I need advice on how to proceed with this stone wall technique (Blender/Quixel Mixer/UE4).
polycounter lvl 6
I'm remaking an old map from Unreal Tournament 1999 GOTY. DM-Tutorial. I was mesmerized by this when I was a kid playing this for the first time. The graphics were amazing at the time.
I have a problem with getting started on making the walls. I don't know if I should just try to make it all in Mixer or I should make a sculpt high-poly in Blender for the stone slaps and teeth engravings. Bricks, wooden panels, and gargoyle head. I'm trying to remake this map the way a game studio would do it today like how Bluepoint Games did Shadow of the Colossus or Demon Souls remakes. A lot of the 2D textures can now be 3D assets combined together with their own materials.
Sculpting in Blender is still lacking compared to ZBrush. I'm going to do a course online on Blender sculpting to learn more. I know I should do to make the wall(s) that a blank plane for the bricks (create in Mixer). A 3d mesh sculpts for the trim and teeth engraving (3), but it looks to me that it should stick out since there are pillars on the left and right sitting on top with shadows (1). The Wood paneling wall should be modeled or just created in Mixer? Then the gargoyle head should be a 3D model placed on top of the wall for sure.
So far my plan is to sculpt the bricks/stone slaps in the middle and then use mixer for the wall for bricks / wooden panels. The pillars on left and right will be a separate mesh that can be placed around.
Am I thinking of the right approach? Is there a better way I should handle this? This is what I got so far in Blender.
I have a problem with getting started on making the walls. I don't know if I should just try to make it all in Mixer or I should make a sculpt high-poly in Blender for the stone slaps and teeth engravings. Bricks, wooden panels, and gargoyle head. I'm trying to remake this map the way a game studio would do it today like how Bluepoint Games did Shadow of the Colossus or Demon Souls remakes. A lot of the 2D textures can now be 3D assets combined together with their own materials.
Sculpting in Blender is still lacking compared to ZBrush. I'm going to do a course online on Blender sculpting to learn more. I know I should do to make the wall(s) that a blank plane for the bricks (create in Mixer). A 3d mesh sculpts for the trim and teeth engraving (3), but it looks to me that it should stick out since there are pillars on the left and right sitting on top with shadows (1). The Wood paneling wall should be modeled or just created in Mixer? Then the gargoyle head should be a 3D model placed on top of the wall for sure.
So far my plan is to sculpt the bricks/stone slaps in the middle and then use mixer for the wall for bricks / wooden panels. The pillars on left and right will be a separate mesh that can be placed around.
Am I thinking of the right approach? Is there a better way I should handle this? This is what I got so far in Blender.
Replies
What's the end result intended to be used for? Are you making a single wall for a small diorama? (one-off unique sculpt makes sense) Or are you making a larger environment with buildings/walls? (modular technique is better, with trim sheets)
I'm trying to remake an old map from UT99. The walls are kind of a challenge. Since they were 2D textures on a flat plane. They were trying to make it 3D with shadows back then (21 years ago). But I would have gone with trim sheets and just mixer but notice the walls. There are pillar columns on the left/right. That means the trim part at the bottom and top is actually meant to be sticking out more which if it was done in a mixer, it would be a bit of a mess with texture warping in displacement. So I started modeling pillar and bricks/stone slaps (that's what it looks like to me). I'm also going to model the gargoyle head and large bricks row at the bottom.
Yes, I'm trying to be as modular as possible. I got all the base meshes ready to go and now I'm just updating each mesh. I got the floors done and it looks beautiful.
Here's what I got so far for the brick walls. My plan is to sculpt, combine, and remesh the models in blender and then bake a displacement map for mixer while making a low-poly wall for the game environment in UE4.
Make a few tiling textures: bricks, raw stone, etc. Make a trim sheet or two. Make your modular wall pieces. Then use vertex color to blend together the trims and tiles in UE4.
Examples:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments
Techniques:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture#Trim_Sheets
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture#Modulation_Blending
I have done plenty of modular environments, in fact, that was the year-long thesis project I did for college. Lots of fun. It's like playing with legos.
So you recommend I just create the brick texture and wooden panel texture as individual textures/material. Then create a trim sheet that is the stone/teeth pattern as shown in-game screenshots, the large bricks at the bottom row, and the pillars on left and right.
This is normally what I would do as my workflow but I was also concerned about how it might look flat or "previous-gen graphics". For example, if you look at the pillars, wouldn't that be a mesh now? It looks like it has depth. Same for the gargoyle head which I think should be a model? Do you think it should be a sculpted model?
I know that displacement maps can be great but there are flaws in displacement which if it's displaced too far, it gets texture warping or displacement teeth.
Part of my challenge is to use Quixel and UE4 and create a remake of any old game environment in one week. I plan on doing 3 of these kinds of projects. It's so much fun seeing a cool map you saw as a kid and then remaking it in brand new graphics.
Let me know what you think. Should the pillars and gargoyle head be part of the texture trim sheet as well? Should the mesh be a flat wall mesh or should it be a very low-poly mesh that does have some extrusion for the trim and pillars part to make better use of the displacement?
So far what I got is the floor tile texture which I think looks great so far. The cracks do look low-res though. Gotta fix that.
My biggest holdup is remaking the walls into 3D assets with new materials. The hold up is modeling them and sculpting them. In blender, sculpting is so limited to only 3 million polygons. I tried to sculpt but it's just terrible. Laggy too. A ton of performance issues (Blender 2.91).
As you can see, I'm trying to remake this as if this map is being made today rather than a remaster. The pillars on the left/right can be their own asset that you place around. However, I'm starting to think that this should just be a flat plane model with a texture and displacement but it will still look flat and get limited by displacement texture warping if done too much. Normally, I would just pop in a high-poly plane into ZBrush and sculpt the upper trim with teeth and bottom row of stones, teeth, and large blocks. Then use a brick material for the main background. Place pillars around and place gargoyle demon head on top (as a separate model).
Any advice? The wall is really the biggest holdup. Once that's done, everything becomes easier to create and finish.
Sculpt 3-4 bricks using the multires modifier and build your wall using them with instancing. Remember, a 4 sided brick gives you 6 possible rotations to use it with - more if you flip them as well.
Keep your multires low in the viewport until you're done, that shouldn't stress your pc too much. Do the small details in the texture, not the sculpt.
These are all the walls I have to create (four in total). Two of them have stained glass windows which can be a simple mesh and texture/material.
I will keep updating on my progress. Cheers.
I feel like I have complicated things but I know that just having it all be one texture would make it look flat and exactly like 1999 games. I'm getting frustrated with my lack of software. xNormal baking is terrible and hasn't been updated for awhile. Quixel Mixer and Bridge kind of sucks for texturing individual meshes. Any advice on what to do next? Another big problem is UV editing. Blender UV editing sucks so bad. I loved Maya UV editing tools.
As far as I can tell after fiddling, it seems to now have everything you'd need to do things a similar way to, say, substance painter. So I'd say this isn't a factual statement. Could you elaborate on the process you were trying?
Xnormal isn't perfect, but you'll manage. We all used to use it and many still do. I believe in you! And also maybe there's a UV editor plugin for blender that sucks a bit less.
I also just realized that xNormal does support .fbx files but doesn't like them so much. Using .obj and making sure that the cage option is checked made all my baking maps work and look much better.
Right now, I'm going to finish the bricks trim meshes with a material. Start modeling the stone steps and pillars. That should be easy. I think the walls were the hardest part since I have been converting it from a 2D texture (20-year-old game) to a modern 3d model with multiple meshes and materials. I'm also tackling with the ceiling which I think I have to go with my own design since the ceiling in-game is just reusing textures that don't really make sense. I think the whole map was made exclusively in BSP models and tiling textures. No static meshes.
I managed to finish making the low-poly, UV maps, and material for the stones and trim. I realized I have to create a corner variation. Any tips on that?
The ceiling looks weird. The tile material looks good on it but the wood panel material doesn't make sense for this. I think it would make more sense if it had wooden bars/planks instead.
My plan is to now create the corner piece for the trims/stones. Also, figure out what to do about the ceiling and glass walls. Get those out of the way, then I will start modeling the stone steps, small/large pillars, wooden support beams, cage/hole for the ceiling, etc. Get the hard part out of the way and everything else will start to come together quickly.
Any feedback or advice from what I got so far? I also want to thank everyone for helping me out so far with feedback and tips.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedro_domingos/15750676365/in/photostream/
Oh cool! I didn't realize that what it could be on the walls. Hmm, interesting. Now it doesn't really make sense to have it on the ceiling at an awkward angle or does it?
- Fixed and improved resolution scale of floor textures and displacement tesselation
- Updated and fixed wood crypt walls with better wood direction and indentation bolts for the brass panel
- Updated Walls Stone and Trim textures with improved color, detail, and polygons.
- Created Ceiling, Pillars (Small and Large), stone steps slabs, wood beam support, glass walls, and lanterns.
- Updated lighting and post-processing in UE4
- Added colored stained glass shader for glass (Blueprint)
- Added water
I'm open to all feedback and suggestions. My current challenge right now is the wood support beams in the ceiling. The metal clamps shader looks very basic and flat. I tried to darken it so it's not so obvious. Also, I'm having a big issue with the glass panel. I recreated the green glass panel in photoshop but I took the original textures of the angel and devil and up-res it with AI and Photoshop.Is it frown upon to take an old game texture and just upscale it? Is it okay that I'm using the original glass textures from the original game? I don't know how to create that texture from scratch. How would I even get a naked woman posed with all that detail and then coloring it? The same goes for the lantern on the walls. The texture is taken from the original game since I couldn't figure out how to model it and also apply glass texture. What should I do here? This is for my portfolio which I'm hoping to get a job as an environment artist (I don't have a job right now).
Also, the water looks very basic like an Xbox 360 game water (similar to Bioshock). What can I do to make it look more realistic but not moving much since it's just still. I thought of converting the floor texture into a material blend material and "paint" wet water around the edge which could increase realism.
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Tone down the bloom, it's way overpowered in all your shots. Subtlety is key with bloom, too much and it feels like I my eyes are full of water.
Black shadows is a pet peeve of mine, and many art directors too. Needs more bounce lighting.
If you can't repaint the stained glass, then just make your own interpretation of it. Doesn't need to be the same subject matter. You could take a render of a character you've made and apply some filters to make it look like stained glass. Or find a public domain photo and convert it. Lots of art deco stuff like this in CC0. Same with the lamp.
Water, take a look at the Paragon assets. They probably have a nice water shader somewhere.
Floor tiles are looking awesome.
You already have a huge selection of paintings with the same subjects depicted over and over again at your disposal, and what's better, without that raging edgy 90s art vibe: Renaissance art. Those panels the original environment are a rehash of such works after all, I feel that going straight to the source and building something from there instead of rehashing the rehash will yield a superior result.
Renaissance works are public domain, you only need to find CC0-licensed photos of them. Pick an artist, find an artwork with a woman and one with angels, composite them into something new, draw demoniac traits in the variant or borrow horns and other attributes from other paintings. You can apply a glass filter to hide resolution differences if needed. If you're willing to spend more than 5min to make it look really good also trace over the edges of elements in the panting in a new layer to make it look more like actual stained glass deceptions of people and repurpose it for a material mask + normal map, otherwise just throw a procedural texture on top of it.
I didn't bother doing it below because I'm lazy, but I suggest you to try to find works by a more obscure artist. It won't be a tired image everyone ever has seen multiple times making it an almost easter egg, which is fun. Also try to look for sketches and studies, they tend to have flat backgrounds making it easy to edit besides being less-known.
A quick proof of concept combining two Botticelli's workshop paintings + procedural voronoi:
See it as an opportunity to not only do the same in the original but do it better, researching stained glasses and reproducing the material feel more faithfully now the engine can handle it.
This would be my first port of call. There are some other resources like this, iirc The Met has a resource like this, as does I think... The Getty Search Gateway? I think they have an open images program, google that. The internet archive has some public domain works also but I find it difficult to search, and a lot of them are from gallery/museum collections so you can find them more easily elsewhere. You could try something like Unsplash too but be sure to check usage restrictions and triple check the uploader actually owns the rights to the image.
Googling something like "CC0 licensed reference photos woman" or some variation of such would probably go a long way though. This pose is pretty common in life drawing resources but they're usually licensed, rather than free to use.
Edit: The above is not fool-proof for google images, I use searches like this to find sites and galleries where the usage rights are clear
Here are the changes:
- Updated Lighting, Post Process with better bloom, contrast, and global illumination. Added noise and effects to make it look more realistic like filmic look. Tweaked the AO amount, etc.
- Updated water with Paragon Assets, tweaked it to my likings.
- Updated Floor Tile material to be a blend material to add water "wetness" around the pool and few tiny water puddles around the map.
- Fixed and adjusted Crypt Wood Panel Material for the Wall
- Added reflections for water and shiny surfaces
- Added decals stains around stone walls (very subtle)
- Added Light beam effect from the glass
- Added stained glass effect from glass color to floor/objects.
- Add blueprint for the lantern to flicker and glow in real-time like IRL for burning candles.
- Model Lanturn and Textures completely from sctrach.
- Added Metal Cage for the center ceiling of the map
- Updated and remodel and retextured wooden beam support
- Updated glass material with better bump detail for normals
- Recreated Angel and Devil texture from scratch in Photoshop using various paintbrushes and just looking at the references screenshots.
- Recreated green glass texture
Now, I'm thinking of animating or simulating ball & chain physics for the metal cage to just hang and swing a tiny bit in-game. That could make it come to life even more or I could just leave it alone. I'm not sure how I would do about making it swing realistically. Also, sound. I want to use 100% free sounds to finish this off. Ambiance sound and music soundtrack for this (where would I find free sounds to use?). I will record a video of this. I don't have any video editing software. I used to have Premiere Pro until I ran out of money to pay for that.Here are the screenshots and let me know what you guys think so far? I would like to wrap this up soon so I can move on to the next project (my goal is to create 2-3 more environment projects for my portfolio and find a job after that's done).
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