This is looking fantastic. I Agree with the flowers also. It'll definitely add to it.
I also agree with acumen, some more geometry on the rocks and/or some extra floating land pieces that aren't necessarily attached to the garage would add some context to it.
The building and other details are great. rocks need some love in order to have a consistent level of quality.
Acumen - Glad you like it. As for the wood, I'll see how it looks with some more geo. In the concept its really kinda plain wood, that's why I didn't go for chips and what not from the start. I'm assuming you're talking about the bluie wood by the way.
Jessica - Flowers on the way.
DLoud - Thanks. I'll work some more on the rocks. You're talking about the rocky underside of the islands, right? Not the actual little rocks I've kinda scattered about?
dissonance - heh, escher paintings do my head in.
Also thinking I might make either a toilet outhouse thing on a separate little island if I can find the room. I don't want to detract from the main island too much. Or maybe a well on a little island. That might look funny considering there wouldn't be much, if any water.
Another update. I'd say I'm nearly done on this. I feel I need to move onto something new soon. I've added some clouds, which I followed a cool tutorial for, tweaked the sky color to be more like the concept. Also worked on fixing up some textures here and there.
Also spent some time texturing the undersides of the island, and made an outhouse. Also added flowers.
Was thinking I'd also learn how to make one of those edge detection shaders just to see if it looked alright.
Sorry I haven't posted any texture sheets as asked. I'll do that soon, probably once I've got some final renders done. They're not all that spectacular anyway.
Speaking of which, do you guys just do a print screen or something? Or is there a better way to get a final render for folio purposes out of UDK?
Love this little thing man! Inspires me to do something like it.
Not a big fan of the transition of the grass to rock. Feels like there could be a bit more of a overhang instead of it being matted down.
Something like this but not so hairy looking. lol
As for the "renders" out of UDK... it is all realtime so in theory a printscreen is all you should need to do. Unless you are going to be doing any compositing or anything. I would think UDK is robust enough that you wouldn't really need to do any of that.
Keep it up man! This is on the verge of being in my inspiration folder. :P
Edit: Check out this guy's clouds. Food for thought.
Also maybe add more contrasty wood grain on the sign... looks like there is almost none. Then you could probably make the letters solid as they are a bit difficult to focus in on.
letronrael - Thanks.
ladyknowles - Thanks. I'm just using the snippet tool in Windows 7 to take my screenshots.
jeremiah_bigley - Glad you're liking it. Thanks for the paintover. I plan on doing something like that. As for clouds, those guy's skies are looking awesome; I just don't think they'll suit my art direction as much. I'll fix the sign as well. It was looking a little off to me too ha.
Chimp - Thanks. I'm probably going to leave the roof as is, but I'll see what I can do about the rock texture. I might've forgotten to sharpen it actually.
n88tr - Thanks for the idea. I'm not keen on making another spot for landing but its given me an idea. might make the bridge lead to a little fish pond or something.
Looking great Hayden! I agree about the big island rock texture maybe needing more detail, and some grass clumps for edges. Needs more clouds too! Don't forget to put that little round window back in! The outhouse you added is really cute too haha.
Another update. I worked on the grass to rock transition a bit more. Tried to follow jeremiah_bigley's feedback.
I'm still unsure whether or not to add another island or what to put on it. I was thinking either a Bird pond or an actual little pond. But I'm not sure if another detailed area will draw too much attention away from the focus of the piece.
As it stands now, what you guys reckon? Would this be good for my folio? I want to finish up soon and start something new.
PS - I have a folio, but how the heck do you add a signature on Polycount?
very sweet, love the colorscheme, i think the building could be a bit less straight though, irs looking all so geometrical, i think a bit more crooked could work out very well
well done!
i think the scene could use some more ambient light. nvm the sun, since its up there in the sky, some amount of light will come from anywhere, including from below.. and softer shadow would work better with the whole hand painted theme, my 2 cents.
Neox - Thanks. I'm a big fan of your art. I'm tempted to try and change the shape language a bit now that I'm almost done. I kept it straight to try and follow the concept. What sort of things would you change? Like flare out the ends of the beams and things like that?
Kind of like this?
vreza - Other than just lowering the light map resolution of certain meshes, I have no idea how to do soft shadows, heh.
yeah much better, its really not much work overall, you can just grab the building and deform it with ffd/lattic volumes - but yeah just checked the concept, it's also very angular - didn't read from your first post, sorry
But i think your latest changes gives it a lot more character
Hey everyone. Back with another update. I took Neox's suggestion of breaking up the straightness and making the overall shape language of the buildings more crooked.
I think it looks a lot better than the regular, straight one did, even if it does veer from the concept. I figure its okay to add little changes like this.
I also added some more grass and rocks here and there and made a little bench. Overall, its either 4234 tris or 6012 instanced tris. I don't know what the instanced ones mean.
I didn't add the rope over the top of the garage doors like in the concept because I wasn't sure how to do it, unless I just used an alpha plane and texture the rope on. I also left out the round window on the top building because I thought it just wasn't necessary. Seemed like a dumb spot to put a window.
What do you guys think? If there aren't any major problems then I'm going to call this finished, make it the first part of my game-art folio and start on something new. Probably going to make something like a machine gun or a sci fi environment to balance out all this bright whimsical stuff so I can feel like a proper man again.
A big thank you to everyone who gave me feedback and helped me along the way. I'm pretty motivated now; I never had the knowledge to finish the few other UDK environments that I'd started.
awesome work man! There`s a vibrancy to this thats really appealing. The ONLY thing that irks me is the tower on top. The fluting of the shape helps, but it still seems a wonky. Perhaps scaling it down on the Z while still retaining the scale of the window as a separate object, might be worth a stab.
Speaking of which, do you guys just do a print screen or something? Or is there a better way to get a final render for folio purposes out of UDK?
use [tab] to get to the console, rather than [~], and turn off the UI with ToggleHUD, scroll the mousewheel until there is no weapon in your hand, use Ghost to navigate to a good position, then use Tiledshot n to take a screenshot, where n is the number of times bigger you want the screenshot than your current resolution. for instance, if you're running the game in an 800x600 window, Tiledshot 2 would produce an 800*2x600*2 = 1600x1200 screenshot, and Tiledshot 4 would give you a 800*4x600*4 = 3200x2400 screenshot. from here, open them up in photoshop and scale them down to your desired resolution, and because of the downscaling, you'll get a bit of fake AA thrown in for free. you'll find the images themselves in C;\UDK\UDK-[UDK version]\UDKGame\Screenshots
Lovely work man, absolutely terrific execution of an original concept. I do think the tower is starting to look off, it's scaled too large and too tall compared to the concept. Keep up the good work!
scottjrobertson - I didn't go with the tower in the latest image. I went with the one before it. I'll see about toning it down a bit. Thanks.
Noors - Thanks. Going to revise some things in this soon. Already started on something new, but when I do, I'll address the planks. Not sure what you mean by flabby, but yeah, I'll fix the highlights. As for contrast, you mean between the planks themselves?
dissonance - Thanks a lot for explaining all that. I'll give it a shot!
I really think you did a good job on this scene overall. A couple of things really catch my attention though. First, I really think you can go into a bit more detail in your rock and grass textures and just do one more detail pass. They lack a lot of the lighting and color that your concept has.
The concept has a lot more vibrancy than your scene has now. Everything feels muted in a way that doesn't bring as much life as you want to have. I think you can have some of that edge line in your texture to bring out some depth that the concept has. Next I actually think you went a bit too low poly in certain areas and it hurts the scene more than help it. The ground shapes are suffering and aren't as detailed as they should be. The shapes of the rocks underneath can be better defined, for instance. This really feels like a fun environment but with a couple more tweaks it could be amazing.
marq4porsche - Thanks. I'll re-do the rock underneath the island like you say. I was afraid of going too high poly with it, but yeah, I can see how it's too low. I'll shape some actual rock formations in there. I might have to just re-do the whole island from scratch, as I really think the way I approached it was wrong. I'll work on getting that vibrancy in there too.
Oh and another thing about taking screenshots, after you hit tab, type in "fly" so you can move around freely in 3d. That way you won't keep falling forever...
Replies
I also agree with acumen, some more geometry on the rocks and/or some extra floating land pieces that aren't necessarily attached to the garage would add some context to it.
The building and other details are great. rocks need some love in order to have a consistent level of quality.
Jessica - Flowers on the way.
DLoud - Thanks. I'll work some more on the rocks. You're talking about the rocky underside of the islands, right? Not the actual little rocks I've kinda scattered about?
dissonance - heh, escher paintings do my head in.
Also thinking I might make either a toilet outhouse thing on a separate little island if I can find the room. I don't want to detract from the main island too much. Or maybe a well on a little island. That might look funny considering there wouldn't be much, if any water.
maybe give the smaller islands more of a purpose than just to prop the dock up, seen as theres ladders there.. or have some for of repair going on
Also spent some time texturing the undersides of the island, and made an outhouse. Also added flowers.
Was thinking I'd also learn how to make one of those edge detection shaders just to see if it looked alright.
Sorry I haven't posted any texture sheets as asked. I'll do that soon, probably once I've got some final renders done. They're not all that spectacular anyway.
Speaking of which, do you guys just do a print screen or something? Or is there a better way to get a final render for folio purposes out of UDK?
Do you used Tiled Shot in UDK to take screenshots?
Not a big fan of the transition of the grass to rock. Feels like there could be a bit more of a overhang instead of it being matted down.
Something like this but not so hairy looking. lol
As for the "renders" out of UDK... it is all realtime so in theory a printscreen is all you should need to do. Unless you are going to be doing any compositing or anything. I would think UDK is robust enough that you wouldn't really need to do any of that.
Keep it up man! This is on the verge of being in my inspiration folder. :P
Edit: Check out this guy's clouds. Food for thought.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1496477&postcount=342
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1496271&postcount=324
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1496269&postcount=54
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1496070&postcount=52
I think the clouds look a bit weird in that final shot. Maybe spread in 2 separate clouds, like less in a bunch behind the garage.
and I don't know about that render question you asked
:DDD
here's some things I'd change personally:
- the mud/rock texture below is rather blurry compared to everything else, add some detail there.
- the wooden roof planks are a bit big, the scale feels off, i'd tile it a bit more so there are twice as many as there are currently.
just my opinion though, great work regardless.
ladyknowles - Thanks. I'm just using the snippet tool in Windows 7 to take my screenshots.
jeremiah_bigley - Glad you're liking it. Thanks for the paintover. I plan on doing something like that. As for clouds, those guy's skies are looking awesome; I just don't think they'll suit my art direction as much. I'll fix the sign as well. It was looking a little off to me too ha.
Chimp - Thanks. I'm probably going to leave the roof as is, but I'll see what I can do about the rock texture. I might've forgotten to sharpen it actually.
n88tr - Thanks for the idea. I'm not keen on making another spot for landing but its given me an idea. might make the bridge lead to a little fish pond or something.
More updates sooooooon.
n88tr - that is an excellent spaceship
Edit: And yes, show us your flats!
I'm still unsure whether or not to add another island or what to put on it. I was thinking either a Bird pond or an actual little pond. But I'm not sure if another detailed area will draw too much attention away from the focus of the piece.
As it stands now, what you guys reckon? Would this be good for my folio? I want to finish up soon and start something new.
PS - I have a folio, but how the heck do you add a signature on Polycount?
i think the scene could use some more ambient light. nvm the sun, since its up there in the sky, some amount of light will come from anywhere, including from below.. and softer shadow would work better with the whole hand painted theme, my 2 cents.
Kind of like this?
vreza - Other than just lowering the light map resolution of certain meshes, I have no idea how to do soft shadows, heh.
But i think your latest changes gives it a lot more character
I think it looks a lot better than the regular, straight one did, even if it does veer from the concept. I figure its okay to add little changes like this.
I also added some more grass and rocks here and there and made a little bench. Overall, its either 4234 tris or 6012 instanced tris. I don't know what the instanced ones mean.
I didn't add the rope over the top of the garage doors like in the concept because I wasn't sure how to do it, unless I just used an alpha plane and texture the rope on. I also left out the round window on the top building because I thought it just wasn't necessary. Seemed like a dumb spot to put a window.
What do you guys think? If there aren't any major problems then I'm going to call this finished, make it the first part of my game-art folio and start on something new. Probably going to make something like a machine gun or a sci fi environment to balance out all this bright whimsical stuff so I can feel like a proper man again.
A big thank you to everyone who gave me feedback and helped me along the way. I'm pretty motivated now; I never had the knowledge to finish the few other UDK environments that I'd started.
Only little crit: the blanket looks like a checker area, maybe
you can pucker it more
marq4porsche - Haha thanks.
konstruct - Thanks. I'm not totally sure what you mean by the top tower. Do you mean to just try flaring out the bottom like this?
Noors - Thanks. Going to revise some things in this soon. Already started on something new, but when I do, I'll address the planks. Not sure what you mean by flabby, but yeah, I'll fix the highlights. As for contrast, you mean between the planks themselves?
dissonance - Thanks a lot for explaining all that. I'll give it a shot!
The concept has a lot more vibrancy than your scene has now. Everything feels muted in a way that doesn't bring as much life as you want to have. I think you can have some of that edge line in your texture to bring out some depth that the concept has. Next I actually think you went a bit too low poly in certain areas and it hurts the scene more than help it. The ground shapes are suffering and aren't as detailed as they should be. The shapes of the rocks underneath can be better defined, for instance. This really feels like a fun environment but with a couple more tweaks it could be amazing.