Had some help today from my friend, to improve the rain material. He showed me how to use Reflection Vectors and Vector Transform properly in order to make sure the windows reflected the room and made it seem as though there was glass in the frame.
He also showed me how to make window distort to reall make it seem like rain was hitting the window. I must say, I'm much happier with the result and it's tempting me to go deeper with materials.
I also textured the exterior building facade, which helps to ground the scene as being in a dark, gloomy city, like Gotham.
Hey Neil, ive been looking at your progress, I must say its a sweet idea, I attempted a Joker themed like study back in school, and it was really difficult to sell that idea with props and lighting.
A few pointers because ive noticed your not to familiar with UDK and its lighting power.
Your scene is coming across really dark still and its a constant uphill battle to balance mood with fill light.
I assume this is a night setting judging by your exterior shots? Your scene to me is pretty basic lighting wise, so what Id recommend, is scrapping all the lights, starting with a Dominant Directional Light to represent your moonlight, tweak the angle so that when your looking at the window the source light is coming from an upward angle, bump up the brightness a bit to make it stronger, Lightmaps help EXPONENTIALLY with UDK's lightmass renderer, and there very simply done with just a second UV channel.
So once you've got the dominant going, toss in a point light around where the screens will be with a medium saturated green light, id decrease the radius to somewhere between 5-900 with a falloff exponent of 5 or higher, this will give you soft lighting results as well as limit it just to that area of the room.
The idea of the front door being cracked open with a fallen lamp is really a cool idea to bring in additonal fill light, so id recommend using a spotlight, moveable/toggleable depending on if you wanna do a realtime render at some point.
Set its intensity to 5 or higher (Brightness) and give it a warm yellow/orange
Also in world properties, you can change the environment color to a low saturated purple so when your shadows render it wont be a harsh black shadow, and will mix well with the green and moonlight.
Thats my take on what I can see (personally) and improving your scene lighting wise ten fold.
When you get your screens more finalized you can tweak the bloom scale/threshold on that green point light to really sell that glowiness.
Id work on some of your tiling textures, specifically the wall brick, its quite noisy and doesnt really pop as brick should, could be a good reason to carve out some custom brick in Zbrush :thumbup:
Your asset work looks great, so ive got nothing to say about that.
Try those changes or dont, but ill be following this to see your progress.
Keep at it!
-Killa
Thanks for the feedback Killazzz!Funnily enough, I had just made adjustments to the world properties but I'll definitely give redoing the lights from a scratch a try too! Can't hurt to try and If I don't think it works, I always have backups
Hey guys, so, I've been making more progress on the scene, adjusting the lighting again to get a better fill light and maintaining the mood of it. I've also added a load more assets that I've been working on and making the various rooms feel more believable and grounding them in the world. My experiments in ZBrush have paid off as well, with me feeling a lot more comfortable using the software and as a result, more confident in my sculpting, so I'll be aiming to do a lot more sculpts for some of the key assets.
I also spent some time writing out my own little story for the scene, to help me really figure out what it is I'm trying to do. My idea was to suggest that this was the Riddler just starting out, he's not an established villain yet, and as such wants to toy with Batman as much as possible while figuring out who Batman is at the same time. By writing it out, I was able to create the idea that Riddler would have created this space as a Red Herring to lure Batman into his trap and killing him, thereby establishing himself as a true villain and proving that he is smarter than Batman. So, my plan is, to line this corridor with Mannequins dressed in the Riddler's trademark suit, all in various poses leading Batman (and therefore the player) into his trap, much in the very theatrical way he would in the comics. I also think this will help tell the story visually, my overall plan all along.
In terms of lighting, I've added some spotlights to the exterior, shining in through the windows, as I was finding the over all dominant light wasn't giving the results I was after. By adding the spotlights, and making sure their lightmass settings were adjusted to give a decent saturation but not too much light bounce, I was able to get a fairly nice balance between fill and mood lighting. I'm pretty pleased with how it's come out, especially after the difficulty I had with it a few weeks ago.
In terms of assets, I'm still quite happily plugging away with them. At this point, to make it feel and look like an Arkham game , it's a case of just cluttering the scene with as much visual interest as I can, as it's a technique used in every single Arkham game. As mentioned previously, I feel a lot more confident in sculpting now, so I'm pretty excited to see what I'll achieve with it.
As usual, thanks for looking at my work, and any comments or crits are completely welcome.
I personally think the scene is a bit noisy, stuff everywhere: garbled. Its kind of hard to tell what the points of focus are.
Do my a favour and re-light the scene as if it was daylight outside, and take alook and see what areas are messy and which ones lack interest. it may help adjust composition even if you don't intend to use that sort of final lighting.
Thanks for the feedback, that's a good idea! I'll get on it some point this week (Running out of time on this) so I'd like to get most of the assets to a good standard first.
Okay, haven't updated in a while. This has been one hell of a long project and I appreciate you guys being so patient with me on it. After receiving a ton of feedback it was decided I should shake up the scene and reorganise it, making the building itself feel more believable. So I got to work and did some proper research and changed the scene to be more like an apartment loft. At this stage, time is against me so Im going to be cranking out assets and filling the space again. I also got some feedback on lighting and was told not bother using lightmass. However, I'm not sure if that extends to baking the scene as well. Any advice is much appreciated:
Thanks! Nothing much, just an update on my texturing! Going to try and crank out as many of the assets as I already have before I start working on any other details!
I'd still really appreciate any info on my lighting query from the last post!
Update! Been blasting on with some much needed texturing this week. Also been getting myself better acquainted with nDo and dDo. Very powerful pieces of kit, I must say:
Its still sooo DAM GREEN AND DARK!
lol
Good progress on the textures I can actually see.
I do like that you changed up the layout a bit, that half-circle window will work alot better for some incoming night/day light
Nothing major today, just playing with exterior facades. Anyone know why my plan with Gotham National Bank isn't distorting like the lights around it?
C&C is VERY appreciated at this stage!
EDIT
@killazzz - ahaha, yeah I know, really need to try and figure this lighting malarky out. The green is now a result of Post Processing though, so it's a lot easier to play with than it was with lights :P
i'd say pull back on some of that green. I feel you are losing some great lighting opportunities and some vibrance of colors with that wash of green over everything. just dial it back a tad, make your light against the wall a tad brighter. add in some small filler lights in areas to add some light to the really dark areas. remember that the engine can only do so much when reading the bounce. and also remember that there is always a tad bit of light everywhere, as long as it is not closed in watertight. Just place lights with an extremely light intensity. maybe a .05 just something to slightly brighten up those dark spots.
Okay, took the advice of luge and messed with the lighting a tad. I also had a wee test bake of lighting without lightmass and the results were...okay. I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing or if the untextured stuff is just throwing me off but I'll hopefully be getting some one on one help later today.
right now i'm not liking the green question marks, they are flat and hiding that brick, like its a flat piece of geo laying overtop of it. maybe go into that decal texture and small bit of transparency. really digging the lighting now though. also, that sheet is bugging me a little. the threads are too big, they should be thinner, but thats me. i'm really liking the way this looks though.
The lighting looks sooo much better man!!!
Its nice to see some more textures as well, I'd agree with luge about the question marks, I like them but they need to be just a bit less prominent.
Cheers! Yeah, I put them there without much thought, so Im thinking of something to fill the space now. I was thinking some kind of scheme he's planning or something.
Hey everyone, feel I should show what I handed in on Friday. It's not perfect and I'll definitely be revisiting this and polishing it up but I'm pleased with what I achieved. This has been a long project and I'm ready for something new:
its looking good, BUT, it feels like you are starting to revert on the lighting. its feeling like its getting over washed with green again. just be careful about that. ALSO... your decals have some clipping problems on them. they have an outline of white around them that I'm pretty sure you aren't trying to do. There should be an option in the material editor where you can fix the aliasing and bring it in more to remove the white outline. the option is "Opacity Mask Clip Value". If you up the value, it will clip inward more, and remove the white. another way to avoid this, is in your texture, make the background color of the texture a huge of the decal.
Replies
He also showed me how to make window distort to reall make it seem like rain was hitting the window. I must say, I'm much happier with the result and it's tempting me to go deeper with materials.
I also textured the exterior building facade, which helps to ground the scene as being in a dark, gloomy city, like Gotham.
As usual, C&C is appreciated.
A few pointers because ive noticed your not to familiar with UDK and its lighting power.
Your scene is coming across really dark still and its a constant uphill battle to balance mood with fill light.
I assume this is a night setting judging by your exterior shots? Your scene to me is pretty basic lighting wise, so what Id recommend, is scrapping all the lights, starting with a Dominant Directional Light to represent your moonlight, tweak the angle so that when your looking at the window the source light is coming from an upward angle, bump up the brightness a bit to make it stronger, Lightmaps help EXPONENTIALLY with UDK's lightmass renderer, and there very simply done with just a second UV channel.
So once you've got the dominant going, toss in a point light around where the screens will be with a medium saturated green light, id decrease the radius to somewhere between 5-900 with a falloff exponent of 5 or higher, this will give you soft lighting results as well as limit it just to that area of the room.
The idea of the front door being cracked open with a fallen lamp is really a cool idea to bring in additonal fill light, so id recommend using a spotlight, moveable/toggleable depending on if you wanna do a realtime render at some point.
Set its intensity to 5 or higher (Brightness) and give it a warm yellow/orange
Also in world properties, you can change the environment color to a low saturated purple so when your shadows render it wont be a harsh black shadow, and will mix well with the green and moonlight.
Thats my take on what I can see (personally) and improving your scene lighting wise ten fold.
When you get your screens more finalized you can tweak the bloom scale/threshold on that green point light to really sell that glowiness.
Id work on some of your tiling textures, specifically the wall brick, its quite noisy and doesnt really pop as brick should, could be a good reason to carve out some custom brick in Zbrush :thumbup:
Your asset work looks great, so ive got nothing to say about that.
Try those changes or dont, but ill be following this to see your progress.
Keep at it!
-Killa
I also spent some time writing out my own little story for the scene, to help me really figure out what it is I'm trying to do. My idea was to suggest that this was the Riddler just starting out, he's not an established villain yet, and as such wants to toy with Batman as much as possible while figuring out who Batman is at the same time. By writing it out, I was able to create the idea that Riddler would have created this space as a Red Herring to lure Batman into his trap and killing him, thereby establishing himself as a true villain and proving that he is smarter than Batman. So, my plan is, to line this corridor with Mannequins dressed in the Riddler's trademark suit, all in various poses leading Batman (and therefore the player) into his trap, much in the very theatrical way he would in the comics. I also think this will help tell the story visually, my overall plan all along.
In terms of lighting, I've added some spotlights to the exterior, shining in through the windows, as I was finding the over all dominant light wasn't giving the results I was after. By adding the spotlights, and making sure their lightmass settings were adjusted to give a decent saturation but not too much light bounce, I was able to get a fairly nice balance between fill and mood lighting. I'm pretty pleased with how it's come out, especially after the difficulty I had with it a few weeks ago.
In terms of assets, I'm still quite happily plugging away with them. At this point, to make it feel and look like an Arkham game , it's a case of just cluttering the scene with as much visual interest as I can, as it's a technique used in every single Arkham game. As mentioned previously, I feel a lot more confident in sculpting now, so I'm pretty excited to see what I'll achieve with it.
As usual, thanks for looking at my work, and any comments or crits are completely welcome.
Do my a favour and re-light the scene as if it was daylight outside, and take alook and see what areas are messy and which ones lack interest. it may help adjust composition even if you don't intend to use that sort of final lighting.
I'd still really appreciate any info on my lighting query from the last post!
lol
Good progress on the textures I can actually see.
I do like that you changed up the layout a bit, that half-circle window will work alot better for some incoming night/day light
C&C is VERY appreciated at this stage!
EDIT
@killazzz - ahaha, yeah I know, really need to try and figure this lighting malarky out. The green is now a result of Post Processing though, so it's a lot easier to play with than it was with lights :P
Its nice to see some more textures as well, I'd agree with luge about the question marks, I like them but they need to be just a bit less prominent.