Interior ship overhaul for "Spocean"
polycounter lvl 10
Hello, Polycounters. Posting my work here for the first time is a little daunting, since I have lurked and admired for years, but I feel like I have a task ahead of me now that might be of interest to some people, and which could be envigorated by polycount's wonderfully naked feedback.
I'm the sole artist working on an indie project called "Spocean". You can find some more info about it here.
Here's as far as I got in six months of working on all aspects. You'll notice that many default udk assets are still rearing their ugly heads.
What you may not notice is that nothing is aligned to the grid (in fact I never even had snapping on at any time), I'm using brushes like they were actually a legitimate thing (apologies to you venerable veterans of old), and I've been lighting more like a gaffer with unlimited, invisible china balls than a thoughtful, efficient environment artist.
I'm going to try and right all of the technical wrongs I started to make almost a year ago now, when I first started tinkering with 3ds Max and the UDK (I still tend to work mostly in blender and sculptris).
Why am I so obsessed with overhauling this one environment? Well, this is the only environment in the game. It's ship to ship combat. There really is no room for excuses from an artistic perspective.
So follow along if you're interested, make sure I'm alive every now and then, and please rile me up if I'm getting complacent.
I'm the sole artist working on an indie project called "Spocean". You can find some more info about it here.
Here's as far as I got in six months of working on all aspects. You'll notice that many default udk assets are still rearing their ugly heads.
What you may not notice is that nothing is aligned to the grid (in fact I never even had snapping on at any time), I'm using brushes like they were actually a legitimate thing (apologies to you venerable veterans of old), and I've been lighting more like a gaffer with unlimited, invisible china balls than a thoughtful, efficient environment artist.
I'm going to try and right all of the technical wrongs I started to make almost a year ago now, when I first started tinkering with 3ds Max and the UDK (I still tend to work mostly in blender and sculptris).
Why am I so obsessed with overhauling this one environment? Well, this is the only environment in the game. It's ship to ship combat. There really is no room for excuses from an artistic perspective.
So follow along if you're interested, make sure I'm alive every now and then, and please rile me up if I'm getting complacent.
Replies
It would be nice to see some of the textures and models with some wireframes and maps for curiousity.
As for your worries about the environment, it looks the part. There are some tweaks in maybe getting some contrasting lighting and tuning the overall colour pallete.
But its definately shaping to have a great final outcome. Just be careful sometimes of our artist demons in that we are never truely satisfied. Important lessons come when you know you must stop working on something.
textures seem a bit inconsistent though. some feel pretty stylized, others are clearly photosourced (cgtextures? they look familiar). even if you're going for a mix of modern and old textures, they should use a similiar stylization.
some normal maps look weird, for example diamond plate texture.
@Blaisoid: Totally, supremely photosourced, and cgtextures is indeed my dealer. I would love to be able to hand paint this, but sadly have neither the time nor tablet to do so. What is the general attitude towards photosourcing in the industry? Every day it seems to sound more and more like a bad word, but it can be so damn efficient and impressive to none-the-wisers if properly done.
I wonder if there will eventually be a wilhelm scream equivalent for game textures?
As far as the normal maps, I've only just come to understand the high to low poly baking workflow, so all the bump detail that you see here is just extracted from the textures (except for the spoceanfarer's pants).
Here are some shots of previous revisions to give you an idea of where I've been in the past with this space:
And some wires for the props and the fellow:
Cannon:
Gun rack:
Spoceanfarer:
however, cgtextures is so popular that there's a chance that people who will play your game have seen them before. and i think that's not a good thing if your textures feel familiar.
but my point wasn't about this.
problem here is lots of those textures don't fit together.
for example all the steel beams on this screen:
http://www.spocean.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/mediaweb2resized1.png
also, look at the way horizontal beams have shade on the left instead of below them. pretty ugly, ain't it?
There are a few things that i noticed, that may need some polishing. Stuff like you saying you are not showing your normal and specular because they are derived from the diffuse. In some cases i noticed the textures looked a little too nosiy, maybe because too much bumpiness from the normal that was created from the diffuse. Showing your work in a proper breakdown will also help others understand how you do things.
Something else i noticed.
Assets like the stairs in the background.
I'm a huge fan of your work, by the way, and would be remiss if I failed to mention that the colors and textures you use were a substantial inspiration for all of this scene.
So I basically just deleted everything that needed to go. The basic layout of the ship and key game elements such as the canons, helm, gun racks, and shot racks will remain in place, as their positions have already undergone a bit of actual gameplay testing, and work nicely where they are from a functional perspective.
It's good when you can afford to go back to an old piece of work after a long break. There really isn't enough that can be said for seeing everything again with fresh, bloodthirsty eyes.
Couldn't help but feel a little like this guy as I opened up the udk file again for the first time in two or three months.