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A Castle Tower

Sir_Dillon
polycounter lvl 6
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Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
Hi there, guys!

I am quite new here, as well as I am to 3D-art.

I recently started to learn and train myself on creating environment assets with some kind of modular use and tiling textures... Not quite got the hang of it yet, but as I said: I just started...
I want to show you my first real project! So, to start on a --for me-- obtainable scope, I decided to make a castle tower. Sculpted tiling textures with normalmaps. All the stuff of which I see plenty around here, scanning your posts and projects.
I have gotten quite far now with the model itself. My last week on the project I spent fighting with the lightmap and I will come up with some questions about that one. So feel free to drop by and give me your comments! I have a lot of bleeding going on in my lightmap and I might need some good advice there ;)
There are a lot of things I am very aware of myself. Such as inconsistencies in different textures/materials, the still recognizable tiling patterns which I not yet have managed to eliminate sufficiently... maybe things like meshflow. But I thought it more important, not to stick with these issues too much but to go ahead and complete a model with works inside the UDK. So that all the export-stuff and the lightmap got tackled too.
Now… here you go! Some pictures of the current state. Feel free to share your comments and wisdom.

Cheers!

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  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    Yeah...

    And here I go with my first question about lightmaps.

    I understand that the lightmap of a model is responsible for the shadow it casts on other objects and the world, as well as for the detail of the shadow it receives by other elements. I also know that UV-chunks may not be stacked and must't overlap and stuff...

    But what about distorsion?

    I have attached an example. So just for demonstration purposes look at the Window example and at the way I just mapped it. As I have it inside UDK now I cannot see bad results... But maybe you can tell me if there are things I am doing wrong.

    Give it a shot! Thanks! ;)
  • pnyx
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    pnyx polycounter lvl 18
    Hey Sir_Dillon :)
    I like what you got going so far. I can't really help you with your lightmapping question though as I don't have any experience with that sort of stuff myself, but I'm sure someone around here can help :)

    as for the tilling, probably some decals or plants, ivory being the classic here i guess, could break up the tilling as well as making it look a little less sterile.

    cheers
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Well, distortion in the UV means you'll get distortion in the lightmap, too. Luckily they are generally pretty low on detail so you won't notice stretched/skewed pixels as much, so 'does it look good' is a decent approach. And your current UV isn't all that horribly distorted, anyway.
  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    Hi there!

    @ pnyx

    Well yes. Some vines to cover the tilling is the thing I will try next.. as soon as I figured out how I do it to match the style at least a little bit.

    @ Snader

    Well... Okay! Sounds quite reassuring. Happy to hear that! So I will try to keep things the way I started out... And if I should overdo the distorsion... well I guess thats the first thing I will see in the result then ^^

    Thank you guys!

    Oh yeah... One other question:
    Do I get bleeding in the lightmap from anywhere else than the spacing in my UV mapping too? Or is this the only reason?
  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    Finally!!

    I managed to overcome my project progression crysis and finally fixed some new parts to amend my tower by a wall.

    Some fixes in eg. base colors of the textures are still required to make them blend together more nicely.- And then up next....

    some vines I wanted to make will have to be added.

    but enough chatter! Here the pics!

    Greetz!
    Dillon

    the elements:
    uAYkv.jpg
    00MhB.jpg

    and the results:
    EXjHo.jpg
    ATcUP.jpg
    aUwsW.jpg
    T9Ky2.jpg
  • moderiert13
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    Castle Tower is a Facebook-based tower defense game where you build your fortress, create an army of fairytale creatures, and fight other players to become the greatest. I found a game site MMOWood which provides all kinds of game guides for players such as business game Biz Tycoon, MMORPG Wartune, and card game Kings and Legends. I hope it will be helpful to you.
  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    ...yyeeah.

    Nice Comment, really xD

    but I don't care the least bit ;)
  • C
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    C
    To get rid of the tiling feel, you can use decals on your walls and roof with damaged bricks/ roof tiles.
  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    Yes, thats right. I am aware of decals, though I do not yet know how to create and use them. Getting into decals is still a thing on my learning-list... ;)
  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    I have added some vines. They can help break up tiling and cover seams of elements, as well as give some life to the scene.

    RkDYb.jpg

    SYCXZ.jpg
  • ASGUARDVIKING
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    Hey dude!

    I think what ya have now is getting good! the vines really made a big difference. One thing i have to say at the moment is with the UV, I would relax the UV more so the smaller spaces have more 0:1 info then scale the whole thing up so it uses the most of the 0:1 as possible so it will look better. Keep it up!
  • e-freak
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    bump - this looks pretty rad :) any chance to see what happened to it?
  • Sir_Dillon
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    Sir_Dillon polycounter lvl 6
    Hi, e-freak!

    I have to admit, that this project has not received further attendance yet. Building this tower and the wall, I wanted to get used to the Asset-import pipeline for the UDK. Also I got in touch with modelling and baking my own textures, normals and stuff. I learned quite a lot there so far. But as you can see, creating foliage made it obvious to me, that it is a complicated chapter. And until I have not learned to create shaders and blend materials (e.g. a kind of foliage-roots material with the stonewall) I saw no point reworking and reworking the Vines ;)
    Also I would have to do some more assets if I wanted to boost up the scene and make the tower and wall become a castle.

    So as soon as I have learned the next things I think I need for this scene to improve, I will revisit. But is a lot there is to learn. And I often do not know where to start

    :poly142:

    Greetz!
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