Pirate Town Set
Hey everybody! I am a student in my postgrad year. I am currently working on a Caribbean pirate town to hopefully export into the Unreal engine. Here are some pics of my progress. Feedback welcome!
Quick concepts:
Screen shots of some of the assets:
Quick concepts:
Screen shots of some of the assets:
Replies
Here are some screen grabs from max:
Right now I'm working on the outer environment. Will hopefully have an update of that soon.
Also texel density seems off on a lot of stuff. Make sure you're projecting a 512x512 texture for every 6 meters in unreal.
I'd slow it down and take your time on really polishing a few pieces up so you have a better idea of where you want to take the piece. What you have now is good for layout purposes and whitebox, but you should really go back in and improve upon what you have (unless this is being made for an i-phone or top down rts or something).
I've never used unreal before, but I'm trying to read up on it as much as possible. If you have any useful links or anything that would be great. The point of this project is to build something for next semester to play around with it in unreal.
I have unique unwraps on everything, 1024x1024 on my buildings. My feedback has been that I need to optimize my uvs by making multiple tileable textures. This is an example of what I have:
So, I have to go back and fix that too.
Here are a just a few of the references I've been using:
Thanks for all the feedback. I'll get down to polishing the pieces up and will hopefully have an update soon.
Your models look pretty good overall but as was mentioned, if this is being pitched as a level or enviro for unreal you can afford a lot more polygons in there imo. I'd keep an eye on your textures too, a lot of the brickwork seems very uniform on your arch, but in your reference there's a lot of variation in the mortar that breaks up the monotony a lot. I'd also watch the strength of your normals in places, plaster wall on the house is too strong imo.
Keep it going, i like the idea.
Less vertices = less work UV-ing
Less vertices = better performance
cool work so far man, the lighting is holding it back and making it muddy. also, having everything uniquely unwrapped is really inefficient. 1 or 2 tiling 512 brick textures broken up with vert blending and a small 512x256 trim sheet could give you the same results and be usable on way more buildings in the scene.
for the lighting its all yellow brown, having a warm sunlight and a cool ambiet would give you more contrast and some color variation. keep at it man, pirate shit is always cool. maybe steal some ideas from these fucking awesome concepts for the canned pirates of the Caribbean game done by Daryl Mandryk. they have such and awesome sense of mood and atmosphere.
I also suggest to use warm colors (I assume you did that for the last one?)
Crate are fine, n88tr.
Also I suggest that you add more objects to the scene to make it look more vivid and not that empty.
The Scene is like a large void atm cornered buy those buildings.
Also I suggest that you use tilebrakers for the textures to remove that overly visible "i am a tiling texture look".
Since i'm not one of those shader gurus from the tech artist area, I suggest that you take a look at the stuff there, especially the udk area.
I suggest you do a little research on vertex blending and material creation utilyzing that very technique for tile braking.
I also suggest a read of the following threads:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68089&highlight=udk+blending
Ah there it is:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76295
Also take a look at this:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74090&highlight=blending
I hope this helps a bit.
You actually improved it a good deal with that last picture, though maybe I just can't see it through the sun beams!
The artwork PixelSmasher posted looks like an excellent source of inspiration for you. Even if it's a different style and mood than you want, you can still carry over some of that believability that they depict. This is a pirate town, after all. Make it look like the pirates have laid a few years of wear and tear on those buildings!
However, I do notice that the textures could use quite some work. It looks as if you almost went for a painterly quality, yet it ended up being a bit too realistic? Hard to explain...They seem very muddy...I suppose it just seems to be a little bit TOO in-between realistic and hand-painted to be THAT flat colored. I think punching out some more normal maps / increasing the bump in places might do you more good than not. Especially in certain pics of yours...the floor seems a lot flatter than it should.
The biggest thing though, might not be any of what I aforementioned, but rather it may just be your lighting setup that is detracting from the total quality of your scene? Who knows at this point...
I'd tinker with the lighting to see if what I said is at all justifiable!...
I should have read your post first, lol...the amount of tiling...is definitely affecting.
Maybe he was planning to have a modular workflow though? I don't know...
keep it up!
a few questions and suggestions?
Where is the scene set? like world location and what era is it? this will help you gather architectual reference which would help this peice alot.
may i also suggest you remove all of the 'special' effects until your models and textures look good as they shouldnt be used to cover your mistakes but instead to compliment your work. And remove the blur when showing your work all elements should be veiwable.
Also i would go and gather so much more reference for your scene this will help you alot as it has helped me greatly, here is a good piece of reference i found that may help you to get some mood in your scene
http://www.stivesgallery.co.uk/HarboursFull/OldHarbourGallery.html
hope ive helped a little good luck
Yeah... the god-rays are DEFIANTLY getting toned-down. Can almost hear the "Hallelujah!" Update coming up real soon.
The setting for the set tried to follow some outlines set for a game premise. Basically, in a pirate-ridden world, there are two waring factions: the Caribbean pirates vs the Asian pirates. The Caribbean pirates are a mish-mash of English, French, Spanish, and whatnot, so I tried to incorporate mostly English and Spanish styles together.
Take heart, I do have a LOT more reference than shown... and if it means anything, I spent a whole afternoon putting "Arrrrrrr matey" after all my sentences to see if it helped. Even considered buying a parrot, but they poop too much.
You need more pirate stuff.