UDK environment: The wizard's desk
Hi everyone,
I feel ready to start a new project, I'm trying to keep things small. I'll be doing a small environment, not even a room... It will be a wizard desk full of books, scrolls, devices and creepy stuff and kind of a wall with a window and the ground for background. I'm starting today. Get ready for some images in a couple of days...
I feel ready to start a new project, I'm trying to keep things small. I'll be doing a small environment, not even a room... It will be a wizard desk full of books, scrolls, devices and creepy stuff and kind of a wall with a window and the ground for background. I'm starting today. Get ready for some images in a couple of days...
Replies
+1
I've been working this morning in this concept, I'm not a concept art specialist or anything but it's true that its so good to try always something and don't start out of nothing:
I started doing the background, a couple of textures and models, all loaded inside udk and lightmass...
I keep on going with this one, and have great new screnshots to show
second screenshot .. and a low grunge to your wood to add some variation
good luck
Thanks for the tips
@dissonance: I tried but I suppose the normal should be more accentuated. I'll try to correct it... because anyway, its not tiling perfectly
@ayoub44: Well, the blue light comes from the candle on top of the skull that I was about to add in the next update... Thanks for the sugestion it's true, some low grunge and it will look better seen close.
And its so fucking late and I've worked so hard today!
good nights!
The stone wall (the window trim in particular) looks lower resolution than everything else though. The cracks between the stones are too dark, and the specular is too high.
Are you going to get some candle wax running down the skull like you have in the concept? That was a nice touch, you should try to go for it.
Is it just me or does something look off about the skull? I'm not sure, but I think the eyes might be too big.
Its material is a bit off too...
I was going to add the wax but also wanted to have the candle and the skull as separated props. I'm going for it in the next update!
@Weirdboy: Maybe, I didn't put that much care in the proportions or anything, just typed in skull in google images and left the gallery in my second screen to sculpt with the references, but I didn't care too much. I got something that looks good.
Well, so I've not been caring about the details too much, I just was trying to get the more material the fastest... And leaving the polishing for a later stage. I use to do this most of the time... I suppose it's like painting a picture. Some people like to make out the details as soon as they can and other just jump giving a few strokes here and a few there, but like to go on with everything at the same time.
I think today I'm trying to make some books and the potion bottle and them I'll go back over all the details you have been pointing out and fix everything one step at a time...
Thanks for the feedback!
may i suggest to work on the candle's shader a little? it looks too solid for me.
there should be more light shining through the candle from its inner outwards.
(gosh, is that understandable at all??)
But damn the skull looks nice. Looks kinda like it's just drawn in there.
The normal map is a mix of bake from a high poly sculped in zbrush and some normals from images that I obtained using some base textures - leather, rusty metal, etc, plus some drawed by hand for the signs on the cover. I used occlusion cavity, normal, and height maps to help me compose the diffuse. A lot of photoshop and thats all. Both books share the same texture as you see.
Don't look at the cork or your eyes will bleed with that specular lol.
Shame on me for not trusting lightmass completely!
and the fast concept I did thinking how would I model the bottle.
-I finished the bottle specular texture
-I found the fix for normal map seams... (an issue that was driving me mad, not too much info out there on how to do it!!) and lightning sseams for the skulls
- Re-baked the rocks around the window in higher res - in the end I think I'll have to polish that rocks much more and make a harder edge on the border...
-fixed the mat of the book to make the golden part look shinny
-made some new normals for the windows and tweaked the material (now they look soooooo much better, I just needed to learn some new things about materials to make those cristals shine!)
Added some dust all over the desk top...
So even though I can still think of a couple of things I'm leaving behind, I'll leave all for the next week's "fix-stuff-and bugs-day"
Tomorrow I'm doing the piece of table cloth, the oppened scroll laying on it, and the big oppened book. And if I have time a key, or a little chest, or the dagger
I almost couldn't tell for a second if you had done another peice of concept art or if it was a 3D object!
I really dig the transition from warm to cool light, it's something that always makes me really get into a piece.
For some reason though the persepective on the window keeps changing depending on what direction i'm scrolling from! it's quite the trip actually, great work!
The other day I almost go crazy with a heightmap I was working with that looked pretty much like this
http://files.sharenator.com/black_dots_optical_illusion_Optical_illusions-s390x325-13679-580.gif
Well, to be honest it was far less extreme, but also disgusting...
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/media/artwork/?keywords=&view#/artwork-0078
See the stearin trails running down the skull? I think it would add some cool believabillity to the scene
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The knife's handle is carved as a cobra snake. I still need to do some work in the material.
This is whats going to be the support for the orb emiting blue light in my scene. In the begining I was going to model some kind of plant motif but couldn't resist and added this kind of little sculpt. I sculpted this with radial simetry x4 and it's quite funny because with the orb in place it looks like every figure is hiding a bit behind of the ball and peering at the next one in a cicle that turns around over and over...
I love the socket you've made, the idea with the figures is pretty cool. The overall scene is coming together nicley.
Keep it up!
I finished the socket and made an orb with a simple sphere and an emissive material
To sum up you make a tiling low poly pattern in 3ds max or maya or whatever, takeit into zbrush, sculpt it, back to your 3d app, duplicate the objects you need to fill up your tiling completely, render to a plane, and compose in photoshop... Some people also do it directly in zbrush, I had also tried to do some textures like that but, I found easier to do al the set up of the base you are going to sculpt in max. It was much quicker.
http://www.3dmotive.com/training/zbrush/tileable-zbrush-video/?follow=true
Well, if you really want to enhance the detail of your high polys you'll never want to hand paint your textures directly. You use your occlusion, normal, heightmaps, cavity or vertex color baked from your high polys as a base, then to add some additional fine grain and photorealistic feel, you mix those maps in photoshop with some base material textures from photographs.
You can use your baked maps to create masks. For example use your heightmaps or occlusion to add a lighter tone to your specular textures in areas that are going to stick out from the overall surface of your model.
The only things I paint sometimes is masks... in the end almost everything is more like mixing layers, playing with levels, curves, and masks made up from baked maps in photoshop.
Try to get that tutorial dude. It will help you a lot to understand better how it goes.
Have you had a look at this (very simple) Sub Surface Scattering example on the UDN?
It would really be nice to see the light scattering in the candle decrease as it gets lower
So up to now this is how far I could manage to get:
the close shots are my favorites, especially the composition of the shot at the top of the 2nd page. If you can get a shot like that with all of your most recent additions that'd look money
Well, this is more than everything something I'm doing for my portfolio, also learning and practicing, but more than everything is for that. Currently I'm unemployed. So for sure, a key thing I have to achieve is get a few shots that get to sell my stuff the better I can for the next time I make a round sending CVs and all that... Up to now what I've been told everywhere is that I had good stuff but like too scattered and diverse, so by doing this I'm trying to focus on one area: environments and props.
Well, so I better keep working on this...
Thanks for your suggestions!
At last I made the skull with the wax running all over, and you were right it was something I needed to do, looks so cool :O
Loving this little environment... I think you could increase the appeal x10 by adjusting the composition a bit. I get that you are going for a messy wizard desk, but having one major point of focus (and only one) would help it a lot as the scene. The magic orb would probably be more prominently placed and more isolated. If for no other reason then it is heavy and could break if it fell, it feels weird pushed to the edge like that.
TLDR version: Now that you have a bunch of cool stuff, it would probably be worth doing a pass on visual hierarchy.
I suppose I still would have to add some sort of cool effect to the orb, but for sure it's better now...
Do you have other plans for the surrounding space? It might be cool to situate the desk within an alcove http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_De_cpyyLtGM/TCBMLos-yiI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/84gzLTtuUM8/s1600/Toppole+(9).JPG