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TOWER - Crash landing

Hey all! So I'm not 100 percent on if this will work in the tower, considering it doesn't have a ceiling, although it fits within the size specs. I thought it would be cool to have a sort of exterior diorama between two floors....

Anyways, here's the block out. The blue plus guys will be some sort of winged demon, robot swarm, etc., and the red blocks will the crew of the crash landed spaceship, blasting away at the swarm. Everything is a placeholder, obviously!

I'm probably going to mess with the freeway so that it doesn't block so much of the view, and maybe add some shrubs or trees as well. Any other input is appreciated!

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Replies

  • Drone2222
    Some concepts for the characters. The space dude is pretty generic retro sci-fi, but whatever. I'll probably keep the retro look for the ship, too.

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  • chaitanyak
    sweet!!! can't wait to see the creature
  • Drone2222
    chaitanyak wrote: »
    sweet!!! can't wait to see the creature

    Thanks! Well here's what I've got so far, modeled and unwrapped.

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  • JamesArk
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    JamesArk polycounter lvl 10
    I actually really like the retro space guy. His gun is perfectly generic low budget sci-fi.
  • Drone2222
    JamesArk wrote: »
    I actually really like the retro space guy. His gun is perfectly generic low budget sci-fi.



    Thanks! Good thing, too, because my ability to design weapons and ships isn't so great :)




    Just finished setting in the mood for the lighting, and decided to make it a night time scene. The outcome of the lighting has inspired me to add a bunch more little story elements, like a broken fence that the ship crashed through, some smoke coming from the ship and the crash trail, and if I have the energy after that I hope to making some bystanders looking down from the freeway (that's probably a pipe dream, though).

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  • Drone2222
    UPDATE!

    So, in attempting to preserve the lighting that I have going on in Max, I've learned a couple things about lightbaking for Sketchfab. First, I had to completely redo the unwraps for objects that tiled - apparently you can't bake lighting with tiled UV's and textures, which obviously makes sense in retrospect. As a result, some of my objects are now needing bigger sized maps since all the UV space needs to be unique (plus each lightmap is it's own extra map). Second thing I learned is that Sketchfab doesn't recreate lighting as well as I'd hoped, even with the lightmaps. Anybody have tips on how to make it work more accurately?

    Anyways, below is my current progress/test model on Sketchfab. There's still a but of texture work to be done on what's there, and the creatures aren't textured at all - they happened to have the car material when I exported, which is better than grey standard. Still need to fully model the space dudes and texture them, and then probably a busted fence as well.

    Last thing --- CAN ANYBODY SHARE SOME WISDOM ON MAKING GOOD LOOKING LOW POLY SMOKE!!??? I've tried like five or six times and it's killing me!



    (view on Sketchfab for full screen)
    [sketchfab]d034969107e5436db9d376dd2e1a3133[/sketchfab]
    Model by drone2222 on Sketchfab
  • LReisis
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    LReisis polycounter lvl 6
    This is looking sweet man! keep it up!
  • Drone2222
    LReisis wrote: »
    This is looking sweet man! keep it up!

    Thanks! I definitely need to keep up the momentum, especially since I'm getting closer to finishing it. Started on the space dude today and I'm 90% done... he's only missing his feet and blaster. Check out the progress image below.

    After messing with the emissive maps and the bloom effect in Sketchfab, I think I'm going to be able to make some pretty sweet looking fire coming from the ship. So that, a busted fence, and doing some texture work is what's left!


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  • Drone2222
    Well, I'm calling it finished! Not much different from last time, except for the inclusion of the space dudes. I ended up just leaving the car texture on the bugs, I actually like the way it looks even though it wasn't my original intention! I don't know why it took me a few months to get around to finishing it when I was so close, but oh well.....

    [sketchfab]ef517b475cb44abe8683cf1f81ac01ac[/sketchfab]
    Polycount Tower: Crash Landing by drone2222 on Sketchfab
  • erick6
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    erick6 polycounter lvl 8
    This is looking good, I like your composition and lighting. But come on man, don't give up just yet! If this is going into the mighty Polycount Tower, might I recommend a few more details to add?
    • Don't be lazy! Create a proper texture for your robot bugs! I bet they'd look slick all coated in gray or silver metal and would contrast better with the background, as right now they are a bit difficult to see with all the black from the car texture. It just doesn't look right. Maybe even have a few two different colored bugs?
    • Add some white lines for your highway, that will make it pop out a lot more.
    • Get some reference for the lava. It usually has a simple orange/yellow gradient on the edge will make it more visually interesting. You can also create a similar effect with it like the one you used for the water.

    There are a few more things that could use some polish, but if you don't want to work on it any more at least try to get those points sorted out and I can assure you this will look a whole lot better.
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