Prayer Bridge, Modularity
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys! Here's a bridge I'm working on in order to learn modularity. When I am done, I am going to reuse the pieces to create something else (not sure what yet, but I'm thinking something along the lines of a courtyard). So far I have my model snapped together in UDK, and I am working on the textures. I am treating some parts of the bridge as props and packing them onto one texture sheet, but most of it is going to be using 2-way tiling textures. Everything will have diffuse and specular maps. My goals for this project: to learn modularity, Blizzard colors and style, and more efficient texture planning and reuse.
Concept by Blizzard:
My color plan:
In 3Ds Max (this was an early block-out - some pieces have changed since):
Current modular pieces and props:
Blocked out in UDK. Still thinking about what I want to do for the surrounding enviro. I want to keep this pretty small with the final shots being close-ups on the building. Currently working on my lightmaps, as I still have plenty of lighting errors here. Also gotta fix the snaps on my little incense pillar, it is getting kinda covered by the rest of the building haha. The current terrain textures and water are placeholders:
Progress on some of my props:
Diffuse:
Specular:
Here's my original incense pillar texture, painted at 1024, in case anyone wanted to see a close-up of it.
Incense pillar:
Roof scrollie things and lantern, textures still pretty WIP:
Another prop I am planning to build for this project. For this particular piece I plan to create a high poly in Max and ZBrush. Concept also by Blizzard:
The blockout/plan for my tiling textures:
For the next few days I will be working on my tiling textures and fleshing out the composition of the scene. Critique and comments on modeling, texturing, or anything at all is welcome!
Thanks!
Jessica
Concept by Blizzard:
My color plan:
In 3Ds Max (this was an early block-out - some pieces have changed since):
Current modular pieces and props:
Blocked out in UDK. Still thinking about what I want to do for the surrounding enviro. I want to keep this pretty small with the final shots being close-ups on the building. Currently working on my lightmaps, as I still have plenty of lighting errors here. Also gotta fix the snaps on my little incense pillar, it is getting kinda covered by the rest of the building haha. The current terrain textures and water are placeholders:
Progress on some of my props:
Diffuse:
Specular:
Here's my original incense pillar texture, painted at 1024, in case anyone wanted to see a close-up of it.
Incense pillar:
Roof scrollie things and lantern, textures still pretty WIP:
Another prop I am planning to build for this project. For this particular piece I plan to create a high poly in Max and ZBrush. Concept also by Blizzard:
The blockout/plan for my tiling textures:
For the next few days I will be working on my tiling textures and fleshing out the composition of the scene. Critique and comments on modeling, texturing, or anything at all is welcome!
Thanks!
Jessica
Replies
Definetly another sub.
Btw what happened to the pandaren brewery?
Anyway, the scene is already very solid start! I know its a bit early to be thinking about it but itd be awesome to see you tackle a modular WoW themed city/village scene.
Subscribed again!
This is sooo awesome !
T.
Definitely like your style. Looking forward to seeing what you end up with.
This is my first post and your work is the first thread i have looked at...wow...beautiful work! I am curious though do you sculpt in ZBrush at all and will you ultimately create normal maps? Sorry I'm a noob to game texturing but not texturing in general. Keep up the awesome beautiful work. P.Pappy
Jessica tends just to hand paint everything in a painterly style, no sculpting, no normal maps.
While you're reusing some geometry to build a complete asset, I challenge the idea that this is modular.
What is modular about this is what I've already said, you're split the asset (the bridge) up in to individual elements for texturing. That's just smart & efficient art creation. And, while that is the core definition of modular artwork, I don't see these pieces getting a lot of reuse.
A true test of whether or not what you've built is modular is to build something else out of it. Build the bridge you have now, then try and build something else that uses a good portion of your pieces here.
I reckon it would be a challenge to do so without creating 50% new pieces for that new asset.
Food for thought
dtschultz - Hmm, for the dragon, nothing special haha. I just did a line drawing of him - then started painting him in! I treated all of his forms like I would any basic shape, just thinking of light direction and whatnot.
poopsterspappy - Welcome to Polycount :] I am actually to go through the full high to low poly process for the dragon gong concept I have posted up. I will be using ZBrush for that. However, I will be keeping it low for the rest of the project, some of that due to time constraints. I have about 3 weeks left for this project, although I will probably continue working past the deadline to polish this for port.
WarrenMarshall - Here are some vids I recorded of my process, although I don't know how fun this will be to watch since it is in realtime speed xD: Livestream - If anyone has the patience enough to watch this and has critique for my process, I would be happy to hear.
Adam, challenge accepted >:] Here is my second building, a shrine. It is using all of the bridge pieces except for one (the short incense pillar I had textured from the last post), and I had to add 2 more pieces - a door plane and a tall pillar. I think I may also need to have 2 different types of floor pieces instead of one, because I want to use two different floor textures for this building.
Speaking of textures, I really messed up with the plan I had :x haha . . . from what I understand, I can't actually use tiling textures on this project because the only thing that really matters is that the pieces are seamless where they line up with each other; therefore it would just make more sense for me to unwrap, pack, and texture each piece uniquely. Hooray for making more work for myself :P
Anyway, here are the tileable textures where I got them to before I realized my mistake. I can still use these if I chop them up some:
Wood Railing:
Walkway:
Wall:
After I pack all the building pieces, I will get back to texturing. Another update coming, Saturday most likely. Critique and comments welcome!
p.s. Hmmm, after looking at that door plane I made, I think I should probably make it more interesting lol . . . will be adding geo to that haha, door knobs or something.
A note for you modularity, you could possibly break the stairs in half and add more definition to their models. This method depends on the engine, but adds more detail without a hit to the memory.
Also, you can use it for smaller staircase situations too!
P.S. Next time HD video on YouTube or Vimeo would be better but I'll take what I can get. :P
The building model is rocking. The silhouette is really reading nicely. Can't wait to see this all finished.
just checked out your livestreams also. when do you plan on doing that again? great to see your painting process.
oo, also wondering.. since your using a mac, how you go about 3dsmax and udk, do you just boot into windows? or have a diff computer? i've been debating installing both on my bootcamp partition but its annoying going back and forth.
Cool stuff!
I see this a lot. Spend polys on arches and spheres, ignore the OCD desire have clean flowing edgeloops on flat surfaces where it adds nothing to the forms ingame. You could accomplish that roof for 1/3 of the polycount and have plenty left over for the arches.
toxic_h20 - Maybe!
hathol - I'm not sure when I'll be streaming again, I guess if people want it I could post here when I stream next? And I have two laptops (mac/pc) that I switch off working between with a flashdrive.
Goraaz - Thanks! The stairs and their sidepieces are actually one whole modular chunk, but I have split the steps into 3 different pieces in the texture; that is where I plan to add my variation. Does that seem ok too?
Kevin, haha, I had JUST finished cleaning up the roof geometry before I read your comment. I agree there were a lot of wasted tris before, leftover from the initial messy block-out. Thank you for the crit.
They may seem boring, but they dispel the myth that art is done perfectly on the first try, and they prove that good art such as yours takes time, iteration, patience, and....HARD WORK!
tristamus - Haha, yes, they DO take a long time !! And a lot of trial and errorrr :poly142:
Anyway here is an update on my textures. Last few days have been pretty rough because I kept changing my mind about how to texture and uv. Initially I was going to use tileables, as I explained in my initial post, but then I thought I wouldn't be able to make tileables work so I packed everything onto a 4096 x 4096. Only to realize (thanks to some of my friends/mentors
Roof, and another variation of floor (I wanted one without the rectangular stones lining the side). Seams still need to be fixed:
Here's how my other floor texture looks in UDK right now:
Stone archway trim, and the rest of the space is going to be for my dragon statue prop:
Gold trim for the roof; stair step; wall:
Currently updating all of these textures to my scene in UDK to see how they are working together. High poly for the Dragon statue also coming soon. Critique and comments welcome!
Your getting faster I believe, lets aim for a lil less than 5 months this time ^__^.
Keep up the amazing work, I agree with Gannon.Your colors are BOSS!