3rd Year Project - Chinese Town
polycounter lvl 4
Hi everyone, my name's Carrie and I've been lurking around on polycount for a while now, having a look and being inspired by the fantastic work people are posting. I decided it's about time I posted a little bit of my own, so here I am with the piece I'm doing for my 3rd year project.
It's based vaguely on a town in China called Phoenix Town which I fell in love with when I saw it featured on a show on BBC last year. I'm trying to recreate the sense that this is a busy, friendly community town with the emphasis of the level being the river and the square.
I've been working on it on/off now for about 6 months but now I'm coming to the end of my course and I've got just under 7 weeks left to get this up to a standard good enough for my portfolio.
I'd love to hear any comments from you guys about how to improve this and any critiques as well. The environment has been put together in UDK, and all assets have been created by myself.
Things I have left to do:
Thanks for taking the time to look!
It's based vaguely on a town in China called Phoenix Town which I fell in love with when I saw it featured on a show on BBC last year. I'm trying to recreate the sense that this is a busy, friendly community town with the emphasis of the level being the river and the square.
I've been working on it on/off now for about 6 months but now I'm coming to the end of my course and I've got just under 7 weeks left to get this up to a standard good enough for my portfolio.
I'd love to hear any comments from you guys about how to improve this and any critiques as well. The environment has been put together in UDK, and all assets have been created by myself.
Things I have left to do:
- Fix the lighting on the trees
- Complete the river water texture
- Sky
- Complete texturing on the buildings and market stall
- Numerous other things that will pop up during the process
Thanks for taking the time to look!
Replies
I've adjusted the fog and DOF, and also implemented the use of a colour look-up chart. Added some little floating candles in the river to make it more visually appealing but probably going to need to add more of them.
Started setting up the cameras as well for the presentation on my portfolio.
http://youtu.be/uib32iKSQC0
Does anyone know how to embed Youtube videos?
What reference are you looking at for lighting inspiration? Good reference is key!
The lamps hanging on the houses should cast light onto nearby surfaces. Lightmass can do a great job when set up well, all those fancy bounces.
To embed youtube, simply post the URL, but it has to be stripped down to this, and not the youtu.be version either:
For example:
[ame="
Done a bit more work on this. I've adjusted the colour so it's not quite as red. Completely re-done the surface of the water with help from a tutorial on www.hourences.com, added more of the little floating candles, and also re-done the maple tree as the lighting on it was terrible and it was really letting the scene down. I've replaced the willow tree for now but I will be re-doing that within the next couple of days as well.
I'm really liking the way this is coming along, but still got quite a bit to do to really make it something special.
Add more detail to the rocks.
Reflective lighting underneath the bridge
Unique bits for the wooden buildings on the left side.
Moss on the bridge
Sky
Nicer blend of sand into river/steps
You could use vertex color to soften the sand transitions. Also the wall on the left where it meets the sand, that edge is a bit too harsh.
The foreground dock looks really dark. I bet your texture is really dark, so it's not getting much light.
I would love to see some distortion in the water reflection.
Overall the lighting feels very directionless. The tower at top left shows the light angle, but the rest of the scene does not. I would turn off all the other lights in the scene, adjust that one light and the Lightmass settings, until things look good. That light should be giving you 90% of the lighting in your scene.
This is just now with one light source, a dominant directional light. Messed around with the position/colour/brightness ect and some of the lightmass settings. Looking any better?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html#Diffuse%20Textures
I agree with Eric, showing the lighting only mode really shows all the cool details you are losing from your diffuse textures. You never really need too dark of diffuse textures. I would also suggest maybe toning back the saturation in some of the woods (including the bright red) as well. And adding some large scale details to your textures like color variation, cracks/wear or less saturated parts where the sun has faded the paint. Specifically the red posts/railings just read as red. Although I know they are made out of wood, it wouldn't read to someone who didn't know they were made out of wood.
I love the detail of the candles floating down the river. It is a really cool touch and could add some pretty cool lighting elements to the scene. And on the subject of light sources, it looks a bit odd having all of the windows and lamps glow so much but not produce any light. I would suggest adding a small little lighting bit of lighting from each source. That would also help (along with lightening up the dark brown wood) to relieve a bit of the contrast between the bright yellow of the windows and the dark buildings. It draws the eye unintentionally instead of more towards where you want the center of attention to be at the river and square.
Good luck, and keep up the good work. You're making progress!
ASTA
http://gamona-images.de/289686/scale,960,600,outside/1c102ace5c0b2c0c5f47e666145bb173.png
Age of Wushu
http://mmohuts.com/wp-content/gallery/age-of-wushu-reveal/age-of-wushu-scholars.jpg?ec9f9b
etc.
Quick update on this, though not done too much today.
I've completely re-done the rocks (still not fantastic but better than the floating bin-bags I had before!) by making a new model, better texture and making the moss growing on them more visible.
I've also added caustics underneath the bridge, against the rocks and under the boat. Toned down the colour of tress as well to make them look a bit more natural.
The boat is looking a bit tiny at the moment, the step to the right of it looks really deep by comparison I'd play with the scales a bit, it might be ok when running around in UDK but it does look really small in that shot.
The wall to the right could do with a better texture (even the same brick texture from the wall at the back) as you can see it repeating easy, or break it up with some foliage or something.
The shadow to the right of the boat, what's casting that? There is no transition for it from the water to the ground, it just appears.
Looking far better though keep it up:D