UDK - Deus Ex - FEMA Boss Room [WIP]
polycounter lvl 13
Hey polycount! I started working on a UDK scene based on a Deus Ex concept. Everything is WIP and I welcome any and all feedback. Looking forward to see what you guys think.
Current Progress:
Concept:
http://barontieri.deviantart.com/art/DX-BT-FemaBoss-258300787
Current Progress:
Concept:
http://barontieri.deviantart.com/art/DX-BT-FemaBoss-258300787
Replies
the scale looks pretty accurate to me, keep at it
If you look at the concept, you see that the yellow pillars have a decal on them that you have missed, breaks up the pillars nicely. Also your resolution is hurting the pollars a bit, it looks noisy, but you can tell that the noise is lowrez, scrap the noise, and add a detailnormalmap that you can tile for noise instead, will allow you to get some more accurate resolution for that kind of surface detail.
You have also went ahead and added the wires running along the pillars, which is great, however in the concept you can see that the wires have larger shapes. Your dual wires are running to closely to eachother to read as two wires from a distance, separate them more, and make the wires a bit thicker so its easier to read from a distance. Also adding a few angles and bends to the wires is good, breaks up the monotony.
And I agree with snow about the pillars, dont look like they are smoothing properly, you can easily afford a few extra polygons inte corners of those pillars.
The rail-system in the ceiling is also missing the middle detail, its wayy to thin in your version, it easily deserves to be modelled out properly in the lowpoly, and be alot wider in the concept, so it reads better : ) Just some ideas, you are off to a good start.
As seen on the Polycount wiki :
@Snow: I messed with the pillars a bit. Added a few extra edges in and adjusted the smoothing groups. Seems to have done the trick!
@Snefer: Added some decals and a detail normal map. I think the noise/intensity of the spec is washing it out. Once I get up close I can see it, but from the shot I really can't. I will probably scale it up and see if I can get something that looks good.
I increased the thickness on the pillar wires and the wires suspending the center lights. It might be a bit too thick though, thoughts?
Haven't touched the rail system up top yet, soon though!
@Kharn: Thanks for the tip! I have been using .fbx for exports but I haven't had a chance to read Epic's FBX workflow documentation. There is probably some stuff I have been missing.
I messed with the lighting a bit and it still needs a lot of work. Thanks again for the feedback! More soon.
Played with the crane rail system up top, changed up the floor, and added in a few more deco meshes. Also added an image outside to get rid of the giant black hole
@XRevan23 - Yeah that grate is pretty rough. I will work on getting that and the rest of the geo fixed up and into the level.
@Ryan and Josh - Thanks for looking guys, more soon!
I feel like I might be jumping around too much. Going forward this week I am going to focus on getting all the models/normals completed. There is quite a bit of detail I need to model. Thanks for taking a look.
What does confuse me though, is how you've gone through the trouble of imitating the original concept so closely on everything, yet your rear wall is completely different. Not that I'm complaining as I love the lighting contrast that it creates and I prefer it. I just thought I'd ask why you haven't afforded yourself the same freedoms with the rest of the image
What's the plan with the big doors? at the moment the perspective and the bright outside light draws the eye to them. You could do with some more foreground detail too!
@fearian : I will mess with the falloff for sure. At first I was trying to adjust too many things at once and was having issues tracking which settings did what. I have since toned that down and am taking baby steps
As for foreground detail, I hear ya. The whole scene feels like it is lacking detail and the little touches that will make it interesting (or hopefully interesting). I will try to get some more of that stuff into my updates!
Just getting done with work now, should have another update posted before the sun comes up
If you decide on that, then we can figure out what extra details can be added to the foreground in a more natural-looking manner.
@SirCalalot - Right now I think of it as a storage facility of sorts. In the game it was a boss battle room. At first glance the crane system in the middle doesn't make any sense to me. The track it follows wouldn't be able to put stuff on the different floors (I will look around for some ref to see if i can find a similar set up), so maybe some sort of forklift thing would work well. I will definitely think about this some more.
So I have a sort of workflow question for you guys. So far I have been jumping around a lot, leaving one prop half finished to start on another, or play with lighting. Do you guys block it out, then completely finish one piece at a time? I have been doing once over quick textures on most of the stuff then moving on to the next piece. I would imagine more planning ahead of time would make it pretty easy to understand what each piece needs to look like and minimize the risk of having to redo a bunch of stuff.
Here is my latest update. Played with the lighting a little bit, It got a bit too dark again by the blue lights. Blocked out the exterior real quick and put in the skydome. I spent like a whole day fighting with what I thought was a normal map issue on an symmetrical object, to only find out it was my lighting messing with my head
Ultimately it is whatever works best for you but I found it to be counter productive when working on my last scene.
As for workflow I have always build my environments in stages. Like get a solid blockout. Then go through each pieces making a high and then low then baking it. After all the Low polies, normal maps and AOs are in engine I then go and texture everything. It just makes more sense in my OCD head! I very rarely have to redo stuff. Having said this I have just gone back to a project I started in the summer and I had a few baked meshes but I had to block the rest in and yeah it feels a bit uncomfortable tbh. I don't think I shall do it this way again! I have had to go back and remake some high pieces because of the rest of the blockout etc. I don't know, I think if you have a solid enough blockout then its fine to jump around as really you shouldn't need to go back and redo anything.
But yeah its all down to preferences I think!
it depends on what you're working on of course, but it definitely doesn't hurt to quickly rough things in before spending a shit ton of time on something, only to take a look at it in the end and realize it doesn't work for the overall design (why concept is usually imperitive). With something like this, where it's a "show piece", so no gameplay is needed, and you have a fleshed out concept to begin with, it probably wouldn't hurt too much to quickly rough some details in, lay out those uv's, plan out your textures properly and throw some values in the diffuse, toss a quick lighting pass in there, then finish each prop to their highest level of detail one after the other. I find if I start doing 1/2 the details of a texture (after the rough in phase) then move onto something else, it usually takes me twice as long to complete it. Bit of the "scatter brain effect".
I'm sure there are a ton of other methods you could use to complete a scene, and each person works differently. You just have to find out what works best for you and do that
Keep it up!
Here is the most recent update. Right now I am working on finishing off the assets I have and getting them fully completed (save any necessary tweaks at the end.)
In the original concept, it sits nicely in the corner of 2 lines.
In your current version, those lines are gone. Thus the "3xb" is sitting there very loose and feels a bit misplaced.
Calling this guy done (for now). Still very open to any crits as I have a ways to go before someone will pay me to make environments for them