El_Coffo's game environment
Hi there!
I am a student at Gotland University, Sweden. I am currently studying my third year of Game Design and Graphics.
So, I kind of got this opportunity to explore and do pretty much anything that I would want for two weeks. While reading this forum I've decided on making an environment snapshot.
I fell in love with this concept art from Fable 3 by Emrah Elmasli, so I guess that this is what I'll be spending my nearest future on.
So far I've made a block-out for different modular parts.
Any kind of feedback good or bad will be highly appreciated.
/Cheers
I am a student at Gotland University, Sweden. I am currently studying my third year of Game Design and Graphics.
So, I kind of got this opportunity to explore and do pretty much anything that I would want for two weeks. While reading this forum I've decided on making an environment snapshot.
I fell in love with this concept art from Fable 3 by Emrah Elmasli, so I guess that this is what I'll be spending my nearest future on.
So far I've made a block-out for different modular parts.
Any kind of feedback good or bad will be highly appreciated.
/Cheers
Replies
Make that small area look really great, make it modular so you can expand it and once you have your little mini section done, a few days work and you'll have the whole thing finished. No farting around with block ins or a nagging urge to do massive composition as you go. And if it takes longer than expected to make the assets up to snuff, you're not sitting there with a scene 10% done, you've got a very small section that can be as done as you want it to be. It's a very expandable goal.
good luck!
stick to what crazyfingers say.
That seems like a very smart way to tackle it! I'll be sure to do as you suggested.
This is what I have managed to produce so far.
The crates and barrels are UDK's own and are only there for filling the level as of now, I will model them myself later .
I have never worked with modularity before so this is kind of a trial and error exercise for me. If anyone sees that I'm heading for the wrong direction or has any general tips n' tricks I'd love to hear them.
I actually disagree with this. The concept the OP has chosen was done from an awkward angle - unless the player enters or plays in this environment from an elevated position or is 20 feet tall. An early block out from the player's perspective would answer many questions the concept art does not address.
Some examples:
Will a player ever get a good view of a particular area? If not then it makes no sense to spend time making art for an area that the player never sees. Answering such questions early on will reveal how much work is needed, and more importantly where that work will need to be invested in. You may think the concept art answers these questions, but until you get art into the game and start playing around you never really know what the player gets a good look at and what is obstructed.
From a certain angle the elements looks good, but if I move several feet to a side will it still look good? If not, making large scale adjustments to a primitive block out will be far easier and faster than dealing with this issues with fully arted assets.
Even an extremely basic block out of the entire scene, as the OP as done in the first post, is better than simply not doing one and jumping straight into making art up a highly detailed little corner of the scene. I think after the OP has done this step, and has settled on a compositionally pleasing block out of the scene, is it safe to start making art for a particular area. You need to treat this scene as a whole, and the whole is composed of individual elements. You need to work from large to small and constantly tweak and course correct as needed. If you jump straight into the small scale stuff and ignore the big questions you may find you just spent hours doing work for something that looks bad but could have been corrected very easily early on in the process.
As said, there is a varying scale in your bricks. I don't know what orangeknight is talking about, but the problem you have lies in your UV map resolution. I suggest that you first make sure that everything in your scene has the same resolution. You don't really need any plugins for that.
Another critique about the bricks is the texture itself. You have some kind of dirty putty over the bricks and you appear to be wanting to make it look damaged and old. The damaged looks really random and on illogical places. Also very concentrated in that manner. This is not how a wall like that would take damage. I also suggest making 2 textures: 1 of the putty and 1 of the bricks and make them seamless and repeat them. Then use texture blending.
Note that there are some weird seems in the wall as well.
Another critique is the floor. The cobble stones you use are all a different color and way too saturated, because of that it doesn't look like a stone floor you would see in a city like environment like the concept art describes. It looks like a stone floor you would see in crazy candy land. Besides that, the specularity value suggests that it is metal rather than stone. Also note that you have created rounded off stones with a lot of bump depth. These stones do not appear like that in the concept art. What I see there are flat stones with not that much depth.
The structure you made which is part of the wall, obviously suffers from some serious texture stretch on several places. I also cannot really make out what kind of structure the material is supposed to resemble. The whole shape is also not the same as the concept. Excuse my critique if you are still working on that building.
Lastly, the steps you textured look a bit like metal. I think this is supposed to look like stone.
Also note that the color map of your stairs, floor and walls are ALL a very different color. The concept suggests that these elements are all roughly the same colors. Even though colors will look better once you light the whole thing, the initial color of you color maps define the real color of the surfaces.
I am not trying to be a hard ass on you. But this scene, being in this early stage, already suffers from a LOT of serious quality and observational errors. My suggestion is that you gather enough reference material from simple wall and floor structures, and really work from that.
I am really surprised that you are a 3rd year student, since you really seem to be missing out on the very basics of visual art. And I'm not talking about 'modeling' or 'texturing' skills. Cause those are some technical skills which you already have. I'm talking about pure observation. The ability to see things how they are: this is the most important skill of 3D visual art.
EDIT: Also, do not bother to make the whole environment. This is undo able for even the most experienced of artists just in 2 weeks. That would take you several months. I would suggest that you just work out a small detail of the scene.
EDIT: If you still would like to create a full scene like this, I would suggest that you set up a camera in your scene with exactly the right perspective of the concept art (using the image as reference plane) and then lock that camera. That way you can quickly build a blockout while you maintain the correct dimensions. By the way, I also wonder why you would want to create an environment still in UDK.
Thanks for the feedback, it is really valuable!
The image that I posted before is of course in a very early stage and is not showing off anything finished. It is supposed to be a way for me to see what kind of materials and colors that would and would not work, as well as to get some criticism from the forum of the work in progress.
Being a third year student with a major in game design and a minor in graphics, sadly I have not spent as much time as I would have liked on the art side. But, that is something that I intend to change now.
I know that my textures could look a lot better and that is why I took on the challenge of this massive concept, for the ability to learn.
I hope that you will continue to check in and to see if I improve!
I misunderstood your specialization earlier, sorry about that. Also not really sure what "graphics" is. Could be a lot of things. Doesn't really matter though. I would be as critical towards an experienced professional as a complete beginner. Only way to learn is to recognize your mistakes.
It's really nice to hear that you are motivated and it makes me quite curious about your little project here. I hope to check back here if I remember (I'm not as active on this forum as I'd like to).
Keep at this man!