[WIP] Handpainted Street UDK
Hi all!
I'm currently working on my final year project to go along with my dissertation. My focus is on hand-painted, colourful textures and I'm going to be building a scene in UDK.
The scene I've chosen is based on concept art by Ivan Laliashvili:
( ~ivany86 on DeviantArt)
I've done a rough block out in Maya to test out scale and proportions. Because the painting leaves the furthest street to imagination, I have more free reign to decide how that area looks.
I've gathered a tonne of reference images and decided it should be a sort of court yard, which I can hopefully bring to life with scene dressing.
Here's some screengrabs from Maya viewport. I'm going to render out the blockout with mentalray and contour rendering at some point to make for tidier presentation, but for now it serves its purpose.
I've written up an asset list, made my preliminary colour key, and decided to start with the cobblestone floor texture as a kind of proof of concept.
I am wanting to use normal maps as opposed to faking them, though I'm planning to keep them relatively soft - using basic sculpts to provide an AO base. (Though I'll probably sculpt more detailed for the hero pieces and stuff).
Here is the cobblestone texture tiling in the block out:
I'm still debating whether to start again and make them more angular (and thus closer to the concept) or keep them softer, and more cartoony, and closer to the twist I'm wanting to put on the scene.
Comments and crit would greatly appreciated.
I'm currently working on my final year project to go along with my dissertation. My focus is on hand-painted, colourful textures and I'm going to be building a scene in UDK.
The scene I've chosen is based on concept art by Ivan Laliashvili:
( ~ivany86 on DeviantArt)
I've done a rough block out in Maya to test out scale and proportions. Because the painting leaves the furthest street to imagination, I have more free reign to decide how that area looks.
I've gathered a tonne of reference images and decided it should be a sort of court yard, which I can hopefully bring to life with scene dressing.
Here's some screengrabs from Maya viewport. I'm going to render out the blockout with mentalray and contour rendering at some point to make for tidier presentation, but for now it serves its purpose.
I've written up an asset list, made my preliminary colour key, and decided to start with the cobblestone floor texture as a kind of proof of concept.
I am wanting to use normal maps as opposed to faking them, though I'm planning to keep them relatively soft - using basic sculpts to provide an AO base. (Though I'll probably sculpt more detailed for the hero pieces and stuff).
Here is the cobblestone texture tiling in the block out:
I'm still debating whether to start again and make them more angular (and thus closer to the concept) or keep them softer, and more cartoony, and closer to the twist I'm wanting to put on the scene.
Comments and crit would greatly appreciated.
Replies
I'd go angular with the stones as well, just because the softness is bringing this to cartoon town. Most of the shapes in the piece are sharp and exact.
Also, the lighting is delicious in the piece. A great mix of natural light and sourced lighting. I'll be watching this for sure - best of luck to you!
Love,
-Jon
Cant wait to see more
Can't wait to see your progress on this
The piece reminds me of background cels from Miyazaki movies (which served as inspiration for TF2), so further reference may be found in that form.
@Endfinity Jon - Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I was starting to lean towards angular too.
@Pixelatedkiwi - Thank you for the feedback, will definitely be modelling in some more detail. Was just using the big boxes for scale and layout really, hence why there's so many n-gons.
@Gazu - Thank you!
@CreativeHD - Thanks! It was a hard choice between some of the concepts I'd found, but I'm happy with this one so far.
@Torch - Haha, thank you!
@NomadSoul2501 - Thank you! There'll be a lot of iterations until I'm happy with the progress of the visual style, haha.
@ducckz - Aha, thanks.
@JustGarry - Cheers for the sub!
@CordellC - Thank you so much for the feedback! Yeah, I was thinking the same, it's gonna take quite a few tests to get it as I want it. It's funny you mentioned impressionistic, because my accompanying dissertation actually deals with the impressionist movement a lot aha. So far it's proved pretty tricky to translate directly, even when using palette knife brushes and loose geometry.
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I started on the wall tiles and made them more angular than the floor ones, though now I am worried I've strayed far in to the "WoW-ish" look (which I think came from looking at my handpainted Pinterest folder for a lot of inspiration).
I don't know whether to soften it down a bit, though it could end up looking too repetitive in 3D if I follow the fairly blank tiles directly from the concept.
Anyway, here it is:
My next point of call is to redo the floor tiles and hopefully nail a concept that sits somewhere between the aesthetics of my two attempts.
For the textures, I think you have the relative scale a little off, you could scale down the ground one or scale up the floor etc. Also the contrast is a bit harsh the way it looks now, but since you have nothing else in the scene I can't be sure about the balance.
Another thing that bugs me a bit is the filling between the stones on the wall texture, maybe try a dark version for it?
But the biggest thing I could say is Keep Going:
You likely have to itirate a bit when you see the overall, piece. But individually the textures are pretty nice.
Part of the job of an Environment Artist is to take the concept art and reproduce it in 3d. Employers are not going to want to see you take a dope concept and turn it into a pseudo-WOW style piece. They are going to want to see you matching the concept as close as possible. Obviously that depends on the style, how rendered the concept is, etc, etc. But for this I would match EVERYTHING you can. Camera angles, proportions, textures, etc. Don't make assumptions or guesses. Use the concept! All the answers are there.
Set up a camera (in Maya, UDK, Marmo where your final output is) and get the proportions correct. Once those are there start with values and temp textures, then lighting, etc. Environment art creation is a lot of process. Once you do it enough it becomes somewhat formulaic and you'll be able to apply the process to any project.
Do these shapes work better?
When I start painting, I'll make sure to not go in to too much detail as I think I am overrendering a lot.
Keep going with this. It's ok to rework textures. You'll do the new ones in 1/2 the time and better. You'll learn tricks to speed you up. Keep on going!
Little trick overlay the concept art on top of your render/screenshot and click the layer on/off. Even make an animated gif if you want. Find what's out of place. Also make sure you keep your camera consistent. Just make a new one and place it exactly where you want. Remember to think about focal length, etc, etc too when you're adjusting your camera.
Your direction on this though is really great. The angle might need to be rotated a bit more up though.
Once you get some base textures in then the lighting it will really pull together.
I'll keep an eye on it. Subscribed.
I've been working on my base textures a bit more. I have several sculpts and diffuse textures done (a few still need a bit of polish to make them totally seamless). Trying to stay closer to the concept, but still give them a painterly aspect.
In UDK now!
Floor
Grey Tile
White Tile (Still needs tiles painting and to be made seamless)
Red Striped Plaster
Wood Kit #1 (Need to paint in some more colour and tone, also need to make specular map)
Sculpted the window in zBrush. Baked it out, this is the normal map only. I went back to it today to add more geometry around the egdes, then re-baked it, but started getting weird artefacts with the smoothing groups when I put the new model in to the UDK. It either wouldn't read the smoothing groups, or it would import them with weird white triangles. I'm not sure how to fix this, so have left the old low-poly mesh in for the purpose of the update.
This week I'm going to start modelling the actual geometry for the two houses and the gate in the background.
@Ben716 - Cheers! I've added the rest of the buildings now, though most of the distant ones are still very basic. You're right though, it does help envision the scene a lot more.
Here's a current screenshot of my progress. I'm at Uni so I don't have any other screenshots on my pen drive at the moment. I've added more geometry, rebaked the windows (about a million times) and bumped up some of the normals. I've also put in the first pass of lighting to try and catch that light/dark transition.
(Also I made the tiny plant to take a break from tiling textures.
@Fenyce - Cheers! There's a bit of a mix going on. Some are sculpted/highpoly'd in zBrush/Maya and then baked out and painted over in the diffuse. Other ones, which are smaller and less important, are just painted and then ran through nDO2 to give them a boost. I'm on a tight schedule because of University deadlines, so not everything can be sculpted unfortunately.
A lot of textures are still WIP - I've prioritised getting meshes and basic diffuse textures in first. As such, there are a lot of specular maps to make, painting to do and alpha planes to assemble (as you can see on the big cart on the right).
I feel like your textures look a little flat even though they have normals, especially the floor and wall textures.
If possible maybe crank up the normals a bit to see if you can get some more depth or if you have time try to paint more depth information into your texture.
I'm not an expert on hand painted but you could probably make the stones look a little more 3D.
I can also really notice where the floor texture tiles currently in the second picture, try breaking it up a bit with decals or vertex painting more areas of the floor. Either that or just have less areas of the floor open and empty if you have any additional props to scatter on that right hand side of the screen.
On the same topic, the first screenshot looks very well laid out and is a good beauty shot but the second shot feels empty and a little bit less interesting because of this.
Over all though I like your scene and its got a lot of promise. I look forward to seeing it when its completed, easily finishable in two weeks as long as you focus on what needs to be done.
As for that light error in the second screenshot, check if theres anywhere light might be leaking through assets, lightmass is a pain for this and in modular scenes will find weird ways to light bits you don't want. Maybe try experimenting with making external walls have two sided textures or a weird way of fixing this is to model a kind of umbrella around the outside of your scene to block any additional light that is coming in from odd angles.
that might be helpful? Idk...
I think something really quick and simple for the last bit of polish would be adding more silhouette detail on the walls around the first screenshot. Try model in some chunks of various sizes to break up the straight lines that are going on Atm. also maybe just grabbing one of your wood planks and putting it on top of the roof in the distance (where the dragon in the concept is) and making some fast but interesting shapes out of it.
Echoing David's comments I'd also work on a solution to break up the tiling floor in the center. Maybe add some stone meshes that add a bit of height to a couple of rocks, or a small scattering of pebbles.
Seconding this, it'll probably be a mesh with a hole in one side.
Nice progress so far! I adore the concept, as I stated before, so I have a few things to suggest so you might get a bit closer with the overall lighting and atmosphere.
You've got some great contrast, something I'm usually suggesting people push more, but for the first time, in your case, I might would pull back on the extremes a little. The concept is a lot softer.
Bring a little more golden color to your directional light and pull down the intensity a bit. It's hitting the back buildings so hard that they're clipping out. The concept shows a bit of detail, even on the heaviest impacted wall. The directionality might be off a bit too as the concept has some separation between the walls of the building on the back left.
If you're using UE3, allow more bounce from your directional light. That could be turning your bounce numbers up a little or you could also increase the indirect lighting scale on the directional light to allow for a stronger bounce on impact. I'd say that your shadows in the alley are too dark, and while dark is fine, you'll want a softer fill if you want to match the concept.
It's also possible that your environment color is a deep blue, and that's making the shadows pretty saturated and deep, whereas in the concept, they're a soft blue-green - not as heavy as what you currently have.
I'd suggest killing all lights in the scene and working with your directional light and the GI. Get that solid before moving on to your lamp (and other accents).
I would also introduce some fog here to create atmosphere as the concept has some lovely depth. Keep the fog light, and off the alley and really have us feel it in the direct sunlight. In the concept, there's some god rays coming in from the right - you could try some volumetric rays, or you could try to cheat a spot light with rays enabled.
Your lamp on the cart is spilling far too much light. I can see the point light circle hitting the side of the building on the right. You'll want to adjust the attenuation so that it's a softer throw.
Maybe a minor adjustment to your FOV for more of a telephoto look? You're warping some of the foreground more than in the concept. You could bring the default 90 to something like 70 and then bring the camera back a little bit. Hopefully that won't skew the image as much and might match the concept a bit more.
I just kinda rambled, haha. If I wasn't helpful, let me know and I can go into more detail. I wish you the best of luck!
Love,
-Jon