Around the World in 12 Months

Scozzi

Hey Polycounters! It's that time of year again. The time we make resolve to change our lives in one way or another and hope that we will maintain our desire for improvement. This year for 2012 I plan to explore the world through level design (possibly a bit of an exaggeration.) In order to get some practice and solid exposure to UDK I am going to be attempting to produce 1 UDK level every month for 12 months. The levels will hold basic, if not loose, associations with the season of that month. I will be very open to any and all critique and affirmative or critical words that can help me grow as an environment artist. I'm also going to open up a few of the levels to collaborative work in various capacities. (I'll talk more about that another time). January's UDK level is going to be a snow covered English village! I'm exciting about this overall project and I'm hoping to have a least two portfolio worthy levels when it's all said and done. I'll be uploading some early reference shots for the first level soon!

Macattackk

sounds like a great resolution and mission. good luck!

for december you can do an apocalyptic north pole, since the world is supposed to end

Scozzi

Ha! Wonderful idea! I'll definately keep that one in mind.

Scozzi

Hey all, hope everyone had a safe and fun new years. So far today I am primarily making sure the UDK pipeline is set up well so I don't have to many significant issues along the way. But Ill To ahead and share my basic direction for the first level. I've decided today the ski resort in February, so for January I will be doing an English village similar to the town in hot fuzz (wells, somerset) Here is my first mood board for the month. I'll try to get a bit more reference up through the fourth.

My basic guidelines for each month will be:

• Day 1-5: Reference, color, Style, and layout
• Day 6-7: Terrain, hopefully foliage thoughts
• Day 8-10: foliage and terrain wrapup
• Day 11-20: Static Meshes
• Day 21-25: Layout and Building
• Day 26-27: Tweaking
• Day 28-31: Post Process and finish

If anyone has any suggested modifications to that I would love to hear them. PS for some reason i havent been able to upload images on pc so ill try to troubleshot that then update further.

Wonkey

Let's see your Progress!

Oranghe

nice idea gogo!

JR

Where are the WIPS, fellow? Cheer up!

Scozzi

Scozzi

Jessica Dinh

What a great idea to keep you on your toes! Sounds ambitious! I'll be watching.

WarrenM

Great idea, Scozzi! Good luck!

Sako

will be great to follow and learn from! Good luck, sir!

jeremiah_bigley

I am all for reference and research... but 5 days seems pretty long for just gathering pictures and getting ideas. I would think you could at least be blocking out your layout in within those first 5 days.

Nonetheless... Waiting on that 3d :P

Scozzi

Alright! So glad to see so many people excited for the idea. especially a couple of outstanding artists I have already been following and have a lot of respect for! Hope I can impress. Sorry I've been slow to start. Holiday's and such got in the way a bit, None the less. My semester has begun and as it stands I will strive to post updates on Wednesdays and Sundays... keep me to it! I'll probably have an extractor For you this week as well.

Scozzi

Hey everyone! Sorry for the wait! My classes this semester have me running all over town for supplies. Anyway, here is a quick three dee update for ya! The first shot shows a few of the pieces created currently for a modular set. I just watched the modular workflow video again on 3d motive. http://www.3dmotive.com/training/udk/modular-building-workflow/?follow=true

which I think is really nice, And I really like the idea of modeling from an image as well, so that is what I have done here. Currently i don't feel like its really fitting my theme even though I relatively like the pieces. Anyway, heres the stuff, the three tiered stone base is intended to be in the center of the city and hold either like a large clock or a sign of some sort. Look forward to hearing what ya think, and even opinion on what it should be! So inform you as to what i had in mind to fill out the town. I was thinking of a small central block for the city, a small residential area across the river to the south east, and a small farm and barn to the southwest, with a train station with Tracks heading into and outta the woods to the west of town. The area will be surrounded with woods, with signage saying wolves have been spotted Fun fun. Hope everyone is well!

Wonkey

Post some Progress and show us your layout!

Scozzi

Alright, another quick update before I head off too classes. I've done more work on my other two texture sheets. Overall though I am way behind. Hopefully I'll be able to kick it in to gear and get it mostly wrapped up by the end of the month. In general if a level is not quite done, I'll either plan to spend the next month on it, or leave it to revisit at the end of the year. I have three textures sheets currently with 4 (possibly 5 planned) Currently, 1 sheet for downtown city area, 1 sheet for residential area, 1 sheet for streets and roads, walkways and such. I'll try to finish and fill the sheets tonight and I will throw up the layout when I get home as well. I found a cool tutorial on doing modular roads yesterday so I'll probably redo the roads with that seemed more efficient and better than what I am doing now. Anyway, this is just a quick shot, I'll post a more in depth update at the end of the day.

Scozzi

So, unfortunately, I had some computer trouble and business from school and I was not able to adequately wrap this level up for presentation. I definately learned a fair amount from it, and frankly learned the direction I took and scope I had in mind, where not productive to creating the scenes I want to achieve with this threads exercise. I would be glad to do a quick post mortem if anyone was interested. However, at this point I am considering that this level could be completed and be compelling, but it would need a second month. I knew the goal was ambitious, and during the course of the year I may take opportunities to plan two months towards a larger environment, but for the majority I plan to scale down the scope of my scenes a focus on a smaller space to actually create something I can be proud of, instead of what I have with this level which is a hodge podge of assets. Sorry for the anti climatic start to this, and I plan to not disappoint in the future. Februaries level will be an attempt at fusing medival and sci-fi styles for an attractive hallway scene.

S_ource

Not to tell you what to do, but a hallway? isent that kinda werry unoriginal? ;P

Scozzi

Lol yea, it definately is. What about like an intersection. Seen some really cool 4 way stops so to speak

mminnitt

I agree that it's not really fitting the theme yet, and really a lot of the mood board itself doesnt fit with 'English Village'. A good deal of the references seem to be more continental than British, though I suspect some are in England they don't really fit the traditional portrait of the UK.

If you do want to hit the original target I'd do away with the city-type architecture and go with something more rural. At the moment the parts are modern brick and some various tile textures. Personally I'd go for the more archetypal English village or town. The Cotswolds and The Yorkshire Dales are ideal reference for this aesthetic. Couple of images linked to show a town and village.





TLDR: More rural, less continental.

Scozzi

Thanks a bunch mminnett!! Those are wonderful photos, saved and stored! Your very right, that window piece with the pertruding from it threw me off the theme early on. Any way rest assured the theme will be visited, but for now febraury will be a different concept. I will however spend until tuesday trying to prepare a udk render for crit. I wont promise it will be at all related to the theme though :P Thanks so much for the support.

Scozzi

Source i'll try to ponder more unique compositions for the scene to, hallways are way overdone.

Scozzi

Just wanted to drop by and dump some screens of what I have been working on. I decided after last months disappointment I should go back to modeling 101 and go with something I'm more familiar with. (since I can't remember the last time I walked down a sci fi medieval hallway) So, for February I choose to do a movie theater. I have been going for a retro, art deco type look. And I am behind for sure.. but making good progress I think. I have a couple screens of some of the assets, I have also done other stuff like wall lights. I have built the structure to scale on the grid, but I plan to actually construct the building using bsp to try that out. I had a bunch of cool references to show, but unfortunately It was on my slate pc and my sis tripped on the cord and it fell on the floor and now it won't turn on, so my mood boards are gone for now, I'll try to prepare more if I get a chance to show you what I'm looking at here. I think again the scope is way large, but we are gonna take this one down, and I'll scale down a bit in March.

My favorite piece so far is probably the movie poster, but I am having an annoying smoothing error in the corner of the frame. I tried changing the smoothing groups individually for the trim pieces and yet its still there. Any ideas?