my textures... Guess I'll add it to the list!
Also, I cant quite point my finger on whats wrong with those trees, but I wouldn't leaf them looking like that.
More updates. I was feeling a little overwhelmed and stuck, so I decided to take a few days off - sorry for the lack of updates. That being said, it was the best move I could make, I put a few hours in over the last couple of days and the scene is starting to progress again. I'm inspired again!
Biggest changes are to the lighting, driveway and grass. LOTS, LOTS more to come...
Definitely need to do a "trash" pass. I think I'm going to get my foliage to a point where I'm happy, get the lighting closer to final and then start adding more props...
More to come!