King's Quest VII Remake - Falderal

JBledsoe · Nov 2013

Hello everyone! I'm brand new around these parts, so I'm excited and looking forward to any feedback

I'm working on a project for school and would really like some advice on this piece. It's basically a remake of my favorite childhood game King's Quest VII - Falderal. Thank you everyone!

Here's the original:

And here's what I've got so far...

Snader · Nov 2013

It looks kind of washed out, like all the props have been in the sun too long and the paint's faded a bit. And the materials feel rather flat and papery, especially things that should be rather shiny like glass and water.

chrisradsby · Nov 2013

Kinda feel like you need to make sure your shader is doing a little bit more work on environments like this. Like actually getting some kind of half-lambert stuff in there. Really stay away from blacks.

Try pumping up the brightness and saturation a little bit. Don't go overbright though, you rarely see that in painted-cartoony environments. Interesting though!

JBledsoe · Nov 2013

Alrighty! Thanks guys, I'll try that out. I've since messed with the lighting since these screenshots as it was suggested by my instructor.

Originally, I toned down the boldness of the colors in my textures cause I was afraid of all these different bright crazy colors would assault people's eyes, haha, but I'll try undoing that. I had been looking at Disneyland's Toontown as an example for this as well.

Anywho, thanks for the feedback! I'll posted updated screenshots once I fix it. Is there anything I should be adding prop-wise to clutter the scene up more or do you think it looks okay in that sense?

DougClayton4231 · Nov 2013

It looks good

I'd say that you should patch that edge in the tree leaf texture that's making it look like there's dark holes in the canopies.

JBledsoe · Nov 2013

@DougClayton - Ah! I didn't even notice that, now that I see it, I can't stop seeing it, haha. I'll fix it right away, thanks!

JBledsoe · Nov 2013

chrisradsby - So I spent a day trying to play with different shader tutorials I found online, especially the half-lambert you suggested. I found that TF2 shader tutorial, but it didn't seem to work correctly for me. I would really love to do the half-lambert shader for my scene to make it look a little more cartoony... or maybe even go for a zelda look. I want to stay away from cel shaded stuff like in Borderlands cause there's always someone in my class doing that.

Anywho... I'm still an amateur when it comes to creating shaders in UDK, so if anyone has something I could break down and learn from regarding cartoon-like environment shaders, I would most appreciate it! Preferably something detailed, so I can truly understand how it works

Marshkin · Nov 2013

I love this theme!
Are you using any normal maps? Those might help make it pop out a little more and give the shapes some more definition.
This tutorial might be helpful. I'm not sure if it's too close to borderlands though... http://www.moddb.com/games/unreal-tournament-3/tutorials/tf2-shading-in-ut3

JBledsoe · Nov 2013

@Marshkin - yeah I have normal maps on most things , but I haven't finished all of them yet. Thank you for the tutorial link, but that was one I tried and couldn't get to work

something was really weird and blocky about the shadows . When I talk to my instructor tomorrow, I'll give it another go to see if I can get it to work properly. Thank you, however!!

DougClayton4231 · Nov 2013

In order to get better results out of a cartoon-like shader, you might like using the custom node to write your own HLSL code to produce the results that you want, rather than trying to create it using the built in nodes.

JBledsoe · Nov 2013

@DougClayton4231 - I'm afraid that's out of my skill level, lol. I looked up some tutorials, but got lost

not sure I'm ready to tackle that yet. Maybe after I graduate in a couple months and have the free time to just sit down and learn something more advanced.

JBledsoe · Dec 2013

Hello! Sorry I haven't updated you guys after getting your feedback, but here's a semi-recent shot of what I've done with the level. I've been trying to work on the lighting more and as someone suggested that I try to lighten the shadows.. here's what I got.

OLD:

NEW:

I've since added a wheel of cheese floating in the pool of water as it is apart of one scene in the game when Chicken Little screams "The sky is falling!" It animates by rocking and bobbing slowly in the water, but since I just did it today in class, I don't have shots of it just yet. But I will soon

I have also tweaked the lighting a little more as I've discovered the wonders of editing the Post Processing Chain, so it's slightly different from the screen shots above and a little more saturated, but I just wanted to post this shot to see if I'm somewhat going in the right direction as far as lighter shadows go.

I tried using the Sobel Edge detection shader to get that toon style outline, but I didn't quite like what it looked like so I scrapped it. But I may give it a try again later if I can figure out how to make it appear smoother and less jagged.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

Here are newer shots of my level. I've since added clock hands on the town hall, the floating cheese wheel that falls from the sky into the well, falling leaves (particle), butterflies, and birds that fly through the sky. I've also textured the well, and brightened the scene a little more. As suggested to me, I also added bases to the pillars of the house.

Muzzoid · Jan 2014

Nice modelling.

Looks like you need a bit of a hand with understanding some texturing things though. It looks like you are painting exposure values into your textures.

How light interacts with colours is that for high saturation objects, light does not increase brightness past the local colours. So adding white will make things look sun bleached and look really wrong. Instead you should have local colour in your textures as the brightest colour.

Have a look at the original concept art, you will see there is no white mixed into the lit parts.

this might be a little hard to understand so here is a diagram

Also try and avoid having such wide AO. If you can instead tone it back, and make the lights in the scene have soft shadows, it will have a similar soft affect, but it will look better.

It's helpful to look at really colourful work, and you will see that this is super important with making harmonious colour schemes that look good to the eye. EG (nsfw) http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8003/7665351276_8ca6d5257b_o.png Notice how the only white points are the speculars.

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

I think the material I'm using when I was playing with cell-shading is creating the white splotches and the weird black shadows (which is really visible on that upside-down red tower). I had trouble with it, so I'll probably continue messing with it.

I'll work on the AO some more as I also had trouble with that, but I've discovered how to tweak it with Post Processing Chains, so I'll fiddle with that some more.

Thank you so much for the feedback!

The diagram helps ^.^

Muzzoid · Jan 2014

Glad to help.

Could you post some texture flats?

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

Sure, is there any in particular you want to look at?

Muzzoid · Jan 2014

The more complex hand painted textures?

Also a nit pick, this isn't cell shaded. cell shaded will usually have no gradients.

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

No I know, hehe. I meant I was playing with a cell-shading tutorial [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT3qGgsYRFM"]UDK Cell Shading Tutorial - YouTube[/ame], as I mentioned above. It's still applied on top of my texture. Which is probably why I'm getting weird blown out highlights and shadows. I've come to understand that those sort of shaders are made mostly to be used with simpler flat textures, so that it lets the material do the work with the banding. Just didn't have time to fix it yet, as I applied it on many of the static meshes. Was mostly playing with it to learn and understand

tremulant · Jan 2014

Muzz hit the nail on the head. And seeing your texture flats may give us some more insight into some beneficial adjustments you could make. If you look at the original game, black is pretty much non-existent. Your updated progress is reflecting the original a bit better, but there is still a lot of black in there. Instead of black you need color in your shadows. Likewise with the lighting, make sure that the shadows aren't black, if you have to, saturated them a bit more with dark blue.

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

Okie dokie! I'll get some up as soon as I can.

As for the colored shadows, I've been trying to change the color for a while now. Only thing I've managed to achieve is to make them lighter. I've tried changing them in the world properties (scene shadow values), changed the environment color, used a skylight, and tried adjusting them in my Post Process Chain. I think I may have to have my instructor look at it, cause I probably messed up somewhere. Not sure what I'm doing wrong

I'm still learning UDK, so I apologize if I'm sounding dumb, lol.

Muzzoid · Jan 2014

As far as colored shadows, don't worry about it. Everything in your textures should only be local colour. Changing light colours is what will handle all that.

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

Okie dokie. Thank you so much! I'll make these changes and will probably have the results up by tomorrow (It's getting late

).

Thanks again everyone!

John Ehresmann · Jan 2014

Definitely going to sub to this, big fan of the Kings Quest games and loving what you have so far, looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

cholden · Jan 2014

Really dig this choice of concept. One thing that can help scene like this is a soft frensel material like in Super Mario Galaxy.

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

@Muzz - Here's some of my textures. I haven't been hand-painting textures for very long, so any advice or diagrams would be VERY appreciated as I've been stressing over this student project for a while now lol. Thank you! ^.^

JBledsoe · Jan 2014

Hey guys! Tomorrow is my final class (and I'll have graduated from college! Woo!)! I just wanted to share my reel project to show the changes I made with all of your feedback. If there is any additional feedback you want to give to me after watching the video, please do! I will be continuing to work on these levels still so that I can improve them, especially since I will now have more free time to really focus on it.

http://youtu.be/TZXWBo15HM4

The King's Quest level starts around 1:05. The level before that was also another project I was working on at the same time. Feel free to give feedback on that one as well if you like.

I appreciate everyone's feedback they have given me! It helped me out a lot for my class. Thank you!

King's Quest VII Remake - Falderal

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