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Dismal Mountains

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polycounter lvl 7
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ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
Hello! I've started a new project after finishing my second year of university for the summer. I'm using a concept by SnowSkadi

http://snowskadi.deviantart.com/

dismal_by_snowskadi-d4c7zyn.jpg

Thankfully he gave me his permission to use his gorgeous work.

So far I've only done some terrain work, but plan to build over this with rocks made in zbrush and maya, and either use speedtree or build my own trees. Here's what I have so far:

141i73p.jpg
And an overlay to see how it relates to the concept:
11gu7lv.jpg

ztalqx.jpg2usjtpu.jpg

The mist material I have used, from Chris Albeluhn's site :) Ever grateful!

I apologise for posting so early, but my problems in the past have come from not getting help from an early stage..

Replies

  • Selaznog
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    Selaznog polycounter lvl 8
    Looks like it's a good start so far. Can't wait to see the sculpting! By the way, what are those glowy things in that last render? Leaves?
  • Ace-Angel
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    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    They look like leaves to me, which what they're supposed to be according to the OC.

    Currently, the 'start' looks great, but the nasty wall stretching is going to really ruin the scene in the final steps, so I suggest tackling that when you have some time.

    Create unique rocks, nice, jagged, big, rocks, kinda like these:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/swazileigh/7033953795/sizes/l/in/photostream/
    4381955-Obelix-0.jpg

    obelix20tailleur20.jpg


    And place them next to your wall/ground parts, this will help break up the tiling, and give it more life at the same time, and the best part is, by scaling them and rotating them in UDK, they look much more pretty and varied.

    So basically, your current walls of the canyon will be kinda your 'back' based color on which you will overlay your separate, unique rock variations.

    Use the rocks to also cover 'hard' edges near the rock and the fog parts, those look really unnatural.
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks guys, see, this is EXACTLY why I've posted now, such good advice already.

    @Selaznog Yeah they're just one of UDK's particle system leaf things :) There's some in the concept so I just put them there for now. I'd love to make my own though, if I could.

    @Ace-Angel Thanks for that reference picture its great :) Yeah this was my original plan, kind of have a material I can paint onto it now, and then build rocks like in this tutorial: http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/modular_rocks/modular_rocks.html

    It might take me a bit of trial and error to get it right though, I've only used zbrush for one project so far. Hopefully this is the chance to do something great though!
    @Back8 Thank you:)
    @Dnna1 Thanks!
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 15
    Nice going, I like what you've got so far :) Regarding the cliff-wall to the left, that's a tricky area. There are several ways you can go about it, my suggestion would be blending terrain with rocky cliffs.

    And also maybe use a "forest" mask on the actual cliff. So that when you get into creating all the trees and bushes you can use the greenish forest background texture to blend stuff and make it look thick and nice. Also notice the rocks at the edges of the village against the cliff, it breaks down from bigger rocks to smaller ones.

    Also, remember that a valley like this is usually in shadow, so you really need the sun-position to be in the right place in the end and/or use fill lights or torches to light the small village.

    Nice going so far!
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    @chrisradsby Thank you for replying :) I love your work

    Yes i've spent the past few days thinking about the cliffs and came to terms with the fact that I need to make some pretty badass rocks to make it look good. I came up with these below after messing around, wondering what you guys think:

    578683_10151579259605037_510830036_24017326_1788168219_n.jpg
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Ok so after days of trying, fiddling, experimenting and stuggling, I finally retopologised my first object! I used Zbrush; I know its not great, but I couldn't afford Topogun even though I LOVED the trial. Its around 1000 tris right now, which I know is a lot but I can change it if I make some more.

    522229_10151608331675037_510830036_24057832_749456178_n.jpg
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    303438_10151685890575037_510830036_24145461_740652329_n.jpg


    Check my blog for some more things
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    Those rocks are looking good, and I adore the concept so I'd love to see what you do with it :)
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    Fascinating. I'm interested how you are going to do the cliffs. I've been learning..and making our studios rocks and cliffs for the past two months. The best results I found for styalized verticle rocks (like the concept) is breaking it down into seperate pieces.

    141i73p1.jpg

    I know my drawing is a little blockier, but you get the idea. That way you can just copy past and kitbash a cliff. I know other studios/games do it a little different with a single tiled texture.. but i am more preferable with Zbrushing around 6-8 rocks with a few hero pieces thrown in for good detail. That way you will have nice detail to place those plants on.

    also remember, these brushes are your best friends. 1. Mallet. 2. Trim Dynamic. 3. Pinch.

    Don't forget Mike D's brushes. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96425

    I'm a big fan of using his chip brushes all over the edges and cracks of my cliffs for that added hyper detail that you can't really sculpt yourself.
  • walreu
    Omg! That concept is so awesome, i want it now, give it to me!! :--D
    That is just the kind of environment i would love to model. Lucky you!
    Keep it going, looking good :)
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    ErichWK I am so grateful for your post, and you've actually cleared a lot of things up for me because I have been wondering how to go about doing this for a few days now. Those brushes are amazing and again, thank you!

    @SirCalalot Thank you :) Great to know you'll be following this project too! :D<3

    @walreu I know :) Its so beautiful isn't it, I feel very lucky that SnowSkadi gave me permission to use it. You should check out his other work if you want to do something similar!

    Placed some things in the level tonight and played with the lighting. After hours of minecraft on the xbox!

    19mbky.jpg

    2nsyool.jpg
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    As of now your rocks are a bit blobby. One of the things I've had to learn was that..chances are the first couple of iterations are probably going to be bad. So I threw out a few days worth of work because it just wasn't working..then it clicked. Don't be afraid to start over sometimes. The rocks look alright, but seem to be lacking a clear definition from one rock to the other, like there is a lack of AO.

    Your rocks also seem to be lacking moss. Are you using any real world reference by any chance? That might help.

    Also. What I do..and works pretty well.. is if you have nDo, I create an AO and a Cavity map from my normal map and overlay that in my texture. That way you don't lose your hyperdetail you create in zBrush
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Haha :( I already made like 20 rocks before these ones and threw those out! I did make an Occlusion map from the blue channel of the normal map but couldn't figure out how to get it into udk. Do you have to overlay it on your diffuse?

    I will try what you said with Ndo :) Thanks Erich!
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    If it makes you feel better, I heard it took Naughty Dog months for them to get their rocks/cliffs the way they want to. How are you making your AO maps? I combine my AO from my bake in Xnormal and use nDo to convert my normal map to an occlusion map. Don't forget to make a cavity map out of your normal.
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    On the subject of Naughty Dog, if you want some more inspiration for large rocky surfaces, Anthony Vaccaro did an Uncharted 3 - Environment Art Dump a few weeks ago.

    Although they used a completely different method to what you and @ErichWK have mentioned (no high-polys), it's worth having a look :)

    At its most basic level, they create a tiling rocky sculpt in ZBrush, create the tiling textures/maps from that and apply it to various modelled low-poly meshes.
  • ParoXum
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    ParoXum polycounter lvl 9
    What ErichWK said basically.

    I would add that you should make your rocks look less like single fallen rocks stitched together, and more like a cliff face for an environment this big.

    You could sculpt a tiling rock cliff texture, and then model rocks like Erich said and apply that tiling texture to them, at varying scale, tile more closer to the player, and less from afar, to create a sense of scale in the distance.

    temp10.jpg
    This is the diff/nm I used on my last map for example. You can do pretty much anything any shape of rock with that kind of texture given the proper geometry.

    Also, but this is only my opinion on the matter, this would be far more efficient and convicing to a professional than uniquely unwrapped rocks with texture waste.
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    @ParoXum I totally agree, and I love your work! After a few days of working on the houses, I've decided I'm going to definitely take yours and Erich's advice and do the way you suggested. Its much better for performance and will be easier to produce something more believable. Thanks for posting those textures, I was actually just looking at your portfolio the night before you posted this! I will update as soon as I've implemented your ideas!

    @SirCalalot That is what I'm going to go for definitely :) Thanks for the advice :D Please keep posting when I post more work!
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Right with all of you lovely people's help, I came up with this today:

    538798_10151704011155037_510830036_24204133_664357905_n.jpg

    I didn't get round to doing a diffuse just yet, and I don't really know how to go about it! But I'm glad that I've done this, since now I know how to go about it again if you think I should do it again?
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    Looking good from here! Just bear in mind that the rocky surfaces in the concept are a bit more stretched vertically, so remember this when applying UVs to your rock models :)

    When I create my diffuse from a sculpt, I like to render out the Ambient Occlusion and Cavity maps and combine them with a Polypaint texture for some colour.

    Your can get some nice rocky effects using Polypaint by masking by cavity in the 'Masking Controls' tool before applying colour:

    Zb31_tool_masking.png

    I then usually just layer up a Photoshop document in various blending modes and ways. As well as this, I add some more maps from CrazyBump using my originals as a source.
    I might also 'Soft Light' blend in a photo-sourced tiling texture too.


    Edit: I wrote down the exact process for some boulders in an old project, but I'll have to get that when I'm home :|
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    SirCatalot, you are officially a legend and my new polycount badass! I tried out the polypaint, what a great thing :) I ended up replacing the tiling textures, this time after I'd done the polypaint and I got this:

    182296_10151707602925037_510830036_24218002_852684766_n.jpg
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Your rock type doesn't fit with the steep cliffs of the environment. Look at some pictures of Zhangjiaji park, China.

    img_5726.jpg

    IMG_2730.JPG
  • ParoXum
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    ParoXum polycounter lvl 9
    Try to avoid having too much occlusion in your diffuse texture, if you use occlusion maps, use a saturation layer to colorize it very slightly (5-10%) to the raw underlying color of the surface. Red rocks = slightly red AO. White stone = slightly blue AO (because then the skylight is more noticable).

    Also what snader posted makes sense, you might want to give a try to cliff face sculpt #3 :P Try to work with more broader shapes, that are more continuous and stratification-like. And you should be fine :)
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Snader and Paroxum posting in my thread :) Never thought I'd see the day!

    Thanks Snader, I think the hardest bit about this has been not finding great reference and that is perfect...I'll try to do a sculpt based off the last one today!

    Paroxum, thanks for the advice, I didn't know you could add colour to your AO map. I already do it with the spec as you can see :) Yes I think I went a bit AO happy with that yesterday, first time I've used it properly yesterday.

    RIGHT! I am not giving up with these BLASTED rocks! I am going to go away and do another, and not call that last one a failure because I know what I'm doing now.
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    I have to say that rocks are not easy to get looking right, especially ones of a modular nature.
    The difficulty is that the only real way to get what you want is trial, error and experimentation - as I'm sure you know by now :D

    It's really impressive to see how quickly you've developed your skills this far, and it won't be long before you have the look properly nailed down!
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    With our help you'll get it soon! ^_^
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks SirCatalot and Erich. Where you I be without you guys and polycount? Still making blobby rocks!

    More experimenting today, will do more later:

    562070_10151712001990037_510830036_24235005_1612184937_n.jpg
  • ParoXum
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    ParoXum polycounter lvl 9
    You're in the right direction, both those sculpts could lead to an interesting pattern, in the case of your concept art, sculpt on the right feels more appropriate. But it's up to you to decide if you follow the concept on that point.
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    lol wtf? posted in wrong thread. my bad!
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks Vincent, I developed the second one a bit more as I liked the style of it but didn't think it was structured enough, I tried to get each rock more defined. I also tried the saturation layer on the ambient occlusion, I liked the effect! :)

    @dustinbrown That thread helped me loads, I'm so grateful. Particularly Orb's works, I think he's got a new #1 fan in me!

    301760_10151719768185037_510830036_24255216_722686723_n.jpg
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    I built a small portion of the cliffs tonight! Here's what it looks like inUDK, the trees are from unreal:

    546203_10151721341895037_510830036_24259021_1612819130_n.jpg
  • ParoXum
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    ParoXum polycounter lvl 9
    Some quick feedback I can give based on your texture (not the latest screenshot but the post before):

    There's too much overall contrast in your texture (which now makes your stone look stylised-ish). Especially when you go for white/grey stone, the contrast between all ambient occlusion, cavity stuff and the rest is too much.

    Result is then too noisy when tiled and exacerbate the patterns you can find into a texture.

    There are other ways to use an ambient occlusion bake into a diffuse texture, you can for example use it as a mask for a moss texture or a slightly darker rock photo. If you did that, consider not using your AO in multiply at all or a very slight opacity, because of the doubled effect.


    Now I don't say you need to start again ;), at the moment I feel only your diffuse is weakening the work (and probably specularity).

    Also you might want to tone down specularity a bit ingame as well, unless you want your rocks to be wet looking.
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks for the feedback, but I'm shamed to admit I don't really understand. I've been trying for an hour to research about masks in photoshop but I have to admit I can't figure it out :( Could you explain making a mask using the AO in a bit more detail?
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    I thought I'd make a very rough and ready explanation in images :)

    UjkzM.jpg
    3vbXI.jpg
    xGwah.jpg
    Uu0yA.jpg

    If I'm being super dense and over-complicating things, someone please slap me and show me a quicker method.

    Also, red and green are proper gash together.
  • S2Engine
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    S2Engine polycounter lvl 10
    You can also just copy-paste a layer directly into a mask, without the need for selecting color range. Start with doing a select all on your AO layer and copy it, then hide that layer and create a new empty mask on the diff blend. If you hold ALT and click the mask icon, you'll enter the mask itself and can paste right into it. I use this to paste photo source stuff for masks pretty often. You can always go back into the mask with ALT and then adjust levels to get a change in the values too.
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    See? I knew someone would have a quicker way :D
    That's the beauty of Polycount.

    Edit: Yup, that will save me a lot of time in the future, cheers @S2Engine!
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks for the replies guys, polycount never fails to astound me with its help! :)

    How does this look? Tried to take the contrast down like Paroxum said and use some moss

    11818_10151723977430037_510830036_24266566_11270710_n.jpg
  • ParoXum
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    ParoXum polycounter lvl 9
    A lot better. :) Keep it coming.

    Your tiling is not perfect I see at some places you have some straight lines cut in the diffuse.

    Now maybe you could post some wireframes of this mountain side so we can give pointers.

    At the moment it's relying only on your texture to create depth changes, modelling actual deformations that make sense in your mountain side would greatly enhance the aspect.
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks Paroxum, its so encouraging with all your help :)

    I started a tree in Zbrush and have contiuned building the cliff faces :

    244a9hi.jpg
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    552867_10151732379170037_510830036_24300937_1881705565_n.jpg

    Needed a break from some rocks so I started on the rickety bridge! :)
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    11752_10151740768795037_510830036_24338747_1944599875_n.jpg

    551063_10151740769120037_510830036_24338748_1654284754_n.jpg

    Sorry for the slow updates, trying not to rush everything as I want to do my best!
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    Ohnomnom, looking good :)

    You could bend the planks slightly to get that extra bit of silhouette detail - perhaps with just one edge loop going through the centre of each.
    In the concept, there is a lot of moss growing over the wood, so it's probably damp a lot of the time - and with people walking over it regularly the planks would no-doubt warp a bit and dip in the middle.

    It's only a tiny detail, but I think it will really help to sell the material.

    (Literally clutching at straws here.)
  • Reventius
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    Reventius polycounter lvl 9
    I had looked at this thread a little while ago and coming back to it now, it's nice to see how much you iterated your rock sculpts to get the result you were looking for. It shows good progress. I like where you're at with the new cliff texture.

    There are still a couple of things that are jumping out to me right now though. First off, the scale on the features of your buildings looks off. In the concept, the large house on the left looks to have at least 3 floors, where yours looks like you cut it down to two. A result of that is the buildings in the concept are helping to convey the scale of the scene much better than yours are doing right now. Also, right in front of that house on the left, your terrain is starting to slope down really quickly. In the concept, there's a pretty flat and level area right in front of the building leading out to the wooden walkway. I'd suggest you try and revise that to closer match the concept or at least put in some sort of stairway leading from the front door to the walkway, for obvious safety reasons. Not sure how much you were willing to deviate from the concept.

    Like I said before, I like the revisions you've done with your rock / cliff sculpts already, but I'd also recommend you revise them even more and take them further. One of the assets I see that you have scattered around, particularly near that house I kept bringing up and leading down the canyon on the right, looks a lot like an everlasting gobstopper. You have a lot of really round boulders and rocks in that asset and it makes it look really unnatural. Try sculpting out some different shapes as single pieces and bringing them into the engine and manually place them around more. Some round ones are okay, but also try sculpting out some larger boulders with large flat sides on them, long rectangular ones, etc. Reference, reference, reference. When you're placing them, think about how they would fit together and settle naturally in the environment. I think you'll be able to achieve a better and more natural looking result if you work with it more.

    Basically, if you make some more natural looking assets and rework your scale to closer match the original concept, it'll help convey that huge space better and sell the scene.
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks guys, sorry I haven't posted in a while, I have been working on it, just I've been travelling up and down the country and its been difficult to find time to update...

    @SirCalalot Thank you for saying you like it :) means a lot
    I agree with you about the extra loop, I'll update soon.
    @Reventius Thank you, sure did work on that cliff a lot! :P

    I'm still reworking the houses, so I should fix all these problems soon :) I'm going to definitely going to sculpt some more rocks!

    Thanks so much for the feedback its really helping!

    Anyway, I've been working on the trees, which I'm finding quite difficult. This is probably a really common problem, but my leaves look SO bad in UDK its ridiculous. I've changed the alpha so much and I still can't get it to look right. I've made a picture to show my problems, please help. :(

    2cfwg0j.jpg
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    You need some edge padding on your diffuse texture, as colour textures and transparency both scale in different ways when the camera pulls back - leaving a sort of halo effect around your leaves (imagine your alpha map going blurry).

    To remedy this, make a copy of your diffuse layer in Photoshop and place it underneath your original.
    Then apply a Gaussian Blur to 'fuzz' the edges.
    Press Ctrl+J five or six times to duplicate the layer.
    Highlight all of these new, blurred layers and press Ctrl+E to flatten them to a single layer (you can blur this again if your want to get rid of the artefacts, but it isn't too necessary).
    That should make a nice amount of padding round your diffuse image that is near the same colour values as the edge pixels. :)

    The 'halo' effect will still happen on your leaves, but you won't notice as it's the same colour as them.
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    SirCatalot, you are a STAR! Thank you so much, you know that problem has plagued me so many times and I never even thought of it this time. Sometimes you just need a boot up the arse, thanks for supplying it :)

    Well I solved that problem, but the trees still look crappy. Does anyone have any pointers about how I can go about making them look better?

    eh0les.jpg
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    :)

    With regards to the trees, you probably need more negative space in your texture where there are no leaves.

    Each leaf card on the tree is also reading as quite square, so you could try to make the overall shape of the clump a bit rounder and maybe not bring the details all the way up into the corners of your texture.

    You could also unify all of the leaf card Vertex Normals too.

    3D Motive do a great foliage tutorial if you have membership with them. It shows you how to do the things using 3DS Max, but it's not hard to follow along in Maya instead.

    I hope that's helpful! :)

    Edit: This page on the Polycount Wiki also has some useful links.
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 15
    You have the cliff texture, now use a mask and tile something like this on top of it.

    (ofc darker greens and maybe not this exact one :P)

    forest_seamless_pattern_sjpg8270.jpg

    Concept
    (http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/281/a/e/dismal_by_snowskadi-d4c7zyn.jpg)

    Which will help you blend in the trees, and make it a little bit more lush and natural. Ofc you have to try different setting and create something that works :)

    EDIT:
    Maybe something like this (quick 5 minute done) end result:
    tile-cliff.jpg

    Don't use my example, it's compiled using the above and another copyright photo. :poly124:
  • ladyknowles
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    ladyknowles polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks SirCatalot, I made them a bit better (turned out after hours of being frustrated I'd been loading the wrong FBX file). How stupid can I get?! It's astounding! I'll try the things you've linked to aswell :) Is a 3dmotive membership worth it? Money's a bit tight at the minute :/

    @chrisradsby Thanks chrisradsby!! I'll do this next, great stuff. I love your work!

    Here's some updates. I'm going to make more rocks so don't worry bout dem gobstopper rocks. Am I updating too much?

    564873_10151788018540037_1796171541_n.jpg

    560739_10151788018710037_1904190414_n.jpg

    579239_10151788018445037_634889104_n.jpg
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    You can never update too much! :D
    It's definitely looking good so far.
  • jimmypopali
    Very cool progress, keep it up!
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