WIP - Sci Fi Hanger
So I've been working on a new scene for a client and he's graciously allowed me to share the work in progress scene on here.
Be prepared for a bit of an essay here as I go over the details as well as some very large images grabbed straight from Unity editor...
So the client is after a sci fi hanger bay in Unity engine. The target platform is iOS but for the moment it will serve as a PC based proof of concept for his idea, a semi Infinity Blade style game on rails, not so much for actual production but more to display his skills with app development.
The budget was 10 000 polys and although he didn't specify a memory budget for textures I decided to keep things conservative, both for memory usage and also to test some ideas for workflow and construction.
So based on the initial feedback he drew up a quick mudmap of the scene and where the cameras are...
The dark C shape on the left is a raised catwalk and serves as the entrance to the room.
He also sent through a couple of concepts images he grabbed off the net for reference to the style he wanted from it.
So based off his top down map, I knocked up a quick blockout of the forms and framing...
The spaceship was just grabbed off the net from some free 3d model site, it only serves as a proxy for size and position of the ship which will be designed and created by someone else at a later date. The human character is a free unity model I grabbed for scale ref and the crates were provided by the client.
Using my admittedly poor illustration skills I decided I would mock up the forms and surface shapes of the main platform before modelling anything.
Now in my professional career I've generally worked on very modular environments and the last 2 scenes I've done for my folio (the city scene and the sci fi bridge) were mostly more hand built and unique.
For this I was inspired by some of the modular threads on here and I wanted to see how far I could take it, not so much modularity for piecing together the level in the unity editor, more so for modularly modelling the scene in Maya and getting as much reuse as possible with minimal new materials.
With that in mind I made some shapes on the texture page to suit the style and created modular construction pieces from that. The texture at this stage (and currently still is) is very basic colours and shapes, with a final texture pass to come at the last minute.
My reasoning for working with textures first and modelling shapes based on those came from my wanting to use nDO2 exclusively for the scene and not have to do any high to low poly normal map baking.
Here's the texture in it's current state (at this stage in production though I had less on it)
From that I created the following pieces...
Using the few of those pieces I had at this time I started blocking out the main platform as well as doing a rough lighting pass, the starfield texture was also provided by the client to be used outside the hanger bay. I grabbed my railing from my other sci fi bridge scene as proxy for the catwalks as well.
By this next shot I'd created a few new pieces for the darker interior platform under the ship and blocked it out, I also figured I could use them for the catwalks as well and quickly threw them in to test.
In the next shot I knocked up the pipe\support structure using pieces I'd already made for the main platform as well as roughing out the new railing style for the catwalks (and realizing I'd have to do a majority of the railing via alpha cutout textures rather than modelling otherwise I'd kill my poly budget)
The next shot I basically went to town on the rest of the mesh, using pieces I'd already created I blocked out the hanger door shape, added an overlooking platform above, blocked out some ceiling detail and the wall behind the catwalk.
I wasn't happy with the wall behind the catwalk so I sunk it back somewhat and blocked out some rough doors to each side of the main platform and added some fluff\support detail along that wall.
So although there's elements I'm not 100% happy with I moved onto building it properly, the previous shorts weren't snapped nicely together and I hadn't optimized and removed backfaces.
I'm not completely happy with the back wall behind the catwalk still, I feel it's too bare and on the other end of the spectrum I think the walls below the overlooking balcony above are too busy. I'm also not happy with that other platform\structure to the left of the pipe supports beam, and I've temporarily removed it (though I forgot to remove the lights on it :P
I'm about 4 and a half days into it now with probably a couple of days left I should hope, with the final texture pass of course. I'm only charging the client for 5 days though as he's not in a hurry for the scene and he's allowed me to use it in my folio so I don't mind putting in a little extra work on it.
Oh I forgot to say, I have another texture page I will be using, it currently only has the railing alpha cutout on it but I will be adding various decals to it to scatter around the place and break things up some more, numbers, lines, markings possibly some dirt or scorch marks.
Crits and suggestions are welcome, but I'm working to a small budget, both time and technical limitations here so I can't go overboard.
Be prepared for a bit of an essay here as I go over the details as well as some very large images grabbed straight from Unity editor...
So the client is after a sci fi hanger bay in Unity engine. The target platform is iOS but for the moment it will serve as a PC based proof of concept for his idea, a semi Infinity Blade style game on rails, not so much for actual production but more to display his skills with app development.
The budget was 10 000 polys and although he didn't specify a memory budget for textures I decided to keep things conservative, both for memory usage and also to test some ideas for workflow and construction.
So based on the initial feedback he drew up a quick mudmap of the scene and where the cameras are...
The dark C shape on the left is a raised catwalk and serves as the entrance to the room.
He also sent through a couple of concepts images he grabbed off the net for reference to the style he wanted from it.
So based off his top down map, I knocked up a quick blockout of the forms and framing...
The spaceship was just grabbed off the net from some free 3d model site, it only serves as a proxy for size and position of the ship which will be designed and created by someone else at a later date. The human character is a free unity model I grabbed for scale ref and the crates were provided by the client.
Using my admittedly poor illustration skills I decided I would mock up the forms and surface shapes of the main platform before modelling anything.
Now in my professional career I've generally worked on very modular environments and the last 2 scenes I've done for my folio (the city scene and the sci fi bridge) were mostly more hand built and unique.
For this I was inspired by some of the modular threads on here and I wanted to see how far I could take it, not so much modularity for piecing together the level in the unity editor, more so for modularly modelling the scene in Maya and getting as much reuse as possible with minimal new materials.
With that in mind I made some shapes on the texture page to suit the style and created modular construction pieces from that. The texture at this stage (and currently still is) is very basic colours and shapes, with a final texture pass to come at the last minute.
My reasoning for working with textures first and modelling shapes based on those came from my wanting to use nDO2 exclusively for the scene and not have to do any high to low poly normal map baking.
Here's the texture in it's current state (at this stage in production though I had less on it)
From that I created the following pieces...
Using the few of those pieces I had at this time I started blocking out the main platform as well as doing a rough lighting pass, the starfield texture was also provided by the client to be used outside the hanger bay. I grabbed my railing from my other sci fi bridge scene as proxy for the catwalks as well.
By this next shot I'd created a few new pieces for the darker interior platform under the ship and blocked it out, I also figured I could use them for the catwalks as well and quickly threw them in to test.
In the next shot I knocked up the pipe\support structure using pieces I'd already made for the main platform as well as roughing out the new railing style for the catwalks (and realizing I'd have to do a majority of the railing via alpha cutout textures rather than modelling otherwise I'd kill my poly budget)
The next shot I basically went to town on the rest of the mesh, using pieces I'd already created I blocked out the hanger door shape, added an overlooking platform above, blocked out some ceiling detail and the wall behind the catwalk.
I wasn't happy with the wall behind the catwalk so I sunk it back somewhat and blocked out some rough doors to each side of the main platform and added some fluff\support detail along that wall.
So although there's elements I'm not 100% happy with I moved onto building it properly, the previous shorts weren't snapped nicely together and I hadn't optimized and removed backfaces.
I'm not completely happy with the back wall behind the catwalk still, I feel it's too bare and on the other end of the spectrum I think the walls below the overlooking balcony above are too busy. I'm also not happy with that other platform\structure to the left of the pipe supports beam, and I've temporarily removed it (though I forgot to remove the lights on it :P
I'm about 4 and a half days into it now with probably a couple of days left I should hope, with the final texture pass of course. I'm only charging the client for 5 days though as he's not in a hurry for the scene and he's allowed me to use it in my folio so I don't mind putting in a little extra work on it.
Oh I forgot to say, I have another texture page I will be using, it currently only has the railing alpha cutout on it but I will be adding various decals to it to scatter around the place and break things up some more, numbers, lines, markings possibly some dirt or scorch marks.
Crits and suggestions are welcome, but I'm working to a small budget, both time and technical limitations here so I can't go overboard.
Replies
Lots of cleanup, made some light fixtures\posts, some supports for the catwalk (though I want to redo the pillar part of it), regenerated the cubemap, cleaned up the pipe\support structure. A ton of lighting tweaks.
You have a lot of variations in angles, some of them don't work well together...such as having a 45 degree piece right next to a ~55 degree piece.
You also seem to have a pretty varying level of pixel density. Your back wall looks much noisier and lower res than the floor sections, for example.
Your lighting is too yellow for my taste. I know its cliche, but consider adding more cool colors to your lighting. Maybe use the yellow for accents with the smaller lights, but have a blue ambience to the whole area.
Its coming along overall, your larger pieces remind me a lot of HALO.
Everything is busy and doesnt make sense at 1st glance.
The Flooring has no form, the edging has way too much variation both in the design and angles. As gsokol mentioned.
The Ceiling, looks like a planar map of a tillable texture that doesnt really work with the main shapes.
Barely any real material definition atm, so i hope your final texture pass can pull it all together.
Lighting in general doesnt help selling the depth of the scene. Its flat with a few hotspots. That Chalky yellow lighting/Fog coming from underneath is way too pastelly.
Hopefully another week on this will give it the time it deserves.
The yellow actually came from one of the reference concept pieces, but I will try introduce some more blue\green ambient colours which will hopefully balance out the scene a bit more.
I've only had\have a week on this so I have to focus my efforts from here on in to achieve the most bang for buck, so unfortunately redoing the angles of the pieces is probably off the cards at this stage. I intend to have less contrast in those angle panel shapes though which should hopefully reduce their notice-ability. The centerpiece of the scene will be the ship when it's eventually done so hopefully that will give the scene the focus it needs.
The ceiling should be an easy fix, it IS a planar map at this stage and is a leftover from the blockout stage.
Had a few thoughts if you'd like some outsider ideas to this Project:
Under all the green tones, the hazard strips are losing their cautionary color scheme.
Same going for the Pipes up on the ceiling too. Maybe try and bring them back? Get some warmer tones to help them pop back out.
Also, is the SpaceShip the main focus in the scene?? perhaps gather alot more light around that area, to pop the ship out also.
Heres a quick color correction...
Cheers mate, bean.
Here's a rough blockout of the main view, what it would look like with a proxy ship, imagine some crates dotted around underneath it as well, with an enemy in the foreground.
I'll run your change past the client, he had specific reference concept he sent me to go by which is where the green\blue and yellow scheme came from, I'm not sure how attached he is to it though.