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The Bi-Monthly ENVIRONMENT ART Challenge | September - October (74)

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Hey everyone, I'm excited to bring you the Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge for the months of September and October!

An opportunity for those who enjoy creating real-time 3D art to test their skills and craft a piece from the provided concepts below. The challenge is open to anyone interested and at any skill level. Remember if you don't finish in the time allotted, just keep plugging away and post when your work is finished. We want to see your work! So keep going and finish those pieces!


- ENVIRONMENTS -

HARD SURFACE:
The Lab by Wang Jie
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKLO1v (Alternative scene angle available in link)


STYLIZED:
Ponds by Ruslana Gus (Thanks to @engelmanna for the suggestion!)
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lVwkeO

- PROPS -

HARD SURFACE:
G.A.M Missile Prop Design - Missile [Grand Space Opera – Light Age] by Himesh Anand
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nY8yyK


STYLIZED:
Environment Collection I by Mike Azevedo
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lxYb2o

- WILDCARD ENVIRONMENT -

電脳九龍城 Kawasaki WAREHOUSE by tomotubby (Thanks to @demigodssw for the suggestion!)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomotubby/9280111627/


- RULES -

Please read all the rules before starting:
  • Try to post at least one critique for every post that you make. This will make for a better learning environment and help us all grow as artists.
  • Try your best to finish as much as you can in the time frame provided, but remember even if you don't finish by the end of the challenge we encourage you to keep pushing and finish your piece!
  • Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique. Please avoid creating a new thread as we don't want to spam out the forums.
  • It is recommended to use a game engine to present your work. Unreal Engine, Unity, and CryEngine are very common engines that can be used but feel free to use any alternatives that you want. (Marmoset Toolbag for example.)
  • Feel free to change up your chosen concept a bit if you want! Interpret these concepts to your liking, especially if your aim is to add storytelling elements.
  • If you finish your project and decide to post it to Artstation, make sure you give credit to the concept artist in the form of a link to their profile. Additionally, it is recommended to ask a concept artist for their permission to post a 3D piece based on their work before doing so.

- RECOMMENDATIONS -

  • When you are just starting out making a scene, it can seem complicated or imposing. Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on. 
  • 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, don't be afraid to make it your own.
  • We 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.
The goal is to learn and grow both artistically and in your ability to both give and receive critique, but don't stress about it and remember to have fun!

Good luck!

Replies

  • rohom3Des
    This is my first time doing this challenge, and I will go for the hard surface one. I'm really excited about how this will end 
  • alibaba17
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    alibaba17 polycounter lvl 5
    I will go with the Ponds by Ruslana Gus.

  • PuuroMan
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    PuuroMan polygon
    This is also my first time doing this challenge. I will be creating the first hardsurface enviroment in UE4. Cant wait to start working on modelling this weekend. Good luck for everybody and have fun!
    .
  • Blendermonkey
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    Blendermonkey polycounter lvl 10
    Hello! I'd like to give it a go even though I'm an animator by profession :)

    My questions:
    - I suppose this prop in-game would be on just one texture map (along with roughness and normal), how big would the map for something like this usually be? 2k?
    - I wanna make stars and alphas on a black BG and reuse them. In Blender I can turn the black parts transparent, and use a different UV map to place them. Would this be the way to go for a game engine?
    - If I bake the modular parts separately then add them to the mesh, the connection with the other parts won't have any bevels but will just penetrate each other. is that ok or are there ways to get around that?
    - What's a good approach to glass? I know before it was just a texture, but maybe now it's a new material made in engine and no texture is necesarry?

    Here's my train of thought for now:



  • red_33
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    red_33 polycounter lvl 2
    Going to work on stylized environment. 

  • Blendermonkey
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    Blendermonkey polycounter lvl 10
    Hello Updates :)
    Finished the head sculpt and temporarily baked it just to see how it's working. I feel like I might have to go and simplify the head to fit in with the rest of the style. I was going for a mischievous deal-with-the-devil look. I think I'm finally getting the hang of Blender's sculpting tools. 
    Right now I'm fearing that I won't be able to fit all the normals on one map without loosing significant resolution. Maybe the diffuse can make up for a low res normal?



  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    @Blendermonkey Looks really nice so far!

    As for the resolution definitely make sure to do testing before committing anywhere. There is the option of splitting the character out onto it's own textures or using a non-square texture size like 2048x4096 as possible considerations.
  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    Wasn't planning on participating but changed my mind after my image got selected   =)
    - Did some basic block out in Maya and exported it to unreal, also did some basic lighting. Picking up unreal after a long time and have forgotten a lot of basic stuff. 
    - All the pivots and orientations are messed up.
    - My plan atm is to finalize the proportions, prop requirements and decent lighting in block out phase and then maybe move to wall materials.
  • rocketjump4d
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    rocketjump4d polycounter lvl 4
    Hello guys,
    I want to participate too. It's a blockout and it's not finished, just trying to get something similar to the reference.

  • rohom3Des
    Hello everyone, I hope your scenarios are doing good! This is the current state of my blocking. There is something that bothers me, the squared glass wall from the left.

    It is supposed to be translucent and I don't know if I should face it as a subdivided mesh or a flat plane with a material on it. 

    I will start adding some Bridge materials on the walls to get a feel of the mood and I will try to solve this glass issue. 

    Any feedback is super welcome :D

  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    @rohom3Des Blocking is looking really cool dude. For the left glass wall, I would have a plane with normal and an Emissive map to fake the glass feeling. Doing translucent things in unreal is very tricky.
  • Blendermonkey
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    Blendermonkey polycounter lvl 10
    Alright I made two UV map layouts. One for  the normals and one for diffuse. My polycount is 7300 tris right now. I baked the pillars, box legs, and the character. Everything else is just reusing those normals.

    Edit: Aaah I made him a moustache but I forgot to bake it onto a lowpoly model!


    @rohom3Des I think the left and right wall are the same material in the reference. it's just that the angle makes it so one looks more transparent plus there is a red light behind it. Keep it up :)

  • Blendermonkey
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    Blendermonkey polycounter lvl 10
    I've realized that Substance doesn't support multiple uv maps (not udims, but the same uv's differently laid up). I used one set to map the normals, and another one for texturing. Now I'm stuck and I don't know what to do.
    My options:
    -redo the uv set so there is only one and rebake
    -paint everything in Blender (but then i don't have smart materials and I have to rely on my poor handpainting skills)
    Is using multiple uv sets in games bad? Did I do this wrong? 
  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    @Blendermonkey Usually we just have a single UV set for diffuse, normal, roughness metallic etc. I have only used 2nd uv set for light maps or for dirt and grunge shaders in engine.
    I think the best option will be to only have a single UV set.
  • Blendermonkey
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    Blendermonkey polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the info! So I redid all my UVs so that there is just one map and started texturing. For now only smart mats and generators, I still need to go in and do some manual painting. Also, I decimated the head and body since I didn't want to waste time on retopo. My model is under 5K so is what I did ok? Or is decimation frowned upon?


  • CrimsonIndustry
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    CrimsonIndustry polycounter lvl 8

    It's been far too long since I've modeled significantly in something that's not CAD; feels nice to get back to it. I'll be going for the Ponds concept by Ruslana Gus; blocked this out to get a rough feel for it. Unsure how far I'll get with this challenge, but I'd really like to finish it.
  • FruityCupid
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    FruityCupid triangle
    I'm hopping in a little late but still going to give it a shot. Going to take the stylized environment as far as I can in the time that's left <3

  • allenjay_roldan
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    allenjay_roldan polycounter lvl 4
    Hey everyone, I'm going to be working on the stylized environment 'Ponds' by Ruslana Gus.
    I've blocked out the basic shapes in Blender and refined the modelling of the center piece. I've added subtle changes to the shape to give a more stylized feel. 
  • CrimsonIndustry
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    CrimsonIndustry polycounter lvl 8

    More progress. I'm pretty pleased with how it looks so far, particularly the roof tiles here - I had fun making them: 

    But, I've reached a bit of a stumbling point. I don't really like how the rocks/stepping stones here are turning out, and after fiddling with them for a while, I just can't seem to get them to look decent. I wanted to put them on a thick slab since I felt having them go the entire height of the pond would make them too skinny, but the geometry I've chosen for the outer wall (a beveled slab) stops them from going flush with the top edge of it, which doesn't make it look too good. Plus, the rocks themselves just look "wrong". Too pillowy, too sharp, too rounded, too flat, it's all of them at the same time, somehow.

    Any suggestions on what I could try to improve them, or maybe something similar I could look at to see how it's done there?
  • FruityCupid
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    FruityCupid triangle
    progress so far! everything is uv mapped and i wanna try hand painting textures.
    the one part that isn't modeled yet is the roof. I had a hard tme visualizing what it looked like. After seeing how other users tackled it, I have a better idea on how to build it though. 


  • par94
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    par94 polycounter lvl 2
    Hello everyone! Maybe I'm joining a bit late, but I'll try my best on the stylized pond.
    Already done a quick blockout in Blender.

  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    @CrimsonIndustry Hi dude, all the shapes are looking really cool! To make the rocks feel better you can sculpt on their edges a bit. Something simple like the below image should be enough. 
    Thomas - Owner of StylizedStationcom Author at Stylized Station - Learn  Stylized Art - Page 11 of 26

    For the stepping stones, I think you should be able to curve them a bit, like what @FruityCupid has done.
  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    Made some decent progress on materials and lighting.
    - Got the lighting to look decent after a lot of trial and errors. 
    - Added material blend on walls and simple material on floor and ceiling. Quixel bridge made it really easy to create material blends.
    - Wall and floor looks like they are intersecting. Maybe I will need to create a decal that goes along the edge to hide it. If somebody else knows a better way, please share it with me.
    - Had some problems exporting weighted normals from maya to ue4, spent a couple of hrs trying to fix that.
    - Did some R&D on edge decals for wall edges. Not sure whether I will add it though
    - Since lighting and materials look decent now, will be focusing on improving the blocking and prop creation next.

  • FruityCupid
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    FruityCupid triangle
    roof is done! 
    The gate feels pretty finished right now. Not crazy about the stone tiles but they're not the centerpiece so maybe it's not a super big deal if they're not perfect. 
    been playing around with shading through photoshop but nothing i'm confident enough to show just yet



    i didn't get as much as i wanted done today, but i did have a chance to mess with the Geometry Node Editor to get some nice random lillypads out on the water. Just have to figure out how to make them not clip into one another, and for the placement to be less random and more focused near the stone steps
  • Rektum
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    Rektum polycounter lvl 7
    This looks pretty fun. I think I'll try the hardsurface challenge. I want to get more into Unreal Engine 5. Good luck all!

  • par94
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    par94 polycounter lvl 2
    I've done quite a lot of progress in the past few days:
    I did the highpoly version of a few assets:

    Afterwards I did some baking-texturing in Substance, and started to bring assets and textures into UE4:



    Also created a couple shaders for the sakura leaves and stylized water.
    Still got a lot of things in the to-do-list, but I love how it's starting to take shape in UE.
  • Phoenix995
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    Phoenix995 interpolator
    oh i love the mood already! exited to see how it looks at the end!
  • PuuroMan
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    PuuroMan polygon
    First update! Progress and Problems. 
    I got few props done for the enviroment(light, table and walls.). Also set up some simple lighting and working on the glass material.
    Glass material needs a lot more work. I never worked on material as complex as this one. Will see if i am able to make the material look good. 
    Next step in the scene is to create models for the "fish tanks" and the ceiling lights above the operating table. Also might add detail to Op table. 


  • FruityCupid
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    FruityCupid triangle
    I've lost a bit of steam on this but maybe if i post progress I'll feel a little more motivated
    Handpainting textures has been a lot of fun so far. 

    i'm not sure how to progress with the water. part of me wants to give it a transparent effect. maybe a sss pass? it would be nice to have something in the scene move too. like ripples in the water or something
  • Cheungygirl
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    Cheungygirl polycounter lvl 8
    Hi all! It's been a long time since I've done a challenge, I thought I'd go for the very cool broken fortune teller concept from Environment Collection I by Mike Azevedo.

    Here's my blockout so far, hopefully I'll be able to persevere and finish it:


  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    - Made some good progress on the low poly. Most of the prop stuff is done, working on the wires at the moment.
    - Had to take the file to 3ds max for wires. I looked into Maya and blender spline modelling, but wasn't feeling confident about it. Planning to complete all the remaining wire work in the next week.
    - Also got to know while looking for references that this place is actually a "kowloon wall city" themed arcade in Japan. I Wouldn't have guessed it in 100 years  :)



  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    -Exported the wires and low polys to UE 4 and adjusted the lights a bit. I am feeling good about how it is looking now.
    -Also learned that the lower the min light map resolution in UE 4 the better the shadows look. I have changed the resolution from 64 to 8.
  • Rektum
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    Rektum polycounter lvl 7

    Blocking out some materials and lighting. This one's pretty fun! I've never mixed a parallax occlusion material with translucency.
  • jgarrison
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    jgarrison polycounter lvl 5
    Since it's relatively simple and no one seems to have attempted it yet:



    I pretty much know how I'm going to approach this, except that I have no idea how to do the particle effect coming from the thrusters.
  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    @jgarrison Glad to see someone decided to tackle that one! The model itself isn't the most challenging but it has some material challenges that make it interesting. :D
  • jgarrison
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    jgarrison polycounter lvl 5
    I thought I would be done with this by now, but I'm really just getting started. This is kinda my first time really doing any complex hard surface modelling like this and I just sorta jumped into it assuming that my usual methods would work out for me.


    The first mistake I made was cleaning up faces and doing the UVs for the low poly assuming that the final product would more or less correlate. This has worked out for me in the past for some more simple stuff, like a pair of sunglasses or a wooden chest, but I see now why this should be avoided.


    The next mistake I made was thinking I would be able to just sculpt the details in ZBrush and somehow, I dunno, polish it out. I realized after a couple hours of this that I was never going to get good results and I actually had to do myself some learning.


    Now I am using booleans! Which seems obvious, in retrospect, but I've never had a good excuse to use them before. I'm going to finish it like this, but if I did something like this in the future I think I would want to try a CAD program like Shapr.
  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    @jgarrison Really cools shapes dude! Those booleaned cylindrical parts will be a challenge to bake though. For cylindrical parts, I usually prefer to just bevel the low poly, and the panel on top can be added in painter later.
  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    Made some decent progress on props, did some quick textures on the door and the electric box on top. The UVs aren't as packed as they should be, but I can change them later if needed. 

  • Cheungygirl
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    Cheungygirl polycounter lvl 8
    Progress on my fortune teller machine so far (rendered in Unity) 
    Hadn't sculpted in a while but once I got into it it's been a fun practice project! :) 

  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    Made some more progress prop wise and added a couple of wall decals as well to test them out. 
    The wires were giving me some issues in light bake, so had to increase its light bake resolution to 2k. I feel like that's too much for a game, but it should be ok as a quick fix I think.
    Moving to poster decals now, hopefully everything will be done by the end of this week.


  • Cheungygirl
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    Cheungygirl polycounter lvl 8
    It's been cool to see others progress!  =)

    I've been able to work on this a lot recently, and now I'm gonna call it done!
    It's been great to practice more sculpting, fabric is definitely not my forte though :p also decided to render in Unreal to learn the engine and pretty happy with how it came out

  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    @Cheungygirl This is looking really cool. The text work with Emiessive looks very convincing.
    I feel like The gold metal engraving details on the body will look better with some normal thickness, also adding a skylight or something similar will lighten up some of the back areas which I feel are a bit dark atm. 
    btw The tiny spider webs are also looking cool!  =)
  • Cheungygirl
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    Cheungygirl polycounter lvl 8
    @demigodssw Thanks for the tips!  =) Yours is looking great so far!
  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    @Cheungygirl Really nice work! The fabric might not be the best like you said but I think you made it convincing enough and it works really well with the piece. =)

    @demigodssw Love the griminess you've got to it already and excited to see the polish you're planning to add to cap it off!
  • Pep_mepla
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    Pep_mepla polycounter lvl 2
    PuuroMan said:
    First update! Progress and Problems. 
    I got few props done for the enviroment(light, table and walls.). Also set up some simple lighting and working on the glass material.
    Glass material needs a lot more work. I never worked on material as complex as this one. Will see if i am able to make the material look good. 
    Next step in the scene is to create models for the "fish tanks" and the ceiling lights above the operating table. Also might add detail to Op table. 


    I really like everything here!!! From the lighting setup, to the materials used and your interpretation on the concept, it looks amazing. Did you have time to finish de fish tanks?
  • Pep_mepla
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    Pep_mepla polycounter lvl 2
    Here's what I was able to do in two days with Rhino and Unity using HDRP.
    I uploaded a video on my artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Pozz1B


  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    Hey everyone, some great work came from this challenge and I encourage those who are still working to keep going! Making it to the finish line is still the best thing even if it takes a bit more time than the challenge runs for.

    As October is coming to a close it's time to get to voting for the upcoming challenge 75. As always, you're welcome to come vote and make suggestions even if you don't intend to participate.

    https://polycount.com/discussion/228350/the-bi-monthly-environment-art-challenge-concept-thread-november-december-75/
  • PuuroMan
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    PuuroMan polygon
    Finally i was able to complete this enviroment :D Just in time. Unfortunetly i did not have time to sculpt and model those Alien and fish models. Im not yet good at sculpting and i need to learn Zbrush in the future. Overall i learned alot of new things and im happy how this enviroment turned out. I added few things that are not in the original concept art reference to additional realistic feeling. Also i was not able to fix small problems with glass material. It looks good but will stop working in certain angles.





    Already hyped for next challenge!

  • demigodssw
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    demigodssw greentooth
    I feel like the environment is done, feeling happy with the output  :). Spent a lot of time baking light to fix light issues.
    The Chinese poster and text are all from random internet images and I have no clue what they say. 
    Since one day is remaining I will check it once again tomorrow for any small improvements or If I get some feedbacks, I can address those. Overall, learned a lot while doing this challenge, and had a lot of fun!!







  • Pinkfox
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    Pinkfox sublime tool
    @PuuroMan Love that you were able to make the hallway headed toward the door like that, really brings the space alive. Makes it feel like a specimen examination area with additional specimens being available to be pulled. Would definitely love to see it with the specimen in the future when you're more comfortable with sculpting but what you've got is fantastic!

    @Pep_mepla Pretty solid for two days of work! Would love to see you push it even further but hopefully it at least provided insight that will make your next piece even better!

    @demigodssw So awesome to see the finished product! Has been really wonderful to see the progression of it from an innocuous small box to a space with some history and character! I did have one thing I noticed that I think would be of help. In your second picture you can see the specular highlight in the mailbox holes. If you have a mask for those areas in your material I'd make sure the specular in that area is set to 0 so that doesn't happen and it looks like a true hole. You've definitely outdone yourself though! :D
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