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DFS Creepy House

polycounter lvl 8
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lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
Hey all! I am working on another project for my portfolio, this time a creepy house! This is what I have so far for the concept. I modified an existing concept and then created what I think the back should look like. Any suggestions would be great!

<my perspective is poop>

N3zofGn.jpg

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  • EbbAndFlow
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    Very impressive concept! I'm on a phone so I mistook it for a model before I zoomed in, interested to see how you develop this, the only thing I can criticize is the chimney seems to be a little too light in contrast to the rest of the roof and it might draw too much attention.

    Very cool concept I like your style!
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks, I'm working on it this week so I'll probably update around friday or so. I'll have to mess around with the chimney, I'm not completely happy with it.
  • leleuxart
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    leleuxart polycounter lvl 12
    Love the light coming through. Hope you continue that with whatever engine you're putting it in.
  • PacoCasares
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    PacoCasares polycounter lvl 11
    I second Ebb, I thought it was already 3D, I love seeing great concept before the 3d work is started. Looks awesome <3 Great colours too!

    If you ask me, when you complete this, you should totally do a spooky environment that goes well with this. Its awesome :D
  • Jonas Dahlman
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    Looks awesome and I really do like the concept! Can't wait to see progress. But you need spiderweb! Spiderweb = creepy shit :poly121:
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Day 1 of modeling:

    DjuoMSY.jpg

    I am not entirely sure how I should model everything. I know the roof will be a plane for the 'game model' but I am not sure what to do about the tiles in the high poly. I was thinking probably just make a bunch of shingles and layering them. Would that be the best way? Guild Wars 2 had a bunch of really good houses that are similar to what I am doing, in terms of design.

    I'll be adding the doors and windows when I work on it again. Also the wood crisscrossing the house. I was thinking that I would just alpha out parts of the walls and roof so you could see through to whatever light source ill have on the inside. Or I could paint the light coming through and use planes to give the light ray effect. Bit of both?
  • pixelb
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    pixelb greentooth
    Love your concept! You might consider adding in some small props to use as story elements. Right now the house looks very pretty, but doesn't say anything about who lives there or what they're up to.

    I recommend going for actual geo over alpha'd planes on the model. It's more important that your scene look impressive than meeting some imaginary poly budget.
  • jsargent
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    jsargent polycounter lvl 5
    I think you should write the name of the original concept artist at the top as currently I think it reads like you modified your own concept and its hard to spot his name on the artwork. Looking forward to seeing your model, I saw this one a while back and thought it looked great so I'm glad to see someone is tackling it :)
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    @pixelb I talked it over with a friend yesterday and decided to model in the planking on the roof since its where a lot of the detail is. I'll be kicking around some ideas for props to add as well.

    @jsargent I think i'll be updating the concept on Thursday when I decide what I'm adding to the piece besides the environment stuff that's around it. I'll be sure to make the original concept artist more visible on there.

    I remember seeing the concept a while ago as well and made a mental note to go back to it whenever I had time for another project.
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Hey all!

    After Day II:

    2QVZtXo.png

    I have the rocks laid out about where I want them. I'll just be switching over to modeling environment stuff for now. I'm doing the tree from the concept and then I am going to add a barrel and an overstuffed shitty mailbox. The barrel will go under the gutter that is going down the middle of the roof. Any suggestions so far?

    I'm going back and forth on whether the roof needs sculpting. One the one hand, I could not sculpt on them, overlap the UVs and then do a blanket wood texture. on the other, I could unwrap them separately on another texture, maybe with a few other things. Thoughts?
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Another small update: Added a tree, barrel and mailbox. Think I will go in later and make the mailbox a little bit bigger.

    6iBnNc0.png
    jAWZgfr.png
    PAO2nkF.png
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Just a quick render of my high poly. Now, for a quick question. I know half of this project could be done with tiling textures. But, since I don't have much of it in my portfolio, I wanted to have a high poly environment scene. My question would be, should I show a version of both, the high poly everything version and the tiling texture version, or should I just show off the high poly but do the actual in game with tiling textures.

    Also, you will notice I changed a few scale things from the last model as well as the tree. Let me know what you think!

    S3ql1TL.png
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Update: Baked normals and ambient occlusion. Also made roughly half the scene with tiling textures, I've gotten feedback before that I need to use more of them. First foray into the world of photo textures.

    The things in the scene right now are tiling, everything else just has AO. You can probably get a better sense of how it'll look when I update tomorrow with the rest of the base textures.

    IVb8Uvg.jpg?1
    ezHeMy9.jpg?1
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    Lovely concept! Will you use tileables? Or unique textures?
    The roof looks to flat at the front, you should give it depth. (Since it isn't made of paper, but wood, hehe)
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    @Fenyce Yep! Everything in the render that isn't white, is a tiling texture. The roof is going to be alpha'd out, and trust me it looks a lot better when it is. I'll be working on it some more tomorrow, so I'll have a *hopefully* complete base texture done by then.

    If the alpha doesn't end up working out, I have a contingency plan for using actual geo, we'll just have to see how it goes.
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Update! My progress so far and what I plan on doing:
    + Base tiling textures done
    + Flats and ambient occlusion on unique textures
    + Roof texture somewhere close to final alphas it'll have, has base texture
    + Get all base textures done tomorrow
    + Get grass/branch alphas placed tomorrow
    + Get prelim lighting done tomorrow

    Thing's i'd specifically like feedback on:
    + Tree texture
    + Weird artifact on back of the ground of the model, how do I fix?

    General feedback on the photo textures/saturation level/suggestions for getting the mood right would be greatly appreciated!


    Z8lJVgc.jpg
  • PhoenixWolf
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    PhoenixWolf polycounter lvl 9
    just my personal taste but seems like the roof should have some thickness to it as oppose to just a plane
  • DWalker
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    The yellow light seems a bit cheerful for a creepy house. A sickly greenish light would give a more ominous feel, or a red light could suggest a diabolic influence.

    Smoke from the chimney can also influence the effect towards either cheery homestead or festering nest of evil...

    When you get around to texturing the barrel, keep in mind that the strap will leave behind a discolored band on the wood after it slides.


    old-barrel-s-thumb2863814.jpg
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    @ phoenixwolf My main reason for choosing the plane was so I could have a unique texture on the roof without having to texture individual plank. I brainstormed last night on a way do add depth but still keep the unique texture but I'll experiment with that after I get the bulk of the texturing done.
    @dwalker those flats were defiantly placeholders, but I like the direction your thinking is going. I'll have to experiment with light colors to get the right mood. Also, smoke would be an excellent idea, I'll have to keep that in mind! And thanks for the tip on the barrel!
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    + Base photo textures sans dirt and grime, which I'll be adding tomorrow
    + Illumination on windows is a flat color for now, making it look window-y will also be tomorrow
    + Thinking about doing a different plant that has a curve to the plane instead of being just flat, may fix the problem of the terrain looking flat
    + Any suggestions on how I can get this closer to the concept? Any thoughts in general?

    Concept (so ya'll don't have to scroll)
    N3zofGn.jpg

    Kib4vQ8.jpg
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    The modeling of this is really good. You have a powerful silhouette on everything almost. The chimney looks a little droopy.

    The texturing though needs some love. Go back and grayscale them all out (temporarily). Make sure there aren't the same value of grey surfaces next to each other. Then reintroduce your colors. You're lacking value separation and everything is sort of blending together in places. I will say the wood frame on the house and red is working though.
  • Denny
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    Denny polycounter lvl 14
    I love it so far. Apart from what Jeff said I think the chimney's texture has very round shapes and little variation of shades compared to your concept. The rest looks great to me.
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    + Had another go at placing grass and also made it thicker, to see how i liked it
    + Fiddled with lighting/rim lighting a bit
    + Worked on window/barrel/door/roof metal

    For next time:
    + Will work on chimney/roof/mailbox - I think when I go in a punch up the value on different parts of the roof and add some illumination, it'll really help out everything looking the same tone

    Main question, besides critique of what I've got so far are:
    + Having trouble with getting a good translucency in marmoset, seems like alpha-to-coverage might be the way to go but I'll need to do more research. Any suggestions?
    + Preference on grass placement/thickness?

    on8tMXw.jpg

    Thanks everyone!

    @Jeff Parrott I'm slowly touching all of the textures. It's been pretty helpful to gray-scale my renders so I can see whats going on. Thanks for the tip!

    @Denny I'll see what I can come up with when I start in on the chimney (Saturday?) It definitely just has a flat texture on there now
  • razz
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    razz polycounter lvl 9
    Perhaps make the grass thicker at the base and just add much more strands. You can make it more lush and still keep the worn/damaged look, just add some variety, more grass in one part, none or very little in another, longer and shorter and so on.
    You lost some color in the windows in the last update. I liked the orange. Also, it would be sweet if the rays coming out of the window would have softer edges.
    Looking real nice overall ;]
  • Jonas Dahlman
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    Looking really awesome and great progress! I definitely agree with the last poster and was spot on what I was thinking :poly124: It feels like you the grass to scattered, try to make it more where it tends to grow around the edges.

    I think that the bottom part of the house could get more dirt as it sticks out to much with the red versus the ground. Also as someone else pointed out more value variation in the textures overall would be nice, mostly thinking of the red in this case.

    Keep up with the good work! :thumbup:
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Yo! Thanks for the suggestions.
    +redid the grass again, I really like how it turned out
    +made the lighting warmer on the windows
    +made it so you can see the wood around the windows a little better
    +added dirt to the bottom of the house/wood/chimney

    any suggestions?

    dxVJXph.jpg
  • Bonkahe
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    Bonkahe polycounter lvl 12
    I would make the walls a bit more interesting, not entirely sure how, boards where the paint has pealed off or something? Next I would remove some of the light poking through the roof, I know it's supposed to be run down and creepy, but it seems quite a bit more run down on the roof then anywhere else, might also try adding the light rays (like the windows) to some of the larger cracks in the walls and roof, to make them seem like more than just really bright paint. Finally I would add more personality to the grass, a few weeds or something that twist over, like the concept, just to add a bit more detail. Looking good though, would love to get my hand on some texture flats and wireframes.
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Final (unless anyone sees something glaring to fix). Thanks for all the critiques on this. Really helped out a lot.

    0MIefdf.jpg

    If you are the curious sort and would like to see the wireframe/textures/high poly I'll have it up on my website by tonight. Thanks again!
  • Denny
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    Denny polycounter lvl 14
    I think you have a great portfolio piece and I believe it doesn't hurt to nitpick on it a little more. ;)

    You strengthened the variations on the walls which is great! However, the green/blueish spots doesn't look quite right to me. I think turning it down just a little bit or maybe make it a bit darker or wood-like could improve the appearance. Right now my eyes keeps getting distracted by those spots on the wall, I think the piece could benefit from some additional tweaking.

    Everything else is top notch!
  • Vysuki
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    Vysuki polycounter lvl 9
    Looking great, I'd say add some dirt at the bottom of the walls if possible, usually you see some going up to a foot up the wall just from the dust on the mud being blown about.

    I think one of the things about the grass that sells it well in the concept that's missing is it looks like you have a clumpy tall grass bush of some sort under the windows which really helps catch the light (back and side) but that seems to be missing or just very thinned out on your model.

    I agree with Razz, I liked the orange windows better and overall it looks really nice :D
  • lishaleston
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    lishaleston polycounter lvl 8
    Luckily these are all easy fixes. :)

    @Denny - I might try and tone down the teal color a bit and punch up the darker purples that are in the wall.

    @Vysuki - I agree, it would be good to add some more bushy grass in front of the windows. Also, I'll punch up the dirt that's at the bottom of the walls/wood.
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