Lo lo, just going to use this thread to post current works to hopefully get valued feedback aiding and resulting in improved work to become a better environment artist.
thats a great start and a good idea
i agree get some trees and flowers into it also make a foot path that leads to the house to gets people attention because i see a house but nothing thats going to lure me to it
I feel like the updated block-out is looking better for sure. You might want to bow the roof a bit on the top, the straight lines feel a but boring. Moving forward adding a door and or windows will help establish some scale since right now it could be a toy, a normal sized house or enormous, cause the mountains don't really give a reliable scale.
Also out of curiosity what method did you use to make the grass?
Also out of curiosity what method did you use to make the grass?
Alphas and bendy cards.
Scale should be sold in this next screeny, thanks for the feedback!
Cheers for the feedback josh, path is a great idea.
So heres more detailed work going into the structure before I start getting serious on it.
Anything to add or comment on would be a great help at this stage. Gonna get some sleep for the night
i like the color idea for the house goes well with the sunny background
for the "something here?" may suggest placing the barrels you got there or a cargo box
You have a great start going. As for composition keep the rule of thirds in mind. Maybe have the house more towards the left or right of the screen with the path leading the eye to the house?
So, heres a first iteration of texture work, the only thing I am happy with here is the wood which is the only thing that is semi painted.
I plan to remove the beam on the roof and replace it with a single line of tiles geom.
Also plan to put in everything else that is in the blockout, I would like to highrez sculpt & bake the tiles on the roof and the base stone texture but time is of the essence so I might just do a quick clean up of them.
Lots more to do but I am inspiring myself to work on!
Edit: Forgot to mention there's no normals in the scene yet, I plan to perhaps add tessellation to break some of the harsh lines in silhouette, but that idea is still up in the air
Wow that is sexy. What engine are you using? Nice work in the textures and the paintover. Nothing to critique, except the issue Josha mentioned with the tiles melting over the side of the roof, which I assume will be fixed in the coming stages :P
Cheers guys, and I am using UDK to create this scene.
Update!
Still lots to do, the path is in place but I am not happy with it, will need to fix the transition between grass and path.
The roof still needs fixing.
The forest in the background could use some more variation and work.
I need to add more variation to the grass too along with adding those other things I still haven't, such as the windows, barrels etc.
Getting there though! I am toying with the idea of having some trees closer, engulfing the house almost, but I think that will require quite a bit more work to get looking nice.
Little ish update. Composition works much better here imo. Waterfall in the background? Fences leading the eye to the house... I would like to remake the trees into static pine trees to get some nice shadows and thickness.
Still need to do those windows and lots of others things to bring it to life more...
Oh I also added particles to this one, hard to see in a still but glowing pollen floats up from the grass into the sky
Much improved composition, this is coming along nicely. The mountains peeking through on the right are practically a straight line, I would suggest making them more... mountainy.
Cheers Josh, compositionally it's pretty much done.
I have been thinking. If it's taken me 4/5 days to do this, perhaps I should expand the environment.
Anywho, heres what I plan to add/change before I move on, any ideas that I could add to this would be great!
(Some of the drawings will mean more to me than anyone else no doubt, more of a reference sheet for myself).
At the moment your chimney is lost in the silhouette of the tree behind. It seems like you're going to adress that anyway :P
The shadowed area in the courtyard needs more work. A bouncing indirect light or a direct light (tho it is daytime)
Also most of your textures have a desaturated look, you could do the same on the grass as its color is stealing the attention a bit too much at the moment to me. Or do the opposite and add more color to the rest.
Reflections on the windows will help sell it as well.
The pebbles at the moment dont look like pebble, but more like earth balls or horse by-products.
At the moment your chimney is lost in the silhouette of the tree behind. It seems like you're going to adress that anyway :P
The shadowed area in the courtyard needs more work. A bouncing indirect light or a direct light (tho it is daytime)
Also most of your textures have a desaturated look, you could do the same on the grass as its color is stealing the attention a bit too much at the moment to me. Or do the opposite and add more color to the rest.
Reflections on the windows will help sell it as well.
The pebbles at the moment dont look like pebble, but more like earth balls or horse by-products.
Awesome feedback, thanks! Will look into most of those, unfortunately the quality of most of this has to slightly suffer in places to meet my universities deadline. Come a few weeks time I can return and rework this into a portfolio piece.
Really appreicate your time in looking over this, I also admire your helms deep and recent castle project, looking forward to seeing what you do next!
Soooo, been quite a bit longer since my last post compared to the interval of others.
I tried quite a few things with the scene and as a result I have a lot more to clean up now but it should be for the better.
-The chimney shape needs revising and orange colour,
-The bark on trees need darkening,
-The path stones are getting weird shadows,
-The fence either needs a new mesh or needs to be broken up by other meshes,
-The rocks need moss like grass over the top of them and perhaps a revised mesh/texture.
-Windows need reflection/specular
-The path needs more small details and perhaps larger details on it (Twigs, crates)
-Roof STILL needs fixing
-Focal point(s) needs more love
-Getting weird shadows on the roof now that I didn't before.
-Sort out the colour saturation levels (Grass vs path vs roof)
Either way, here tis!
I would quite like to change the windows mesh too as they aren't all that interesting.
I am thinking more variation in foliage too but not looked into what kind of plants one might expect among this sheet of green/yellow/grey.
C&C Welcome.
(Ps, Going to try get this done by end of today/tomorrow, deadline soon approaches).
You should take a look at the ground and tree textures. Ground lacks life (seems just like a diffuse map, and the colour is saturated) and the tree 'scales' look too big. It throws away some sense of scale. But I guess all of this is not final.
I would lower the bloom, or sharpen it just in some areas. Everything shines and makes the scene look blurry. The colour of the roof in shadow does not match the rest of the walls; you can see this specially in the smaller roof. And the depth of field is too high. I don't even think there has to be any dof here. I would play with the colour of the sky too. The yellow light looks strange with a cloudy sky.
It's becoming pretty good though. I like the lighting!
Really appreciate the feedback, really helpful stuff!
The deadline is just around the corner and even though I don't want to just yet, I must call this done.
Perhaps revisit it in the summer when I have time.
Working on something new. I have a really solid picture in my head of how everything will look in it's final stages. So for now I am creating the modular pieces and slotting them together like this screenshot for compositional reasons/showcase of progress.
Lighting test. I still need to have a second floor texture, different main roof and to push up the middle roof section by about 2 fold.
I am questioning what I should put down underneath the windows on the bare walls... Perhaps more smaller windows? Not too sure how much that would adjust the mood though.
im liking the design on the paintover, having a throne at the end of the table could be cool as an environment focus, the room looks abandoned to me so you could go further and have a spiderweb encrusted skeleton sitting in said throne grasping a goblet... though that might be a little cliche xD
keep it up : ]
So still got that other environment I am working on and about 5 others
But now with this one I have gone with the generic texture approach and I am really curious how I could get some unique looking details in there...
Decals crossed my mind and so did Vertex shading and vertex blending but I am fairly in-experienced with all 3 methods... I mean I have dabbled but I have never used them for something this size and importance of uniqueness..
I think I have read somewhere that you can bake AO into the vertex shading and use that.. And I hear the term 'Vertex colour pass' a lot yet haven't explored it too much.
TL:DR Advise on making generic wall/textures have unique details with different techniques.
Bump, I am really struggling with interesting details to add to it... Perhaps a change of texture?
Im a newbie when it comes to performance with vertex stuff/decals and additional draw calls... Perhaps more unique geometry with an atlas texture sheet would be best?
Is there also anyway to view the draw calls in UDK to measure 1 method to another and how they effect performance?
I don't know about optim in UDK but you still could check some threads like Romy's one or others nice artists here on PC ( and elsewhere, finding infos about UDK is not really hard to find, and it's part of the job, right ? ^^ ).
I think you can use the three methods in fact, as they are not used to do the same things. Decals can add dirt or cracks on large parts, vertex blending can mix textures ( for example instead of having the same wall texture everywhere you can blend with other materials ) or just add color or darken/lighten the base texture ( to do wet stone for example, it's darken than dry stone ).
In Max you can easily bake the AO into the vertex color, it's like a render to texture with a skylight, but with a vertex color modifier or something like that.
I don't know about optim in UDK but you still could check some threads like Romy's one or others nice artists here on PC ( and elsewhere, finding infos about UDK is not really hard to find, and it's part of the job, right ? ^^ ).
I think you can use the three methods in fact, as they are not used to do the same things. Decals can add dirt or cracks on large parts, vertex blending can mix textures ( for example instead of having the same wall texture everywhere you can blend with other materials ) or just add color or darken/lighten the base texture ( to do wet stone for example, it's darken than dry stone ).
In Max you can easily bake the AO into the vertex color, it's like a render to texture with a skylight, but with a vertex color modifier or something like that.
Cheers man, UDK itself isnt the problem I have used it for a fair few years I guess it's workflow. I am thinking Decals + Vertex blending + Vertex colour information is that not a lot of draw calls? Is there a way to check draw calls?
Im thinking perhaps a 1024 atlas map would be best? that way I can add unique geometry.. Still not too sure about stains on a generic texture though. Might HAVE to do decals for that.
@Iciban: Plane ontop of 3 sided geom, used the UDK foliage paint tool to scatter around and then used material instances to change the colours for variation.
Anywho, back to uni. Been asked to re-create a scene from a film or game within a game engine.
I chose this scene from Alien:
My progress soo far:
(Preview built lighting, ignore lightmap issues).
I plan to be showing complete workflow for this with textures sheets and individual models in hope that some of you guys can make advisement and suggestions for improving.
So here is a break down of 3 of the assets I have worked on so far:
(Diffuse needs work? Specular feels messy).
(I found the spec tricky to get looking right on this one, diffuse needs more love perhaps?)
Will post others as I go.
Huge crit and feedback would be appreciated, what changes could I make to textures/model or even workflow to get better results (They don't feel up to scratch right now)?
- Highlights: Is it supposed to look wet? If not, you would want to darken the edge highlights by a good deal.
- Blurriness: The texture in general looks a bit blurry, especially around the dirt areas between the stones.
- Separation: Some stones seem to overlap each other. A bit more space in between should seperate them better.
- Cohesion: The shapes do not match each other. Some are round, some very edged. You should decide either for cobblestone and make them rounder or for a sharper version.
@toolpaddz - Cheers for the feedback. Completely agree with most of the point above. I don't think it's worth changing the texture as it was around 30 minutes work but I might make a new one and take your points into considering when actually making it.
I made a pillar, mainly to try to improve on my material/texture work over geom.
Another update:
Right hand side to flesh out, side box thing to finish too and perhaps a new mat on the floor and ceiling, maybe a few more assets to flesh things out too.
Replies
i agree get some trees and flowers into it also make a foot path that leads to the house to gets people attention because i see a house but nothing thats going to lure me to it
keep up the good work hope to see more
Also out of curiosity what method did you use to make the grass?
Alphas and bendy cards.
Scale should be sold in this next screeny, thanks for the feedback!
Cheers for the feedback josh, path is a great idea.
So heres more detailed work going into the structure before I start getting serious on it.
Anything to add or comment on would be a great help at this stage. Gonna get some sleep for the night
for the "something here?" may suggest placing the barrels you got there or a cargo box
I plan to remove the beam on the roof and replace it with a single line of tiles geom.
Also plan to put in everything else that is in the blockout, I would like to highrez sculpt & bake the tiles on the roof and the base stone texture but time is of the essence so I might just do a quick clean up of them.
Lots more to do but I am inspiring myself to work on!
Edit: Forgot to mention there's no normals in the scene yet, I plan to perhaps add tessellation to break some of the harsh lines in silhouette, but that idea is still up in the air
the textures no the outer edges of the roof does a odd band can you look into that
Update!
Still lots to do, the path is in place but I am not happy with it, will need to fix the transition between grass and path.
The roof still needs fixing.
The forest in the background could use some more variation and work.
I need to add more variation to the grass too along with adding those other things I still haven't, such as the windows, barrels etc.
Getting there though! I am toying with the idea of having some trees closer, engulfing the house almost, but I think that will require quite a bit more work to get looking nice.
the path looks like sand to me but thats just me
keep up the great work
Still need to do those windows and lots of others things to bring it to life more...
Oh I also added particles to this one, hard to see in a still but glowing pollen floats up from the grass into the sky
Todays update, bed time now!
Still many things I wish to change, it needs more story and thought put into it.
you should feel great about the work you put into this
hope to see more from you
I have been thinking. If it's taken me 4/5 days to do this, perhaps I should expand the environment.
Anywho, heres what I plan to add/change before I move on, any ideas that I could add to this would be great!
(Some of the drawings will mean more to me than anyone else no doubt, more of a reference sheet for myself).
The shadowed area in the courtyard needs more work. A bouncing indirect light or a direct light (tho it is daytime)
Also most of your textures have a desaturated look, you could do the same on the grass as its color is stealing the attention a bit too much at the moment to me. Or do the opposite and add more color to the rest.
Reflections on the windows will help sell it as well.
The pebbles at the moment dont look like pebble, but more like earth balls or horse by-products.
Awesome feedback, thanks! Will look into most of those, unfortunately the quality of most of this has to slightly suffer in places to meet my universities deadline. Come a few weeks time I can return and rework this into a portfolio piece.
Really appreicate your time in looking over this, I also admire your helms deep and recent castle project, looking forward to seeing what you do next!
I tried quite a few things with the scene and as a result I have a lot more to clean up now but it should be for the better.
-The chimney shape needs revising and orange colour,
-The bark on trees need darkening,
-The path stones are getting weird shadows,
-The fence either needs a new mesh or needs to be broken up by other meshes,
-The rocks need moss like grass over the top of them and perhaps a revised mesh/texture.
-Windows need reflection/specular
-The path needs more small details and perhaps larger details on it (Twigs, crates)
-Roof STILL needs fixing
-Focal point(s) needs more love
-Getting weird shadows on the roof now that I didn't before.
-Sort out the colour saturation levels (Grass vs path vs roof)
Either way, here tis!
I would quite like to change the windows mesh too as they aren't all that interesting.
I am thinking more variation in foliage too but not looked into what kind of plants one might expect among this sheet of green/yellow/grey.
C&C Welcome.
(Ps, Going to try get this done by end of today/tomorrow, deadline soon approaches).
I would lower the bloom, or sharpen it just in some areas. Everything shines and makes the scene look blurry. The colour of the roof in shadow does not match the rest of the walls; you can see this specially in the smaller roof. And the depth of field is too high. I don't even think there has to be any dof here. I would play with the colour of the sky too. The yellow light looks strange with a cloudy sky.
It's becoming pretty good though. I like the lighting!
The deadline is just around the corner and even though I don't want to just yet, I must call this done.
Perhaps revisit it in the summer when I have time.
I am questioning what I should put down underneath the windows on the bare walls... Perhaps more smaller windows? Not too sure how much that would adjust the mood though.
Looking at it now, it's a bit too dark. There will be more windows in there etc.
keep it up : ]
But now with this one I have gone with the generic texture approach and I am really curious how I could get some unique looking details in there...
Decals crossed my mind and so did Vertex shading and vertex blending but I am fairly in-experienced with all 3 methods... I mean I have dabbled but I have never used them for something this size and importance of uniqueness..
I think I have read somewhere that you can bake AO into the vertex shading and use that.. And I hear the term 'Vertex colour pass' a lot yet haven't explored it too much.
TL:DR Advise on making generic wall/textures have unique details with different techniques.
Im a newbie when it comes to performance with vertex stuff/decals and additional draw calls... Perhaps more unique geometry with an atlas texture sheet would be best?
Is there also anyway to view the draw calls in UDK to measure 1 method to another and how they effect performance?
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91066
I think you can use the three methods in fact, as they are not used to do the same things. Decals can add dirt or cracks on large parts, vertex blending can mix textures ( for example instead of having the same wall texture everywhere you can blend with other materials ) or just add color or darken/lighten the base texture ( to do wet stone for example, it's darken than dry stone ).
In Max you can easily bake the AO into the vertex color, it's like a render to texture with a skylight, but with a vertex color modifier or something like that.
Cheers man, UDK itself isnt the problem I have used it for a fair few years I guess it's workflow. I am thinking Decals + Vertex blending + Vertex colour information is that not a lot of draw calls? Is there a way to check draw calls?
Im thinking perhaps a 1024 atlas map would be best? that way I can add unique geometry.. Still not too sure about stains on a generic texture though. Might HAVE to do decals for that.
Anywho, back to uni. Been asked to re-create a scene from a film or game within a game engine.
I chose this scene from Alien:
My progress soo far:
(Preview built lighting, ignore lightmap issues).
I plan to be showing complete workflow for this with textures sheets and individual models in hope that some of you guys can make advisement and suggestions for improving.
So here is a break down of 3 of the assets I have worked on so far:
(Diffuse needs work? Specular feels messy).
(I found the spec tricky to get looking right on this one, diffuse needs more love perhaps?)
Will post others as I go.
Huge crit and feedback would be appreciated, what changes could I make to textures/model or even workflow to get better results (They don't feel up to scratch right now)?
- Blurriness: The texture in general looks a bit blurry, especially around the dirt areas between the stones.
- Separation: Some stones seem to overlap each other. A bit more space in between should seperate them better.
- Cohesion: The shapes do not match each other. Some are round, some very edged. You should decide either for cobblestone and make them rounder or for a sharper version.
I made a pillar, mainly to try to improve on my material/texture work over geom.
Ignore the grain on the second one and take it as a reference, the calculated bounce light doesn't do it any additional justice.
Right hand side to flesh out, side box thing to finish too and perhaps a new mat on the floor and ceiling, maybe a few more assets to flesh things out too.
I chose this shot from alien and added some stuff.
Also for future reference, is it better I create a new topic for each project? I appear to be receiving very little feedback.
Crits and feedback strongly welcome, finally found something I think I would quite like to be a portfolio piece.
Based off of St mary le strande
And then mess around to see how modular it was and came up with this:
Later images are looking good.