Small Street Scene

fanaya2001

I am working on this small street scene for a final of my class. Im recently learning normal maps and we have been using 3DS Max 2011 and Mudbox 2012. The requirements is just to make it look bad ass. This is what I got for the moment. I am open for any recomendations.

fanaya2001

This the image ill be working with

fanaya2001

ranger_park

I dont understand what the squares around the stop sign are supposed to be. and you have two cylinders ( that im assuming are just pillars) that are just there...what are these? and is that a wheel on the fence? If it is, why is it there? You should try to make your scene tell a story.

Also, you need to add a LOT more props/objects. Have you learned how to texture yet?

fanaya2001

The squares are going to be rocks and the after the rocks, those long rectangles are going to be logs. I want to try to recreate this scene since it reminds me of my old fashion Mexican neighborhood. They usually have tons of decoration with old tools or objects outside their fence (in this occasion rock wall) in which hopefully I can later on. The two cylinders are were the trees going to stand.

I have two weeks to finish this and I do know how to texture, but the focus of this project is focused on the normal maps. After the assignment is done, I would like to texture everything.

I'll try to be more descriptive next time

fanaya2001

ranger_park

The wheel doesnt look like its resting against the fence. You also have shadows going in different directions( the trees, stop sign, mail box). And the shadows of the stop sign and the fire hydrant are a lot softer than the rest of your shadows. The ground texture is starting to look good but does need more work. When you get up close it gets really blurry.

fanaya2001

I have been having some issues with Mudbox, and I haven't found the answer to fix this. I have done some research, asked a few people and I got no answer.

I have been trying to export the normal map several times, but they would always come out very strange. Instead of pushing the detail out, it seemed as if it was sinking in.



The left image is the mesh with the normals and it appears the same way in 3ds. Any suggestions?

This is my update, I am going to begin working on the trees and the aloe.

Ranger, thank you. My scene was very vague at first and I think that it still is. I have been doing some sketches to define more the scene to fill out the emptiness.

fanaya2001

I was late and been working on many things. But here is what I have.

keres

Are you rendering this with mental ray or a game engine? I can't shake the feeling it was rendered MR.

Joopson

Try inverting the green channel in the normal map. Not sure if Mudbox can do that automatically, but that should fix the normal map problem.

fanaya2001

Keres
The rendering was done in 3Ds Max with the default scanline Renderer

Joopson
I have tried to invert the green channel and it still makes it look weird.

Alex3d

Switch render to Mental Ray, you'll get better quality. Please increase the size of your terrain, and set up a skybox, its really painful to look at your assets with such a setup... Now you need to work on your lighting.

ranger_park

What is your building supposed to be made out of?

fanaya2001

adobe.... but ill im going to try to work on a different scene... this is the first one i have created... thank you all

Rick_D

it's coming along well, lighting is definately the low point here. consider putting it into an engine (cryengine might be the easiest with the best results), or just start checking out some lighting tutorials.

the normal map issue is because it's inverted. when you add a normal map into a regular shader in max you need to make sure it is set to normal bump, not just bump, and if the mp appears inverted you can set your "bump scale" to -100