The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | September - October (92)
ngon master
Hey everyone! Welcome to the 92nd edition of the Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge for the months of September and October!
This challenge is a way for real-time 3D artists to test their skills and create a piece of work based on concepts provided. It's open to those of all skill levels and we do our best to provide meaningful feedback along the way so everyone can come away from the challenge with actionable points on which they can improve their craft!
- ENVIRONMENTS -
HARD SURFACE ENVIRONMENT:
Mutator Container by Martin Parker
STYLIZED ENVIRONMENT:
HARMONIC - Part 02 by Kenza Morvan
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g0A9LE
- PROPS -
HARD SURFACE PROP:
Sonder - Buford's Room by Chris Karnezis
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vDaGQ6
STYLIZED PROP:
Sketch compilation by Guillaume T. Delbarre
- 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 Godot 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 something like 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!
Replies
The scale looks good to me! Will you use more polymodeling before sculpting the details, or will you go directly to zbrush after this?
Maybe you can use Fspy to get the exact camera angle used by the concept artist, that has helped me more than once when they have very aggresive focal lengths and the objects look very distorted, like the cannister you mentioned.
Love the sculpt! Did you model the golden details, or used an IMM brush? Those types of details always give me headaches.
did a block-out trying to work out all the proportions, I banged my head against fSpy as that has helped before but I just couldn't figure it out for this one, ended up just doing it by eye, it seems a little tall but I think I got it fairly close
Hi there! I struggled with fspy at first too. Finally figured out a way to make it work and bring back to Maya: (Line up v/points in PS, take all that with lines to f/spy, copy your lines with f-spys x and y axes, save as f-spy file, import to BLENDER (you need the add-n in BLENDER first), then I think for yourself you stop here but if for Maya, just set line-up-gizmo-thing IN BLENDER to y-up, export fbx, import to MAYA
Also, I'm moving over to Blender from being a Maya user of 15 years, so if anyone has tips/tricks/tutorial videos for softening/hardening edges please let me know. I can't find a whole lot online that does what I need without odd shading...
@kwagner Did you find what you needed for hard vs soft edges in blender? I often set the shading to autosmooth (rmb in object mode/shade auto smooth) and then set some select edges to sharp. You can also go to the object data properties/normals and set the auto smooth angle all the way up to 180 degrees to make sure the shading is smooth on curves.
And yeah I've been modelling in Blender and then importing and placing prefabs in Unity.
Maybe even some primitive placeholders for the curlies. Don't be held back by looks (or a "proper" approach) if you do those though, they're just a tool to understand the scene!
I like how the sculpted high poly came out even if it no longer really matches the concept. Mostly there are some techniques in Painter I wanted to try since I'm not so familiar with stylized texturing, so I wanted a few more details to practice.
Hello, I'm attempting the harmonic scene. So far did the blockout, some lighting and rough color blocking.
- work more on tiling normal map for pillars
- experiment with making textures more painterly - especially stone on walls and gold
- create decal for middle insignia
- add more variation to floor textures, fix pattern, add the swirls
- adjust scale of sculpted detail on trim sheet - doesn't read from camera
- add decals for cracks on walls and pillars
- fix dark edge error where wall meets roof
I'd say watch out for the tangent between the table and box in the middle of the room also (maybe that's being too picky at this stage). It's a little hard to read if the middle box is touching the floor too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXM1jr6nxTU
I still think it needs a lot of work, some areas out of the shot are not even painted... some parts are too busy, I really wanted to repaint the golden parts too, and equalize better the surface and its colors, but I'll be away for the rest of the month so I had to call it done.