[UDK] Final environment project.
Finished, last update. "Land Of Giants":
Hello PC,
I'll be updating here what is going to be my final school project. Is my first environment in UDK, so if I can have your help during this process (anything is welcome) it would be nice.
Material so far:
Concept (by Fan Ming) that I want to create in 3D (with that camera angle):
Structure I will be following:
Blockout to check sizes:
Hello PC,
I'll be updating here what is going to be my final school project. Is my first environment in UDK, so if I can have your help during this process (anything is welcome) it would be nice.
Material so far:
Concept (by Fan Ming) that I want to create in 3D (with that camera angle):
Structure I will be following:
Blockout to check sizes:
Replies
How do you plan doing the rocks/landscape?
How long do you have to finish? More than a semester I hope.
Looking forward to seeing this develop.
If you are sure that you want to tackle this concept it might be wise to concentrate on the modular pieces of the castle first. This means that should the worst happen (hopefully not!) and for whatever reason you run short of time at least you have modular castle pieces you can use to create a more enclosed environment. I'm not sure what your assignment brief is but if it is simply an image like the concept above then there is a lot you can 'get away' with. This ranges from the easy one of not having to model anything that cant be seen (so the whole back of the castle!) to concentrating on larger shapes/silhouettes and not getting caught up in small details (maybe not advisable if you need to show close breakdown shots).
Good luck with the project!
@toolpaddz, @sybrix, @PixelSuit: I have 3/4 months to finish the project. I'll be working on this as well on "Tower22" (video game in progress). It is going to be hard, but I think (and hope) I can handle it.
As for the landscape/rocks, I thought of doing the cliffs (big one on the left, and the cliffs that are on the center/right as broken land) with single meshes. The other part will be mostly "landscape" besides some high rocks that will be meshes as well. Maybe the difficult part of this is to blend the landscape of the right side with the cliff mesh.
@Pixelsuit: It would be smarter if I start with modular pieces indeed, but during the project I'll be learning (at school) how to work with texture blending, master material/instances, entropy, etc, that I'll be using on those modular pieces, so I decided to work on custom pieces first until I have knowledge enough.
Simply an image, so as you said, I won't have to care about "hidden pieces", or small details.
I'll be updating as soon as possible!
Some custom objects I did. I'll texture them at the end, when all the objects are done.
Feedback is welcome!
Thanks jfitch!!
The broken stone column would just fall down because there is nothing below supporting it.
Nice concept and start. Looking forward to your progress.
Keep up.
I've been testing some shader stuff within UDK and now I am creating the first tileable texture. I don't like too much the soldier, I am going to change it, some advices?
Here are the updates:
Mesh paint: (Testing with UDK textures) .
-Stone, grass and their transition with heightmap.
-Vertex world offset painting (Left side).
-Tessellation painting (gray peaks).
Any thought for the soldier?
Good to see you are making progress!
To me, the main problem is that of scale. Not the proportion of the objects, which seems to be good, but the scale of them. If you look on the concept, there are people on it, and they look like ants. This means the environment is massively big.
So, what stands out, is that you are doing very large details on the pieces, but don't have very small ones. This is what seems to make the scene look off.
I believe that you need more high frequency details on the props. Try to put a person on the scene and you will soon realize that, as an example, the Soldiers are supposed to be at least 50x bigger than an average person. On that massive scale, you need tons of very small details, else it looks plain and tends to show that you just scaled the object to be that big.
That "scale" thing, is also true to the Soldiers beveled edges. The gap seems to be gigantic. I think it would do you good to make then thinner.
As a reference about what I'm saying, I'm linking a picture of the Moais. They are stone made, and the average height is 4m. Have a look on how detailed the bump is. If you are using Zbrush, I believe the Surface Noise plugin could do you some good.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Ahu_Tongariki.jpg
I believe the same is valid for the the castle pieces, so here is a reference to the size of the damage details:
http://travelingwithkrushworth.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/conwy_castle_wales_photography2.jpg
Hope you find my comments constructive and are able to take this forward. In case of doubt, let us know and we shall try to help you more.
cheers.
First, thanks for your reply.
Yes, you are totally right, I agree with you about the scale and the missing little details. What I have done is just the big and really visible broken stuff. Then, I am creating some tileable textures, I'll blend the normal map I already have with the new normal map of the textures (with smaller detail), and finally I'll create a final "broken texture", that I will blend again with vertex paint wherever I choose (smallest detail).
So I think finally there will be enough little detail. As you say, the scale of this environment is really large indeed.
I'm checking the soldier again, it needs some improvements.
Thanks for the feedback and the references, very good ones!
After a night of work, here is the first tileable texture. Done with Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop. Here are some snapshots of the process:
I just used "MalletFast".
Still very much work remaining: objects, texture and shader work, landscape, mountains, fx, lighting, etc. But here it is:
Also are you sure your normals are right for the custom objects ? Inverted green channel ?
@Wingednosering: I would want to finish it on June, let's see how it goes.
@Shrike: Normals aren't right indeed, green channel is inverted! I completely forgot it, thank you so much.
Right, overall shape is regular. I am going to use entropy for the castle: Moss between the cavities and a broken version for the tiles.
@hollandje: Thanks!
New update, I hope you like it.
In think the tree is to thick compared to the original concept it must be much thinner. The army walking on a fine line and has huge space. Maybe a better earth texture with a visible "street" helps.
One thing you need to dial in now is your lighting and color. Your current image is very flat and washed out by your atmosphere pretty heavily. I took this to the 'shop and you're darkest value was 29% with brights in the upper 70's/low 80's. I think you could push it more, just like what your seeing with the contrast in your reference image. I did a really quick levels adjustment and now there's a lot more range across the full spectrum. I think pulling back your atmosphere a bit will allow you to have cripser, darker foreground elements.
Introduce a bit more color to the scene by having your ambient hit some cool tones while the warmth of the sun still has it's overall oppressive impact.
Can you post a lighting only shot, and possibly a unlit shot (textures only)? That might help us better dissect what else you need to pursue once you make some contrast adjustments.
Good luck, very neat scene,
-Jon
EDIT - My adjustments were made on my main, higher contrast monitor and are a bit flatter on my second monitor. I hope the improvement is apparent or at the very least, the principle of my point gets across.
@Cibo, @BringMeASunkist: Scaling is one of the points I have to solve indeed. Yes, earth texture has to be improved. I also was thinking on doing the army, and how to do it. Many simple characters? Just planes with army alpha? Thinking of that.
Stones and tree are going to be important for this scaling issue, for sure.
Endfinity Jon: Thank you! As I told DWalker, lighting work is not started yet, but completely right, I'll keep in mind these things. Anyhow, I would really like to count with your feedback when I start with lighting. (I had a look to your projects, really great environments). Here the shots. I didn't check lightmaps yet, so there are many issues:
Unlit, lighting (there is a problem with the second landscape on the top, not important, I'll remove it) and detail lighting (normal maps and tessellation):
Greetings.
I'll try to update as soon as possible.
Sorry for the late reply Mr Significant, I didn't see your message. Thanks, I'll check it!
The end of this project is coming, latest update:
Looking at your recent image, I've listed 3 main points.
Your sky needs to be brighter so you can silhouette the bridge across it, this is one of the main features in your concept as it has a great balance between light and dark. Speaking of your sky, it needs to be a little brighter overall so that it can support the amount of sun that needs to hit the side of your fortress. Right now, I'm having a hard time seeing where the sunlight is hitting. Redirect it a bit so that it's hitting the side of the castle and that will bring some of the rich warmth we're seeing in the concept piece. Another thing I noticed is how strangely ambient your current piece feels. Something about it feels very detached. It's like you had a lit background and pasted an image over top. I'm not sure if you're environment color is too bright or you have a skylight in the scene but it needs to be toned down so that areas that aren't in direct sunlight fall to dark as they do in your concept piece.
Finally, I'm not huge on the volumetric fog as it seems to take my eye off the piece and right to it. Maybe softening its influence would help.
I took your lit version and did a really rough paint over (to the tune of a soft brush and 5 minutes). Just trying to show you the color and value you need to push in your lighting when compared to the concept. This is a very rich and colorful piece and I'd love to see some of that color come through in the lighting.
EDIT - My darks suck, notice how dark your shadows are in the concept. Try to hit that.
I would change your environment color to a purple as I'm seeing it all over the place in the concept in the darker areas. Turn your bounces down so that you can have rich darks. Don't let your directional do all the work, you might need to supplement some more spot/points in to splash some additional light on things. Also, to the right, there's a door with ethereal blue light coming out so try to hit that as well.
See if you're able to push more color into the lighting and more contrast as well. I think establishing your black point and then building up from there will really help your with that.
I hope some of that was helpful, kind of a sloppy and quick critique but I hope the points are there. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Good luck on finishing this thing,
-Jon
Here are some issues you need to think about:
- Scale & Perspective, right now you need to add things to really show off the scale you've got going on in there. Ie this means the size of the leftward cliff mesh and texture. AND the surrounding area. As well as the size of the brick on the actual castle. Right now they would be gigantic if we're going for the scale you have in the concept art.
- "Place lights where you need them to be to get the color you want."
- Don't use terrain to create cliffs, use cliff meshes. Mainly If you were to replace all the terrain with mesh you'd end up with something a lot easier to work with, you don't need to however. You can just blend the cliff-meshes into the side of the terrain giving it a sharper look.
- After extensive lighting passes and you still don't get everything the way you want to. Make sure you use color post processing (color grading) to get the colors you want. You need to adjust the LUT.
Here is even further breaking down the colors maybe
Aaaaand there you go.
I hope I helped somewhat. Just isolate what you need to do and focus on it one step at a time
@Endfinity Jon: There is not a skylight, I have to check the sun and ambient color indeed. As for the fortress, probably I'll have to add a spotlight so I can have a fake light of the sun over the surface. The same with the blue light, I'll push it up. Thank you so much.
@chrisradsby: Hello, thanks for the reply: Scale is one of the issues I have to solve, as you say, brick size, stones, tree, have to be checked.
The left cliff is just a static mesh, actually is just a plane + vertex paint + world offset + tessellation.
As for lighting, I'll change the hue a bit, closer to your colors, and push up the light, as Endfinity Jon said too. LUT, right. I'll work with that too, let's see how it changes.
Thank you very much for the feedback. And amazing work with "The Division", congratulations.
Yeah. I'm curoius how did you made a shape/model of that cliff. It's modeled by hand or ZBrush sculpt and using meshlab to reduce the poligons?
Thanks coots7 and Mr Significant! I changed it a bit, here a new shot.
As for the cliff:
The geometry from the beginning is a simple plane. With vertex paint blending of two different rocks (two 1024 tileable textures) and tessellation, to give the relief. Besides, with vertex painting I also have the control of the vertex position (world offset), so I model the big shapes directly in UDK. So: Tessellation + world offset is what gives all the relief and shape, although the base geometry is a simple plane.