[WIP] UDK, rustic/renaissance building

eidriaen

Hi guys! Figured I would post another piece I'm currently working on. It's part of a student group project, we're creating a sort of slum area based on Italian architecture. I'm using my friend's holiday picture he took as a reference:




Here's what my level looks like at the moment:


The archways on the bottom are going to be changed so they are less "boxy", building and roof texture is just temporary at the moment, and there aren't any windows or balconies yet.

Any critique is welcomed

AmbiguousPackage

Are the buildings just models or BSP. If you have worked with modular building design, you may want to look at using proc building creation in UDK. Not only will it save you lots of time once its setup but you will get many building design quickly generated for you.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ProceduralBuildings.html

eidriaen

They are models, and I'm going to sculpt them in Mudbox in order to get them looking a bit more interesting. Looks interesting that procedural building though, but use that for a later project

eidriaen

My latest image of this project:





Feels like I'm getting somewhere, but would love to hear some feedback

Macattackk

nice job, just start filling up those walls with signs and wires/pipes and itll start looking awesome. the wall textures are looking really good and unique.

How were you able to get the texture to be unique like that? Is it just a large tiling texture?

St.Sabath

First of all,i think this is coming along nicely!
imo the light- and camera-angle are spot on for this scene.
i would tweak the position of the far most left building though. the roof is kinda in line with the building just right to it.i would position it so the that these 2 roofs would have a bit more silhouette.
i would also suggest to increase the overhang on the rooftiles just for readability,..i know in RL they're overhang is minimal and you based it on that as far as i can tell,though in this scene they would read better if they where a bit more distinct.

just my 2cents.

keep it up!:thumbup:

AzzaMat

sorry but what is this for? game environment, art project, pre-rendered animation or something else? The environment looks like a game level but the way your building it sounds reaaaaaally inefficient for that. I would seriously consider taking AmbiguousPackage's advice and look into modular level design. If you look at any of the levels given in UDK and take them apart you can see they use modular pieces mixed with some bespoke pieces to create really nice looking levels. The polycount wiki has some great bits of information and tutorials on modularity and in the long run it will save you a lot of time. Anyway enough of that, I would consider squashing your roofs a bit, Italian roofs tend to fall of a bit more gently.



Also (suddenly gone bold and cant get rid of it) the edges of your building are really straight, maybe add a bit of geometry to make it seem more weathered and damaged especially on the long straights just to break up the line, overall it looks nice so far.

Gannon

Nifty, I'm working on something similar to this. You could stand to break up the different building stories and warp the corners of the buildings a bit more. Nice start though.

I'd recommend making a bunch of tiling textures, then vertblending them all on modular pieces. It works really nicely.

Broken_Lawnmower

If you do go down the modularity route, the Assassin's Creed games boast many outstanding examples of modular world building with these types of buildings. Besides that, I'd say pick a different texture for your ground plane (or at least darken the one you currently have). Right now it's pretty close to the texture you're using on your buildings and just looks kinda weird (look at that picture ref you were using for example - the ground is sort of a dark grey).

eidriaen

Thanks you guys for the feedback so far!

To answer some of your questions:
- buildings are textured with vertex painting with 4 tileable textures (my material looks like "spaghetti-vision", but it works )
- it's an environment project, where we need to make an environment to work in a game engine, so I have to constrain my polycount
- it's my first attempt of creating something with a modular method, and I didn't really break it up in as many parts as I could have, I need to get better at that

It's a student project which I have to hand in pretty soon, but I'll keep working on it for my portfolio.

eidriaen

Hey again guys!

Done some more work on my project, and applied some of the changes that some of you mentioned. Scaled the height of the roof a bit, moved the buildings around so the street doesn't look so straight, Found a rock mesh in UDK package and scaled it up to make a mountain, added some foilage from same package, changed the sky texture and changed the ground texture and shape.

After I built the lighting I got a weird black shadow running along the base of my buildings, which I can't figure out how to get rid of... Any help would be appreciated.

Anyways, here's my image atm:

wirrexx

are you using tileable textures and then blend them together in UDK?

Otherwise, i like the progress.

eidriaen

Yes, tileable textures and vertex painting.. They are blending alright, but I should have added more tessellation to my building meshes to have more control where the texture was, but I think it's looking alright

yodude87

AzzaMat wrote: »

sorry but what is this for? game environment, art project, pre-rendered animation or something else? The environment looks like a game level but the way your building it sounds reaaaaaally inefficient for that. I would seriously consider taking AmbiguousPackage's advice and look into modular level design. If you look at any of the levels given in UDK and take them apart you can see they use modular pieces mixed with some bespoke pieces to create really nice looking levels. The polycount wiki has some great bits of information and tutorials on modularity and in the long run it will save you a lot of time. Anyway enough of that, I would consider squashing your roofs a bit, Italian roofs tend to fall of a bit more gently.



Also (suddenly gone bold and cant get rid of it) the edges of your building are really straight, maybe add a bit of geometry to make it seem more weathered and damaged especially on the long straights just to break up the line, overall it looks nice so far.

remember that it depends also on the kind of italian architecture you want to replicate. the first one is the one you might find in places like florence or pisa (northwards), while the second one is the typical style from basilicata or calabria, southern italy. architecture and styles may vary tons when you change between north/central/southern italy.

eidriaen

Fixed my normal maps a bit, to get some more depth in them. Broke the corners of one of the buildings a bit to be less "boxy"

Fnitrox

Your initial photos really look like a city near where my home is... Sperlonga, even if it's not i'm pretty sure it some southern Italy place...

They use a really unique kind of paint for buildings which feels like chalk and they are all really really bright white... i know you're trying to break up monotony but the green doesn't fit in there too much.

But in the actualy city there's a lot of hand painted stuff on walls, of really bright colors, something like graffitis, i may snap some reference for you if you want as i'm going back home for the weekend.

Also looking at the rock formation behind the city i'm even more sure that it's the place i'm talking about. Those rocks are made of limestone, their color is a really bright "whiteish" pink, while your looks more like an american mesa.
Most of the craks in it should be vertical, but the "flow" of the rock is horizontal. It's a sedimentary rock formation, very fragile and carved from the sea.
There's also a particular erosion called "falesia" where giant pieces of stone falls in the sea as they can't stand their own weight since the bottom as been eroded by the water.

I'm really liking the progress overall so far you grasped most of it's essence without knowing much about the place and it's quite good!

EDIT: oh i forgot about roofs... most of them don't even have one, it's just a flat terrace on the top of the building with a row of rooftiles on a small wall surrounding it...pics posted by AzzaMat looks more like Rome or Florence architecture, not the medieval costal kind that you're going for

eidriaen

Thank you for the feedback.

You are right, the green is basically there to break up the repetitive pattern abit, I might tone it down a bit.

The rock is basically just a mesh from a UDK package that I have scaled up to have something in the background. I created something with the Terrain tool first, but it didn't look so good. Didn't want to waste too much time on the mountain since I had a deadline for this.

The image is from Amalfi Salerno in Southern Italy, a friend of mine gave me the picture. I liked the image and decided to create that. Should have picked a better reference image to be honest, because it's not really the best angle to see everything (especially the roof).

David Wakelin

Looks nice, I myself am a student in Games Design :P

Only major critque I have is on every building theres dirt on the base of each building - making it look asif each mesh is floating - I know youve noticed this problem but only thing I can really think of it appearing from is shade from the light source - i.e. your mesh really is a little high on the ground.

Will keep watch on this one

Alberto Rdrgz

why does it look like building hovering? (i didn't read :P)

eidriaen

It's actually embedded in the ground, I've checked if there was any space between the ground and the buildings. You don't notice it until I build lighting and then, for some reason, I get that black line across the bottom of the buildings. I thought at the time that it might be ambient occlusion that did it, but no matter what settings I messed around with it would still be there.

Would be grateful if anyone could explain why it's there...