Skymill

[Deleted User]

A 5 week project at school. limits 5000 tri count and 1 2048map

Critiques are welcome

Anyone with UDK lighting tips are greatly appreciated.

ErichWK

You probably would have done better to do a 512 wood texture and smartly tiled it. Same with the rocks. For the amount of tris you put in those rocks, I would've expected you to do more with the geometry and push it. Good mood/palette though. I'd bump up the saturation on the grass.

gsokol

Yup, like ErichWK said...uniquely unwrapping that wood is icky. Only benefit your getting there is that you have ao baked...but for a large area like this you can get by with SSAO/lightmass.

For your lighting..its very neutral right now. Also, it doesn't match the sky at all..they need to match or it will look pretty bad.

Lighting for an outdoor environment should mostly be easy though..you have one main source of light...the sun. Are you using a directional light currently? Also..are you using lightmass?

toxic_h2o

Looks sweet dude! couple things I notice, the cracks in the rocks feel a little overall large(something I struggled with), and dont really read well especially in the udk shot. Also when using a limited poly count I would optimize the tris on the rocks a bit more, seems to be some waste there.

The grass is really pixelated so like Elizabeth said, I would either up the texture or take it out all together, its kind of an odd place for grass anyways. I would take the tris from the rocks and add more rocks up there. Also the seam is pretty noticeable under the platform where the grass and rock meet. I do like the green the grass adds though, so maybe instead of grass you add some plant alpha cards or vines growing on things which can just be added to the texture. I really like the pipes, I question how they intersect the platform though. I might have made them go around and underneath it to avoid that transition. The spec on the rocks feels a bit much and you might be able to push the spec on the none rusted parts of the pipes. There are other things but these are a few that stood out.

Overall I really like the idea, just a few things that could be pushed more. Also im currious why you choose to do something this large with only that amount of tris? If I had a limit like that I would try and make a small prop that at player perspective would look really nice, do to ur constraints if a player were to get near this it would look pretty pixelated and clunky. 5000tri is way too small for something of this magnitude. However you did a good job for what you had to work with. good exercise for the Blizzard contest.

[Deleted User]

@gsokol currently i have one directional light, a spotlight and a couple point lights.
the directional light is self explanatory, the spotlight is there so it can hit the windmill and make it the main focus originally i was trying to make a volumetric fog affect put couldn't find any tuts on it. and the point light i made a cool blue to contrast the warm colors on the rocks.

also the skydome is UDK stock

jk_virginia

I would zbrush a few wrinkles into the canvas on the windmill also I would show how the beams holding up the balconies connect to the ground adding moss where it touches the grass
and adding something where it connects to the rocks like a metal plate and rivets.

Pickle

agree with everything jk said ^^. Also I think the specular of the metal is maybe too low since it's a windmill in the sky catching alot of sunlight. The detail of the fabric looks too large in the first shot.

keep on going.

[Deleted User]

@jk_virginia awesome ideas! will be adding.

@Pickle i wasn't sure if copper is all that shiny but ill see what i can do. i agree with the cloth fabric though, will be fixing!

Lazerus Reborn

Propulsion of some kind?

Another propeller at the back of the windmill or in the rock base or something. Other than the other picks people have hit upon not much else i can say, so here's the first thing i thought of when i read the title

2:20'

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF9fqx4H_Cg"]Gorillaz - Feel Good inc. Official music video(HD) - YouTube[/ame]

[Deleted User]

@Lazerus Reborn hahaha i totally forgot about the music video

[Deleted User]

some of you might have noticed the tillable wood texture is not the same on the model which is true. i was running late making texture sheets and that was an old screenshot. the texture was way to stylized for my scene so i had to get a better photo source texture and mess with the AO and cavity a bit.

Heres the final wood texture: