Hand Painted Environment - Blacksmith House

TheKennny

Hey everyone! So this last month I worked on this scene. I took inspiration from the new Pandaria concepts and added some of my own things to it.

I'm still working on a few assets but here are some WIP renders of the environments:







I'm looking for some critiques/comments so let me know what you think!

Darkmaster

This is really excellent work here! The one critique that I have is that the main wooden beam that is horizontal to the ground on the main structure has an area that is pretty much black from the screen that I'm viewing on. Pretty much anything that is in the WoW universe will never actually hit true black. Having said that, I'm sure that when you painted it it really is brown, but the way that it is shown here in this scene makes it appear totally black. So maybe try some different lighting around that area, or tweak the brightness so that none of your art is lost!

Overall, this is definitely your strongest piece in my opinion. I briefly went through your website, but from what I saw, this style is definitely more in your element. Keep workin it man, this is really epic!

Oranghe

i feel there is to much contrast in this scene, your model and textures look really nice but for me it's getting very lost in blacks. Be nice to see softer light come from your light sources to warm your scene.

Doing a great job however and i'm really digging that background

mutatedjellyfish

I agree, the harsh lighting (the shadows, actually) kills it and makes it look really really cg and bland. It's hard to really dig into the texturing work with that lighting.

Edit: Played with levels and curves, check it out:



Now that's probably too blown out (ie, not enough contrast), but I would try to coax some more ambient lighting out of your settings and play with colored shadows more instead of black shadows. Using color to shadow instead of straight black compliments the cartoony style while still giving you a nice range of lights and darks. I'd say go run around some of the twilight areas of WoW to see how they handled lighting.

Here's the histograms of the original versus my version



This measures the VALUE RANGE of your image. The left side of the graph is the darks, and the right side of the image is lights. The vertical length of the bars basically represents how many of the pixels in your image are that shade of light or dark. In your original, note how extreme the pixels are trending towards black, even approaching flat black. In my version, they still trend towards darker as it's a night scene, but there are much more midtones to balance. Value range can be played with to achieve various moods and effects (think noir stuff like Limbo), but as humans, we generally enjoy having a balanced image with bright brights and darker darks and some pleasing midtones. To many brights and your scene is blown out and flat. Too many darks and your scene is hard to see and flat. Too many midtones and your scene is boring and flat (non-lit). If you can get a good balance, it really opens your scene up, directs the player to give attention to the bright areas, and invites them to explore the mysterious darker (but not black) areas.

Hope this helps!

marq4porsche

I think the paintover helps a lot, the contrast is pretty dark atm.

Jeff Parrott

Coming out great Kenneth! Definitely tweak out the contrast in the lighting some. I'd really say push the color palette with the lighting more.

The modeling is fun and the texturing looks to match the modeling.

The stepping stone rocks could have more faked depth to them.

Add some fog to the scene (if possible) to give it a bit more depth and atmosphere.

Coming along great though.

Seirei

Wow it someone would tell me this is a piece out of the new World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria I'd believe it.
Realy great stuff! And it that's WIP I'm hyped to see the final version.

cholden

Really dig the scene. Doesn't seem anything like a Blacksmith House though I do notice the smelter on the right. Maybe some close-up shots of smithing tools, etc. would aid in selling it.

TheKennny

Thanks for all the comments and critiques!

@Darkmaster - thank you! I can definitely say that I had a lot of fun making this scene.

@mutatedjellyfish - thanks so much for the explanations! That definitely helped out a lot, I appreciate you taking the time to break it down!

@cholden - I definitely agree. Now that most of the scene is in place I intend on going back and filling it in with a few little assets like tools and whatnot.

So I started playing a bit more with lighting as you guys recommended, this is how it looks like atm:





It's been a tricky balance to get things lit up more but still try to give it a night-time feel. Everything pops out a lot more now for sure.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the old/new lighting:

P442

Personally, I don't think your lighting is the "issue." I think your textures are just too saturated.



This is the original image posted. I desaturated only.



This is the second image posted. I desaturated and darkened levels.

For a night time scene, I prefer the first image, as it has more blue lighting. The second has too much yellow in the lighting for a night time scene.

An easy way to fix this is to put a post process volume around your scene and change the saturation, so you don't have to adjust each texture.