ArenaNet Environment Art Test - Matt Via

matthewjvia

I had hoped to have this presentable a few weeks ago, but life and work kept getting in the way. As you can see I'm still not finished. I have to texture the windows, stove pipe, and front step still. I was aiming to get the model as close to the concept image as I could and use the textures to make it unique. Please let me know what you think and where I can improve. I know I'm rapidly running out of time, but I don't plan on doing anything else until this thing is as good as I can make it.

matthewjvia

I almost forgot, it's 2984 tris when I include the grass planes. They aren't textured yet, so I just left them out for now. Also this isn't my final lighting, I just threw it together for the post.

iniside

Nice bricks. But wood beams cloud be more aged/disorted. They are to straight, which cloud be nice looking of they were made from new polished wood. Also show wires, because I can't really see where all those tris coming from.
From this screen I can tell you cloud easily cut them from roofs, they don't need to that smooth.

matthewjvia

Most of the tris are coming from the edges of the roof and the supports under it. I originally tried making the roof all as one flat piece, but it looked flimsy, so I added the trim around the edges make it look thicker and hide the switch between the shingles and the boards underneath. It looks better, but it took a big chunk of my budget. I also deleted all of the hidden geometry and removed the grass accounts for about another 100 tris.

matthewjvia

matthewjvia

I took Inside's advice and aged the wood some and adjusted the geo so that the beams aren't so straight. The difference isn't too noticeable, but hopefully it improved it some.

I only have one day left to get this done and sent in, so I would really like to get some last minute advice.

matthewjvia

Well, I didn't get this posted on here in time to get much feedback before the deadline, but I figured whether I get the position or not, I'd like to at least learn from doing this. These are my final renders and textures from the art test. I would really like to know what I need to improve on for future projects.

ParoXum

Looks good on the mesh it seems, but there's so much texture space wasted really, texel ratio could have been much higher with stacking.

matthewjvia

Yeah, I staked some, but not enough. In my head it seemed necessary to have as many unique parts as I could, but when I made the final texture it didn't really make a difference. I'll keep that in mind next time.