[UDK] Treetop Village
polycounter lvl 7
Hey guys! I'm really excited to share my first official UDK environment with you all:) Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on a treetop village project for class. I've kept modularity in mind throughout my entire process and really tried to push the kit's flexibility. But enough talk, here is my progress!
And lastly the grid system for the environment:)
And lastly the grid system for the environment:)
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I've loved tree top villages since Donkey Kong Country, I know most people will invoke star wars as their goto tree top villages but...
You've put a great deal of thought into your process and it's really paying off
Once you add warm lights in the foreground spilling from the buildings it will generate a nice warm/cold foreground to background effect.
I would have gone with a different kind of grid, either triangular or more likely hexagonal. That way you'd probably have a less noticable grid, and you would have less squish/stretch on the 'diagonal' bridges. 1, 2 or 1.7 (85% scaled from 2) units, versus 1, 2 and √2=1.4 (70% scaled from 2, double the squish.):
I'd also do the walkways different. Right now you have modules that are virtually identical. You have only one width of walkway and are intersecting with trees. This means that a thin tree actually has a wider (and thus heavier) load than a wider, stronger tree. Doesn't make much sense.
I'd go for 2 narrow walkways with an angle of 120°, 2 medium and 2 wide, to give some variation, and then a few fence modules of slightly different length/curvature. I'd make the 'left' post of each module a bit bigger and the 'right' one a bit smaller so you could have them intersect and tile around the walkway. With the different sizes you wouldn't need to have a specific tile with an opening for bridges, you could just use two smaller fence modules on both sides.
Why 120° instead of 90°? Because that fits very well with a hexagonal grid, and because 120° tiles very nicely around a cylinder, with much less visible repetition than a 90° module. Not only because of a larger texture, but also because our brains can't simply mirror the texture. (for the lulz, try reading text that's turned 120° away from you instead of simply 180° upside down.) Texture repetition doesn't matter horribly much in the case of wooden planks since there's not much unique detail there anyway, but every bit helps I guess. And of course it saves a few module-instances.
djoexe: Spot on:) It was actually a youtube gameplay video of turok that started this whole project! lol
Rafferty_Eggleston & Dubzski: Thank you both!
There are others here that I want to respond to - as of right now I'm off to pay a visit to a classmate during his final Digital Forensics presentation. Thanks all for the replies, input and kind words!
It also depends on the time of day your going for too I think, ex; will the scene be at night or in the middle of the day? Just general questions like this... because if it was at night, getting the contrast might be alot easier with using a bluer kinda fog and having alot of light sources (for example, look at this ewok picture
Another thing you may want to consider is adding alot of leaves and smaller branches, they seem to be almost completely missing from the scene, which might help alot with the depth and also adding a cool looking canopy at the top.
Either way though the scene is looking really impressive and I'm loving it, the way you planned out everything and put it together is pretty slick. The modeling is also rock solid along with the texture work
Right now the entire environment uses 3 textures so I figure it's time to 'branch' out and add some more assets to make the place look lived in. Thinking some foliage would do this place some good as well, vines could hide some of the seams between modular pieces.
Man is it tough to get a decent composition with all the trees in the way xP
Anyway since you have so many beautiful lightsources (all that lanterns and windows!) you should maybe think about a night setting, to make that pop out even more.
My critique would be that now we have illuminated areas in the image but they don't spill over onto the scene. There's all these bright dots but they don't do anything for you at the moment.
Did a super quick paint-over to illustrate what I mean.
Can't wait to see where this goes
And while you could see the textures better at daytime, I like images with atmosphere better. Through you surely could do a nice daytime scene, too. And for a Portfolio you can also show your texturework either on the texturemaps or with some closeup screenshots (like detail scenes)
Sadly I haven't got into setting up lights by now, so I'm not really able to help you out with that, but right now it's looking a little flat. The Paintover you've got from NomadSoul sure is already an improvement, but I guess it could be pushed even more. Maybe you'd check out some tutorial if you want to make the scene really pop.
There's still some areas that could use some light but it's getting there.