Bar Daikaiju Environment
Intro
What's up everyone - browsed the forums for some time, haven't posted much though until now. I graduated from college within the past year (associates), and am focused on landing an environment artist position. I will be attending GDC come March, and I want to have a fresh main portfolio piece on my site since it's been awhile since I've updated it. I feel it no longer reflects my best work. I'm hoping creating this thread will have me take this environment to a whole new level in my work. So let's get to it!
Premise
So recently I played through the game Catherine, and really dug the small subtle environments the characters would go through. They have a couple Japanese bar/restaurant scenes. I also went to Japan 6 months back, and have been wanting to do an environment inspired by that. So I plan to do a fictional restaurant called Bar Daikaiju. It will be located in Tokyo, so a bit of claustrophia is a must. It will be 2 floors. 1st floor is basically a ramen house, while the 2nd is more of a bar/sit-down area. 2nd floor will be a tad bit more upscale.
Plan
I plan to rethink how I approach every step of the process of creating an environment. It's easy to get stuck doing things the same way, so I plan to kinda check myself every now and then. Part of that was creating this topic to get feedback/critiques. I plan on modeling in Max, texturing in Photoshop, and lighting/rendering in UDK. I don't know if I will need Zbrush for anything at the moment, but I'll keep it in mind. I'm a beginner when it comes to UDK/Zbrush, so a big part of this project is me learning the engine efficiently so I can demonstrate this to potential employers. I don't feel I can call myself an environment artist until I do this. So except a lot of questions in here as well probably :P
Schedule
I plan to have this completed within 4 weeks. If I can finish sooner, even better. I basically just want to have a revamped portfolio in time for GDC.
Reference
So I have a handful of images for reference, but here's a collage of the ones I'm focusing on mainly. I plan to have the 1st floor be more of a ramen house, while the 2nd floor is more bar/dinner oriented - just a tad bit more upscale. I included the well-known Bathhouse by Jordan Walker as reference as well, because of its expert use of UDK. That's what I want to strive for, and I like the steamy mood from it which could be used to a more minimal extent for the 1st floor ramen house.
Oh, and don't hold back on suggestions/feedback/critiques. I'm here to be toughly graded in order to reach my new potential. :poly123:
What's up everyone - browsed the forums for some time, haven't posted much though until now. I graduated from college within the past year (associates), and am focused on landing an environment artist position. I will be attending GDC come March, and I want to have a fresh main portfolio piece on my site since it's been awhile since I've updated it. I feel it no longer reflects my best work. I'm hoping creating this thread will have me take this environment to a whole new level in my work. So let's get to it!
Premise
So recently I played through the game Catherine, and really dug the small subtle environments the characters would go through. They have a couple Japanese bar/restaurant scenes. I also went to Japan 6 months back, and have been wanting to do an environment inspired by that. So I plan to do a fictional restaurant called Bar Daikaiju. It will be located in Tokyo, so a bit of claustrophia is a must. It will be 2 floors. 1st floor is basically a ramen house, while the 2nd is more of a bar/sit-down area. 2nd floor will be a tad bit more upscale.
Plan
I plan to rethink how I approach every step of the process of creating an environment. It's easy to get stuck doing things the same way, so I plan to kinda check myself every now and then. Part of that was creating this topic to get feedback/critiques. I plan on modeling in Max, texturing in Photoshop, and lighting/rendering in UDK. I don't know if I will need Zbrush for anything at the moment, but I'll keep it in mind. I'm a beginner when it comes to UDK/Zbrush, so a big part of this project is me learning the engine efficiently so I can demonstrate this to potential employers. I don't feel I can call myself an environment artist until I do this. So except a lot of questions in here as well probably :P
Schedule
I plan to have this completed within 4 weeks. If I can finish sooner, even better. I basically just want to have a revamped portfolio in time for GDC.
Reference
So I have a handful of images for reference, but here's a collage of the ones I'm focusing on mainly. I plan to have the 1st floor be more of a ramen house, while the 2nd floor is more bar/dinner oriented - just a tad bit more upscale. I included the well-known Bathhouse by Jordan Walker as reference as well, because of its expert use of UDK. That's what I want to strive for, and I like the steamy mood from it which could be used to a more minimal extent for the 1st floor ramen house.
Oh, and don't hold back on suggestions/feedback/critiques. I'm here to be toughly graded in order to reach my new potential. :poly123:
Replies
Yes! Thank you for the tip. I played Yakuza 3 awhile ago. That game is crazy accurate to real architecture in Japan. I will definitely take a 2nd look at Serena.
Cool concept. The Lightning looks quite complexe, would love seeing it done in CE3 since i prefer it's lightning.
Basically just doing the modeling right now. I'm trying to make everything as modular as possible. I started changing all the unique meshes to the blue color.
I feel like I have most of the basic parts all modeled out. What's left is basically all the small props (dishes, bottles, cookware, etc) - which will take a bit, but I might come back to that later. Like I said earlier, I'm no pro at UDK yet, so I might texture/import the big stuff first to make sure everything goes smoothly and get the foundation set up. Then once I'm confident on that I can work on the smaller detailed pieces.
So I think I'll probably finish the major modular pieces tonight or tomorrow, and start messing with importing tomorrow.
The scene feels pretty simple/empty as of right now, but once I start filling it with tables/chairs and later dishware, I know it will look a lot more crowded (in a good way). Nothing too high poly yet really, I think a lot of that will end up being in the dishes/bowls and whatnot later. I'm planning on going for the wooden look on the bar/tables like you would see in Japan, and there's not really a whole lot of curves. So the poly count should be pretty reasonable by the end. I will need to make sure I work extra hard on textures though so that everything still pops.