ya i can see why. Really detailed tho. Its like something I would see in zbrush. For all your highpoly work, did you use zbrush or did you just model it in maya.
Also for building your low poly. Did you retopo or you just used the same mesh, but just delete/ wield edges. Like working in reverse.
I can never bake that good normal maps in xnormal. What is ur settings?
the issue with your lightmap is just likely because of all the seperate pieces you've got overlapping in many places. If you kept things welded together really agressively this issue would be subdued. check UDN here for their lightmap instruction stuff. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html the point near the bottom where they cover building a crate out of one solid piece of geo is similar to the problem you're running into. thought your higher res lightmaps should help, sometimes with so many chunks it still has trouble (dunno why though, logically). I see you sitched together more elements to get it cleaner. Try maybe leaving less of a gap in between everything. Sometimes I've packed things really tight and still had it render better (more seams possibly, but sometimes that depends on lighting too) then when leaving lots of padding. Errors can be likely, dont get me wrong, but at least you'd have more space to render the form, which seems to be getting destroyed here.
Keep it up though! these are looking really great and making me super nostalgic!
Iciban - I didn't use zBrush on the first few assets including the teleporter, but I did on my current one, though I overdid it. For the low poly I save out the mesh before I add control edges and small details so I can go back to it later and optimize that rather than my finished high poly. However, this does require me to rebuild parts from time to time. As far as baking goes, it's just a lot of trial and error. I explode everything and do test bakes to find out where I should put hard edges and UV seams and try again. In the end I normally end up putting a couple maps together in photoshop.
danjohncox - Bah, I was hoping for some better news. I'll have to play around with my lightmap UVs and the packing to try and get the best I can out of it. Thanks for the info.
Tiny update for now, just started work on painting details, still no spec. I don't know if I'm just kidding myself with that hex pattern or not.
Man, these are just awesome! I wonder how easy it would be to mod Blue Burst to run with these models instead of the originals.
I was wanting to find time for a project similar to this, but remaking my characters from the original PSO with the designs from the screenshots of characters from PSO2.
Anuxinamoon - Thanks, I bumped up the saturation just before taking that last shot, perhaps I should do some more. I'll see how it looks when I get all these things together.
In UDK, and I've been working on beam. I'm using a flipbook texture for the lightning and simple emitter for some animated specks. Also, the screen text now scrolls, and for the big PSO fans, the text is the lyrics to the opening song.
Just wanted to say that somehow I missed this project of yours, but saw it for the first time in the WAYWO thread; I immediately said "That looks eerily like PSO" which I hadn't seen in 8 years. So, awesome job capturing that!
Axios: cool work, I'm digging all the cool props in this thread. For that lightning you say you are using a flipbook. I made a similar effect once in UDK with a few tiled textures and some panner material nodes. It might give you smoother animation in-game.
Thanks, I'll revisit that material as I get through this next asset since it basically uses the same effect.
Just an update for the sake of consistency. Started in on the fence that the console controls. It's just a blockout for now, still coming up with shapes and details. Methinks I'll start working on a small scene for this stuff once I finish this one.
Axios - Thanks for the link. The textures are looking amazing. How many props are you planning to make? Just curious, but are you working for any game company? With your talent you have to be
Just adding to the pile of holy shit this stuff looks great and glad to see some PSO love! I'd really love to see you take on a scene or two from Forest 1 using these assets but I imagine that would entail a lot more work than you're planning lol
Iciban - Thanks, I am working at a company, but because I don't get to do this sort of stuff at work, I'm always looking for opportunities.
My current plan is to do this fence prop as it is a companion piece to the console. Then, I'll get moving on a small Forest 1 scene. I feel as though I've gotten my fill of hardsurface, at least for the moment.
excellent! i havent read too much through this thread, just been looking at the images. but... do you plan to recreate the environment? or just the props?
good job man, i never played fantasy star online but i do remember the art not looking this good. hrmmm maybe im wrong better google it great job either way!
Well, I've gotten a blockout together and started in on some terrain textures. The walls of the terrain will be replace with sculpted rocks but for now I've just thrown my tiling textures on there to get a feel for it, but they've really been bothering me. I'm hoping that they'll work once I get rocks, trees, foliage, and some breakup textures in, but for now I think I need to take a break from them to let my eyes adjust. I'll attempt the rocks next.
Rocks! I've exaggerated the scale of the rock walls compared to the reference because rocks are awesome, but I do intend to cover them with a good bit of foliage to balance things out.
Awesome, it's really going to come together nicely! One thing that might help the terrain is if there were more large-scale variation in value; if you can, I'd play with some darker patches of green in the grass and maybe some yellows in the dried leaves.
nostalgia!!!!!! oh man. Totally agree with Oniram about flythrough with music, oh boy.
As for the terrain, the tiling is getting a bit fierce, the detail itself is nice but i really think it needs to be adjusted or blended with a larger scale detail through the material to make it feel a little more natural. The rocks have nice shape but are looking a bit soft. Would be nice to see some harder edges in them to contrast the large, softer ones. They're just feeling a bit too blobby at the moment i think.
Love how its coming together though, really nice! did you do the rocks as modular pieces places in udk, or just model out a whole big strip thats fitted to the terrain? .... or... something else?
Modified the terrain texture blending to work in some more variation in value and some more yellows, and adjusted the rocks to have some more variation in height and be shorter overall.
I modeled the rocks as a tiling strip and deformed it to fit the terrain. I brought it in all as one piece so it isn't the most efficient thing in the world, but it should work for this small scene. There are a bunch of triangles I can cut out from areas that have been pushed into the ground, but I won't do that until I think they're right.
Edit: I tried making the rocks look sharper by sharpening and intensifying the normal map and parts of the diffuse, but it didn't do too much. Not sure how I can go about improving that more without redoing them.
Alright, I'm definitely in need of some advice here. I'm trying to tackle building trees like the one seen in the back here:
And this is what I've done so far, just trying to figure things out:
I want them to have large roots that I can drape down walls and across path with a bunch of foliage place on top. My problems come in with how to texture these efficiently. I'll have a main tree in the middle and then a series of smaller trees around the outside, but some areas will get pretty close to the camera. So here are my thoughts so far. I could unique sculpt (top picture) and texture a couple base trees, and toss some tiling detail maps on them to improve the texel density. Another idea is that I could do a modular system (bottom picture) with a basic trunk and few roots and branches to cobble together a bunch of different trees and hide the seams by making them be very knobby by design and then use plants to hide key areas. With either of these, I could also implement vertex blending for the moss.
I'm just having a hard time deciding how I want to execute it, whether through one of those methods or another way, so I'm finding it difficult to really get moving on them. Any advice or examples for this would be much appreciated. Thanks
What if you took a similar stance to the ground using vertex blending for the texturing. You can model the trees how you want, and let them use tiling textures, then you can use vertex blending to change the textures at certain parts like the roots or when you want to add special details/moss.
Also by making a few of the trees look a bit different by rotating the model you can get lots of variation through the use of the same textures and a smaller amount of tree models.
So I've been working on trees, and after a number of attempts, this is where I am. They're definitely getting closer to what I want, especially compared to what I had, but I think I need to step back from them for the moment and let my eyes adjust. I think I should space the trees out a bit more to let some more sunlight in. I'll be making bushes to cover more of the perimeter and start on some grass.
I think the canopy for the trees is a bit to thick at the moment though, part of making trees believable is having areas where the sunlight comes through.
Look at some images of trees and look for areas where you can see the sky through the canopy.
Yeah, I wanted to go with some big trees, as there were some massive ones around the edge of the PSO map, but for reference, the gate is maybe 1.5x player height and a box was about 2/3 player height. When I went to check this stuff, all the assets turned out to be bigger than I had remembered, especially the teleporter. I'll be doing smaller shrubbery and trees for the remainder of the perimeter and then some foliage sourced from the game along in interior.
Anyways, thanks for the input, I went and thinned out the canopy a good deal. It's more efficient and looks better now. I'll need to redo the vertex coloring on the trees to get the moss back in.
Edit: I'm also trying to bump up the forest-ness compared to the original.
Wow. Just wow. All of this looks amazing and is bringing back memories of my HUcast. Keep up the amazing work! Can't wait to see the trees with the moss back and the shrubs you are planning.
Looking good, though I go think having some smaller trees and foliage on the edges of the paths will help a great deal in breaking up the scene. So far for plants it's just trees that are all the same height and width. So some smaller ones, because even super small ones could really help.
those tree textures look like they tile a bit too much and dont seem to have enough larger shapes to lead the eye around them. They seem overpowered by small scale details.
Thanks, I've been working on adding the shrubbery around the perimeter and tweaked the lighting a bit. I now have the moss on the trees so hopefully that breaks up the tiling enough. I think it looks a bit odd at the moment with all the foliage around the exterior and none on the interior, but I'll have that stuff coming up next.
Replies
Also for building your low poly. Did you retopo or you just used the same mesh, but just delete/ wield edges. Like working in reverse.
I can never bake that good normal maps in xnormal. What is ur settings?
Keep it up though! these are looking really great and making me super nostalgic!
danjohncox - Bah, I was hoping for some better news. I'll have to play around with my lightmap UVs and the packing to try and get the best I can out of it. Thanks for the info.
Tiny update for now, just started work on painting details, still no spec. I don't know if I'm just kidding myself with that hex pattern or not.
I was wanting to find time for a project similar to this, but remaking my characters from the original PSO with the designs from the screenshots of characters from PSO2.
Whew, late night. Finishing up the textures on this now. Next I'll work on it in UDK and get that beam effect going on it.
The last asset seems more desaturated or something compared to the other assets though.
Simple construction shot
In UDK, and I've been working on beam. I'm using a flipbook texture for the lightning and simple emitter for some animated specks. Also, the screen text now scrolls, and for the big PSO fans, the text is the lyrics to the opening song.
Just an update for the sake of consistency. Started in on the fence that the console controls. It's just a blockout for now, still coming up with shapes and details. Methinks I'll start working on a small scene for this stuff once I finish this one.
My current plan is to do this fence prop as it is a companion piece to the console. Then, I'll get moving on a small Forest 1 scene. I feel as though I've gotten my fill of hardsurface, at least for the moment.
High, normal/AO, wire
Rocks! I've exaggerated the scale of the rock walls compared to the reference because rocks are awesome, but I do intend to cover them with a good bit of foliage to balance things out.
As for the terrain, the tiling is getting a bit fierce, the detail itself is nice but i really think it needs to be adjusted or blended with a larger scale detail through the material to make it feel a little more natural. The rocks have nice shape but are looking a bit soft. Would be nice to see some harder edges in them to contrast the large, softer ones. They're just feeling a bit too blobby at the moment i think.
Love how its coming together though, really nice! did you do the rocks as modular pieces places in udk, or just model out a whole big strip thats fitted to the terrain? .... or... something else?
Modified the terrain texture blending to work in some more variation in value and some more yellows, and adjusted the rocks to have some more variation in height and be shorter overall.
I modeled the rocks as a tiling strip and deformed it to fit the terrain. I brought it in all as one piece so it isn't the most efficient thing in the world, but it should work for this small scene. There are a bunch of triangles I can cut out from areas that have been pushed into the ground, but I won't do that until I think they're right.
Edit: I tried making the rocks look sharper by sharpening and intensifying the normal map and parts of the diffuse, but it didn't do too much. Not sure how I can go about improving that more without redoing them.
And this is what I've done so far, just trying to figure things out:
I want them to have large roots that I can drape down walls and across path with a bunch of foliage place on top. My problems come in with how to texture these efficiently. I'll have a main tree in the middle and then a series of smaller trees around the outside, but some areas will get pretty close to the camera. So here are my thoughts so far. I could unique sculpt (top picture) and texture a couple base trees, and toss some tiling detail maps on them to improve the texel density. Another idea is that I could do a modular system (bottom picture) with a basic trunk and few roots and branches to cobble together a bunch of different trees and hide the seams by making them be very knobby by design and then use plants to hide key areas. With either of these, I could also implement vertex blending for the moss.
I'm just having a hard time deciding how I want to execute it, whether through one of those methods or another way, so I'm finding it difficult to really get moving on them. Any advice or examples for this would be much appreciated. Thanks
Also by making a few of the trees look a bit different by rotating the model you can get lots of variation through the use of the same textures and a smaller amount of tree models.
So I've been working on trees, and after a number of attempts, this is where I am. They're definitely getting closer to what I want, especially compared to what I had, but I think I need to step back from them for the moment and let my eyes adjust. I think I should space the trees out a bit more to let some more sunlight in. I'll be making bushes to cover more of the perimeter and start on some grass.
I think the canopy for the trees is a bit to thick at the moment though, part of making trees believable is having areas where the sunlight comes through.
Look at some images of trees and look for areas where you can see the sky through the canopy.
Anyways, thanks for the input, I went and thinned out the canopy a good deal. It's more efficient and looks better now. I'll need to redo the vertex coloring on the trees to get the moss back in.
Edit: I'm also trying to bump up the forest-ness compared to the original.