[UDK] Modular Prince of Persia Palace
polycounter lvl 6
Hi everyone!
After some work experience in CG 3D, I am now trying to find a job in the game industry again, which means working on my portfolio and improving my skills. I decided to work on my weaknesses mainly and improve my speed and scale on environments, using modularity. While I know the basics and use some of it, I definitely think I could use it way more and improve my work dramatically.
Thus I searched the Internet for some cool concept to work on. I came upon one concept of Prince of Persia that I really like and decided to work on that (after replaying Sands of Time to get me in the mood, love that game). Scale is definitely strong in this one!
Concept Reference
So I jumped in and started blocking out the scene with basic geometry. This is all very rough right now, lightmaps are very low resolution and using bad UVs layout. But I think it's enough to start showing it on Polycount and receive some interesting criticisms. Better to change things now anyway, that's what the blockout stage is for after all.
I plan on reducing my texture space as much as I can, using tiling texture, trims, vertex color alpha for some AO, vertex color RGB for some changes in tone/dust/old. I never did this kind of project before so I could take some time to update depending on the task at hand. And of course, I'm open to any criticism.:)
Replies
I had some things to do IRL and had to pause a bit this project. When I came back to it, I decided to start over after watching some tutorials on using a modular workflow. The blockout looked alright but it was not really well thought-of for each piece.
So this time I worked first on the texture using a grid directly in Photoshop and matching it with UDK and Max. I'm only using one 2k texture right now (there's a bit of a plaster texture at some places too for testing purpose, I'll need to work that later on). Only diffuse, no specular nor normal map (will come later).
And here is a preview of the texture :
I think it's headed in a better direction right now, much more easier to build that way at least. I'm taking some freedom from the concept on the texture too, I try to look at the art style in the past games.
And a little list of what I really need to work on next :
- Way less trim blocks on the towers, I'm only using them because my texture of stone blocs doesn't tile-y yet.
- More padding on lightmap UVs where it's problematic.
- Some parts are really dark, I'll probably add some lights inside the corridor, should reduce the darkness and modulates the scene a bit.
- Working the diffuse, some parts are just placeholders (railing and dome), some parts don't tile well, too rough overall, need to stylize it a notch.
- Sculpting normal, working specular.
- Vertex blending some variations.
- More variations for each piece, some destruction maybe.
- Giving it life with props (maybe a fountain like in the games)
Any crits and advices are welcome.
For lightmaps, I think I can provide some answers. All blocks of this scene have a max lightmap of 32px (it's only overall lighting right now though, nothing special) and when I tweak the padding, there is no visible seams anymore even with simple cube blocks next to one another.
Here is one block, the wall for the corridor. There's two tricks, padding and grid. You need space between your shells to avoid bleeding from one to another, especially when you are far away from the mesh and only see the mip mapped lightmap.
Problem is that you're using a 32px map in close-up, and that is divided by a power of two as you go away. UVs in Max and Maya are kinda too precise and if you place the borders of your shells manually, you're bound to place them between two pixels of your lightmaps. Becase of that, you're going to get some black lines.
This guy explains it better than me in a video here.
He uses Maya. In Max, go to Unwrap options (preferences or the button right to UV in the screenshop) and set Grid Size to 0,0625 (type the full number, Max does take it even if it doesn't displays it), that gives you a grid of 16 block, each representing two pixels of your lightmap. You need one block minimum between each cells and your borders should snap on the grid to avoid bleeding. Don't hesitate to stretch a bit, lightmaps don't really care.
The other thing is to increase the lightmass settings. Base production isn't good enough to give nice results in this scene. Here's the settings I use, taken from an earlier post on Polycount I think :
[DevOptions.StaticLightingProductionQuality]
NumShadowRaysScale=8
NumPenumbraShadowRaysScale=32
ApproximateHighResTexelsPerMaxTransitionDistanceScale=6
MinDistanceFieldUpsampleFactor=5
NumHemisphereSamplesScale=32
NumImportanceSearchPhotonsScale=12
NumDirectPhotonsScale=64
; Decrease direct photon search distance so that we will have more accurate shadow transitions. This requires a higher density of direct photons.
DirectPhotonSearchDistanceScale=.1
NumIndirectPhotonPathsScale=4
; Need a lot of indirect photons since we have increased the number of first bounce photons to use for final gathering with NumImportanceSearchPhotonsScale
NumIndirectPhotonsScale=16
NumIndirectIrradiancePhotonsScale=2
NumCausticPhotonsScale=1
; Decreasing the record radius results in more records, which increases quality
RecordRadiusScaleScale=.1
InterpolationMaxAngleScale=.5
; Decreasing the min record radius allows more records in corners for a higher quality result
MinRecordRadiusScale=.25
You'll find BaseLightmass config to edit in C:\UDK\Custom\Engine\Config. Don't forget to create a copy before. Also be aware that this will take much more time to bake, especially if you crank up the lightmaps resolution.
And here is the result.
No visible seam in close-up and even far away it doesn't catch the eye too much (here the tiling is obvious, but that's another problem). Also sorry for the messy screen, I was testing a bit on the scene.
Hope it helps
How's this grid snapping for the lightmap work when the model is comprised of multiple components and its uvs aren't just a box? Do you still need to snap every edge to the grid with something like that or would it just need to be the uv edges that will meet its counterpart when instanced that need to be snapped? This might be easier with my personal example. I can pm you an image of the uvs to look at when you get the chance. Don't want to highjack your thread with anymore questions
That being said, I did a bit of testing and decided to regroup parts of the level by chunks. Two reasons for that :
- First it seems to be more effective on the lightmap size. My round tower with the dome at the top was made with 32px lightmapped blocks, more than 77 of them. Now that every blocks are merged and cleaned (no more polygons on the inside and all that), it's using a 256px. Less texture space, and the result is better too. Of course I deleted lots of geo which is not seen, that plays a lot I suppose.
- More importantly, it's going to be way easier for me to add destruction and specific details later on that way. Divide by chunks, take the whole chunk in Max and just do whatever I want with it without worrying about tiling with the next piece.
Of course, I'm not going to put the whole scene in one chunk and I'll probably keep some blocks too.
I'm already learning a lot from this project, which is cool. Next update might take a bit of time as I'd like to play a bit with some ideas. Now that the base is pretty much there, I'd like to leave a bit the concept. Got lots of ideas, but it needs some testing.
Time for a small update on the project!
- Started merging blocks to create bigger one, reducing lightmap resolution and improving the visuals (and it's also much smoother to navigate in UDK itself). It's also probably going to be quite useful later on if I do a bunch of destruction.
- Changed the lighting. AO was way too heavy, toned it down a lot. Also adjusted the levels of textures, they're brighter now. There's still artifacts and things that are not working (the orange parts for instance), but I think it's heading in the right direction.
- Started sculpting normal maps. Only did the two stone blocs part. Spec is not worked at all, just a quick level and blueish tint.
- Since it's Prince of Persia like and the scene was kinda empty, I thought that it would be cool to make some kind of tribute to the trilogy. The first step is, of course, a big mechanism. I liked the wheel element that you often see in the games so I came up with this idea. It would probably control a huge gate below. The gate is not there now, I don't exactly know the limit of this project right now to be honest.
My idea is to use multiple symbols of the games in the scene. Right now I added the wheel, the grid thing (don't know the word in English sorry) in the corridor to add some light and the flag (more of a placeholder for the texture). Most of the props I'll make later will be related to the games too : fountain, traps, lever, catchpole, ...
I am now using two 2048 textures. the main one as shown earlier and a second one with tileable-y strips used to make the wheel. I still have quite a lot of place on both. I plan to make the whole base fortress with these two. Props would have their own. And some others if I do make a full scene.
Screens are now resampled with simple bicubic (no more sharper). Most of the scene still use diffuse only, stone blocs being the exception. No decals/vertex blending and all that polish yet.
I spent some time to try things, learn a bit of stuff and decide the scope of the level (should have done that before
Lighting problems all around (still need to group lots of parts) and it's kind of empty right now, but it gets the scope. The terrain is actually a bit bigger behind the camera, in case I need some margin. I am thinking of following the same idea of "tribute" to the trilogy outside. Maybe some iconic weapons or armors of the games. I still have lots of work on the terrain before going into props.
I also tweaked the lighting a bit (due to GI the ground has a huge effect on it so I'll wait until it's more advanced to really tweak the overall lighting). Placing the ground actually fixed the orange parts too. I added some more normal maps (not all yet) and revised the last ones (badly rendered and Y inverted) as well.
Scope wise, I will also add some domes and tower/structures tops behind the wall. Nothing too fancy or detailed, it will just be there to give a better feeling of a massive palace/fortress.
Crits welcome.:)
The only things that really pops out at me is the tiling of some of the bricks, maybe offset or even vert painting some variations as you mentioned would help.
The AO seems a bit tight and strong at the moment, especially between the sand and the structures.
The trim thats sitting above the base blocks doesn't fit in as well as the rest, seems too dark.
Other than these minor things, it kicks ass and the diffuse is working really well even with out normals. more
Great work!
Mr Smo : I'll do decals and vertex blending and all the polish later on, that will probably be the last thing I do right after some props. It is indeed much needed.
And you're totally right about the AO being way too sharp and strong, I'll keep that in mind when I tweak the lighting later on. The trim didn't bother me at first but now that you say it, it could definitely fit better with the rest with some tweaking.
Just one little screencap today as I spent most of my time learning about particles. It's also something I'll probably do in the end but I wanted to get some sands blowing quickly. This is not a tiledshot but a simple printscreen.
Which brings me to a question : what's the best way to render screenshot in UDK for a portfolio ? Editor screencaps are very nice but obviously lack AA. Tiledshot gives super crisp pictures but some effects don't work, lightmaps mip-maps are very aggressive and that much more pixels means different results sometimes. For instance the sand is very bright at some places but at higher resolution, the wavy shadows kick in and give a much darker result when downsampled. Play on PC gives me some very bad visual results. I thought about increasing PIE resolution to something like 2560*1440 and than make a simple shot that I downsample but I've yet to try if it is possible to do (my screen is 1920*1080) and practical enough (maybe use fixed cameras with matinee).
If someone knows a very good way, I'm all ears.:)
-Indeed, create cameras, so you can set specific postprocess (Dof, SSAO, etc) for each shots. And yes, switch from one to another with matinee.
-Set this matinee to start at launch of the map, and toggle HUD off (In Kismet in the Toggle section)
-Start your level with this at the end of your shortcut:
UDK.exe YourLevelName -MAXQUALITYMODE -NOTEXTURESTREAMING -ResX=1920 -ResY=1080
And take screenshots there. You can also use this one: UDK.exe YourLevelName -BENCHMARK -MAXQUALITYMODE -NOTEXTURESTREAMING -DUMPMOVIE -FPS=30 -ResX=1920 -ResY=1080 It will record one bmp for each frame until you close the game, you can also use it if you want to make videos. Files are placed in the Screenshot folder.
Don't forget also, you can set AA in the postprocess settings. (I think it is in the UberPostProcess in a PostProcessChain. You can create a PostProcess chain, plug it in your world settings, and check the 'use world settings' in each part of the post process chain, it will use all the settings from the postprocesschain that are not listed in the world settings)
Postprocess chain also allow to have more interesting DoF effect, thanks to Bokeh dof.
I would also recommend to use color grading instead of photoshop, it is easier/faster.
Something else, in post process you can set up a small vignette also (look on google I think there is an example in the existing packages of udk), wich is a nice small touch.
AGarton -> Glad to hear it. Looking forward to seeing it! :poly121:
I started a thread that's located in the wiki - link here:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=100950
There's some simple setup images that hopefully help you understand how to get the camera working with your kismet sequence. I plan on making a tutorial on my blog very soon about shooting for portfolio as well as creating your own custom post process settings to call up in any map.
Maybe that link will get you started, I'll be around if you have any questions.
How and where are you typing/putting this information NG? I'd like to try it
You just create a shortcut to the right UDK.exe (32 or 64b) and in its properties you paste thes commands at the end.
My only issue is that it looks quite boxy and sorta flat.. I wonder if you should try and get some height variation in there somehow. The composition of the castle seems a bit off somehow.
But that should be fairly simple in the grand scheme of things! You have all your gorgeous textures/materials set up already so its just a case of tweaking the construction of the castle and making it look a bit more interesting.
I hope that makes sense, I feel like English is my second language or something today......
Endfinity Jon/ng.aniki => Thanks again for the info, I'll definitely use that later for the beauty shots.
PogoP => I agree with you. I'm not going to change the fortress layout now because the problem could disappear when I add new assets to the scene but I definitely keep that in mind. Besides, I had planned to create some buildings/tower tops of various heights in the background so maybe that will be enough to make it more interesting.:)
Alright, time for an update! One with lots of greens, and particles birds. Because photoshop brushes are too mainstream. I suppose it's quite silly to make particles for birds but I wanted to experiment with flipbook for a while and I actually had a blast making them. Plus it's funny to spawn an army of birds on the level.
So, I mainly added some grass and palm trees. I started trying to make them with Speed Tree but I wasn't happy with the results so I created them from scratch instead. It's much better, although I may work more on them later. Leaves and grass are moving with the wind too, sadly this isn't easy to show with jpg.
At this point, it really started to remind me of the infamous Prince of Persia reboot, with its awesome art style. I don't aim to fit any particular art direction but I couldn't pass making some sort of link to the game. I first thought of adding Ormazd orbs in the level, but it would have been confusing and bad looking considering I don't have any path for the player. So instead, I choose a fertile ground looking thing.
I also slightly tweaked the lighting as I was having way to much red on the fortress and improved the terrain shader a bit. I may add more grass if need be later on, but I'll wait until pretty much everything is placed for that. I also definitely will need some kind of background for the side, I like that view and plan to use it. There's still some normal maps and quite a lot of specular maps missing too.
Enough talk, here are the shots. Again simple printscreens, so it's not exactly super crystal clear but I'll wait until the final layout to place cameras and do some real beauty shots.
Don't get me wrong, what you have now is great but you could push it to become far better. Looking at the concept you are using it has alot of hidden area which you can fill with the above example.
Di$array => That's indeed the main weakness of the scene right now. Adding buildings behind the wall will improve depth and scale but I definitely need to give some love to the foreground. I'll focus my work on that. Thanks for the crit.
Lots of things changed, but here are the main modifications :
- Regroup some blocks into chunks for the fortress, all of the exterior walls are now good to go for lighting. Raise up some lightmaps rez.
- Tweaked the lighting a bit, added a fog to push back the fortress a bit. I also use DOF for the shots but it's more to toy around right now. I still need to go ahead and step up the lighting, it's still only one dominant light. Also don't mind the light on the roof, I forgot to tweak something.
- Resculpted the two main stone textures, put them in a separate file and a separate shader to tune them good. Added vertex blending variations. One for color, one on the top stone to blend with the same layout but more eroded/destroyed looking.
- Added some decals on the fortress, they need tuning though but they have parameters to do that easily.
- Started laying out the middle ground. I actually had a hard time doing that despite the relative simplicity of it. It's very basic as of now and the lightmaps are super bad but it show the idea.
- Ditched FXAA, no more blur everywhere.
Once again simple printscreens. All crits are more then welcome. I've got a good list of things that really need to be done but I worked on that project for a while, fresh eyes would be appreciated.
I'd like to get this scene ready for some beauty shots on my portfolio by the end of the month, so I will focus on the middle ground and foreground now. Adding props with the tents and the exterior, trying to get a better sense of human scale in the picture, adding a big element at the foreground and polishing everything up/finishing textures.
I may continue working on it later but it needs to be ready for "presentation" quickly now.
So everyone, crits welcome!
Rough days with some extreme temperatures over here, good thing there's no overclocking anymore, but even at stock clock temps are sometimes too risky. And I have to say that I'm a bit "tired" of this project, I really need to work on something else to refresh my mind. Still, I want to get this to a proper level before moving on and maybe come back to it later.
So this is pretty much it for assets and all that. I'm going to take two or three days to polish things a bit. I need to texture some placeholder like the flag, create specular maps (for the fortress especially), tune the lighting to put the focus on the fortress door, work the grass patches placement, ...
Tiledshot 2 this time, no picture tweaking in PS except for the vignette and border effect.
Definatley inspires me to get a bit more of that POP vibe in my own environment I'am working on atm.
Thanks for being so inspiring!
Great work!
Seems I'm not going to take two or three days but instead finish it now. First aim was to create the fortress using modularity and I'm pretty happy with the results. Learned a lot of things, made quite a bit of mistakes (the biggest one being to prototype the fortress but not the full environment with it). I would have liked to create more PoP refs but I really have to move on other things right now. Might come back to it much later though.
So it's time for some pictures. Not all of them have good composition, but at least it shows pretty much all the main places. Tiledshot 2 except the last screenshot with rays, no photoshop tricks/corrections except vignette effect. Last one is simple lighting.
Thanks to all who followed and gave feedback! :thumbup:
Looks awesome man! Turned out really great!
Just two niggles. First, those flags along the corridors look out of place to be blown by the wind so much. They're right behind those columns, which should block the wind yeah? Second, the alternating stripe tent patterns, a European thing, look out of place next to the middle eastern castle. But what do I know, maybe it's the crusades?
Very good work all around.
The only problem I have is that the font you used to show your website address on the images is difficult to read. I would change that to make it easier for people to find you and your awesome work! Thanks for sharing with us all
Concerning :
- European strip pattern, yeah I knew this would clash for some and you're completely right. I needed the project on my portfolio quickly for a possible job opportunity and these tents were bothering me quite a bit. It's all my fault, I should have prototyped the whole environment at the beginning instead of trying to find something fitting later. Strip pattern was the easy way to go to make it look good. In the end, I think the entire idea of tents in front of the fortress is a bit strange. I tried to make it look a bit like some kind of check camp with soldiers checking transport and stuff like that but it's not fully working. It's more visual than practical on that part.
- Flags in the corridor are simple red planes with vertex animation. They have been the same since the first prototype actually. I thought of deleting them but I thing they fit somewhat, even though they are not textured. Should have reduce the vertex animation or at least take a screenshot when they are not at full swing, you're definitely right.
- Ambient color is actually already very blue. I think I would have needed to create point light in order to get blue to those. The way I set the lighting wasn't really good for that idea. But again it's my bad. I spent too much time focusing on the two exterior shot, fine tuning the lighting for them. When I got to make screenshot of the inside, yeah it could have been better. At first I only wanted to create the inside, and then I got a bit lost to add the outside. Hehe, I really should have prototype everything from the get-go.
PixelSuit -> Such a simple remark... yet very important. Big thanks to you, it indeed wasn't a good font at all for a small link like that!
Thanks again to all of you, I look forward to share my next project on Polycount and watch all of yours to fuel my motivation.