amazing! like before, really inspiring.
Love how you show everything step by step. Can't wait when this level is finish.
Btw, how many hrs/ days would u say u spend on this
I would try out a subtle orange glow in the carvings on the stones. It would be a nice compliments to the blues and greens.
ACE! Will definitely try this. :thumbup:
Btw, how many hrs/ days would u say u spend on this
Wow. It's become a little hard to determine by now. I've had a LOT of interruptions along the way. Job interviews, art tests, trips outside the country, Christmas break, etc. If I were to lump together an approximate of how long it's taken me to get to this spot, I'd say about a month (if I were to work weekdays, full time and uninterrupted).
OK mutatedjellyfish, I gave your suggestion a try and... I love the results! I am definitely going forward with this. Here's a quick & dirty .gif of how the runes look in-game:
Looking really good and very promising. I'd suggest to play around with the tint of the glowing crevices, maybe going for some glowing blue and save the red tint for some torches to put a along the path to balance the colors.
You might also need to darken the whole scene, you can achieve that by lowering the tone mapping values or turning down the environement lighting values.
Using some fuzzy shading in the material editor could also add some rim lighting to your models and help with the atmosphere.
All valid points choco, I think I'll keep the crevices that way for now since the center piece will be a strong source of blue light along with the moonlight, but that could change any time since I haven't started dealing with lighting. Once all the meshes and textures are done I'll definitely follow your suggestions, especially the rim lighting one. Thanks dude!
Can you break down how you did the large center ground rock piece. The one surrounding the hole.
Thanks!
With pleasure.
I took a great deal of inspiration for the center piece (and many of the rocks) from Orb's work in Crasher. (If you haven't checked out that thread, DO SO, it's full of concentrated awesome).
Specifically, I looked at this piece he did:
So I split the circular dais in 1/4, got that into Zbrush and went to town on it:
I used a couple of brushes from Orb himself, which he graciously released with a tutorial on his portfolio.
Then I took the 1/4 chunk for the lowpoly, unwrapped it and threw that into xNormal along with the high poly and got the normals & AO, which led to this:
Then after that it's just throw it into UDK, check that it looks sexay, and that's about it.
No sir! It was all hand-carved. Alpha stamps are awesome and much faster, but I wanted the carvings to look very irregular and primitive so I drew all that by pulse and only used smaller stamps for cracks and gashes.
This time I completed the little pedestal fountain in the center and of course the crystal. Still need to work on the chains anchoring the crystal to the pedestal, but I'm doing some research to see if I can animate the crystal bobbing up and down while having physics affect the chains.
After this, It's lighting, particles, some terrain tweaking, background elements and then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
I had to scramble to finish this before GDC, but here is how it all turned out.
I had the chance to show a little fly-through video I made of this to a few people at the Thursday gathering at Lefty's at GDC, and the feedback I got was pretty eye-opening (made much more sense than anything I was told at any of the career pavillion's booths).
So here's how it looks in motion, with said feedback applied:
Finally, I have to thank ALL OF YOU who submitted such great feedback through the development of this scene, you guys rock so hard, the amount of motivation you fueled into this project was massive.
You really took this above and beyond from the first few stills you posted a while back. It was a pleasure to watch it evolve into a beautiful piece of work.
My one minor nitpick is that water on the dais area. The only visual indication that told me it was water was the lily pads floating on the top. You may want to revisit the water material, it's much too clear and dark, looking almost nonexistent.
Hi Kaiser, I'm planning on making some rocks to go in an environment for my academic studies, any tips of getting something remotely similar to the new rocks you made? Thanks in advance.
Hi there! For the small stones, someone posted THIS TUTORIAL in the early pages of this thread, I used it for smaller rocks and it can come in pretty handy if you lack Zbrush or Mudbox.
For the big rocks I did use Zbrush, just made a blob with ZSpheres and messed it up with a combination of Flatten brushes and Trim Dynamic brushes, and the cracks were carved with Orb's own custom brushes. Then it was just standard procedure. Generate a low poly version, unwrap, bake Normal/AO, get some nice rock texture references, manipulate that in Photoshop until it looks like it belongs in your scene, and then test it in UDK.
Oh and don't be afraid to research the types of rocks that exist and which one better fits your scene. That will be incredibly helpful come texture time.
Replies
Love how you show everything step by step. Can't wait when this level is finish.
Btw, how many hrs/ days would u say u spend on this
ACE! Will definitely try this. :thumbup:
Wow. It's become a little hard to determine by now. I've had a LOT of interruptions along the way. Job interviews, art tests, trips outside the country, Christmas break, etc. If I were to lump together an approximate of how long it's taken me to get to this spot, I'd say about a month (if I were to work weekdays, full time and uninterrupted).
Now on to the pedestal in the center. Getting closer!
I'm starting to love this!
You might also need to darken the whole scene, you can achieve that by lowering the tone mapping values or turning down the environement lighting values.
Using some fuzzy shading in the material editor could also add some rim lighting to your models and help with the atmosphere.
Keep up the good work
Can you break down how you did the large center ground rock piece. The one surrounding the hole.
Thanks!
Secondly, on to your foliage......AMAZING! LOVE IT! This enviro is looking great and turning out to be quite good inspiration, congrats
With pleasure.
I took a great deal of inspiration for the center piece (and many of the rocks) from Orb's work in Crasher. (If you haven't checked out that thread, DO SO, it's full of concentrated awesome).
Specifically, I looked at this piece he did:
So I split the circular dais in 1/4, got that into Zbrush and went to town on it:
I used a couple of brushes from Orb himself, which he graciously released with a tutorial on his portfolio.
Then I took the 1/4 chunk for the lowpoly, unwrapped it and threw that into xNormal along with the high poly and got the normals & AO, which led to this:
Then after that it's just throw it into UDK, check that it looks sexay, and that's about it.
Hope that helps!
Did you use mostly Alpha stamps to make the details?
This time I completed the little pedestal fountain in the center and of course the crystal. Still need to work on the chains anchoring the crystal to the pedestal, but I'm doing some research to see if I can animate the crystal bobbing up and down while having physics affect the chains.
After this, It's lighting, particles, some terrain tweaking, background elements and then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
I had to scramble to finish this before GDC, but here is how it all turned out.
I had the chance to show a little fly-through video I made of this to a few people at the Thursday gathering at Lefty's at GDC, and the feedback I got was pretty eye-opening (made much more sense than anything I was told at any of the career pavillion's booths).
So here's how it looks in motion, with said feedback applied:
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Finally, I have to thank ALL OF YOU who submitted such great feedback through the development of this scene, you guys rock so hard, the amount of motivation you fueled into this project was massive.
My one minor nitpick is that water on the dais area. The only visual indication that told me it was water was the lily pads floating on the top. You may want to revisit the water material, it's much too clear and dark, looking almost nonexistent.
For the big rocks I did use Zbrush, just made a blob with ZSpheres and messed it up with a combination of Flatten brushes and Trim Dynamic brushes, and the cracks were carved with Orb's own custom brushes. Then it was just standard procedure. Generate a low poly version, unwrap, bake Normal/AO, get some nice rock texture references, manipulate that in Photoshop until it looks like it belongs in your scene, and then test it in UDK.
Oh and don't be afraid to research the types of rocks that exist and which one better fits your scene. That will be incredibly helpful come texture time.
And thanks for the tips!