Medieval Village [UDK]

jmg06

Hey everyone,

I wanted to do something with UDK again. So I started this medieval scene. The main focus for this project is the creation of diffuse maps. eficiency and polycount not so much.

Here are some screenshots from 3dsmax. I'm planning to upload some UDK screenshots tommorow.

comments and crits very much welcome.

Strkl

That looks nice

But the roof feel weird, maybe it's because it looks like it's made of stone

ParoXum

You can do things not so efficiently as you said, but in this case your texture usage is just incredibly bad and laughable.

I mean even when rushing things and not caring too much about efficiency, an average artist will reuse hundred times more than what you did here. You need to have a rethink about laying UV and texturing if you wish to work in the field someday.

Also sorry if this comes out as harsh but this is polycount after all. This is what you'd expect to receive from a guy like me who needs some sleep and is honest.

Ace-Angel

Don't keep N-Gons, no, bad artist, N-Gons are bad for engine, BAD!

Learn to tile your textures and overlap UV's! This is the basics of environment pieces, the polycount Wiki has some more info on this.

Also, break up your building into modular pieces. The door part for example could have it own unique texture if you really need, add more polies in that area and break the UV's on that bad boy.

Use Vertex colors to fake AO without the extra textures.

Not enough bevels on the model, especially near the edges and the window areas, rocks weren't hard blocks back then.

Your model is really low poly in this regard, and the textures are the unoptimized asset in this regard.

jmg06

Thanks everybody for the comments.
I rechecked my well texture with your comments in mind. Even though efficiency was not my main focus I do realize that this is an important part of the texture creation process. It seems like I can get the same resolution texture with only 1/4th of the previous texture size. This does mean that I'll have to add some extra polys here and there. But that seems worth the reduction of texture space.

Rednaz

Try adding a little color variation in your scene, right now the roof, walls and chimney are all in the same color range. I also doubt that a roof like that could be made out of those bricks. If it would however have been made with those bricks, the roof should be like 3 times as thick.

iniside

Star with tileable textures. When you are done with them. Start to think how to make tileable texture look better. What engine tricks you can use to break tiling etc.
Because now there is just to much wasted space.

Hint. Just use multi-material. As many as subs you want. And start reducing submaterial count later, while thinking what tileable texture can be added to single sheet. Yes it's totaly way around than other people do, but it will be easier to learn, what can and should be on single texture, and what it's pointless. Not to mention it depends on engine you will be using anyway.

jmg06

@ iniside

But using tileable textures for the house moddel would mean at least 3 different texture files. And how would I get the different stone pattern around the windows and doors without using an unwrap.

How is 3 tileable textures + 1 details texture better than 1 bigger texture with all the information?

joeriv

First of all I have to agree with Rednaz, please get some colour variation in the house.
Especially the roof and walls.
I actually had to look for a moment and realize that it was a different texture/material.

Especially from a bit further in game it would look as if it's just 1 tilable texture over the whole thing.

And altough it is low poly, you could spend more.

For example tying in with what you said about the frame around the doors/windows.
Put some more poly's there, make it extrude out a bit, maybe texture that unique.
But then make it a seperate modular piece and reuse it in the whole scene.

And a last thing,
I could be wrong but it looks as if you just painted in your ambient occlusion in PS, why not just render out some ao and bring that in into your texture.

About tilable textures:

This is a picture of 2 different versions of a textured house, one with a unique 2048 map, and one with tileable textures.
They both have the same texture resolution (I would even say the tilable would look slightly better).

+it is easy to reuse the tilable textures over your whole scene.

iniside

jmg06 wrote: »

@ iniside

But using tileable textures for the house moddel would mean at least 3 different texture files. And how would I get the different stone pattern around the windows and doors without using an unwrap.

How is 3 tileable textures + 1 details texture better than 1 bigger texture with all the information?

You model it. And then unwrap over tileable texture. You should start from begining to reuse single texture as much as you can. In long run, creating unique textures for every object is inefficient.

jmg06

thanks for the tips evebody. I changed the colors a bit so that every material looks different.

ivanzu

Did a small overpaint,I think that it would look much better like this.

Eric Chadwick

This might help you.
http://wiki.polycount.com/ModularMountAndBlade

Most game artists go further than this, and pack all the textures into a single bitmap. It's a great skill to demonstrate.