Blizz Enviro Submission - Wintery Cultist's Camp

sybrix

Hey all, I finally got some time after the busy holiday season to get cracking on my Blizzard environment contest submission. I'm just about to start texturing. I'm a noob to painted texturing, trying to improve!

It will be a small camp site of a practitioner of some sort of cultish magic. I'm going with a wintry scene. I'm trying to keep props to a minimum due to time constraints.

I'm going for a voodoo/tribal vibe. I'm thinking about tweaking the little shrine, maybe put a gruesome offering on the table instead of what was going to be an incantation written in blood.

Thanks for looking, I would appreciate any feedback you're willing to share.







Here's a wireframe. The triangle shaped blockmesh is a placeholder for a glowing rune design that will encompass the shrine.

Tomm

It's still very early to critize, but few things that I noticed is both the texture and geometry of the trees.. they dont fit the blizz style.
And maybe it's just me, but the candles could be optimized a lot more.

oh and why would someone put candles outside in the winter?

other than that it's looking good.

sybrix

Good point Tomm. I took a look at some Blizz trees and decided to thicken up the trunks and make everything more angular. And you're right the candles don't make much sense so they're going to go away soon. :} I redid the bark texture and scaled it up a bit. I also rearranged some things, it was feeling kinda empty.

I spent a lot of time fighting with the preset UDK lighting. It's really killing all the details and it's hard to control the lighting with these types of textures. I'm thinking about scrapping the that super bright snow and having a regular ground texture with some snow dusting the ground. The snow as it is now is too overpowering!

Still working on the tent texture.

sybrix

Tried fixing up that harsh snow texture, added some icicle alphas, fixed up the campfire a bit, and adjusted the lighting. Going to focus on the tent next and then the shrine.

I have about 3 days to finish this up since I'm going out of town on the 13th. I would greatly appreciate any input you guys are willing to share.

marq4porsche

I think you can really define your textures more. You can really spend time and build up your shapes on your rocks and especially the trees. You can exaggerate the shapes of the horns on top of the tent as well.

sybrix

Thank you marq. I completely agree about the textures. I'm going to revisit them today and try to define them a bit more. I also took a look at some Horde/Tauren style tents again and noticed they're built with massive wood and horn shapes, so I'll be making those beefier too.

Back to work!

Jessica Dinh

Hey Sybrix! I like little camp scenes, they can be nice and cozy This looks better from your first post, but here are a few suggestions:

Right now the trees just kinda butt into the ground and it looks a little unnatural. In the reference, you can see the trunk is not just one big cylinder, but rather segmented into several vertical clumps. At the base of the clumps are areas for the snow to rest, which offers a good transition from snowy ground to tree trunk. You could paint in these big segments on the tree, doesn't even have to be geo.

Trees could also use more branches - big ones, and twiggy-like ones. The twig ones could be alpha cards so you are saving on geo.

The snow on the ground is also kindof unconvincing. You have really soft, fuzzy transitions, but here and there, you could add bits of ground/leaves poking through the snow in a more contrasty way like you can see in the reference - more speckle-like. Adding some more rocks about would be good too.



Keep it up! :]

Pixelatedkiwi

Yeah I like how this is developing, I think as commented above you can push the textures more. I would be nice to see some contrasting fabrics and color variation on the tent to add some details there, and it feels like the horns and tent pegs could be pushed more into the soft yellows/tans to make them stand out from the snowy environment more? Nice work so far though its definitely coming along well

sybrix

Ooo thanks Jessica! That paintover really helped lots!

Pixelatedkiwi - Thanks, I tried to keep your suggestion in mind when I was picking colors for the tent. I think I am going to scrap the icicle stakes and turn them into horns like on the top part.

Okay, so here's today's revisions:

- Changed the ground texture like Jessica suggested. Had some problems with mesh paint not wanting to work on the middle part though so I couldn't get it quite how I wanted it.

- Adjusted tree bases and added snow to transition the ground/trunks a little better.

- Worked on island base texture and tent texture









Textures in Maya (lights off)

2 days left. Going to get that shrine sorted out next.

sybrix

Spent a lot of time watching UDK tutorials mostly on lighting (still learning the program) so I think I made some progress in that regard.

I'm having a hell of a time with the glowing rune circle getting lost when I zoom out. The texture looks like it starts to disintegrate the further the camera pans away from it. It's really obvious in the screenshots.

I have one more day to finish this, so next I'm going to focus on making a suitable background.

sybrix

Calling it done... Here's what I submitted as the final. Ran out of time playing with lighting, so decided to go with a very simple BG.

Thanks to the people who helped me along with this. Had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot, just wish I had more time!







Some additional shots:







(heeey I got a tree popping off the edge in the back there.. >.>)