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Monthly Environment Art Challenge - September & October 2018 (56)

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greentooth
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kadeschui greentooth
Welcome, all! It's already time for the Monthly Environment & Prop Challenge #56!

HUGE SHOUT OUT TO @alytlebird AND @Urzaz for their help finding these excellent concepts this month.

Apologies as I got swamped moving this month and didn't follow up with the Voting Thread. I'll get us back on track for Nov-Dec challenge so everyone has a chance to cast their vote on the concepts

Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. There's always some good progress that falls off the radar - we want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!

Without further ado, here are our options for Challenge 56!

- ENVIRONMENTS -

HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:

artist: https://www.artstation.com/mb14

HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:

artist: https://artstation.com/pablonotpicasso

- PROPS -

HAND PAINTED CATEGORY:
This month we have something a little different for our handpainted prop category - Choose your own! :)
I felt this scene went well with last months prop, and thought folks might like to get creative incorporating their work, or selecting some of the scene's props to create mini-dioramas. We'll give this a shot this month and see how it works out ;)

artist: https://www.artstation.com/erinros

HARD SURFACE CATEGORY:

artist: https://www.artstation.com/jroid



If you want to change up either concept a bit, as some people wanted, then feel free. Interpret these concepts to your liking.



Please read all the rules before starting.

When you are just starting out making a scene, it can seem complicated or imposing, so take the time to break it down.

Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible and plan it out. A lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some reference images as well for different parts of the scene, maybe gather some refs and make it your own.

Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.

Here are some specifics.
  • Try to post one critique for every post that you make. This will make for a better learning environment and help us all grow as artists.
  • You must use a game engine to present your work. Unreal Engine and CryEngine are very common engines that can be used but feel free to use any alternatives that you want. (Marmoset Toolbag is allowed as well)
  • You must try your best and finish as much as you can in the time frame provided.
  • Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique. We don't need to have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
  • I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
  • Well, that's about it. If you think that any rules should be changed, or there should be new additions to the rules, please let me know. As always, please feel free to provide feedback / suggestions in this thread or by messaging me directly.

All that matters is that you learn while being able to effectively critique others, as well as accept critiques on your own work. Remember to have fun. Cheers!

Replies

  • joe gracey
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    joe gracey polycounter lvl 11
    My first challenge and I'll attempt the hard surface prop!
  • Roumonk
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    Roumonk polycounter lvl 3
    Hey. Started blocking. BTW does anyone know some tutorials on landscape modeling from concept, or maybe some advice? I'm struggling to accurate represent its shape

  • alytlebird
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    alytlebird interpolator
    @Roumonk It depends on how you want to assemble your final scene, but I know Unreal has some great landscape sculpting tools that would work well for a situation like this. But what you have right now really isn't too bad. :)

    Also just a recommendation, make sure you're considering the scale of the structure in the background. The cylinder you've got up close might represent the human in the foreground, but notice the second human figure on the top of the platform on that structure... Honestly I'd probably just grab the default Maya human and throw him in both spots, make sure the scale works that way. It's easier to work with a human model rather than a cylinder representing a human.
  • Urzaz
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    Urzaz polycounter lvl 6
    @Roumonk - Your landscape looks like a pretty good start. Once your building is a little more defined and connected together I'd say pull it all into ZBrush and sculpt the landscape up around your building to match better. Give your building a nice thick foundation so you don't have to worry about everything lining up perfectly.
  • Roumonk
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    Roumonk polycounter lvl 3
    @alytlebird thanks. The same duplicated cylinder, which represents the second human figure is already in place, but its hidden inside the flat cylindrical roof of that structure. I took the distance about 70-100 meters from foreground guy to the Motel :)

    @Urzaz thank you. Yeah, I think ZBrush can help a lot with these huge cracks/rocks too. I think it is possible to depict the main shapes of the dunes with a very few right placed vertices, and then sculpt over it :)
  • jewski-bot
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    jewski-bot polycounter lvl 4
    I'm going to switch back to the hard surface category for this challenge. If I don't dawdle too much, I should be able to knock this out fairly quickly..... Or as quickly as one can when coming home dog tired from work.... :s
  • jewski-bot
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    jewski-bot polycounter lvl 4
    And we're off! Basic blocking is just about done. Need to tweak for proportions and get some of the smaller bits done. I've a pretty good idea on how to go about doing the high poly. I may use this challenge as an exercise with modo's Mesh Fusion toolset for the high res meshes.


  • toxicsludge77
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    toxicsludge77 polycounter lvl 5
    My first challenge!!

    Starting the blockout, I'm not happy about the part that the dish itself swivels on though. It's more complex than it looks, anyone have an idea on how to get that shape?

  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    my block out planning to take the entire block out to the unreal engine then I'm going to start to model the high poly assets and bake and texture and import them and move them to the same place as my reference block out how do you guys like my plan?

    I was also thinking about ditching the reference at this point  for the wood structures and make them after my own head 


  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    Hi - I'm going to make my first attempt at a Polycount challenge here; one question - for the environment briefs, does the finished product have to be a fully realised environment, or can it be functioning just from the camera position? What I mean is, how far beyond the horizon (red line) does the modelling generally have to go?

    My first challenge!! Starting the blockout, I'm not happy about the part that the dish itself swivels on though. It's more complex than it looks, anyone have an idea on how to get that shape?


    I might be wrong, but from a quick glance I think you've got the right shape from how I interpret that part on the concept, but I think you might have rounded the front and back edges a little too much; I think the curve is mellower than that. Here's how I think that shape might look in plan view:


  • JavierGago
    Hi everyone, this is my first challenge here and i will go with Hardsurface prop. See you in the nex days with the blockout
  • Łukasz
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    Łukasz greentooth
    I made very simple blockout to catch proportions and now starting modelling shapes:




  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    making slow progress 


  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    Łukasz said:
    I made very simple blockout to catch proportions and now starting modelling shapes...
    Looking good so far, but looking at the concept I think the plate sitting on top of the large flat surface might be a separate piece, indicated by the shadow gap. On yours it definitely looks like you've got those two pieces welded together. To be clear - I crudely painted in a shadow gap here:


    Another note for other people making this prop - there appears to be an electric motor which presumably drives the tilt/rotate mechanisms round the back. This may or may not be an important detail:


  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    Working up my general landscape environment. More accurately shaped/placed landscape features (boulders etc) are going to be added later, but right now - this is the overall layout of the environment I'll be working with. (Haven't brought any other blockout elements in UE4 yet - so those cylinders for the oil barrels in the foreground will have to do right now).

  • Łukasz
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    Łukasz greentooth
    B_P_L said:
    Łukasz said:
    I made very simple blockout to catch proportions and now starting modelling shapes...
    Looking good so far, but looking at the concept I think the plate sitting on top of the large flat surface might be a separate piece, indicated by the shadow gap. On yours it definitely looks like you've got those two pieces welded together. To be clear - I crudely painted in a shadow gap here:
    Thanks for feedback, that's right, I changed it so now there are small welds at corners and in the middle, I think it looks more interesting than one part just placed on top of another with a gap or blended along whole edges.




  • jewski-bot
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    jewski-bot polycounter lvl 4
    Looking Good so far everyone, especially @"Łukasz" who is off to a great start on his model!  Upon seeing your supports for the legs, I may have to re-evaluate since from the concept I though it was one rod rather than two going from the base to the leg.

    @B_P_L, good eye pointing out the electric motor.  I saw it but am not entirely sure how to connect it to the base.  Building a seat for it to rest on isn't too hard, but trying to figure out what it hooks up into is another matter.  I took a look at a bunch of satellites and don't see any exposed motors on any of them so I'm guessing it's artist's discretion.

    Anyways, here's an early test bake on the satellite dish itself in Substance Painter.  I still need to do the high and low res parts for everything else but wanted to get an early trial going so I can anticipate just how well everything will bake.  The material is just the fiberglass smart material with no modifications.  This definitely will NOT be the final mat, just something to help capture the spirit of the prop!


  • MondJoyy
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    MondJoyy null
    So in hand painted prop category, we will pick one of the props in the scene and make a small diorama. Am i correct? 
  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    @B_P_L, good eye pointing out the electric motor.  I saw it but am not entirely sure how to connect it to the base.  Building a seat for it to rest on isn't too hard, but trying to figure out what it hooks up into is another matter.  I took a look at a bunch of satellites and don't see any exposed motors on any of them so I'm guessing it's artist's discretion.
    I doubt you'd see much in the way of gear-linkage on a mechanism like this: I imagine the motor would feed a  worm-drive (for yaw rotation) and maybe a smaller drivetrain (for pitch) and they would be concealed in a gear box hidden away under the dish itself. I guess all you'd see of the motor would be the heat-sink and the power connectors, but those two details alone are enough to communicate to the viewer that something technical and important is going on back there.
  • danielrobnik
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    danielrobnik polycounter lvl 8
    Been a while since I've done any 3d (new Dad, yay!). Getting back into it with the antenna.

    Here is my quick blockout:
  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    I texured the tower but now i kinda have  no clue how to get the camera positon exacly like in maya
  • JayS
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    JayS polycounter lvl 8
    Few days progress, working out the high-poly.. 


  • toxicsludge77
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    toxicsludge77 polycounter lvl 5
    Łukasz said:
    B_P_L said:
    Łukasz said:
    I made very simple blockout to catch proportions and now starting modelling shapes...
    Looking good so far, but looking at the concept I think the plate sitting on top of the large flat surface might be a separate piece, indicated by the shadow gap. On yours it definitely looks like you've got those two pieces welded together. To be clear - I crudely painted in a shadow gap here:
    Thanks for feedback, that's right, I changed it so now there are small welds at corners and in the middle, I think it looks more interesting than one part just placed on top of another with a gap or blended along whole edges.




    JayS said:
    Few days progress, working out the high-poly.. 


    Hot DANG guys, these are looking great!

    Got a bit of time today to work on the base a little, here's my progress so far...still a long way to go!

  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    Still working into the environment. Wondering if anyone can help with this lighting issue - all my landscape features that are off in the far distance and have the sun directly behind them look terrible. There's something weird happening with the fresnel reflections on these parts of the mesh. The parts that have the sunlight hitting them at glancing angles look good, however, they're all part of the same landscape object, with the same material. Any ideas?

    https://youtu.be/jnNXxS8Sf_A

  • Łukasz
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    Łukasz greentooth
    Here's my update, I think I'm almost done with modelling :)




  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    B_P_L said:
    Still working into the environment. Wondering if anyone can help with this lighting issue - all my landscape features that are off in the far distance and have the sun directly behind them look terrible. There's something weird happening with the fresnel reflections on these parts of the mesh. The parts that have the sunlight hitting them at glancing angles look good, however, they're all part of the same landscape object, with the same material. Any ideas?

    https://youtu.be/jnNXxS8Sf_A


    ok dont know how to fix your problem but i was just wondering how you made the sand material

  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    Leaving the landscape for now and getting on with the jet/rocket engine prop.  Nearly done - just a need to block in something at the back (although you're unlikely to see that far back) and give it a final greebling pass; pipes, cables etc.

    @halldor The landscape material is something of a work-in-progress I've had going on for a while. It's got a few things going on in there so I can't really give you a full breakdown right now, but I can tell you it's made of one albedo and two normal maps; one is smooth and the other is kinda rough/rocky, the rougher one blends in according to slope angle. To be honest you can get a similar result by manually painting in a shader with height LERP blends.
  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    some progress of  the scene did make the small house in the background. I would appreciate if someone can give me some feedback 


  • Uncle_Gun
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    Uncle_Gun polycounter lvl 6
    First WIP post. Any critiques welcome.

  • Gazu
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    Gazu polycounter lvl 11
    Reworked MP40
    Edit:
    Oh shit, wrong Thread. Admin can you please delte or move to "WAYWO" Thread? Thank you!
  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    Engine simplified (not planning on having the back-end visible), retopped, mapped and baked. Ready for some NDO detailing and a paintjob.


    @Uncle_Gun It's kinda hard to give you detailed feedback from the image you posted (too small / dark) but the first thing that jumped out at me was that the cylindrical objects I've circled here feel way too skinny to be able to securely support a large piece of military equipment like this, but other than that everything looks in order - keep it up.
     
  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    I wanted to go kinda close to the reference but it's kinda hard to make out what part I should model from the jet engine it's kinda unclear on the concept, however, I did find some reference so what do you guys think I should do 

    1. just have it super plane
    2. Model some pipes and wires
    3. go full on crazy and model as many details as posable 


  • Zerogun
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    Zerogun polycounter lvl 9
    I skipped out last time so I'm back again to give this a shot. Went with the hard surface. A good quick breakdown. Not trying to match the concept 1 for 1 but I think I'm in the ballpark.

  • jakemoyo
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    jakemoyo polycounter lvl 4
    I washed out last time i tried one of these things but now I think i have it in me to try another round. Going Hard surface environment. I spent most of the time getting the landscape figured out, and a little bit of a blockout. I show up here though and feel like a jabroni seeing what you guys are doing. Gotta keep improving. I spent a little time
     messing with the post process volume in UE4 and i feel like it just washed everything out, made it all red. Is there a way to get that kind of martian, "everything red" effect without just burning out everything?
  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6

    Can anyone Tell me how to fix this problem


    ok trying to keep consistency in my TEXAL density  but it's kinda imposable with a large object like that. i wanted to bake and paint the textures  and the plane is my texal density for 2048 map 
    if i want to maintain the texal density I would have to break the object in 8 peace's or something 

  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    @halldor the short answer is to use 4k textures; as you've already realised - the asset is probably too large to expect a 2k paint job to really look good, especially if you're planning on getting right up close to it. 

    But other than that - I'd say to not worry so much about consistency of UV real-estate, some areas will need to be squeezed smaller than others sometimes and there's no way around it, you just have to learn to hide/conceal those areas.
    The bottom of this asset is going to be buried in the ground, right? So - right there, you can put seams and have shrunken UV islands in those spots. Also - round the back of the asset, are you planning for people to see round there? If not - put your seams and smaller UV islands there. The back of the turbine blades - they're not going to be seen, so squeeze them to be really tiny. Also - if you're 100% sure a face is not going to be seen at all - delete it! It's just taking up precious UV space. 

    Finally - you're using UE4 for this project, right? - learn about the DetailTexturing node if you don't already know about it. This can help out when you're really stuck for texture density on a large asset. See link below:

    https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Rendering/Materials/HowTo/DetailTexturing



  • Fanmen
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    Fanmen null
    Hey guys, this is my first challenge! I liked the hand painted props, so I'm going to try to do a mini-diorama with them. :blush:

  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    B_P_L said:
    @halldor the short answer is to use 4k textures; as you've already realised - the asset is probably too large to expect a 2k paint job to really look good, especially if you're planning on getting right up close to it. 

    But other than that - I'd say to not worry so much about consistency of UV real-estate, some areas will need to be squeezed smaller than others sometimes and there's no way around it, you just have to learn to hide/conceal those areas.
    The bottom of this asset is going to be buried in the ground, right? So - right there, you can put seams and have shrunken UV islands in those spots. Also - round the back of the asset, are you planning for people to see round there? If not - put your seams and smaller UV islands there. The back of the turbine blades - they're not going to be seen, so squeeze them to be really tiny. Also - if you're 100% sure a face is not going to be seen at all - delete it! It's just taking up precious UV space. 

    Finally - you're using UE4 for this project, right? - learn about the DetailTexturing node if you don't already know about it. This can help out when you're really stuck for texture density on a large asset. See link below:

    https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Rendering/Materials/HowTo/DetailTexturing



    thank you so much for the answer,  and yes your right, I am just practising a good workflow nobody is going to see the jet engine up close but
    I am trying to wok like I was actually working for a game, I did end up break the object up to 4 different parts.

    it's not desired texture resolution but I think it will work out like that 



     
  • B_P_L
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    B_P_L greentooth
    @halldor

    This is an example from a book I have of the kind of asset that is complicated enough to need to be split over more than one texture set.

  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    @B_P_L
    jehheb I'm doing that but that is cool what book is this  look super cool
  • halldor
  • Decordova360
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    Decordova360 polycounter lvl 9
    @halldor
    Did you bake out your Engine before Texturing?
  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    @Decordova360 if i understand you correctly, I bake first from the high poly model  then I texture
  • Decordova360
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    Decordova360 polycounter lvl 9
    @halldor Yes, reason why I asked is the fact that the rear of the engine is not smooth, so maybe add a smooth group to that portion.
  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    Decordova360 thank you so much for the tip 
  • Decordova360
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    Decordova360 polycounter lvl 9
    @halldor No problem you're welcome :smile:

  • danielrobnik
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    danielrobnik polycounter lvl 8
    Great progress everyone! Nice work on that engine so far @halldor.

    I'm slowly getting there with this one.

  • halldor
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    halldor polycounter lvl 6
    @dan-r thank you so match and keep up the good work 
  • TheGabmeister
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    TheGabmeister interpolator
    I really want to participate on these environment art challenges. When time permits :)
  • danielrobnik
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    danielrobnik polycounter lvl 8
    Happy with the way this piece came out.


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