WIP - Temple of the Desert
polycounter lvl 9
Hey guys, this is my new piece I'm working on comment and critiques welcome, also looking for some C&C on my portfolio website (http://victorcortis.com). This is the second environment I've done since I switched over from working on characters about 2 and a half months ago.
Right now it's at about 104k tris, and will likely finish somewhere around 130k.
The concept is taken from an artist called Khang Le
Where I am at now...
More to come. Lighting is a WIP. It's just being rendered in Maya right now but I want to take it over to UDK eventually. Still some stuff to do... this render only shows the front portion of the temple too. I'm taking some liberties from the concept and more just using it for inspiration and general feel.
Anyways need all the help I can get on critiques with this piece and my website. I'm looking for a job and gotta have everything the best it can be. Thanks!
P.S. Wires and texture sheets to come.
P.S. Again, yeah I know my workflow is f'ed up but I didn't really have any idea on the complete piece so didn't block everything in first, I'm just working asset to asset.
Right now it's at about 104k tris, and will likely finish somewhere around 130k.
The concept is taken from an artist called Khang Le
Where I am at now...
More to come. Lighting is a WIP. It's just being rendered in Maya right now but I want to take it over to UDK eventually. Still some stuff to do... this render only shows the front portion of the temple too. I'm taking some liberties from the concept and more just using it for inspiration and general feel.
Anyways need all the help I can get on critiques with this piece and my website. I'm looking for a job and gotta have everything the best it can be. Thanks!
P.S. Wires and texture sheets to come.
P.S. Again, yeah I know my workflow is f'ed up but I didn't really have any idea on the complete piece so didn't block everything in first, I'm just working asset to asset.
Replies
Great work!
Great work so far.
The room is slightly smaller (I actually had a bigger version to begin with) by design. I simply couldn't figure out enough stuff to put in the extra areas so shrunk the areas to the side of the pillars. I know, I know bad me.
The middle walkway is also thinner, I might actually go back and change that... in fact I might retexture the stairs entirely. Their UV layout is really shoddy now that I think about it and because of that the pixel density isn't nearly as good as it should be.
As for the lighting it is completley placeholder at the momment. I have an idea what I'm going to do for it, the big question in my mind is the blue light. I see it in the concept but have no idea what is emitting it as it is such a strong light source. Any guesses? I know this was done for a fantasy game so it could be something magical...
Lastly NoChance you made a very good point. The pillars were the very first things I did and they are way too high poly at the momment. I just looked at it further and realized I can cut the poly count for each pillar from about 1700 to 1000 with out losing much definition. When there is 16 of those things in the scene that's 11k more tris I can use somewhere else! Nice spot!
I assume you're referring to the back wooden frame part too. I think you're right with that too, Right now it is all one piece, but if I broke it up into cubes I could pack way more detail into it. It's 1300 tris right now which isn't that high, but if I broke it up I could probably get it down to like 500 easily.
Close up of some props:
And the wide angle shot:
Had a look at your site and it looks really good. Easy to navigate and nice breakdowns of the diffrent pieces.
I'd fiddle with that main light source from above, as it stands the scene looks a bit dark and hard to read.
Edit: I just looked at the progress shots at your website. Unless that's intentional and you plan on doing something different later I think you could get rid of a lot of unnecessary polys at the center.
http://victorcortis.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/WIPGrayTemple.jpg
@Pzychaoz Thanks for critiqueing the website, that's exactly what I like to hear!
Also I'll post a few breakdowns of individual assets soon. My workflow is nothing crazy. Model > UV unwrap (using a combination o Roadkill and Maya) > Texture (Photoshop and Xnormal) > Put in some lighting and presto...
Weither or not I model a highpoly version of something (or sculpt in Zbrush) largely depends on how close it is to the viewer. Then the detail is baked down through Xnormal.
That's the basics of it anyways, if you have any questions I can try to answer them. The main ingredient in my workflow is probably long hours slaving over 3d... and of course the longer you work the faster you get and more focused you get.
Thanks for the tips, much appreciated!
For example, how do I know if a certain wall should be tileable, and if it should, how do I make the asset in a way it fits perfectly and seamlessly, etc.
Anyway, I don't wanna hijack your thread, I'll probably make my own thread once I have a few concept images nailed down and I can get rid of my doubts then. I'm probably just overcomplicating things anyway. :thumbup:
Walls should almost always be tileable. Unless it is a very, very unique wall and the focal point of the piece. In fact you can reuse a lot of textures and materials and most people will hardly ever notice the difference if you do it cleverly.
As far as fitting the assets together, you can do it a few ways. Plan ahead or if you're working asset to asset you can model in a certain scale.
What I mean is on the grid in max or maya etc. model in a multiple of a unit of scale. If your wall is 32 squares long, model in units of 2. So a support beam could be 4 units across and it would fit along the wall 32/4 = 8 times. A door or window could be 2 units. A large support could be 8 units long and fit across the room 4 times.
Does that make sense? What you don't want to happen is make the room like 13 squares across and your support beam 5 squares long, because 5 doesn't fit into 13 perfectly.
Alternatively you can do it a less planned way... model it asset by asset and just build each one to fit perfectly into the scene and adjust accordingly. For instance I modeled the pillars first. Then duplicated them, and modeled the wooden parts inbetween. Once I decided how many I wanted I made the room last to fit it perfectly.
It's a bit janky but it works if you're just wanting to rush head long into things.
BTW updates coming tomorrow (well later today since once again I was up all night).
I can't wait to see what Unreal does to this. Hopefully with your experience with the alley scene you can take some time that you spent learning UDK and use it to create some interesting environment effect. I don't know how greatly this scene would benefit from some light fog/dust in the air but it's worth a look. And on the right hand side of the wall I could see a texture seem. I'm guessing you'll fix that via asset adding though.
Is this just a regular render from a 3D app? It looks like it is. Why not try this out within a game engine?
Also - I think this would really benefit from a GI solution. You've 1 strong light source in this scene that, if bounced around, would fill the room nicely. On top of that, some AO on your objects would do your scene a TON of justice. You have so many nice little detail props everywhere with just simple shadowing coming off them. They fall a bit flat against their background and at times can look as though they're floating.
More updates!
Can't wait to see some more updates!
All hand painted, I would assume?
*Adam - Yes, currently I'm rendering this scene out through Maya. I do plan to take it into UDK, next to see what it looks like in realtime. A bit of a daunting task. However, I did build the scene keeping it in mind, so the final Tri count is 139k, and most textures are 512x512, a few 1024x1024 and a 2048x2048 for the room itself.
*Dudealan2001 - Way ahead of you
*ArcticNova83 - The textures are a mix of photosourcing, heavy manipulation, and hand painting. Obviously some are more photosourced than others, mainly the rugs, and illustrations on the scrolls.
So anyway here are the latest renders done in Maya, with global illumination turned on for kicks. It kind of washes out the blue which I don't like but brightens the scene overall and gives some nice color bleeding. I'll be taking it into UDK from here barring any critiques you all might have. I might be on the slow side though, I've been working on this for a month and might start up another more stylized project.
I didn't know that Adam, I'll keep that in mind. Will I have the same problems with UDK's GI?
This is looking great man. Nice work.
Otherwise I really like the scene - The light coming in from the top is quite effective and well done and you've put quite a bit of variation throughout it. Good job.
Your skylight / main focal point seems a bit dim. Also, I'd like to see some nice soft shadows from it. Shadows in general are falling flat in this scene. Nothing feels really grounded.
Lots of great color to work with in this piece. Keep pushing it.
Could use some nice asymmetry as your main corridor shot is stale / evenly balanced.
Textures feel a bit grainy - walls, pillars, floor tiles, etc. Too much splotching contrast. Could be your lights, film grain post, or your textures.
As Adam mentioned - the lighting could be a quite a bit more dramatic. Right now your bounce light is killing the nice pools of light and shadow you could be seeing.
Light rays from skylight look fake. The color of the light coming in could be pushed to better show the time of day. Light rays could then touch geo and not just fade off to nothing mid-air.
Some subtle dust particles in the main light source would look nice.
Need to add something interesting to the end of the corridor shot - right now there is no focal end point.
What sort of story are you trying to tell through the mood and aesthetics?
Looking cool!
Anyways still a lot to do, since I'm learning UDK as I go. Does anyone know how to properly do windows? The skylight area if set to transparent blocks the light, if I set it to translucent it lets the light through, but also becomes well translucent (the parts that aren't glass).... so if anyone know how to setup a nice shader for a window with the glass built into it let me know.
Just learned this myself, trying out the Unreal engine for the first time over the weekend. I'm assuming you're using a window texture with an alpha, and that alpha shows up as the white tab in the material editor (after the R G and B tabs). Connect the alpha tab with the OpacityMask channel for the material, and set the material's blend mode to "BLEND_Masked" rather than Translucent.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialBasics.html - it's in here, toward the bottom.
So here is the latest update, still quite a few props need to be added. Need to adjust a lot of lighting, make the light coming from the sky stronger, and turn down all the emissive stuff because my lighting is washing out my shadows. If someone has suggestions they'd be appreciated since I only half know what I'm doing... the normals are getting washed out too, and if I turn up Indirect Normal Influence in the World Properties I get horrible blotchy shadows and artifacts on everything...Crits welcome, but go easy... please
s2engine* Yeah I knew that, the problem was that the dominant directional light wasn't shining through the window when it was set to masked... so I have to set it to translucent, but it makes the entire thing slightly transparent which sucks.
-Is the red lighting in the scene going to be toned down? It seem...very sinister which is fine, but I feel there is still too much red.
-Will you attempt to add God Rays from the window once you get your tech problems worked out?
-Will you add environmental effects?
Keep pushing it, I know UDK is being a bitch right not to you but you're learning and you're making progress. Can't wait to see a final result!
I'll look into environmental effects, if possible I'd like to add some smoke to the braziers (torches) and look at the post processing effects.