Post Apocalyptic Checkpoint Environment (Critique Welcome!)
polycounter lvl 5
Hey all!
I recently decided to pivot my career in the direction of prop and environment art, instead of focusing exclusively on props. I found this concept by Maciej Kuciara that I absolutely loved. It seemed simple, approachable, and had room for me to put my own spin on things. I've never worked on an environment before, so this was a breath of fresh air in terms of learning and trying new things. I've got one year left until I graduate college, so I'm pushing to produce my best work before then.
Concept piece:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xYDO
A few of my renders:
I gave myself two weeks to get this project to a place I was happy with personally, and then one week (this week) for feedback and polish.
Some of the critiques I have or have gotten from others so far:
- Blood should be dryer/darker
- Blood on the body bags may not make a whole lot of sense. It seems like how much blood is on them would be related to where in the area they were wrapped. If they were wrapped across the way, there may be less blood. The placement/distribution may also need to be refined.
- Needs a little graffiti. I made an attempt in about an hour, but it didn't look right so I elected to take it out for the meantime.
- Skyscrapers don't look quite right. I'm actually super stumped on the best approach for skyscrapers and large buildings in games. Currently, I'm making a small section and then stacking it like a modular piece. I've got 3 different styles in this scene.
Any and all feedback is welcome!
I recently decided to pivot my career in the direction of prop and environment art, instead of focusing exclusively on props. I found this concept by Maciej Kuciara that I absolutely loved. It seemed simple, approachable, and had room for me to put my own spin on things. I've never worked on an environment before, so this was a breath of fresh air in terms of learning and trying new things. I've got one year left until I graduate college, so I'm pushing to produce my best work before then.
Concept piece:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xYDO
A few of my renders:
I gave myself two weeks to get this project to a place I was happy with personally, and then one week (this week) for feedback and polish.
Some of the critiques I have or have gotten from others so far:
- Blood should be dryer/darker
- Blood on the body bags may not make a whole lot of sense. It seems like how much blood is on them would be related to where in the area they were wrapped. If they were wrapped across the way, there may be less blood. The placement/distribution may also need to be refined.
- Needs a little graffiti. I made an attempt in about an hour, but it didn't look right so I elected to take it out for the meantime.
- Skyscrapers don't look quite right. I'm actually super stumped on the best approach for skyscrapers and large buildings in games. Currently, I'm making a small section and then stacking it like a modular piece. I've got 3 different styles in this scene.
Any and all feedback is welcome!
Replies
@bhenderson thank you as well! I continued with the modular approach with the buildings and decided to add those medium-sized buildings like you suggested. They're basically just cubes with substances on them and a little bit of parallax. I think it helps a lot!
@snake85027 Those pieces are uniquely baked and textured in Painter. If I could do it again, I think I would try and get the same result with tiling textures instead. Then I could give the UVs a random per-instance offset in the material and really get some crazy variation. I gave myself a 2 1/2 week time limit though, so I had a limited amount of that I could use to learn new things. I used 1k maps for the walls with channel packed AO/Metallic/Roughness textures. Looking back at it, I probably could have packed all the walls and barricades into one 0-1 space and baked at a higher resolution. Would have been more efficient with UV packing that way too.