Hey everyone. So my not so little Invasion project is going on a little break for a bit. I'm going to do a smaller scale scene that shouldn't take terribly long to complete, and it'll give me a break from the scale of Invastion. Also, I've been wanting to work on this scene a ton lately.
Here's the concept. It's from
Ben Proctor.
![Sewer.jpg](http://secretsilent.com/drose/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Sewer.jpg)
And here is what I have so far. It's a very modular scene, and I'm hoping to have this all done in a two or three weeks.
![Blog_Sewer_A.jpg](http://secretsilent.com/drose/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Blog_Sewer_A.jpg)
![Blog_Sewer_B.jpg](http://secretsilent.com/drose/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Blog_Sewer_B.jpg)
Replies
@Spatz: Will do and make a few different adjustments to the heights of the walls
@mkandersson: Good point. I will do that. I think I'm going to high poly that and try to bake a normal from it instead of hoping to use an image on it...just to see how it goes.
Edit: Wow look at that pixellation. Stupid Jpeg. Though the shadows do really look a little too soft and spotty atm.
I think with some nice hard surface painting the pipes will look really good.
Kodde, I was actually thinking something similar. I wasn't going to go for a 100% toon shaded look but more of the look Adam's doing in his current project thread. I wouldn't lay it on as heavy, but a slight tinge of stylization could do this scene some good. I'll be adding lines to imply panels in the texture soon.
- The hose, right now it looks more like metal duct work than highly flexible tubing. It looks like you added ribs to a cylinder/spline and forgot to bow in the hanging parts between the ribs. You have the loops to do it... Most of that look should be coming from the model.
- The pieces of the tube are also evenly spaced and pretty rigid, notice how it stretches and sags in areas because its so flexible. The ribs force the cloth/plastic to hold some sort of cylinder shape otherwise it would completely collapse. Theres a bit of a struggle to keep that thing in shape and in place.
You need to dig in and illustrate that struggle especially since its a bit of a focal piece.
- You notice the cord attached to the pipe trying to keep it in place, that should help give you some idea how flexible and fragile this tube is and how hard it is to keep in place. There needs to be some pull around the place that the cord attaches, it needs to effect the model.
- This piece is a window into the larger world around this scene. It seems to be a half assed fix and with it looking like a rigid metal pipe you lose that.
- The little tanks sitting on top of the vent, you could toss two loops around their center and bow it up a little bit, it would build a little bit of style and honestly if you're hurting for the polys they could be optimized a bit to compensate.
Sorry to sound like a dick but you gotta nail this stuff.
You're missing the support beams on the right wall that connect from the wall to the ceiling. It's hard to crit anything else at this early of a stage.
I think you should check out borderlands for the style. I mean the concept screams that to me. Plus it wouldn't be a half bad idea to do a bit of a stylized piece for your portfolio since the other two you're working on are pretty realistic.
And don't apologize for being an Ass. Better you crush me so I can get better than you baby me. I don't need that.
Vic, I do have them as you can see in this updated picture. I had them for quite a while actually, just out of view on accident. Style wise, I can try. I'm a little worried about execution on my part for it. I'll research some more, but I hope I can still use my image based textures.
The brackets that hold the pipe on actually have a little shelf inside for the pipe to sit on.
I'm not sure why you clipped/floated the big boxy concrete support into the wall but didn't do the same for the vent. I would break the vent off and use a geometry tile for the slanted part.
I think you could work a little more modular and kick up a few variants.
The white lines are geometry seams.
Green = same base for left and right walls. The tile repeats maybe a few variant tiles or textures to help break up the repeating.
Purple = Slant tile.
Red = Wall tile, this can be used all over the place, I would actually modify the concept a little and have the lighter boarder be be in the lower green tile and the red tile would be purely concrete.
Blue & Yellow = floating bits.
If you work on a grid and snap to a grid it will make things much much easier.
The textures are a bit noisy, reading a bit more like peperoni than concrete. Imperfections are great when used sparingly especially when trying to match the concept.
The edge on the boxy concrete support could use some defining, you can do that in the texture or with supporting loops to help coral the smoothing/shadows.
The bolts on the vent in the concept are bigger than what you have, and in general I think some of the other finer details need to be larger. Try to work on a minimum detail size and don't fall below it. If its 5 units make sure the smallest detail isn't smaller than that.
-I've removed the unique geometry wall that Vig suggested and threw a cylinder in there for the moment. It needs some extra TLC.
-Added some bowing to the two small blue tanks. Don't know if you can see it probably need another view. Or more bowing.
-Scaled up some screw sizes
-All base textures are done except for one set, which I will do after some reworks.
-Added some place holder water with a Maya ocean shader. Left in the concrete floor too, kind of like that idea.
To Do:
-Yellow Tube
-Work on and work out Vig's modular suggestion
-Finish textures and attempt a sort of style. Liking a Borderlands type idea
-Edit/redo textures to be more similar to Vig's suggestion.
-Lighting. Lighting.
-Set up a camera so I have repeated render shots instead of being a loser and using just the perspective in the viewport. Duh that takes like two second to do.
Btw, everyone who comments and crits I really appreciate it all.
Changes:
-Yellow Pipe edited
-Lighting edited
-Walls now made up of tiles with changed texture sheet for variations in the texture
-Static Cameras for repeatable render results
-Wall Textures
To do:
-Still feel like I want to work on that yellow pipe but not sure what to do
-paint over base textures and finish diffuse maps
-create the spec and normals
-Exports to UDK
-Unique models
I will totally check out moving the pipe closer to the wall. Right now.
With good lighting in UDK this can look great.
Personally I would make the water flat. The waves look too obvious.
I would get this into UDK as soon as possible. And maybe add temporary textures in UDK. The UDK textures can give you a good benchmark to aim for. For example I found my walls in my sci fi corridor scene in my portfolio looked rubbish until I applied a UDK material to it. Then I realised that it needed reflections and more spec.
UDK is actually up next. I'm going to probably bring it over tomorrow morning after I finish up diffuse textures and then I'll make a separate Normal and Spec for UDK than any Maya render I might decide to do. I've definately noticed that UDK and Maya have totally different ways of using or rendering spec and even normal maps.
Everything is ported into UDK. I had to scale stuff up some, that's why that guy is there for. You are looking at Diffuse only textures except for the yellow pipe which has a normal map. Floor is that concrete floor from earlier. Water is much later.
There are a few obvious things I need to fix and I'll get to it tomorrow. I had a suggestion from vcortis about making this in the Borderlands style. It sounds really awesome but I have a question. Should I paint the outlines on to the diffuse, or should I use a shader technique?
EDIT: I only ask because I'm going to be creating a large scene in UDK and don't know if I should design my pieces modularly to fit on the grid in Unreal.
I would also start trying to think up some ways to fill space. Its looking empty.
Not bad though, keep working.
Yea keeping to a grid is key. In max I snap each objects local pivot to the grid and then snap the tile edges to the grid also in 2D snap mode. I also use helper grids because max is a bitch about snapping vertically.
Each objects pivot, is the pivot point in Unreal so if it works on the grid in max, it works in unreal. I test it out by turning on pivot and grid snap and copy/move the objects around, which behaves more or less like unreal will so it makes finding the tile errors a lot easier if you don't need to export/import between tweaks.
I'm pretty sure the same thing can be set up in Maya, I've never done it tho, but the pieces are all there.
@ 3D ryan: Conceptually, it's actually a 'clean' sewer. I do plan to dirty it a little more, probably after i get the remainder of the objects created. That's actually the plan tonight after I finish up any minor errors here and there. Color wise, what would you suggest? Something more industrial?
As a matter of fact, not terribly sure you can tell right away if I actually did anything. Anyway, I'm going to put something in the middle or towards the left side (looking at it) of the sewer and I'm not sure what to do. Some sort of filtration device? Scientific looking machines in a group? A collection of terds that amount to 300?? Serp, thats for you!
Anyway, have at it!
This is just an update shot. I've gotten in almost everything that is in the concept. Texture wise, everything is still a pure Diffuse texture.
Down here, I also have a quick paint over. I've added some support pillars on the right hand wall to break up the planes and add some visual difference to that side of the wall. The black mess is a platform that would have a few controls on it. I just wanted some suggestions on what to include to break up some of the emptiness. I think the other thing swirling in my head is a sort of mechanical object that is in the middle of the water and not quite off to the side.
Anyway, comments/crits welcome!
Example:
Enjoy and crits/comments/suggestions very welcome!
I'm just about done with this project. I'm looking for crits and the like right now. Here is my image. I actually have a video of this on Youtube too. I'll post the image, some of the things I did in here, and then crit away!
-Uses a 'Outline and Crush shader' that is available on these forms. It was created by Drachis. I made minor changes (mostly variable adjustments)
-Uses a Bokeh Blur shader by Drachis. It's toned down considerably but adds saturation and Bloom strength.
-Water is a dynamic fluid object. It uses normal map based distortion effects. The dynamic normal mapping is caused by a fluid normal in the shader.
-Add a height fog to cover the whole scene. The concept seems to have some fog.
-Turn on scene affect and play with the scene highlights, midtones, shadows. Either click on world properties or click on your post process volume to acess this.
-I think it would look cooler if it was brighter with more bloom, while trying to keep the shadow strength. Turning up the brightness of the main light might be enough to do this.
-I would get rid of the black bits in the water, it looks preety bad.
-If any of the props are decent looking in the background I'd bring them forward more to show them off.
*Edit* Actually after seeing the youtube video, the whole scene looks to be of a decent quality. So you could just present multiple views of your scene in your portfolio. Like a second screenshot close to the back. In my scenes I make the far off props rubbish so I can't do that lol.
But if your gonna do one thing I would recommend playing with the postprocess. And the second thing would be making it brighter with more bloom.
also the right hand side wall should be taller and the top should stick out some more, i think this would give you greater scale
and yeah beef the lighting up a touch
NICE
@Shepeiro: Thanks for the comments. I can texture that in no problem (it was my plan initially). Scale is...well balls, I was hoping that'd be ok. Will look in to it.
Keep em coming guys! I'm fixing up parts (that are fixable with a shorter time span) on my first project for today, I don't know if two works is enough for a portfolio relaunch but at this point I have to do this. Aiming for the end of the week to have my portfolio ready for you guys to look at.
if anything, i would reverse it and give the closest parts of the walls a very *slight* blur.
that water effect has got to go, as mentioned. it looks like an error and drops the quality of the entire piece. the water itself needs something - some depth and color to it. some surface reflection. looking at the image now, i wouldn't know there was water in it if i hadn't followed the thread.
it's coming along nicely, but you're not done yet!
Oh, sorry for the size, figured that seeing my material editor would help.
But my crazy ass reflection switching still remains. Why does it seem to depend on the angle of my viewport so much? I don't get it.
change log:
-DoF changed to be close to viewer
-height fog
-added concrete line detail into the wall textures
-increased light intensity
-increased both normal bloom and Bokeh Blur strengths
-bringing out bright warm colors slightly more via Post Process
-Water speed, texture (there is a green diffuse and it works, might be kinda hard to see atm), specularity, and reflection
-height of right wall increased
What I still need to do as far as I know:
-fix that effing water reflection
The blackness you see in the water is 100% caused by the post process shader. Unless there is a way to set the fluidactor and water shader to ignore post process I don't know what to do to get rid of it.
I just spent 15 mins adding more textures to the concrete on your image to show you that it would look better, but it doesn't lol. So I scrapped it.
SasoChicken, my water is a hodgepodge of crap at this point...in theory the shader would work right but it doesn't...I'll keep trying to figure something out but in the mean while I'll tend to the suggestions I have from you guys.
Oh and yea, I figured my lines were too thick but I ended up getting used to them. Also, I wanted to see if you guys had the same initial feeling. And you do.
Im weak on critique but if i see something ill let u know ;D
i gotta learn how to do that Line stuff in UDK as well