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The Bi-Monthly ENVIRONMENT ART Challenge | January - February (70)

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  • miriuk
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    miriuk polycounter lvl 2
  • miriuk
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    miriuk polycounter lvl 2


    Hi Guys I'm trying to set the camera before I finish some issues and details are missing but I need some help with lighting and cameras, I don't know what I can do to have a good scene.

    Grass as well do you guys have any tips to set into UE4?
  • samA
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    samA triangle
    @miriuk not sure if this helps but I found this video useful which covers quite a lot including lighting and post processing. - https://youtu.be/tElS7a7z1Dc?t=398
    As for grass you can add it to the foliage and paint it onto a surface  - https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/BuildingWorlds/Foliage/index.html

    I decided to go for the stylised environment. Here's what I have so far -

    Need to add the top sign then start making high poly versions of the meshes for scultping. Not sure on how to do the tree yet as it's not an area I've focused on before so that should be good to learn!







  • miriuk
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    miriuk polycounter lvl 2
    Thank you so much @samA I'll follow this video, btw I will do the CGMA course "The Art of Lighting for Games" Im really frustate with it.
    Your model looks amazing, are you think to create assets inside? 
  • SLIVIZ
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    SLIVIZ polycounter lvl 4
    Hey peeps,

    Some great work so far!

    Here is where I am currently at. I still need to do some more modelling but I wanted to work on some textures to see what is working and what isn't. 

    This is all done in blender so far as I have never used unreal before so I need to learn how to actually import everything and actually use it.

  • alytlebird
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    alytlebird interpolator
    David96 said:
    I am a 2nd year animation student and I've really grown fond of environment art. Here is my latest interior, Its a little clean as I'm not yet finished so your critique would be very helpful, thanks! 
    *snip*
    @David96 Hi there! This thread is for participants of the Environment Art Challenge, specifically people who are creating environments and props using the concept art posted on the OP. I'd recommend making a new thread in 3D Art Showcase & Critiques (the subforum this thread is located in) to get the critique you're looking for. :)


    Admin note: the post has been moved into its own Topic: https://polycount.com/discussion/224699/interior-xcs-9
  • samA
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    samA triangle
    @miriuk Thank you! Not sure about the interior assets yet, depends how much time I have left. I'll probably end up moving the camera around to hide the interior if it comes to it!
  • Mahelix
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    Mahelix polycounter lvl 6
    Long time lurker here; I've just finished the mid-poly of the steam carbine.
    I've always had a bad habit of overthinking stuff when working on 3D, so this time around I wanted to focus on not worrying too much about being 100% accurate to the concept arts and give a different spin on certain parts that weren't too clear to me. I did like PinkFox and modeled a "fork" connector for the tubes into the body, added a curved profile to the first cannister holder and put a hole on the inside of the buttstock to make the mag fit behind the second cannister.

    As for how the carbine works with the pieces and tubes behind blocking the bolt, one could theorise that you just need to lift the bolt to eject the empty shells, and pulling it back even a little activates a steam injection into the barrel to build up pressure and shoot the projectile.  :#



  • MikeKhine
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    MikeKhine greentooth
    Post # 3
    Hello everyone! I just finished textured the main scene object (hut) in Substance Painter. This process is one of my favorites, as well as working in ZBrush. In this case, I took the created by 3dEx smart material as a basis and customized it to fit my needs. My goal was to personalize the house. For this, it was necessary to come up with a story and build on it. Small details, like scuffs, rust, as well as chipped paint in some places, in my opinion, add believability to the scene.
    Cheers!


  • PatSaenzG
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    PatSaenzG polycounter lvl 4
    Been a few days since an update but first off; thanks for the advice Pinkfox, I looked over the UVs and adjusted them. Next part for me is textuing.

    I started off by creating and putting base colors on the respective parts of the texture and I started by working on the main body of the cauldron. I still feel like the metal needs work but am unsure as to how to go about it so any advice for that would be appreciated, in the mean time I started painting in the rust on the cauldron which will be developed later. 

  • GarethTheDestro
    I've been really bad at updates, but I'd love some feedback on the progress of my textures.  Love all the other posts, I'm new to these challenges and it's been really motivating.


  • GarethTheDestro
  • miriuk
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    miriuk polycounter lvl 2
    What do you guys thinking about this? I made on Unreal but Im not sure if its okay.
    https://cdn-animation.artstation.com/p/video_sources/000/248/361/ramen-2-trim.mp4
  • MikeKhine
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    MikeKhine greentooth
    Post # 4
    Hey everyone! This is my final render. What do you think? Many thanks to Polycount and other artists for this challenge, great job everyone. It gave me a lot of experience and taught me how to optimize the work process. I also improved my skills in working with lights and effects in the unreal engine. 
    More images in my project on ArtStation
  • MikeKhine
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    MikeKhine greentooth

    I really like your paints and color palette, but I think it would be better if the lines and shapes of your models won't be so straight. Great job overall=)
  • miriuk
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    miriuk polycounter lvl 2
    Hi Guys, this is my final render, I learned a lot about the pipeline and I'd like to know your opnion about it, modeling, lighting and render.
    Here is my artistation with more images. Thank you 


  • MrBFox
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    MrBFox greentooth
    Going with the pot/cauldron, something small to get the ball rolling for 3D in 2021. Thinking of doing stylized PBR for textures/Materials.
    Heres the 1st blockout pass roughly camera matched as close as I could get to the concept. Will be using Blender For the modelling and Substance for the textures.

  • MrBFox
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    MrBFox greentooth
    another pass, refining some of the shapes before moving into High Poly

  • Ghostling
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    Ghostling polycounter lvl 3
    Hi, first time here, wanted to try following a stylised concept in unreal so I've been working on the blockout for a few days. This is my progress with the models  so far.


  • MrBFox
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    MrBFox greentooth
    High Poly sculpt made in Zbrush.

  • Saaamoth
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    Saaamoth polycounter lvl 5
    @Pinkfox You nailed it, the renders are looking dope and you've been crazy fast on this project =) !

    It took me forever but I'm starting to have a decent mid/high poly, it still needs some cleaning. I wanted the handle to be big and blocky and along the process it became quite wide. It made the transition between the handle and the metal butt of the rifle look weird and I had to make two more iterations before finding something good enough. Here's how it looks right now.



    @Mahelix Nice progress, that looks really clean! And yeah I chosed the "pull the lever and the shell jumps out because steampunk" approach :p


  • MrBFox
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    MrBFox greentooth
    Low Poly

    Test Bake (Iray)

    Textured (Eevee)

    For the textures I settled on a similar styling to Sea of Thieves taking some inspiration from Tom Wilkins Asset Breakdown (ArtStation - Seadog Blunderbuss, Matt Wilkins)

    have put the asset on my artstation: ArtStation - Polycount Environment Art Challenge Jan-Feb, Blaine Fox

    and on sketchfab too.
    model
  • PatSaenzG
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    PatSaenzG polycounter lvl 4
    Got the texturing to a place where I'm happy with it. Unless anyone has any feed back I'm gonna proceed with rendering in Blender.

  • icegodofhungary
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    icegodofhungary interpolator
    Minor update. I'm behind and probably won't finish by Feb 28. The fireplace is probably one of the hardest things I've attempted. It's too big to uniquely sculpt and get a good resolution, even with cutting it in half. I went with using a tiling texture on the main body and then using sculpted details on top of that. I interpreted the concept has the chimney having plaster over it so I tried to accomplish that look too. It should give a nice backdrop for the future foliage.

    Reworked the floor and brick textures. The bricks were looking like wax and still kind of do. I'm having a hard time getting good crisp details in my normals. All my stones come out soft and blobby. I tried a new plaster material for the walls but it didn't sit right in the context so I reverted back to the original.

    I made two bread ovens so far. The first was really bad. The second one is better but it's too much for a single unique texture. You can see a big difference in texture density in fps mode between it and the fireplace. So I will come up with something for that.

    Did door, windows, and tables

    I started learning more about master materials recently. Wished I had better designed my material schematic before starting. I'm starting to really see the power over consistency with a proper material hierarchy. Also trying to work more in the shader and use fewer textures by using layers and curvature masks + more tiling. Something like the Dark Souls Remaster technique.





    Everyone is doing well and It's hard to find criticisms. It's interesting to see how different people interpret the concepts. The stylized folks are killing it this round.

    As an aside, I watched these last week and they are great. They got me paying a lot more attention to my materials and thinking about story more. If you haven't seen them, give them a go.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr_uSTkBKtk

  • jpeele
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    jpeele polycounter lvl 2
    Still Working on just blocking out the set dressing on this project. There's soo many props, luckily the orginal concept used a bunck of free stuff from sketchfab so it's easy enough to find the exact same models.

    Just a render out of vray for now. I want to get more prop blockout done, then maybe see about getting it into unreal and doing a lighting pass.

    Looking good everyone! 
  • ImsumDave
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    ImsumDave polycounter lvl 11
    Hey everyone. Here is my finished cauldron prop. I tried to create this thing as quick as I could but it ended up taking me much longer than expected. I think there are a few things I could improve on with this thing, but I'm calling it done for now.

    I used blender to model the high poly, zbrush to detail sculpt, blender for low poly modelling (used zremesher for goo). To texture I used photoshop and a bit of blender texture painting to create cross UV island masks. View it on artstation here.

    Final render in marmoset toolbag 3:


    Wireframe:


    Lowpoly (face weighted normals + sharp edges):

  • ImsumDave
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    ImsumDave polycounter lvl 11
    PatSaenzG 
    Looks like you exclusively poly modelled this. There are some powerful sculpting tools built into blender. Sculpting can really add a lot to any 3D asset. Poly modelling, unless done by a master, often looks very rigid and synthetic. Give sculpting a try to give your model some more organic details (undulating edge wear, random chips, Gooier goo). 

    Another thing to considered that's built-in to blender is the stored views addon. I used this to find and store a camera view that best matched the concept. What I did initially is use a program called ghostit to overlay the concept image on my blender viewport. I then blocked in the basic shapes and tweaked both the shapes and camera view, including the FOV, until I got something that matched well. Once the block out and camera were positioned well, I stored my view with the stored view addon.

    As for your textures:
    You have a lot of uniform details in your maps, try to break that up, give it more variation. I think you also need to analyze the materials of the concept a bit more. Go through the process of thinking about what these materials are, how they would react with light, how abuse over time affects them, and how you can use the shader textures to best replicate that. 
  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    @Saaamoth I love what you did with the stock to make the tanks, extra mag, and other flourish bits fit there. I think it flows very nicely into the rest of the gun and you're killing it on the detail!

    @icegodofhungary Loving your materials so far and I think you're doing great work on that front! One thing that might help is the technique being discussed in this post:
    https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/62933-generate-normal-from-vertex-paint#post595807
    Basically blurring the height map and turning it into a normal map that can then be used around the transition between the two materials to create more depth. Thought it might help!
  • icegodofhungary
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    icegodofhungary interpolator
    Pinkfox said:
    @Saaamoth I love what you did with the stock to make the tanks, extra mag, and other flourish bits fit there. I think it flows very nicely into the rest of the gun and you're killing it on the detail!

    @icegodofhungary Loving your materials so far and I think you're doing great work on that front! One thing that might help is the technique being discussed in this post:
    https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/rendering/62933-generate-normal-from-vertex-paint#post595807
    Basically blurring the height map and turning it into a normal map that can then be used around the transition between the two materials to create more depth. Thought it might help!

    Thank you so much I would have never thought to try that. I will give it a go and share how it turns out.
  • Mahelix
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    Mahelix polycounter lvl 6
    Aaaand done ! This was an interesting project, which helped me practice a bit more my modeling in the weapon department. I'll drop here the Marmoset renders I made along with my artstation for those interested ! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QrZxPE

    Keep up the good work y'all !



  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    @Mahelix Looks great! Love the detail you were able to put into places like the back sight, the bolts on the stock, the steam tanks, etc. Really helps sell it and you can see how the gun would be put together!
  • alytlebird
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    alytlebird interpolator
    Hey everyone! Great work as usual on your projects, some really impressive stuff here :)

    The CONCEPT THREAD for Challenge #71 is now live! This time around, I'm trying something different, and I've only given concept suggestions for the Stylized Environment and Hard Surface Prop; the other two categories are wide open for you guys to give suggestions. I'd really love to see more input during this concept phase, so hopefully we can get some of that going!

    Thread can be found here: https://polycount.com/discussion/225243/the-bi-monthly-environment-art-challenge-concept-thread-march-april-71
  • ellis_3d
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    ellis_3d polycounter lvl 2

    Here's my finished stylized environment. I defiantly pushed myself further then I have before. I really had fun! Can't wait to do the next one!! 



    @Mahelix Holy cow that looks amazing!! the textures are beautiful and the subtle amount of wear looks  great!! it really feels that it was used!

    @MikeKhine I really love how yours came out. Its so cool that all of us who did this one looks different in one way of another got to love it! 
  • LEDkrow
    My first environment ever.
    Rushed to get this as finished as I can tonight. I'm a little late, and it's not perfect, but I did it. Started some time in early February and worked on it in my free time as often as I could.
    I will probably adjust some things and re-render for my portfolio, but it's pretty much there. I will edit this post with the updated version on my portfolio when it's done. Overall though, I'm happy with it.

    Modeled in Maya and ZBrush, textured in Substance Painter, rendered in Arnold.



    EDIT: Post-challenge final version: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AqnPGX
  • alytlebird
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    alytlebird interpolator
    Nice job @ellis_3d and @LEDkrow! And great job to everyone to participated in this Challenge cycle; I'm glad to see the stylized environment concept was so popular!

    Challenge #71 is now LIVE! Check it out here: https://polycount.com/discussion/225243/the-bi-monthly-environment-art-challenge-march-april-71/
  • icegodofhungary
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    icegodofhungary interpolator
    I'm still in this. I burned a lot of time re-doing the material system so that I could basically turn Unreal into Substance Painter. I have master materials for the different surfaces (wood, metal, etc). This lets me use the same wood material (with slight variations) on all my wooden surfaces. All the coloring was done in engine too. I could mid-model a table, throw some good smoothing on it, UV it just right, and throw a wood material on it in-engine. I used a second UV channel with AO and curvature to add edge wear. This result wasn't bad but after a while it just didn't look right overall. It would be a great technique for stuff the player never gets close to, but for an immersive first person game, or even third person, this wasn't it. So I scrapped that system except for my architectural meshes,

    I made several new materials to improve on the previous ones. I redid the flagstone floor after doing some self-crit. Redid the wood as well. Then I decided that the best way forward for the furniture and props was to do a lot of sculpting. That's what I've been doing since. I'm getting faster at it.

    I made a barrel generator material in Designer, but it didn't look great in-game. It would be wonderful for an isometric RPG or something, but not for this. So the barrels got sculpted as well. 

    I created some wood alphas for zbrush so I can work faster. It's not perfect and could use some improvement but I'm getting there.

    I redid the fireplace. The old version looked too bad. I created a stone trim and a tiling stone material. I used the height to do a texture deform in maya to get actual brick geometry, then decimated that in zbrush. It's still a little weird looking but much better than the last attempt. I can't think of a single game with a stone fireplace so I could see how they did it. 












    https://www.artstation.com/artwork/w6nXYg





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