First Delve into Environment Arts - Critique
polycounter lvl 3
I am new to this community and would like to say hi and get your thoughts on a project I am currently working on through CGMA.
I am brand new to environment arts for games and would like to get as much critical feedback as possible as I work through the process and garner any tips & tricks along the way.
So I will run through my process so far and if you have the time to comment, I would greatly appreciate it.
The brief is to create a simple Diorama of a ruined gate with some foliage / trees. The course is 10 weeks and I wanted to make sure I came up with something that would be manageable within that time-frame for a noobie
I played around with other ideas like a abandoned gas station, Japanese storefront, a giant severed robot foot and some other concepts but thought I would stick to the brief to get the most out of the course and push myself in quality not quantity.
Here are some sketches I put together for the project to get a feel for what I wanted to create.
Please note, I don't paint so this is a first for me.
Chosen route. Sacred tree surrounded by Obelisks and ruined gateway
First pass at block done in Modo
Some material test for course assignment. First shot at Substance Designer / Marmoset. Left image is my creation while the one on the right is a walk-through by Daniel Thiger ( He has mad skills) mines not as good haha.
Second pass of block with some various compositions, basic lighting, paint-over and photo-bash to get a general look and feel.
What I want to achieve is Photoreal game quality assets / composition. I would like to make all stone structures feel hewn / carved from the surrounding rock rather than built brick-by-brick and contrasting with the black (dead-like) stone and a bright vibrant tree as a shrine.
Any thoughts are welcome. I am here to learn so give me the critique even if its harsh
Really appreciate it and thanks,
David
I am brand new to environment arts for games and would like to get as much critical feedback as possible as I work through the process and garner any tips & tricks along the way.
So I will run through my process so far and if you have the time to comment, I would greatly appreciate it.
The brief is to create a simple Diorama of a ruined gate with some foliage / trees. The course is 10 weeks and I wanted to make sure I came up with something that would be manageable within that time-frame for a noobie
I played around with other ideas like a abandoned gas station, Japanese storefront, a giant severed robot foot and some other concepts but thought I would stick to the brief to get the most out of the course and push myself in quality not quantity.
Here are some sketches I put together for the project to get a feel for what I wanted to create.
Please note, I don't paint so this is a first for me.
Chosen route. Sacred tree surrounded by Obelisks and ruined gateway
First pass at block done in Modo
Some material test for course assignment. First shot at Substance Designer / Marmoset. Left image is my creation while the one on the right is a walk-through by Daniel Thiger ( He has mad skills) mines not as good haha.
Second pass of block with some various compositions, basic lighting, paint-over and photo-bash to get a general look and feel.
What I want to achieve is Photoreal game quality assets / composition. I would like to make all stone structures feel hewn / carved from the surrounding rock rather than built brick-by-brick and contrasting with the black (dead-like) stone and a bright vibrant tree as a shrine.
Any thoughts are welcome. I am here to learn so give me the critique even if its harsh
Really appreciate it and thanks,
David
Replies
I honestly like what you have so far, so unless you're dead set on realism, I'd say embrace the semi-stylized.
More dev on the texture for the walls. First stab at Substance Designer. Let me know your thoughts. There are a couple issues on the final texture which I will sort out but I think its a great start for now.
First go at Substance Designer / Had fun creating the Moss
Couple Renders in Marmoset
Master Material with exposed paras to control Moss Growth / Lichen Amount / Dirt (WIP)
Standing Stone sketches
Brick wall test
Composition
And lastly diorama shots
Sculpts using Mudbox.
Broken standing stone with varying textures
Half of a standing stone with varying textures
Full standing stone with varying textures
And the next design step for the Stone with addition features (Quick comp)
And a set of assets to date
Low Poly
Sculpt
Textured
Otherwise really nice overall, especially like the atmosphere and Hollywood kind of lighting.
D
IE polys are really expensive if they're smaller than a pixel onscreen, but really cheap if they're as large (or larger) than a square of 4 pixels on a screen. So for large assets, that take up more of your screen like a tree does (as compared to say, your grass or a small rock), you can afford more polys without a lot of worry. While smaller assets should use less polys.
For a few polys you could give your leaf cards a bend or two and make them less flat without adding a whole lot. It looks like you're using Opacity Mask (alpha test) for the foliage, which is better than just Opacity (alpha) as it ends up cheaper, but it can still add to pixel overdraw cost. In this case it can actually be cheaper, for very close LODs, to "cut" your models as close to the solid parts of your texture as possible. EG if you can get rid of empty texture area on your model by adding polys this can be an improvement in performance.
Here's a big ol in depth tutorial for trees and other stuff if you want to take a look.
I see you kept changing the lighting setup, be very careful of what the sky looks like compared to your overall brightness and sun position. Currently to me, it doesn't feel like the sky image precisely matches the sun direction and the light/shadow contrast, so it takes back a little bit of the realism. Not a directly noticeable thing, but it does have an impact. I really like the stuff you did and the mood you set though !
It might help to have a bit of a highlight on the edges of the stone, at the moment the nice sculpted shapes get lost in the grungy material.
Really nice progress so far though, its coming along great
@FreneticPonies Thanks for the explanation. I will definitely read that link you sent and dig in further.
@Larry thanks for the spot. I will look into this and see where the error is. As this is and HDRi with one light source at the point of the sun I am not sure where this is happening so I will take a closer look.
@Doxturtle Thanks for the comment. I know what you mean. I will need to pull back on some of the detail of the texture to get that sculpt to pop. I had the same issue on several other objects. Its an interesting balance of details.
D
Here is a link to a little animation of the scene. Just wanted to see how long it would take to render and what it would look like in motion: