Blitz Open Day Madness: Street UDK scene
polycounter lvl 7
Ok, so I was happily working away at my university work yesterday, when someone reminded me that the submission for the Blitz Openday is MONDAY. I really really want to submit some work, so have been frantically working since last night and all of today to come up with something. I apologise if all this is horrendous.
My idea was a european street.
All the foliage is from within UDK, I feel like such a cheat.
Modular pieces for some of the buildings:
Shot from UDK:
And some textures:
I apologise, I don't know the polycount (Ironic) now as Maya is being a bitch and won't open!
My idea was a european street.
All the foliage is from within UDK, I feel like such a cheat.
Modular pieces for some of the buildings:
Shot from UDK:
And some textures:
I apologise, I don't know the polycount (Ironic) now as Maya is being a bitch and won't open!
Replies
Do you have any advice on how I can get the lighting to look better?
concerning the lighting i would say: add more geometry. all your windows are sticking out only a little bit from the walls. wouldn't you expect that they are set back into the wall? this should give you some shadows on the walls.
(the same goes for the air conditioners. i have never seen them built into a wall. let them stick out way more and you get more interesting shapes)
you could also try to break up the lighting itself a little bit. to me it seems that you have only one light source, the sun? for a daylight scene that seems to be reasonable to me (although i really dont know much about lighting
some other things that bug me a bit:
number 1:the lighting colour does not really fit the sky texture. the lighting looks light sunset, the sky like the middle of the day.
number 2: your stone textures do not really align with borders to other textures and door openings in walls. in some areas the stones look like cut in the middle which doesn't make much sense. I would try to align them a little more or cover the transition up with trims. but that might at least in part simply be my nitpicking habit...
in addition to that i would say that some of your trims do not really fit. what are those flowery things in the middle of the walls? give them a meaning. i dont think they are completly misplaced, but you could make them more realistic for example by giving them a a stone rim or something.
aaaand one last thing: the grass that is growing directly out of the cobblestone in the direct center of the image might not be perfectly placed or might lack in terms of execution
i think there is much space for improvements that should not be to hard to make. keep working on it!
@SouthpawSid Ok more shadows, I get you
@Bart Yup got the tutorial now! Gonna watch it ALL and learn! Thankyou
@walkonsky I am incredibly thankful to you for this post!! It's like a checklist for me! I'm going to go through now and fix what you've said. I agree with you about the sky box but I'm having real trouble applying my own sky to the scene, I'm currently using the UDK ones
Plus I'm really happy that you like the scene, so relieving. I've been working on it all day and I'm at that point where I don't know what looks good and what doesn't!
I agree with the other crits on lighting so far, but the thing that strikes me most is the lack of shape. The plant pots are great, but everything else seems quite flat - try to think of the silhouettes and bring in some elements to break it up. The rooftops could use some timber beams, aerials, supports, etc to help bring variety to the shape - wires hanging across the street is always a good one and can help produce leading lines to your scene's point of interest.
Good luck, maybe I'll see you there. I wonder how many other polycounters will be there!
I agree with all your crits and have tried to fix a few in the image below. Gonna work more on the lighting tomorrow!
Thankyou
A quick video.
Now, I know you're placing the doors/windows on the walls, as opposed to cutting, so you can't have them recede into the walls. What you can do, however, is provide the illusion of such.
The middle face (selected red) is still offset from the actual wall, but the illusion of being inset is much easier to sell because of the extruded frame. The windows are potentially ok as is, but the doors could stand to use this treatment.
I think it could be improved a lot over this weekend to really show Blitz something.
At the moment it all looks really flat, flat floor, flat buildings, flat bg.
For the buildings people have suggested changing the windows which i agree with. But, give them some shelves under them with maybe a flower pot or something. Alot of these buildins in europe have railings as well over the windows. Agree with the aircons that that they need to come out more and have some supports. Put some pipes on the buildings and drains. Maybe make one of the buildings three flights of stairs. Aerials on the roofs. I like the cables but have more of them tonnes of them going all over the place. Maybe some with lights on. House number. A lamp on oneof them. These houses should all be varied.
For the floor maybe a curb on the left side of the scene and a drain somewhere, populate it a bit more. Alot of these sort of floors curve inwards.
For the background just get some really low poly houses maybe or just a few fake birds flying.
Add some height fog.
I feel at the moment it is too saturated, may just be my personal prefrence when doing stuff but meh.
I remember when meeting some studios for the first time and being at uni, I worked allday to get the best possible work as you wont be the only one going, you will be competing with others.
I've waited to reply so I can show you that I've implemented at least some of your ideas. Here's the update:
-Added more cables etc.
-Tried and failed to improve lighting
-More dynamic shadows
-Plant pots and shelves
-Added depth to doors and windows
-Improved height fog
@Sako Thanks so much
@S2Engine Wow man, you work at Crystal Dynamics and you're saying you like my work?! *Dies of happiness* I know what you mean, I turned off ambient occlusion and lost the shading around the edges of the buildings, should I turn it back on again?
@Mathew O Glad I reminded you
@Bart Woo Bart I love your work, would love to meet you at the Open Day if I get to go!
@LoTekK Your idea was so simple but so amazing, I have tried to do exactly what you've said and I think it looks much better
@Ikosan I love your work
@Shiv No problem, good luck
@Sharvo Thanks for the compliment, I love your work too. Your reply has been extremely helpful and I've tried to do some of the things you have recommended and will do more tonight!
Good luck with your application everyone, I sent off one as well!
I know you are on a schedule so take it or leave my suggestions.
I did a paintover here, I made levels on the picture to increase contrast, then a very light sepia photofilter to move the colorspace of the picture to something more uniform, then painted some quick AO in and more edge highlights on roof edges and wall corners, to convey better sense of volumes. In the end pushed the sky's bloom to make it stand more and justify why the scene is bright looking.
It's not perfect and it might only reflect where I would take this scene if it was me, so feel free to tear it to bits.
@ErichWK Of course I'll do everything you've said
@Wesley Thanks man, means a lot! Hope to see you there.
@ParoXum OMG! I am sitting here gobsmacked! That looks so much better I can't believe it! I will try and replicate this in UDK but might find it a bit hard, it's the first time I've done this much with lighting!
Was just going to ask people, what do people think I have in terms of chance with this Blitz thing? I only started modelling/using Maya last September and using UDK in bout October/November, so I have no idea about these things. It's a bit nerve wrecking actually. Does my scene actually look like something acceptable? I won't get laughed at will I?! Hah! :poly122:
Now that I think about it, I really like ParoXum's paint over, but I miss the warm lighting from your first post. Maybe you could find a way to combine the two.
Awesome work, keep it up.
Updated the lighting a bit, added some buildings into the background and changed the cables! :thumbup:
Also, might want to move the cable from inside the cloth on the line at the front, should be a quick fix.
Door on the right in the foreground, bring the sides in a bit on the texture, the edge of the frame is currently hidden. kinda looks off to me. I think the same issue is on the background one of the same style but cant see it from this distance so it shouldnt matter.
Hope that made sense :x
So it's 3am, and I said I was gonna stop at 7pm. That didn't work out!
I tried to implement what you said Shiv but you can't really see here. This is what I'm thinking of sending to Blitz. I have LOADS of uni work to do and I would love to spend the whole weekend on this, but I don't want to fail my modules at uni.
Anyway, here's the texture and wireframe sheets I'm going to send!
Learnt a good lesson: Follow a concept and plan what I'm gonna do before hand!!
Thanks Shotgun for saying you like it!
And yes, I imagine the kind of badass villagers who live in this town would like their Apples from a different country
Your most recent update is a bit blown out. Pull back on the brightness of the sun just a tad.
I am not a huge fan of the AC units. They feel a tad out of place. The windows feel a bit arbitrarily placed. Even when people are building things they still have a tendency to align windows, doors, AC units...
Couple of things you might want to consider. The places where the ground and wall meet, meet extremely suddenly. Generally there is dirt built up at the base of the wall. Also on 3dmotive there is a tutorial on Vertex Blending materials in UDK. If you were to do that you could go in a paint dirt where ever you want. Also maybe look into how to apply decals. Then you could do grunge decals and really make this environment a lot less... CG?
The last thing and this is nit picking a little. lol Your flags/cloths are pretty much the same. You could have textured one white on a way smaller texture and then in UDK you just take the diffuse node and use a Multiply node and a Constant 3 Vector node to change the color of each one.
lol just seems like a lot of texture for the flags for not much variation.
Like I said you have made some killer progress. Keep up the amazing work ethics.
I think I'll have to read up on it a bit more. I am extremely intimidated by all the nodes etc.
I agree with all your advice. I think the first chance I get I'll go through this whole thread and implement everyone everythings said. I think the biggest problems are definately the AC units and where the buildings meet the floor.
Thanks for the feedback!
Lmao! yeah I know what you mean... I learned how to use the udk material editor from that tutorial. I spent probably a week watching it over and over. Even if you got the very basic of it... you could do something with it.
Really all you need to know is 2 diffuses in a lerp node > mask by vertex color. That will let you paint 2 different diffuses.
@jeremiah_bigley Haha yup I think I was already doing the wrong thing by using 'texture sample' instead of the Param2d one. I'm back at uni next week and one of my lecturers is a UDK master, I'm going to pick his brain over this and watch that video 700 more times.
I was just wondering what you guys think my chances are on getting in the Blitz Open day? I'm going to go mad until the 24th when we find out! First time I'm ever done something like this if you don't count when I got my internship!
That's Korean
Really nice work Knowles, I dig the palette and the dimensionality of the buildings! Best of luck getting the placement.
Hahaha It's Korean? I wonder what it says. Hope it's not like an advert for a brothel or something and the guy whose looking at my work knows Korean...
Thanks for the compliments, makes me feel great
EDIT: Are you irish? I have a weak spot for Irish Accents... :icon15:
I was at last years one and I think that with the work that you have turned out you really shouldn't have a problem....there are still the vagaries of chance in the mix, but you are well on track for the standard that I saw.
Wow that's great to hear Seth, thanks so much for telling me
It was great to see how a dev studio actually operated for the first time, and the portfolio crit was very helpful too. Try not to slag off TIGA to Philip Oliver without first understanding who Philip Oliver is...(one guy did, bless him.....cringeworthy moment
[ame="
(part 1, watch all 5 of course :poly124:)
It's a lot of info to take in and keep track of, so I'd recommend keeping notes as you go along. By the end of it though you should have a much firmer grasp of the material editor and how some of the nodes and setups work.
@seth. Haha! Seth don't worry, I know you're not on the selection panel
A bit off topic here, but I've updated my portfolio tonight, made it more geared towards environment art, if anyone wants to take a look. As you can tell, I am extremely open about critisisms and won't get all weepy if you rip me to shit! Remember I'm only in my second year at university though!! No where near looking for one of those job things yet...