The Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge | January - February (94)
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!
20241227 by baotong YU
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nJ2x8X
STYLIZED ENVIRONMENT:
abandoned place by Erin Lin
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gBPJx
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
Good luck everyone!
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
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.
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
Do I need to follow the concept as close as I can? Because right now some things about it don't convince me like the piping on the ceiling that looks like Windows XP idle screen, the dead fish laying on the tray (I'm assuming this is a koi pet shop).
Keep it up!
Let me know if you need closeups or anything.
.
Would appreciate any critique.
Kind Regards
I explored your environment on Itch, love the way you chose to present the scene and the foliage so far. Though did have some issues with the cursor snapping wildly in different directions, though that might just be my computer. With the screenshots you provided in-engine it seems the fog is washing out a lot of the colours in the scene. It could be worth pushing back the fog distance from the camera.
Great stuff so far @ATaylor96 , how are you planning to connect that back handle piece to the main handle segment and handle the underside of handle?
The exaggerated look is kinda fun looking though! The buckle looks super clean @EtotheRic . Instantly adding this to my ref board... thank you so much @Eric Chadwick! Do you happen to know the name of the torch model / design to find more / similar things online as well? @Bullyzhd2205 Solid start so far on the block out! The colours are a great boon for helping visualise the asset. I've done a cheeky paint over for you, though feel free to discard any suggestions, they are just my opinions after all.
Main things to improve with the block out are pushing the shapes more to exaggerate and put emphasis on the stylisation. Then also adding more geometry to the cylinders since the faceting is quite obvious, though that's a stylistic choice, might be significantly less noticeable depending how you texture it.
One thing I missed in the paint over is the gap between the focus gear teeth being larger than the reference. It might be nicer to try and fit more/closer together.
Another thought to ask yourself is how you plan on presenting your prop in the final render. Do you plan to have it float in the air? What about resting it another prop table with some small bits and bobs to sell the prop more? This will also change how the strap rests, which is why some foresight might be needed.
Though my high poly isn't quite to a point I'm satisfied with, I've taken some liberties with the reference like adding a cushion under the handle, car battery on the interior, etc. Though I have a nemesis with the handle... It doesn't look comfortable to hold with the sharp edges that the reference shows, and the cushion I added only serves to weaken the wielders grip. So, I plan to rework that area with help from the references @Eric Chadwick shared (thanks again).
It felt like such a waste to not do an interior for the flashlight, which is why instead I decided to do a mini car battery inside. It's still in the works, but I'm liking how it is shaping up.
Valiant
Made in Hong Kong
Cool to see some binoculars. Looking at the concept, I find it a bit hard to tell what materials are used, so I'm curious to see peoples' interpretations.
Those are very nice lamp photos :-B
Nice Progress on the lamp @Hymil, don't have anything to critique really
Great to see all this feedback
Some status update since last WIP - feel like threw a lot of stuff in, that I now have to balance/ refine:
- modified environment - layout, skybox, lighting, fog (still to dense, I think), ...
- exported the level-layout blocked out with primitives from Unity and built a level mesh with some vertex painting for texture blending
- added tree canopy modules
- added more building blocks. With some blocks, I made use of generative modifiers. Here is the setup for a cylindrical shape:
- added moss and long-stem plant. I use a vertex color mask for blending colors and a simple wind/vertex offset.
- added large robot remnants
- ...
Until now, avoided any object specific texture maps, if any put masks into vertex color instead. Through lightmaps, hard edges get a softened. Set seams in strategic places and mostly align the UV borders with pixel raster to minimize steps at seams.Couldn't get the UVs right with modifiers, so I ended up applying all and UV manually. But I think it's still useful to iterate on patterns/shapes. On other shapes, made use of the displacement modifiers to add irregularities.
For the plants, deform leaf instances along splines: