WoW Inspired Enviro

Tokoya

Hey everybody! Been working on this hand-painted enviro to show off to a local game company whose art director said would look over my work soon. I'm a bit stressed because I would like to secure a job there in the future and want to make a good impression :poly142:

Anyway I'm hoping for some good crits to take this work to the next level!









I want to continue fleshing this out into a full environemnt

Dismembered

First off relax, there is no reason to be stressed out. You already have made a good impression "...local game company whose art director said would look over my work soon.". The art director wouldn't be willing to look at your stuff otherwise.

I just recently started hand painting stuff myself so I won't be the best to crit, but here is what I can offer. Roof tiles typically overlap for water/debris run off, right now they don't look like that overlap it seems they just fit together. And the wood grains on the pillars seem awfully big atm.

You could add more geo too. Pulling out the bottom row of bricks to give the house some more profile.

MainManiac

If you're going to make it look like wow then copy wow, thats the only way youll get their style down.


Dont worry about the painting so soon honestly, get that block in lookin good!!

Snader

The model feels very straight and boxy - too straight.

The textures feel flat and based on lines rather than shading and color to show shapes.

Tokoya

Thanks for the awesome advice guys, ill get back to blocking out that geo!

Edit: amd i do realise how bad some of the wood is tiling atm


Snader can you explain what you mean about the flatness of the textures more? I think I see what youre getting at but Im not sure what else to do

Tokoya

Okay so I've been working on pulling out better shapes in the house, I think it looks closer to WoW style, it was pretty damn straight before.. Should I try to push it more before moving on?

Olli.

that wood texture is too squiggly.. you might not need to repaint the wood if you just squeeze the UV island a bit heightwise.. results may vary but its worth a try.

Andreas

Your biggest problem is the silhouette of your roofs, looks like you quite lazily pulled some verts around, they aren't making for a very smooth silhouette. Also, the shape of the handpainted tiles. Its glaringly obvious that it is an image projected off some polygons. Look at the tiles on the WoW example. They look like the tiles laid out like that shaped the roof. Your look like the tiles were cut to fit the shape... but not really in a convincing way.

I think you need to start again TBH

Tigerfeet

It's getting better, but the edges are still very straight. Wherever you see a straight line, try adding a line of verts and pull them off the line. For example on your corner posts, you could cut those polies in half and pull the new verts in towards the center of the building, or pull the bottom verts outward

vofff

I think you need to add some props, to make it feel more alive than just a house.

Mark Dygert

There is a minimum thickness to a lot of wow assets. One thing to keep in mind is where this game is coming from. It WAS a RTS game with a camera that didn't get in close so buildings where chunky and over the top so they could be recognizable and hold up at a distance.

That style carried over to WoW. Most noticeably should be the use of supports and chunky wood timbers as supports. They're overbuilt to an extreme level, you're building is built to a sensible level.

The door frame looks like one solid chunk of wood?

The roof tiles wrap over the top in a weird way. It works in WoW because the roof is flatter at the peak of the roof and the tiles align to the roof line.

Timbers and roof lines are too straight. I'm not talking about the outer silhouette of the roof but where the roof meets the walls. WoW would slope that angle or deform it slightly.

Most of the WoW assets don't have bevels but a lot of those assets are almost 10 years old... so it would help with the chunky style to go ahead and soften up some of the edges and round things out a bit.

Tokoya

Took all of your advice into account added some bevels to the pillars and frames, later I'm going to repaint the pillar textures and create a unique texture for the door frame.

what do you guys think of this variation of the roof?

Tokoya

Think I'm going to add a chimney, then some other props and foliage

Want to give a shoutout to my boys in the Polycount U chat, those guys have been a great source of advice and crits!

Joshflighter

I think the black lines on the roof are really distracting. If you look at WoW's version, they can barely be seen, just enough to separate the tiles.

It's coming along! Keep it up!

Blaisoid

i think making those roof tiles smaller would be a good move. they look huge compared to stone wall below.

Chunkey

It's looking good overall, especially the last update with the roof beams- as mentioned above, the roof tile texture's got a lot of black in it, it might be worth making the black lines thinner so it feels more tightly positioned- also it might be worth emphasizing the underside edge of the tile so if you're looking from below, it will help make the tiles look more 3 dimensional-

WoW features a lot of underlighting in the texture work and also with the viewpoint of the player, you want to make sure that you make the details pop when looking from ground level up.

Another thing you could try playing with is to grab the corners of the building and just move them a bit so it's not all 90 degree corners- really push the fact it's hand built and rustic.

Hope that helps and keep up the progress!

Tokoya

Update! Been learning how to use UDK's terrain editor and painted my first ground textures. Still trying to figure how I'm going to place this water wheel

Tokoya

Feel like I've started to lose momentum, I think I might create a couple trees, fix up some uv's and rough spots and call it done!

Any feedback would be great ^^

ScottP

Make the water wheel thing larger and add trims to the harsh edges of the roof, I don't like how it just abruptly ends.

Also scale down your grass and add more interesting terrain sculpts it looks really blobby and boring. The scene is kind of bland ATM it looks rushed.

Not sure what specs this company is going for but remember wow was made in 2004 we are in 2012 and you are using UDK. Spruce up the detail and polycount and add normals if you can. Make it the wow of 2012.

Tokoya

Thanks for the advice Scott, the company I have in mind usually does indie and mobile titles so I'm trying to keep the scene within that range, otherwise I would definitely create some normals. I added the trim and changed the lighting