I thought you only made prop designs and high poly / sculpts, didn't know you also modeled your LP's. Really outstanding stuff, you learn just by looking at it, you really do.
Nice stuff! I can't help but think that the detailing is really overkill in most of the pieces though. How much of those tiny cracks actually end up in the final normal map anyway? I know it's the Epic way to do things but I'd find a nightmare to work on assets like that so hats off
Nice stuff! I can't help but think that the detailing is really overkill in most of the pieces though. How much of those tiny cracks actually end up in the final normal map anyway? I know it's the Epic way to do things but I'd find a nightmare to work on assets like that so hats off
Kinda have to agree with Minos, but god damn do they look good! How long did that lamp post take you to do?
Kevin may have posted it already in this thread, and it's in the polycount wiki, but if you are following after his working method as so many of us are, read his ppt presentation!
more cool shots and best of all lessons for how to apply the grid, and get the most out of assets. wonderful stuff. and if i may be so bold, even more valuable and interesting than even the mountain of eye candy he always posts once an epic title comes out
Heres a large piece ( with many shots ) I did for the end of game section at the Azura Tower. It... kind of got seriously cut and then obscured, so you can see it as it was intended now.
So true:D I bet you've made enough, Kev, to stretch it at least till Fortnite arrives?
Looks awesome...again...you should try something not awesome for a change
Really nice to try to try pick apart the "design logic" and steal some ideas into my "shape bank". Thanks you very much.
Damn, those last shots (with the tower etc.) are impressive Kevin, those shapes always give me the worst headaches since there is always one or 2 pieces that pinch ever so slightly... makes me cry at night.
You're actually in luck. Digging through my Gears3 folders I see that I saved about 20 or so WIP files that I can do grabs from and show some of the stages I went though. There will be a lot of shots where it will feel like one of those cheap 'here's one I made earlier' deals.
Normally, I save a lot of versions while it is going badly or I am struggling. When 'the shit' starts happening though, I'm chundering forward so quickly and enjoying myself too much to remember to save WIP files.
so you just push a button and this shit happens right? No seriously this stuff beyond amazing. Really appreciate you taking the time to show some stages of your work.
Kevin, Sounds a lot like my workflow. Looking back and cleaning up hard drives and adding stuff not scene yet to my portfolio I have a TON of these iterations as well. Like you it is when I'm trying to figure out how I want things to proceed so I save a copy and do something drastic. EWWW save it as another... Go back to original... do something else.. ok well that's ok but I want to blend it with screw up 2... Oh that looks decent... lets try something else...
Now it's probably not the most efficient method but it works for me currently.
Ok here's the first part of the Azura Tower WIP thread.
First of all here's the concepts.
You can see there are 2 of them. The one on the left was made early on in the project when the best guess about what was going to happen was that 'the storm will be turned off from the button room'. So Shane made the most over the top button room he could imagine
About a year and half later, by the time I came to build the thing, the button room was a tower on top of a tower where there would be a big battle. The room would still have that button inside it but it would be surrounded by some conservatory glass and metal type surround so you could see what was going on in there.
The idea was that Adam would faff around in there , taking his sweet ass time before pressing the button and thus saving Marcus from the huge fight he was having outside to buy him time to.. press the button.
So that left a lot of question marks for me. I got talking with Adam ( the level designer, not Marcus' dad) who was scripting the boss battle and he thought it would be cool to have some kind of cylindrical telescoping floor piece. We thought that if there were a number of levers with codes required before the rest of the floor pieces would slide into place and allow him to travel all the way up to the big button.... it might be less silly.
We pitched it and as there was no clearer thinking as yet on what was going to happen there, people were happy to let us run with that idea.
We didn't think about what was under or around the room with the steps though as the concept only detailed the top room. I left that kind of vague and shit, I didn't really think about that enough. Later, halfway through production, I got the 2nd concept on the right that detailed some of the ideas I'd talked with Adam about, ideas about how the thing would power up, chemical leading in through pipes and gradually lighting up the structure as a way to indicate progress.
Which was much better than the generic panels I had underneath up until that point. You'll see how this all plays out in the WIP shots. I'll explain what was going on at each point to make it clearer. I thought it best to give an overview first.
AZURA TOWER WIP - Part 1
I always start with spline plans, often to decide how many sections I'm going to break a design into. Due to the fact that this will be a huge structure and a cylinder I decided I would model 1/12 of the design, where I could. I started off with the assumption that I would work toward instancing 11 extra copies of 1 piece around the origin point by rotating 30 degrees
Next I plan out the center face piece. I make the designy surround with an extruded spline. For the center I make sphere and cut 2 cylinders out of it at the bottom and then tidy up the edgeloops.
Once I throw those pieces together I try FFD modifying it ... but it looks shit.
I dodge that bullet for a moment and make the floor pieces, which are no brainers.
I continue to hide from the chore of nailing the center and make the window piece into a simple repeating pattern that I know I can deform around whatever cylindrical form I need to later.
I test out how the floor section will telescope around the pivot point. I'm looking to ensure the grid and angle snaps work the way I need them to. I'm counting how many pieces I will need to compensate for each step being only 16 or 24 units down vertically from the one above while still rotating 15 degrees each time. I cut the design in 2 so I could have more texture res.
Still scared of center section. Couldn't really read it clearly in the concept. I decide to make the outer supports instead.
I decide that if I continue to build up from the ground, into the center, it would create ideas or a hint of a conclusion to those forms that terminate in the center. Sometimes building around an area you are creatively dead or intimidated of well left you dig yourself out of the hole. So I plan things out on the front view wtih splines and try to build in some solid mesh flow because I know I may FFD and Bend it drastically later.
So I shelled out those shapes before and sculpted some more stuff, made it more 3d and then put 6 pieces together so that it's segments would be half what the outer floor sections are so they would line up in every 2nd instance. I do this so it looks natural, metal should have seams, panels, welds, bolts. Signs that someone constructed a design rather than sculpted it out of clay help to establish realism and also provide you with more ways to unwrap efficiently, get more resolution and hide your seams with real seams that are part of the design.
So here I am testing the bend.. its slightly off, almost right.. which is why the bend modifier always annoys me compared to the control of Path deformation. It is quicker sometimes though
So here I go back under the bend modifier in the stack and use an FFD modifier on the flat version, pre bend. This allows me a LOT of control in a safe fashion
In the end I have a nice organic shape that still looks manufactured and I mostly just extruded a couple of splines, equalized the subdivides and then deformed it with modifiers.
Can't hide from the center anymore, but I have some forms below that inspire me to NOT deform the clean forms into skewed elastic ones. So I add some edging, detail the center a little and throw in some eye piece cylinders I had from a kitbash layer. I also knock out a ceiling piece, nothing too fancy other than the clean half sphere cuts that I think I can link into struts I'm going to try working in to the center later.
Below are the kitbash pieces I have on the hidden layer. Most of them were from the Centennial bridge set, others from the Char set, some from Gears2 outpost set. It's always good to have a hidden layer with reusable parts like bolts, clamps, cogs, designy furls and loops and so on.
I move back to the floor and start added pipes. I do all of them with splines, that way I can change my mind and move spline points around with 'make visible in viewport' option turned on. When I'm finalized I covert them to editable poly meshs. I've shown some of the pipes in their raw spline version so you can see how much work it is to take them and make them like the ones on the right. You can see I wove the ones on the right, over , under, and through the horizontal pipes... which took time. Making things look chaotic is harder than making things ordered. The concept features really heavy use of pipes though and I had to match that. I also knew I needed to tone it down so it was readable still.
Before I got to this stage btw, I made a lowpoly version of the floor section so Adam ( the level designer , not Marcus' dad ) could test it ingame, built the gameplay around it etc. A sanity check to keep us both sober. The quicker you can get it ingame and test, the better. Especially with huge pieces like this. You can't sit in a bubble for a month with your finger up your arse hoping it will work out while someone waits for you to finish and tries not to worry.
I add some more decorative elements to the roof to better sync with the style of Azura. The concept was reall utilitarian so I was trying to get something more designy in there.
I refined the desk top, thinking about how to making it futuristic, not fall back on generic keyboards.
I start roughing out the braces that will connect the center to the ceiling, I plan part of it with splines. Often, when I have some cylindrical part in a design, I make increasingly enlarged circle splines radiate out from that point like ripples in a pond. I like to have them there to remind me that I could emphasis the center of the cylinders, lead peoples eyes in to those points.
I move back to the floor sections pipes. I'd left them for a while because deforming too many pipes at once drives me nuts.
Started on center pipes, I'm using splines with the snap to fuction set to polygons rather than grid points like I rely on when planning out designs on the front view.
Making good progress now, 'feeling' it, enjoying it; so things are happening fast and I'm making bolder choices. I'm thinking about the hydraulics of the thing, added pivot cylinders which are mostly instanced versions of the center pieces eye pieces. Slowly weaving pipes over everything.
More refinements, checking how the design as a whole is going.
I tend to lowpoly as I go, it keeps me constrained some basic forms when I start wandering too much at the hipoly stage. It helps me to think about polycount early on rather than just cutting loose and not thinking about the cost at the end.
Continuing with lowpoly
At this point I get feedback from Pern. He doesn't like the roof, nor the center section. It doesn't match the skewed quality of the concept enough, its too regular and needs to be deformed and more organic. This is difficult feedback to take on when I'm unwrapping lowpoly versions. It also points me back to the stage at the beginning of this where I started chickening out... which is ironic and then makes the input feel like the thing I should have done in the first place.
So I just go for it and redo the roof inside an hour.
Continue with that
I redo the base of the center face and get the deformation of it and its eyes to look more organic. I feel happier now, I've addressed the concerns and am back on the path.
Kevin, you are an amazing asset to this community.
I haven't been around much lately, but when Jesse posts to FB saying you've unleashed glory, you better believe I come running.
thank you Kevin! thanks for taking the time to write about and upload all those images. really great stuff! It's awesome to see inside your head and your workflow. this makes me want to do some hardsurface modeling
Yup you're pretty much the master of hard surface! Amazing stuff, thanks for taking the time to log everything and share it! I can't wait to see the rest of this break down
Sir you are legend. Thanks so much for the run-through, really helps understanding how you go all the detail packed in without getting lost in greeble.
Below are the kitbash pieces I have on the hidden layer. Most of them were from the Centennial bridge set, others from the Char set, some from Gears2 outpost set. It's always good to have a hidden layer with reusable parts like bolts, clamps, cogs, designy furls and loops and so on.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1200x752.
Very awesome to see your workflow in this thread.
As far as what you said about kitbashing, I just actually made a new tool recently to help make this process more organized/sharable.
I've made some improvements/changes since this video though. Using "Libraries", so you can have a Folder with the created "tools" in it, and load different libraries to drop/add stuff from/into.
Knowing someone as talented as you has those moments of "Ugh, this is frustrating, I don't want to work on it" just because it's not going well, or is one of those problem areas that takes more time, is so good to hear (and see). Even the best of the best have to takes steps back from time to time to make it the best it can be in the end.
Kevin, thank you once again for showing us your workflow and your process. I was beginning to get stressed out just looking at the WIPs and reading through the info on them! It's amazing the work you've got to do in the time you have. Thank you once again and will continue looking forward to the things you show!
Replies
Wat.
Kinda have to agree with Minos, but god damn do they look good! How long did that lamp post take you to do?
"Modular Environment Design, Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the grid".
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/File:Modular_Environment_Design.pdf
more cool shots and best of all lessons for how to apply the grid, and get the most out of assets. wonderful stuff. and if i may be so bold, even more valuable and interesting than even the mountain of eye candy he always posts once an epic title comes out
Heres a large piece ( with many shots ) I did for the end of game section at the Azura Tower. It... kind of got seriously cut and then obscured, so you can see it as it was intended now.
Btw, whats up with the new boards tendency to hide the cursor when typing sporadically?
So true:D I bet you've made enough, Kev, to stretch it at least till Fortnite arrives?
Looks awesome...again...you should try something not awesome for a change
Really nice to try to try pick apart the "design logic" and steal some ideas into my "shape bank". Thanks you very much.
Looks painfull.
Would it be too cheeky to ask for a breakdown on anything or some wip shots next time round? Call me overly curious on your environment work
Inspirational work as usual!
Normally, I save a lot of versions while it is going badly or I am struggling. When 'the shit' starts happening though, I'm chundering forward so quickly and enjoying myself too much to remember to save WIP files.
This will take a while
Now it's probably not the most efficient method but it works for me currently.
So nice to see your work on here
First of all here's the concepts.
You can see there are 2 of them. The one on the left was made early on in the project when the best guess about what was going to happen was that 'the storm will be turned off from the button room'. So Shane made the most over the top button room he could imagine
About a year and half later, by the time I came to build the thing, the button room was a tower on top of a tower where there would be a big battle. The room would still have that button inside it but it would be surrounded by some conservatory glass and metal type surround so you could see what was going on in there.
The idea was that Adam would faff around in there , taking his sweet ass time before pressing the button and thus saving Marcus from the huge fight he was having outside to buy him time to.. press the button.
So that left a lot of question marks for me. I got talking with Adam ( the level designer, not Marcus' dad) who was scripting the boss battle and he thought it would be cool to have some kind of cylindrical telescoping floor piece. We thought that if there were a number of levers with codes required before the rest of the floor pieces would slide into place and allow him to travel all the way up to the big button.... it might be less silly.
We pitched it and as there was no clearer thinking as yet on what was going to happen there, people were happy to let us run with that idea.
We didn't think about what was under or around the room with the steps though as the concept only detailed the top room. I left that kind of vague and shit, I didn't really think about that enough. Later, halfway through production, I got the 2nd concept on the right that detailed some of the ideas I'd talked with Adam about, ideas about how the thing would power up, chemical leading in through pipes and gradually lighting up the structure as a way to indicate progress.
Which was much better than the generic panels I had underneath up until that point. You'll see how this all plays out in the WIP shots. I'll explain what was going on at each point to make it clearer. I thought it best to give an overview first.
AZURA TOWER WIP - Part 1
I always start with spline plans, often to decide how many sections I'm going to break a design into. Due to the fact that this will be a huge structure and a cylinder I decided I would model 1/12 of the design, where I could. I started off with the assumption that I would work toward instancing 11 extra copies of 1 piece around the origin point by rotating 30 degrees
Next I plan out the center face piece. I make the designy surround with an extruded spline. For the center I make sphere and cut 2 cylinders out of it at the bottom and then tidy up the edgeloops.
Once I throw those pieces together I try FFD modifying it ... but it looks shit.
I dodge that bullet for a moment and make the floor pieces, which are no brainers.
I continue to hide from the chore of nailing the center and make the window piece into a simple repeating pattern that I know I can deform around whatever cylindrical form I need to later.
I test out how the floor section will telescope around the pivot point. I'm looking to ensure the grid and angle snaps work the way I need them to. I'm counting how many pieces I will need to compensate for each step being only 16 or 24 units down vertically from the one above while still rotating 15 degrees each time. I cut the design in 2 so I could have more texture res.
Still scared of center section. Couldn't really read it clearly in the concept. I decide to make the outer supports instead.
I decide that if I continue to build up from the ground, into the center, it would create ideas or a hint of a conclusion to those forms that terminate in the center. Sometimes building around an area you are creatively dead or intimidated of well left you dig yourself out of the hole. So I plan things out on the front view wtih splines and try to build in some solid mesh flow because I know I may FFD and Bend it drastically later.
So I shelled out those shapes before and sculpted some more stuff, made it more 3d and then put 6 pieces together so that it's segments would be half what the outer floor sections are so they would line up in every 2nd instance. I do this so it looks natural, metal should have seams, panels, welds, bolts. Signs that someone constructed a design rather than sculpted it out of clay help to establish realism and also provide you with more ways to unwrap efficiently, get more resolution and hide your seams with real seams that are part of the design.
So here I am testing the bend.. its slightly off, almost right.. which is why the bend modifier always annoys me compared to the control of Path deformation. It is quicker sometimes though
So here I go back under the bend modifier in the stack and use an FFD modifier on the flat version, pre bend. This allows me a LOT of control in a safe fashion
In the end I have a nice organic shape that still looks manufactured and I mostly just extruded a couple of splines, equalized the subdivides and then deformed it with modifiers.
Below are the kitbash pieces I have on the hidden layer. Most of them were from the Centennial bridge set, others from the Char set, some from Gears2 outpost set. It's always good to have a hidden layer with reusable parts like bolts, clamps, cogs, designy furls and loops and so on.
I move back to the floor and start added pipes. I do all of them with splines, that way I can change my mind and move spline points around with 'make visible in viewport' option turned on. When I'm finalized I covert them to editable poly meshs. I've shown some of the pipes in their raw spline version so you can see how much work it is to take them and make them like the ones on the right. You can see I wove the ones on the right, over , under, and through the horizontal pipes... which took time. Making things look chaotic is harder than making things ordered. The concept features really heavy use of pipes though and I had to match that. I also knew I needed to tone it down so it was readable still.
Before I got to this stage btw, I made a lowpoly version of the floor section so Adam ( the level designer , not Marcus' dad ) could test it ingame, built the gameplay around it etc. A sanity check to keep us both sober. The quicker you can get it ingame and test, the better. Especially with huge pieces like this. You can't sit in a bubble for a month with your finger up your arse hoping it will work out while someone waits for you to finish and tries not to worry.
I add some more decorative elements to the roof to better sync with the style of Azura. The concept was reall utilitarian so I was trying to get something more designy in there.
I refined the desk top, thinking about how to making it futuristic, not fall back on generic keyboards.
I start roughing out the braces that will connect the center to the ceiling, I plan part of it with splines. Often, when I have some cylindrical part in a design, I make increasingly enlarged circle splines radiate out from that point like ripples in a pond. I like to have them there to remind me that I could emphasis the center of the cylinders, lead peoples eyes in to those points.
I move back to the floor sections pipes. I'd left them for a while because deforming too many pipes at once drives me nuts.
Started on center pipes, I'm using splines with the snap to fuction set to polygons rather than grid points like I rely on when planning out designs on the front view.
More refinements, checking how the design as a whole is going.
I tend to lowpoly as I go, it keeps me constrained some basic forms when I start wandering too much at the hipoly stage. It helps me to think about polycount early on rather than just cutting loose and not thinking about the cost at the end.
Continuing with lowpoly
At this point I get feedback from Pern. He doesn't like the roof, nor the center section. It doesn't match the skewed quality of the concept enough, its too regular and needs to be deformed and more organic. This is difficult feedback to take on when I'm unwrapping lowpoly versions. It also points me back to the stage at the beginning of this where I started chickening out... which is ironic and then makes the input feel like the thing I should have done in the first place.
So I just go for it and redo the roof inside an hour.
Continue with that
I redo the base of the center face and get the deformation of it and its eyes to look more organic. I feel happier now, I've addressed the concerns and am back on the path.
More pipes...aargh!
<<I'll get more of this done another night>>
Saved everything so I can read and study this for the years to come.
This is crazy. Wow... This is 200 times better than how I have been taught at school.
I haven't been around much lately, but when Jesse posts to FB saying you've unleashed glory, you better believe I come running.
Thank you Kevin. Keep up the amazing work.
Very awesome to see your workflow in this thread.
As far as what you said about kitbashing, I just actually made a new tool recently to help make this process more organized/sharable.
http://matthewlichy.com/toolbox/toolbox.html
I've made some improvements/changes since this video though. Using "Libraries", so you can have a Folder with the created "tools" in it, and load different libraries to drop/add stuff from/into.
Thank you for sharing all of this.