wip fantasy environment
polycounter lvl 18
still very wip, going for a god of war feel, unfortunately i only have time to work on this a few hours a week, few things im planning to add are
- add gargoyles
- add props (vases, shields, flags, chains)
- add broken glass
- touch up textures
- add reflection to the marble floor
- adjust lighting
- possible particles (acid rain, dust floating in the beams of light)
so far im happy with how things are coming along, this is a screen cap straight from max , comments / crits welcome!
Replies
I love the textures, are they made by you? The light beams look great too! Can't think of any negative crits.
these are straight screengrabs from 3dmax.. im faking alot of the fog and effects, i dont have an engine to play with so im doing what i can to emulate the post proecessing stuff games have nowadays with some oldskool techniques, the beams of light and fog are simple alpha planes with gradient textures.. yes very ps2 ish ,
textures are mostly photos i grabbed from cgtextures.com and touched up.. i still have alot of texture work to do but will do it in the polishing stage,
found some time to work on this and decided to add a bit more color into the fog to make it fit in with the rest of the scene, i threw in a few gargoyles in there, they arent mapped yet, along with the staircase
what does eveyone think of the overall composition? im really trying hard to work on that aspect of my environment skills
How often would you say that games use environments from 3D Studio Max as opposed to environments developed within an engine's level editor?
The background (sky) not vey clear though. I mean, it is hard to understand what is there.
There r also lit corners but there r no visible sources of light.
I would not suggest adding reflectivity to the floor, cause usually mediaval gothic buildings did not have that except for huge churches in large cities. It would also reduce ancient look or ur environment.
Also I suggest to make stairs from separate blocks of stones, cause that is the way they were usually done back then
Nice job though! Since u go for an old school techniques i suggest trying unreal engine.
do you by chance have a reference image of stairs made from blocks of stone?
i'd love to use the unreal engine, but my laptop cant run anything haha
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=ht...ficial%26sa%3DN
http://www.thesalvager.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/stone%20stairs.jpg
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Rothenburg/Photos/RoderStairs.jpg
http://www.gotuzzohomes.com/webpictures/Ceriana/CerianaStairs.JPG
I strongly suggest that u take some of those awesome books on medieval or any ancient architecture. Beside reference u'll get more inspiration for some other stuff that u may put into the scene
if the latter, i think u need to put the light in the sky somewhere in the foreground. let's say if the stairs (below the sky) had something with light/bright color, maybe a pattern, that would be your "foreground highlight". it would push your composition out of the background.
Also, I agree with the statement about making the stairs out of individual stones, but might I also suggest that you put in two 45 degree angles at each side to give the steps a more octagonal look? I think it'd look much better.
Finally, I hope you're planning to make those gargoyles much higher poly cause right now they're ruining the look of the rest of the map.
thanks for all the comments and crits!
heres a small update, finally will have time this weekend to crank things out! just addin some props n filling the room up, cant wait to start tweaking the lighting and fine tuning colors. getting sick of making bones lol
chip chug goalleyoh
Alex
My own personal taste would be to have the light rays being cast through the windows and broken walls. To do that the sun would have to be fairly low, and behind putting most of this great work in shadow. But, you can remedy that with some off-camera light source of a more un-natural colour and bring the light back in to the room.
That's of course, just my 2 cents.
Can we see the scene from a more generic angle? I'd like to see the entire piece...
And also I think that gargoyles r fine, imo their polycount does not ruin anything.
Btw, what about the column in lower right corner - it is missing polys
Btw, what about the column in lower right corner - it is missing polys
[/ QUOTE ]
Busted.
Just wanted to give you some props on your environment. Keep it up.
almost there! i hope.. still a few smoothing group issues. and stretched textures.. gonna clean em up this weeknd
this shot was edited a bit in fotoshop. added the birds, flags and blur around the castle in the bg, foreground i added a bit of dust/haze and a slight lens flare.. also played around with the colors a bit..
it's looking pretty close to whats here straight from max, just needed to concept a few things out..
here's what i have planed for the upcoming weekend when i have time
- fix smooth groups (skulls)
- stretched textures
- capping geometry
- adding shadow maps
- final touch up on terrain textures
- dust/fog particles
hopeefully that'll do it for the scene, almost time to put it to bed
thanks for all the comments and crits so far!! wires and flats, different angles, closeups will be posted when done!
Lighting is cool. U`ve done a great job. Pitty though it is not in-game.
Yet I`ve got one comment. The skulls in the very foreground feel being giant instead of being very close. They seem to belong to the same spacial plane as smaller skulls on stairs.
Anyways, ur environment is hot!
well back to the old lighting.. added a new sky.. not 100% happy with it, going to paint in more dark clouds
removed the god beams and fog for the time being.. going to move the beams behind the distant castle so it makes more sense
...
now the background castle is bugging me
U r right about the sky - it is not there yet.
I guess that the sky looks too much as a photo, and it
is too relistic comparing to the whole environment. I would suggest that u stylize the sky or even paint ur own.
U r doing great piece man.
after many crits. ive decided to do a overcasty sky with bits of sun peering out, not your typical sky, but hell its fantasy so why not? really happy with how this is tunring out. have a few more shots to take and should be done and onto the next scene, finally!!
this is a screencap from max with vertex colors, i've comped in the hard shadows, occlusion and specular, and a bit of color correction
I see you got the AO malarkey all sorted out, looks ace!!
Now - higher res!
The stairs look freaking gorgeous now! I knew the angles would make it look much better and I love what you did with the individual steps!
Also, I agree with Johny about getting those light rays back in and although I really like the selective focus on the scene giving the blur to the background buildings, they're still too brightly lit for my taste and I think if you cover them with a bit of fog again it would look stellar!
What are you planning to do with this scene by the way if anything?
The only thing I would say I don't like are the really harsh shadows on the archway to the left of the scene. Its great to have the contrast, but I think if you just lightened them up ever so slightly it would look better. Like a dark grey shadow as opposed to pitch black.
And the gargoyles look great now. Must have just been some smothing issues that made me not like them before.
You seriously need to get a portfolio site up man. If you need help making one, let me know.
but that's just my personal taste, at this stage, it's your piece, you proved you can do a great lighting, so if it's an artistic decision to go that way, then I respect it
so here it is! finally got the shots i wanted, the god beams have made a return. though not as obvious, i've adjusted the colors to make it less greenish, quite happy with the result
few things that never got in were ambient fx like fog and dust particles.. i just couldnt get them to look right, i tried playing with some depth of field, it looked kinda cool but i just didnt have enough stuff in the foreground/bg to make it worth while.. instead i added a slight haze to the distant objects to make it appear farther back.. hopefully next scene i'll be able to apply the things i missed out this time around..
i hope these shots give every1 a good view of the scene. im more or less done with it and going to move on to the next!
adam: hey thanks for your help, the AO totally makes it look pimped out, next scene will have more pollies just for u lol
torque: good point on the pillars being too dark.. im actually not tooo too pleased with the first shot where they are.. its like.. almost pitch black.. but i thought adding a light source there would distrct the eye.. i do have a portfolio btw.. its garbage though its just a bunch of personal stuff lol check it out http://members.shaw.ca/vickam/ as you can tell this is my first real attempt at next gen lookin stuff, thanks i may take u up on that offer haha
johny: i agree that the red/green color combo was prtty cool, created an eerie mood, which was what intended to do from the start, but for some reason it just didnt look right, what with the scene having no light sources, and seeing how its sposed to be a "cold" scary scene. i thought the reds kinda gave it too much of a warm feeling.. however i do plan to use a similar light setup for my next scene
vahl: aha greeenish game, i was thinking the same right before i posted the shot. seeing as how it was about 4am i thought it looked cool, i did a bit of color correction on the latest shots, brings out the blues and adds a bit of purple in there.. adds a bit more life into a dead scene but not too much
any comments and crits are welcome, i most likley won't be changing anything for this scene but will apply what others say towards the next environment i have planned thanks!
FullRez Version
then
AWESEOME.
ehhe
why not adding a tad light rays and in the left add that blueish color you like ? would make two mixes of awesome, i would also make like 3 variations of the enviro imo, this has so much potential...
Ur final images rock! I like the contrast between tha sky and foreground - well balanced and fitted together. Great texturework as well.
I am impressed by ur vertex coloring skills
so here are some specs if any one was wondering
27,451 triangles
5 - 1024x1024
1 - 1024x512
2 - 1024x256
4 - 512x512
1- 512x64
1 - 128x256
1 - 1024x256 (used for the lightbeam in distance)
johny: sorry man, looks like you really dig that other lighting scheme
oh and the full rez ver is http://members.shaw.ca/vickam/showcase/cathedral-shot17Comp.jpg