[UDK] Watermill

salacious_Crumb

Heres a Watermill environment I have been working on. Modelled in maya and then put together and lit in UDK. Its based on a concept by Guy Dyas, and was used as a set in Brothers Grimm film.
First time doing grass and bushes. Took a while to get right, and I'm still not that happy with the results, I feel they look a little plasticy.
The background trees, and the barrels, are UDKs, and I would like to add my own. I plan on adding a nice zbrush, gnarled copsed tree (see the moodboard). The water and smoke effects are from UDK, but tweaked by me. Everything else is mine.






Reference:

moodboard:

Gannon

This turned out kinda nice, good job.

Only crit's the lighting's a bit dark. It feels like there's only 1 Directional lighting the whole scene. Try putting some ambient low intensity lighting in the darker areas to bring in some more color. Try matching the lighting scenario in your reference and it'll really show off your modeling and texturing skills.

almighty_gir

i think the trusses on the outside of the building come out waaaay too far from the wall, compared to your reference where they are very shallow.

Samfisher84

wooow cool stuff, great athmosphere

salacious_Crumb

Thanks. There is more than just a directional light in the scene. There are two or three ambient lights. Orginally I was going to match the sky in the reference, but someone persuaded me to go for a moodier, darker more dramatic look.
Its really only supposed to be seen from the top images camera angle. But as the rest was modelled I thought I would show those views too.
Does it seem to dark to everyone? I have'nt seen it on other monitors yet, it could be my home monitor is too bright. I could lighten it up a bit.
I made the wood trusses stick out a bit further. I noticed the ones in the reference are just thin bits of wood tacked on the outside of the building. It is just a movie set after all. I wanted my to look more substantial and structural. Perhaps I went a bit too far?

ES_139

very nice, loving this.
You could perhaps push the contrast a bit it seems a bit ....grim
(is that worthy of a 'I see what you did there?')

SirCalalot

Looking really nice - your plants seem spot-on to me

As other have mentioned though, I'd love to see it with a touch more brightness and a tweak on the contrast to bring out the shapes a bit more.

Jessica Dinh

I really love the building model, looks solid! But yeah I believe this is quite dark, I had to tilt my screen just right to see it.

Guy123

Wow this is beautiful, great work! Is there any chance we could please see the flats and wire?

I love this so much!

Mgoblue412

Your normal map on your water wheel seems a bit to strong to me. This looks pretty sweet though

Computron

Seems a little too dark, like the river is almost entirley black

salacious_Crumb

Thanks everyone. I will have a go at lighting it and will post some flats and wires soon. I think my home monitor is quite bright

Having some problems at the moment. I opened the scene in a newer version of UDK and seem to have broken it. The scene is empty. And now when I try and open it in the old version of UDK it crashes. Does anyone has any idea how to fix this?

I started a thread on the tech talk forum:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91555

salacious_Crumb

Ok. Think I solved my UDK project problems. Thought I had messed the whole thing up by moving folders and using a newer version. But all fixed now.

Heres a first attempt at making it brighter. I know lighting is really important. Think I might add another light over the river as it still seems very dark. Shall I go for a completely different sky? Tell me what you think.

SirCalalot

That is looking damn fine!

If you are worried about the river not showing up very well, it might be worth adding a bit more of an emissive value to the material so that it lights itself slightly. Maybe a bit of a sparkle to simulate specular?

Jessica Dinh

Yay that is looking so much better, I can see everything now! xD The sky is fine, in my opinion, and yeah it would be cool if you could find a way to light the water a little bit better

jordan.kocon

I think this looks really cool, but one thing, and sorry if it has been mentioned already, is just lighting up the water a bit. It is still quite dark, and I think the lighting is working really well for the rest of the scene, but I think a bit brighter water would look cool.

Fraeger

Fantastic! The only thing that I think could look better are the trees (they look a bit too lowpoly right now)

Computron

I think it works better now that you brightened up the river's surroundings, I like it the way it looks now.

salacious_Crumb

Thanks everyone. I turned up the emmisive of the water a bit and even put some lights over it.
The trees aren't mine. They are UDks. I might make my own. Some twisted creepy trees. Just want to finish this and move on to new things.

The polycount is fairly high. I could probably instance pieces, like some of the wood timbers. And I beveled some of the beams, which adds to the count. But it is a portfolio piece, so I figure thats better to make it looks nice.

The plaster texture is repeated here and there over the model. I took the idea from Mount and Blade and Oblivion buildings I have seen. The thatch was inspired by a Mount and Blade thread too.

SirCalalot

Nice breakdown, the water definitely looks better without looking out of place

The texture work in particular looks really lush!

ParoXum

Nice stuff. You could save some triangles removing backfaces on your woodbeams. Also the uniquely unwrapped plaster texture could have been made with a tiling one and AO painted on vertex. But I understand your way of doing here since it's the only building of the scene.

salacious_Crumb

Sircalalot-Cheers. I tried hard at the textures. I think the thatch is my favourite. The ground texture was made with Maya Substances. Something I hadn't used before. Comes in bonus tools and they are wicked. And I blended the mud and ground texture in a UDK material to create the river bed. But most of that work was then hidden by the bushes and water!
ParoXum- thanks. Yeah I tried to remove as many of the back faces as I could on the wood beams. The image above of the wires doesn't really show this off! The only beams that are full boxes are the corner ones as they have all 4 sides showing, even if its just a little.
The plaster texture isn't entirely unique. Its used in pieces on the model. Thats why the plaster model has some divisions, to break up and not to overstrtech the texture. I'm not very good at explaining it. But if you look, theres only one diagonal dirt mark on the texture, but the model has several diagonal wood beams. And yeah, could have done it the AO vertex way, but as you said, its the only building in the scene.

Makkon

This is phenomenal. I'd love to see a larger image of this, and also some textured individual asset pictures as well.

SirCalalot

Are you planning on doing a fly-through? Or are the assets not animated?