arizona dreamin
ngon master
This will be my first art post here on Polycount. I'm a novice in the realm of art. In June I'll be starting up at Think Tank so in preparation, I took a week off work with two goals. One, produce my first environment scene from start to finish. Two, use and experiment with as many studio standard pieces of software as I could.
I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do concept wise, it just came about naturally. I probably put about 100 hours into this but there were a lot of firsts and a lot of technical headaches along the way. In the end, I'm proud I accomplished my original goals. Let me know what y'all think!
Learned how to make terrains in zbrush, made a basic procedural wood in substance designer, terrain painted in substance painter, modelled the gallows in maya
Added in a zbrush base mesh for the hanged man. Looking at reference for that position wasnt very fun.
Learned how to make my own procedural rock generator in Houdini, I really want to learn more!
My balloon animal cacti are in, also decided I wanted to add a church/mission in the background
First time modeling a building as well as taking a low poly object into zbrush to add detailing. Had a ton of fun painting these in substance.
Had a lot of headaches learning to use MASH to get those little rocks all over the place. Then they were just floating. I also had never touched lighting before so it was looking rough. Took me FOREVER to figure out how to have stingray materials in maya accept more than one light source.
After feeling a little unhappy with the image above, I went back determined to work on lighting. While I was at it I fixed some geometry and tweaked shaders. I have a lot to learn when it comes to lighting but I'm a bit happier with this result.
I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do concept wise, it just came about naturally. I probably put about 100 hours into this but there were a lot of firsts and a lot of technical headaches along the way. In the end, I'm proud I accomplished my original goals. Let me know what y'all think!
Learned how to make terrains in zbrush, made a basic procedural wood in substance designer, terrain painted in substance painter, modelled the gallows in maya
Added in a zbrush base mesh for the hanged man. Looking at reference for that position wasnt very fun.
Learned how to make my own procedural rock generator in Houdini, I really want to learn more!
My balloon animal cacti are in, also decided I wanted to add a church/mission in the background
First time modeling a building as well as taking a low poly object into zbrush to add detailing. Had a ton of fun painting these in substance.
Had a lot of headaches learning to use MASH to get those little rocks all over the place. Then they were just floating. I also had never touched lighting before so it was looking rough. Took me FOREVER to figure out how to have stingray materials in maya accept more than one light source.
After feeling a little unhappy with the image above, I went back determined to work on lighting. While I was at it I fixed some geometry and tweaked shaders. I have a lot to learn when it comes to lighting but I'm a bit happier with this result.
Replies
Right now I think there are a few main things that are holding you back and are mistakes almost every beginner makes so don't feel bad.
The biggest thing right now is I think the scope of the scene is hurting you. You have a huge scene to fill with a ton of stuff to make and I think it's hurting the overall results. I would rather see that building on a little diorama base with a couple rocks and sand than a huge open scene where everything feels like it needs more polish.
when you are starting out things just take more time to produce, for example the cactus. Right now they look like blockout meshes and are taking away from the scene. I would consider going on artstation, I remember seeing some great cactus' on there and try to reverse engineer how they were made and try to push to that quality level. do that for every asset. This is going to blow up your timeframe to finishing the scene if you are spending 20 hours on each asset, which is why it can be good to start with a smaller scope.
The other big thing right now is the composition is not the best, I dont have anywhere my eye instantly goes to because the gallows and the building are about the same size in the shot. Adding a path/road that winds from the foreground could also help establish this as an actual place where people travel to and from. right now its in the middle of a super rugged area of terrain and settlements and outposts are rarely just in the middle of nowhere. things like fences and roads can help create leading lines for the eye and give it a sense of scale and human element.
Finaly, I think you need to keep using more reference, the scale/position of the door handle is making those doors look smaller than the huge size they are relative to the building, which also makes determining the actual size of the building a bit weird to the eye. it makes the building feel really small. Then again, I don't know what the reference image you are using looks like maybe its actually like that. but a big thing is always using reference constatntly, for the layout, models and overall composition.
I like the backgorund mountains they look a lot better than the first shot you posted. As for the lighting, I would change the angle so it is hitting the face of the building and casting shadows, it will help show the form better. its also pretty dark so bringing up the ambient light a bit could help, and having the darker dirt contrasted by a lighter worn path/road would help too.
I would also consider putting this in an engine like unreal, as it sounds like a nightmare dealing with shaders in maya or whatever you are using. If you want a job in games, you will have to present your work in a realtime engine so learning that as you go would be beneficial and probably give you less headaches than rendering it in maya/max.
hope this helps! just keep working on each aspect of the scene over and over and you will end up with something, avoid rushing and use reference. Maybe look at screens from red dead for inspiration on how they do their layouts and compositions too
I have a hard time going back to projects when my gut says they are done but I will definitely take all of this in for the things I create in the future.