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The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | January - February (94)

ngon master
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Pinkfox ngon master
Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful time over the holidays. Welcome to the 94th edition of the Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge for the months of January and February!

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!

Anyone is welcome in this challenge no matter your skill level! It's a test of your own ability not a competition between members. We're all here to improve as artists and learn from each other.

- ENVIRONMENTS -

HARD SURFACE ENVIRONMENT:
20241227 by baotong YU
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nJ2x8X


STYLIZED ENVIRONMENT:
abandoned place by Erin Lin
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gBPJx


- PROPS -

HARD SURFACE PROP:
Yellow Flashlight by Tony Zenitium
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/K31vlW


STYLIZED PROP:
National Park - Stylized Props Concept Art by Mikael Yusifov
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/W2wPNQ


- 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!

Good luck everyone!

Replies

  • Hymil
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    Hymil triangle
    Hey everyone!
    I'm Charles, a recent graduate from Sydney. Can't wait to see everyone's work on this challenge!
    Started the block out so far with a focus to get the proportions and shapes right. Also spicing things up and doing this project in Blender over Maya since I just want to get comfortable with such a versatile (also free) tool. Been making a lot of environments recently and want to take a step back and focus on a prop for a bit with an emphasis on texturing and modelling.
  • Fabi_G
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    Fabi_G high dynamic range
    Cool designs, looking forward to see them translated into 3d.

    Looks like a good start @Hymil. What's your plan for the edge-treatment? Will you bake from a highpoly or something else? Are you going for some stylization or realistic texturing? Keep it up!

    I had to give the abandoned place a go. Once again will use Unity and baked lighting. Aiming for a video sequence and maybe a web build. Perhaps I need to re-scope in order to get it done, I'll find out.

    Sketches of different modules: 


    Screenshots of scene in engine:

    Lighting the foliage via light probes to reduce amount of lightmaps.

    Overview of modules in Blender:


    edit: web-build of current state can be found here
  • ATaylor96
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    ATaylor96 polycounter lvl 8
    Hey everyone! I'm an Unreal Engine tech artist working on the games industry. I've been following these challenges for a little while now but struggled get started on personal 3D projects so have never participated. However, it's been awesome seeing all of the results and with it being the new year I figured I'd try to start the year off well and get something finished.

    Here's the blockout so far (with a bevel modifier enabled so I can better visualise the end results). Still plenty of work left to do but I'm taking my time with this and trying to make sure the proportions look great and things match up to the concept art as best as I can.



    Great work from everyone so far, as more progress gets shown I'll try to give some feedback in my next posts =)
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