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critique my wip level

Jarrod1937
polycounter lvl 15
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Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
now while i hate getting negative feedback i need to learn to accept it and use it to improve my levels... so be as brutal as you can (but not too nitpicky).
currently i am at work posting this and since i've only recently discovered how to not get halo's around my trees when rendering (see, stray sod wip), all i have are viewport grabs right now. when i get home i'll post some more high res renders with shadows.
i should also mention that the level is a floating fortress, and only the outside has been worked on so far, there is going to be a lto of inner catacombs and such underground.
fortress_render_4.jpg
fortress_render_5.jpg
fortress_render_6.jpg

a render of what the wall texture looks liek with normal mapping:
wall_normal_mapped_2.jpg

and a statue prop that will be at the entrance:
statue2.jpg

Replies

  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    While confident you may have something interesting here, this is a huge mess of noise.

    Things that will help:
    Get some lighting in here to break up shapes,
    Put the camera in game play positions so we can see the detail levels the way the player will see it in game.
    Highlight edge and shade inner corners with more customized texturing to define shapes.

    If anything, at least some wireframes to give an idea what’s going on.
  • Matabus
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    Matabus polycounter lvl 19
    I'm going to have to agree with Holden's point that the render you have there is WAY too noisy. I am having a hard time picking out what anything is made of. If we could take a look at your texture sheets we could give a bit more feedback regarding this.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    ok, will do when i get home.
    as i said, these are low res viewport grabs, i'll have much more clean renders later on. as far as texture sheets go... well, the majority of the textures here are pure tiling ones, except for the trees which are made up of 1 256x256 and 1 256x512 textures (bark, leaves). however the statue i know is wastful, currently its made up of 2 512x512 and 1 128x128 textures (head, body, stand), but i was going to go back and have it only use 2 textures, all of the body in one texture and the stand in another. or perhaps is this too wasteful? i will admit i am not very texture performance conscious, this is something i am working on. all in all though the list for textures used in the outside environment are:
    1.)1 512x512 (grass)
    2.)1 512x512 (main wall)
    3.)1 256x512(leaves), 1 256x256 (bark)
    3.)1 128x128 (windows), 1 512x512 (building wall)
    4.)1 512x512 misc rock.
    5.) statue textures

    the games min hardware we want to support is a 5900 with 256mb of ram. the engine is a portal based engine and i am wanting to have some zones setup like below (this is an old render):
    FVFG_edited.jpg
  • Tulkamir
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    Tulkamir polycounter lvl 18
    I agree with what's been said, but would like to add the suggestion of breaking up the foreground from the background. Right now everything is kind of mushing together, if you give the foreground and background different texturing it should help to break this up a bit. smile.gif
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    [ QUOTE ]
    I agree with what's been said, but would like to add the suggestion of breaking up the foreground from the background. Right now everything is kind of mushing together, if you give the foreground and background different texturing it should help to break this up a bit. smile.gif

    [/ QUOTE ]
    by breaking up and giving different textures do you mean this for the ground? if so then that is one of the main annoying limitations i have to work with, i have no multitexturing blend capability.
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    I don't know what everyone else reckons, but have you thought about doing some vertex colours by hand? you can bake in some initial colours and tweak them with maxs tools to get the best result. Its somthing I'd consider anyway. heres my lighting suggestion, its rough but you get the idea:

    fortress_lighting.jpg

    basically I think you should aim for something where you can zoom out until its quite small / half close your eyes and still make out the shape of all the objects in your scene, then things will be clearly lit

    edit: is that for me? maybe vert lighting will be detrimental to using normal maps. but in some games I see in-editor lighting that just looks like it would have been better off hand-tweaked imo. maybe hand tweaked light maps instead
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    thanks for the suggestions, i'll show you what it looks like with proper lighting later.
    and perhaps per's wtf is for me showing viewport grabs instead of renders? if so, i figured you guys would be abel to give me some suggestions untill i give better renders (which you have).
  • cochtl
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    cochtl polycounter lvl 18
    you should probably make a new file of your scene before you try this, but you can use multi objects unwrap to make a new map channel and bake in light maps of your scene to give it the impression of in game editor lighting (light maps). that way the lighting will break up the scene and make features stand out better.

    i dont know if this may work, but you can duplicate all of your geometry and apply a matte/shadow material to achieve the same result
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    I thought you could bake your lighting to vertex colors... I like the scene. Nice work so far. I look forward to seeing the lighting.

    Alex
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    well below are some more clean renders. i am going to use shadow mapping for the lighting. i don't believe my engine supports light maps though, it supports shadow maps, realtime soft-shadows, and stencil shadows. i also don't believe the engine will import shaded vertex data, but is capable of it, i've requested it to be included in the importer.
    well, here are better renders. i am not happy with how it looks so far though, it looks amaturish... which is not the look i am going for. so any suggestions at this point would be helpful.
    please ignore some of the texture stretching, i am aware of it.
    rener_1_c.jpg
    rener_2_c.jpg
    rener_3_c.jpg
  • Tulkamir
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    Tulkamir polycounter lvl 18
    My previous comment stands, it looks too mushy right now. I don't mean the ground texture so much as the texture you used for the stone/walls and the such. everything seems to be the same shade/colour/texture. try to add some variation to your textures.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    You might be better off just painting some lighting into your textures or baking it. I thought vertex colors was a standard and got exported from the 3d app. smile.gif How does that really work? Can't you vary the stone texture a little more? Instead of using 512 x 512 for the stones make it a 256 x 1024 and have a small atlas there. The file size is the same so I was wondering if it would use the same amount of resources.

    Alex
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    I think theres a bit too much small detail contrast in the stone texture, meaning when you zoom out it becomes a lot of small dark and light blotches. I would try lightening the outlines around the stones, and darkening the stones themselves. Not just by reducing the contrast though, I would do that and then dab some contrast back in here and there with a subtle overlay layer
  • danr
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    danr interpolator
    it's a box-map nightmare! At the moment, your main building looks like someone has built it like they build a dry-stone wall : roughly-hewn stone piled on top of each other, and held together through gravity, luck and faith.

    before you start worrying about lighting, or even the contrast and detail of the textures themselves as rooster suggests, you'll need to start looking at how buildings (roughly) similar to this are constructed : specifically what variation in stone work runs through the structure, how shapes are picked out, how the stone is laid to create curves, where to use appropriate trim etc.

    when you've got together plenty of reference, you should start to create enough bespoke textures that will allow you add polys where appropriate and carefully map your building to more reflect the reference. The architectural style is of course entirely up to you, bastardize wherever, but it's important to suggest the basic rules of construction or your building will never seem convincing, even for a fantasy environment.

    Crucially, you'll quickly find that using more textures (smaller, if necessary) and carefully mapping them to your polys (again, adding more if necessary) in convicing patterns will give you the shape and definition that this discussion about lighting seems to suggest you're missing. If a building looks solid, detailed and defined with all ambient light, shadow and vert colours turned off, you're more than halfway there.
  • Xeto
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    Xeto polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    Lighting is not the main problem. Jarrod, you're just slapping on one texture all over the building. It's about time now that you think about how a castle would be constructed and weathered and let that show in your texturing.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I agree take a look at some castles here reference never hurts...
    durham-castle-ext-006-s.jpg

    karlstejn-castle-01.jpg

    If you got the old look along with the color and texture look here to break it all up you can get something really cool.

    I’ve cheated a lot of cool ideas on the texture phase by not showing them enough love and that’s a huge mistake because the texture is going to make verything. Push a little extra with it and you'll be very happy you did.
  • Spark
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    Spark polycounter lvl 18
    I think that you have to be a little less on the lazy side, hell I thought you even used that stone texture for the roof for a second. I think Per's wtf comment echoed mine in that it looks like you spent some time on the geometry, and then found a picture of a rock wall and said done after putting a box map on your geometry. You can't expect anything good, if you spend 1 minute on your uv's and another minute on your texture, if you do..then you will never get good results.

    Spark
    www.bbriley.com
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    lol, i woke up and was surprised by the amount of comments... to be honest i did slack on the texturing. i'll hide everything else and focus on texturing the castle today. so do you guys think i should use 2-3 semi-high res textures so i can add in some specific detail, weathering, and lighting (as far as in the texture)?
    the reason for the slight rush job is that i am the only artist for this entire game (except for one character artist), so i am trying to rush myself a bit so i can move on to the next thing and then the next thing... ect. however i guess i am not going to get the results i want if i rush myself, so i'll take my time from now on.
    thanks for the help!

    p.s. as far as the architecture goes, i tried to create a style that is unique so its not quite based on any particular style.
  • poopinmymouth
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    poopinmymouth polycounter lvl 19
    In addition to everyone's comments here, I'd suggest thinking about it in larger scale first. Try to view it at the distance you have in these screenshots, as often as you can. If it doesn't read well from across the room, you should work more on the overall lighting, and textures. Have a top, middle, and upper texture for most tall surfaces, to help describe the surfaces. Most walls have definite changes from those areas, based on wear, light, usage, etc. Having lots of reference helps, even if you don't want to duplicate it exactly.

    Looks like it could turn out to be an interesting piece though, so keep chugging.

    poop.gif
  • yeluis
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    yeluis polycounter lvl 17
    The first thing that comes to mind is noisy. seems the textures have a lot of noise in them that is not making much sense. the second is that there are 2 predominant colors in your scene and makes everything with the same or close hue value to blend and get lost. try to accentuate the diferent materials you have in your scene and also adding weathering at floor seams and other places will help it from looking bland and not believable. last is the scaling in the texture between the castle and the surrounding walls. really pops to the eye.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    here is a small update on the new texturing job. a quick render:

    edit: i rplaced it with a higher res render

    castle_retexture_preview2.jpg
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    240387142_5007eff787.jpg


    A few people have already touched on the two key points I have make. Re-read what Dan said, then take these points on board.


    You building seems to have no grounding in reality. I don't mean it's fantastical like Scar Night or Labyrinth or Ico or Final Fantasy. I mean that it wont work. It will not stand up. As already pointed out, even make believe needs to be functional, it's the grounding in reality of thousands of years of architecture and stonemasonry that makes us look and say - "That's not right".

    So you need to think - how was this building built? What makes it stay up? You can't just make a pile of bricks and bung on a roof on there. Xeto posted some great easy shots. I spent a few day camping this summer in the grounds on a 13th century castle. It's still mostly standing, and that's not down to luck.

    This one is camera phone:

    240316689_0bf0db20bf.jpg

    There are a few here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianhowie/


    Point two - you have 2 colours. Green and Gray. You can use dozens of shades of green, not only for artistic effect, but to lay depth to the scene - darker greens for the undergrowth, softer yellow greens for lichen and harsh mad green for the trees.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    That said, your new textures are a huge improvement over the old ones.
    Just keep in mind all the good points these guys have made - keep it up, you're obviously learning very quickly! smile.gif
  • yeluis
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    yeluis polycounter lvl 17
    awsome improvement, now the big thing other than color that bugs me is the contrast in your texture resolution. look at the ground compared to the stone in the wall. one is "soft" then the other one is harsh and very pixelated. keep it up. Also giving it some foundation to the base will make it look like it was actually built and not placed in some spot in the ground.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    here is the rest of the castle retextured. i also took away the roof as i felt that was also making it look unrealistic architecture wise. i also shrunk the two statues, i understand i want to show them off but having them that large just looked unnatural.
    yeluis, what did you mean by giving it a foundation? because it bothers me just as it does you, it looks like ti was just ploped in a spot on the ground.
    castle_retexture_preview_4.jpg
  • EricElwell
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    EricElwell insane polycounter
    ok, quick paintover with basic lighting to show the form, did a second with a writeup, hope it helps out...

    jarrodcastlePO.jpg

    jarrodcastlePO2.jpg

    Oh, and I forgot to mention, one of the things that really sticks out to me is the crenulation over top of the supports. This is a little screwy. If there is crenulation, then that means that you should be able to physically stand behind it. The way that it lips out right before the crenulation implies that it is either very unstable, or the crenulation only comes up to your waste. Either way, that's wrong. You can lower the lip, or raise the wall above the lip. Hope that makes sense.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    wow, thanks for the good paintover, i'll get started implementing some of those. the supports is something i missed, but i'll note to put supports in future with other buildings. however what do you mean by crenulation?
  • EricElwell
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    EricElwell insane polycounter
    Crenulation is the term for the blocks on top of the walls and towers to give archers some cover.

    Also, I couldn't stop painting, maybe this will give you some inspiration, maybe not...
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    yeah, that does give me some more ideas.
    and now that i know what crenulation is i understand that i should raise it some more. thanks
  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    The scene has improved loads already in that one page, but I think there's still a lot of things you can improve.
    The texture seems to stretch horribly on some points, especially on the pilasters (is that the correct word?).
    Furthermore, the statues. They're probably going to be eyecatchers, and can afford errors even less than the building itself does. It seems as if they're built out of giant rocks, which are then cut into perfect shape, which is a bit silly. Statues are made from and on premade square(ish) blocks. Seams are possible on the foundation, but only straight seams. You should also add wear and tear to them, since they're out in the open, and are subjected to the elements.

    The correct spelling is 'crenellation', btw, for if you want to look up something on Google on it.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    i haven't done all of the things you gusy have suggested but thought i would post an update anyways.
    castle_retexture_preview_6.jpg
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    definately improving man keep it up
  • Mark Dygert
    Huge improvements, nice work!

    The one thing that sticks out and really breaks reality for me is where the tower meets the building. The building needs an end cap to help the transition. Just a simple end cap, nothing fancy. It just looks off because the textures don't match up and the arch just ends oddly.

    It's time to also start adding dirt and crap around the bottom. As rain water runs off of the roof it makes mud and that mud splashes on the building. Also don't forget about dirty rain streaks on the statue bases, they are looking a touch too new. They could also use some plant life/overgrowth around the bases.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    another small update.
    castle_retexture_prev_7.jpg
  • animatr
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    animatr polycounter lvl 18
    wow! I'm really impressed at the improvement in this thread.
    Great work. it can only get better right?!
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    tough to say because you never take close-ups and your compression is so high, but I think your bricks are upside down.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    [ QUOTE ]
    tough to say because you never take close-ups and your compression is so high, but I think your bricks are upside down.

    [/ QUOTE ]
    i think you may be right... not exactly sure how they could have happened though. eitherway its as simple as flipping a layer in photoshop, np at all.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    well the upside down bricks are from my lazyness with the normal map, i'll be making a correct one later on. here are some new pics, i strayed away from the castle for a bit to give the outside wall a better look. my original plan was for water to be carried by the outside wall at the top and form criss-crossing waterfalls at the entrance. so because of thsi i decided to give the outside wall a more aquaduct look. i am going to try to work in some color into the aquaduct texture soon too.
    p.s. i am aware of some of the texture stretching in the second pic and also in the second pic i used photoshop to darken the supporting pillars for the aquaduct since i didn't have time to tweak the texture.
    lol, and i think a tree may be floating in the first pic...

    preview_cas_1.jpg
    preview_cas_2.jpg
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    EricElwell: you crazy, man! Keep on paintin' !

    Jarrod: You've really made some impressive gains in a short time, but you need to keep pushing it. Everybody talking about your structure needing more grounding in reality is (still) right. I've hawked it before and I'll hawk it again: spend 3-4 dollars and get an old copy of David Macaulay's "Castle" used off amazon.com
    http://www.amazon.com/Castle-David-Macau...TF8&s=books
    it's simple, straightforward text, but the beautiful illustrations are the big thing. While accessible to children, don't think this is a kid's book--this guy walks you through the construction and purpose of a typical 13th century castle.
    And as you can see, a used copy will run you all of 1 or 2 dollars. This and other Macaulay books are among the most inspirational I own. Even if you're not trying to be historically accurate, it really gets you thinking about the various facets of castle life (which'll give you ideas for defensive features as well as other aspects), and it'll get you where you need to be. That's not realism, it's believability.
    Some of the most absurd, fantastic ideas work in games despite their outrageousness because someone has had the balls to sell it, make it seem believable to the player. That's your job. Now step to it! smile.gif
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    There have been a lot of improvements from the start. Great job with that.

    The aqueduct kills the silhouette of your inner castle. Looking from the outside or from the inside looking out, all we get is a big box. So all the interesting shapes you've invested into the castle itself have little to no value. Additionally, it appears to be double scale of the castle. If you were to scale it down around 50%, then rebuild it at it's same ground layout, you'd still see castle profile, and have the aqueduct effect you were going for.

    Your bird's eye view has really come together, but you need to focus more on game camera and player view. Import some scale reference player models and copy them all around at key scale locations (doors, paths, lookouts, etc.), and start posting screen shots of those angles, because when it comes down to it, what the player sees in game is all that matters.

    To go along with that, watch your pixel density! This should be as even as possible where the player can approach it. It's ok to scale up distanced objects, but overall, it should be the same everywhere. In max, you can box map everything, say for example at 256, to get an even look all around, the correct the Uvs where needed.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    looking back at it i agree. i may just drop the first layer of the aquaducts, therefore reducing the scale by 50% and getting back to original effect.
    for those who are wondering there is a reason why i have an aquaduct around the castle. the game is online with 2 teams, the imperials and the barbarians (which have been fantasized). the story of the level is that the barbarians took the floating fortress from the imperials. the imperials have planned an infiltration mission. the level goals are:
    1.)barbarians defend the castle.
    2.)the imperials can try to take back control of the castle.. or...
    3.)the imperials can destroy the castle.

    the watr has to do with the destroy goal. basically the castle has a large container that collects rain water. this rain water is filtered into two aquaducts, where they meet at the entrance and form a criss-cross waterfall. as the water falls though it falls into two drains, these drains lead into the underground catacomb system where the imperials first infiltrate (starting position for imperials in the catacombs). the water then eventually makes its way intot he crystal room where it cools the crystal. the crystal is what powers the fortress's levitation and if destoryed the fortress is destroyed. it is the imperials job to stop the water flow and therefore cause the crystal to overheat and destroy the fortress.
    and gaus, for that price i can not turn down such an informative book, i'll check it out, thanks.
    thanks for the suggestions so far, i'll make the changes and post back soon (hopefully).
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    Just wanted to point out something that i find helps me.
    jpaintsu8.jpg

    Notice how the how the black and white version just blurs together and there are no points of interest. Thats not a good thing to see you need to get this thing lit so that it creates points of interest in the lighting. Something that also might help is to change up the color on some of the outer walls. The idea is to break out shapes threw use of color.
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    tgz, thats a good technique I do that too- whats good to do is make a new layer with grey and set it to saturation over the picture, then inbetween those layers make an overlay layer and paint with black and white to pick out the important areas and define stuff. then take off the saturation, maybe tone the overlay down here and there- and the result is what you should shoot for with the textures and lighting
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    ok, i'll kep that in mind when doing the lighting. however right now its all lit by one omni in max. all final lighting will be done in the engine.
  • Jarrod1937
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    Jarrod1937 polycounter lvl 15
    [ QUOTE ]

    Your bird's eye view has really come together, but you need to focus more on game camera and player view. Import some scale reference player models and copy them all around at key scale locations (doors, paths, lookouts, etc.), and start posting screen shots of those angles, because when it comes down to it, what the player sees in game is all that matters.

    [/ QUOTE ]
    boy how right you are. today i did this and found that while my over the top camera looks nice and detailed... my player view looks kind of bland. i'll be adding a lot more things around the p[layer ground level next i guess.
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