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Bruges, Belgium Environment

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Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
Alright so my next project is going to be an alley way in Bruges. Gonna put it in Unreal 3 so although it's going to be just an alley I want it to look complete at every angle.

Here's some of my ref:
ref-1.jpg

and progress:
v2.jpg
v22.jpg
v23.jpg

Definitely would like some comments, ideas, and critiques before I get too far into this thing. Thanks guys.

Replies

  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Too early to tell but are you still in the early blockout stuff?

    Are you going to do high res work for your normal maps?
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    I think I will do hi to low poly on certain assets such as the wall lamp, doors, windows etc. Not the building itself unless people think otherwise.
  • Oneil
    I agree with Jesse it's still too early to tell, I see that you're aiming for the top right shot, that shot has a pretty good potential of looking bad ass, if you capture it's essence, there are to types of stages of lighting that you could use to make this look great 1 , do the lighting as the original shot has , late afternoon or, 2 pre-dusk to dusk
  • gamedev
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    gamedev polycounter lvl 12
    It is early, but start thinking about you final shots. The one posted is quite boring. Create some interesting near, mid, and far ground objects and pay close attention to the skyline silhouette you're making.

    Lastly, the front of your building is a mess. You need to cut it up so you can better re-use textures and increase the overall texture density when you're done.

    Good luck.
  • pliang
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    pliang polycounter lvl 17
    The top right one as mentioned is better as it also has the lighting scheme suggested that you should try and achieve...also I would do some refs on that same area if you can like a town square so that there's more to see...

    Also research some of the items that's not in there which you can add in like bikes...appliances, furnitures etc.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the feedback, taking all of it into consideration.

    Gamedev: I've never done tillable textures before because I've never modeled anything as big as a building, so I'm not entirely sure how my edges are supposed to look.

    Also, in order to apply a tillable texture to a particular part of the building do I need to detach that portion and unwrap it separately? Like so?

    question-1.jpg

    Any tutorials or help you guys can give me would be awesome. Also if anyone knows of any tutorial to create bushes (the kind that is seen in the top right image in my first post) that would be great.
  • Pedro Amorim
    im guessing since that is such a large planar area. you could just use a 512*512 texture and tile it in that wall. you canse use decals to stuff like dirt under the windows and whatnot. later you can do some AO on a diferent UV set since ut3 suports multiples UV sets.
  • Ott
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    Ott polycounter lvl 13
    This is a halfass explanation, but bear with me here:

    tilinguh6.jpg

    Basically you should cut your geometry to allow for the altering, stretching, skewing, resizing, replacing, and detailing the side of your wall in a fashion similar to this. Right now, you could do the entire wall with just 1x1024 texture that is like this, BUT you wont have any texture density at all.

    Don't render it from far back, render it at point blank range with your face right next to it. Does the texture hold up? Nice work.

    In order to achieve this, you need to cut your geometry in such a way that you can overlay specific areas as needed (especially the center areas) and reuse those UVs. In my texture example, I might reuse some of the center pieces such as this:

    final2dg2.jpg

    And therefore getting more re-usability out of my texture, as well as maximum texture density. Feel free to play around with your geometry, hide seams in creative ways, and really push your polygons.

    Any company using UT3 is going to be more impressed with your ability to maximize texture density and texture counts than they will whether this scene were 5k or 30k tris.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    That's very helpful Don, thank you! I haven't fixed my geometry to work with it yet but I will. Here's a small update, starting to take shape.

    Progress:
    v3.jpg
  • bounchfx
    [ QUOTE ]

    final2dg2.jpg



    [/ QUOTE ]

    do you have a good example of building geometry that demonstrates this technique?
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    [ QUOTE ]
    Any company using UT3 is going to be more impressed with your ability to maximize texture density and texture counts than they will whether this scene were 5k or 30k tris.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I disagree.

    While your above demonstration is nice, in the grand scheme of things texture density is trivial so long as its not noticeable. And unless you're playing an FPS, how the texture holds up with your 'face right next to it', doesn't matter.

    What will hold up in a decent environment portfolio is the understanding of what it is you're creating and the methods needed to achieve the goal. Texture density is just another piece of the pie.

    Keen, your scene is nice but I'd continue to flush it out completely before moving on to the actual unwrap process. To answer your question, you'll want to have edges cut in to the wall facade for wherever you'd like there to be a different texture used. Ott's example above, particularly his last iamge, shows how a wall could be broken up in to 6 different horizontal strips for use of 6 different textures.

    However, and this is totally dependent on the technology you're using, it's been my experience that only a couple - perhaps 3, maybe 4 - slices would be needed. The rest can be left up to decals, lightmaps, and shadows.

    To critique the piece itself, the angle and geometry is uninteresting... so far! There's much more you could do with something like this. Watch some movie and see how they use camera lenses and angles to achieve a feeling within a frame. From there, try and think of a way you can show this environment as a place with history, story, or character. Don't simply recreate what you're seeing in the references. Push this design, push yourself. Role play. Where are you? What's happening? Why is this interesting for someone to look at?

    Get creative, and keep posting smile.gif
  • Davision3D
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    Davision3D polycounter
    Looks good
    I think you should try to mak a upright format and put more perspective in it.
    Right now it looks not very inviting, some big windows would be nice.
  • Ott
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    Ott polycounter lvl 13
    [ QUOTE ]
    I disagree.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    So let me get this straight - 30k tris is NOT as taxing on the engine as your "6 textures with lightmaps and shadows"?

    This is what you are saying? I am hearing you right?

    While my example was relatively primitive in the grand scheme of things, go ahead and put 6 textures and decals on the sides of your walls and see how much texture memory you have left in your environment on the Xbox360 - let alone the PS3.

    Keep in mind Keen - if you are looking at studios making stuff for the XBox 360, you aren't doing it with the low end end / low res in mind....you are working with 720p high def specs in mind, for games that are coming out in 1-3 years from now. How a 512x512 texture looks on your screen may lose a LOT of its res on an HD TV if you aren't using it a little more efficiently.

    Open up UE3 and take a look at how Epic textures their buildings and the tricks they use with overlaying UVs and modularity rather than trying to cram 10 textures on each wall. As a matter of fact, a HUGE amount of their objects are using 1 material call. Awesome stuff, and the resource size on a per-object basis is amazing.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Ott, I never said 30k tris is not as taxing on the engine as 6 textures. I was simply implying that in the grand scheme of things, theres more to worry about than that. And if we're getting technical, the texture load isn't taxing to the engine - its the memory load the hardware can handle. I can pump 20 textures on a wall, on a PC, if I wanted to and be fine so long as my PC can handle it. I'd never do that, but you get my point. On a 360 you'd be completely boned.

    [ QUOTE ]
    "go ahead and put 6 textures and decals on the sides of your walls"

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Haha, ok? Done. Daily. Textures vary in resolution and memory so careful with what you're saying.

    I still stand by my original reply - I think there's bigger fish to fry for you Keen. Please don't let Ott or I derail or discourage you.

    EDIT: Keen - are you using anything as a size reference in your scene? I usually make a box that's about the height of a person when I do my environments to make sure things are as to scale as possible. I'm asking because it looks like some areas of your scene are off (door sizes) but it could be from the perspective.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the feedback and critiques, very helpful. I will hold off on the texturing till everything is modeled. Course I'll have a good amount of questions on that building texture business when I reach that stage smile.gif.

    Still have lots to model, specially the buildings in the back. But more critiques and suggestion would be dynamite.

    Here's What I got:
    v4.jpg

    Oh and Adam, I am using size reference, got an old ut2004 character helping me out.
  • Mark Dygert
    Looking good, nice progress so far, the bike is a nice touch.

    You might want to break the doorways away from the main mesh of the buildings and make them modular. Also you don't need to cut every window into the building. you can build modular windows that have a convincing window texture built into a plane that sits just behind the frame, or go with the old faithful method of adding shutters. Make sure the frame extends into the building and the plane sits just in front so it covers up the base building tile. The window on the right next to the barrel might be a good candidate for that but I normally would reserve that trick for higher up on the buildings where players won't easily look into the window.

    Also along the lines of building modularly using ott's texture example you can build modular pieces that fit into those areas, being able to mix and match the pieces to create new interesting buildings from the same textures/pieces.

    Looking good, keep at it, work some detail into the street/alley. Shallow Curbs, a gutter maybe. Sink the center of the street slightly to indicate wear. If you select the horizontal edges of the street and hit the connect button in the Edit Poly rollout, it will give you a new edge running down the center of your street.

    Something tells me you haven't gotten that far yet, but don't forget to include it. You can't really afford to skimp on the details that are close to the player. Most players will never be able to tell you what texture was on the ceiling but they can tell you what was on the floor.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Alright I want to make sure I'm understanding this concept Ott provided. When I create the edge loops on the building does the height seperation need to be 512 so that a 512x512 texture will fit perfectly?

    Here's my perception:
    example-1.jpg

    As far as my windows and doors go, I'll definitely do what you suggested Vig, but I think I'll keep low windows and doors cut out, cause I think it looks better that way. All your other suggestion I'll try to fit in as well. Thanks.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    is this Fps and will you be able to scale the buildings if not id decease the size of the mapping as you go up the building
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    I'll keep that in mind SHEPEIRO, though I'm still hoping to get my question answered, cause what you suggested just raises more questions, such as how would I get smaller texture sizes to tile with a bigger texture sizes?

    Here's a slight update:
    v5.jpg
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Keen, I suppose you wouldn't mind hosting an obj of this scene, would you? I'd like to try out something for some composition..
  • Ott
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    Ott polycounter lvl 13
    Keen - a couple things.

    First, no, it doesn't HAVE to be an specific texture size as far as 512, 256 etc...it's more of a personal scale - Where do you want the most details? Is size an issue as far as the object scale? (bricks, holes, moss, etc...)

    The main idea is simply to cut your geometry in such a way that you can also overlay the UVs. In your original geometry the only thing you could do is overlay 1 simple repeating texture, which is generally dull and too repetitive.

    As far as getting a smaller texture size in a bigger texture goes, all that means is that you would simply stretch the UVs more. The more you stretch the UV's the less detail it will get...but you could only have that part of your texture sheet something small...and the geometry cuts something big.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Ok I changed the geo on this piece I am working on to fit my needs but if you look at it I can easily change the texture on the trim at the top and at the bottom and the area in the middle for both the wall section and the pillar / edge pieces.

    I cut the geo into the windows because these can actually be changed and reposed to be opened.

    wall01_1.jpg
  • Tumerboy
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    Tumerboy polycounter lvl 17
    nice wall Jesse!
  • Ott
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    Ott polycounter lvl 13
    Thanks for the example Jess...that's essentially the same sort of texturing method applied. Once these sort of objects get hit with spec, shadows, normals...the repetition fades away much better than traditional square-repeating.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks guys. A lot can be added to this type of stuff to really break it up like lights on the walls, vegitation, posters and other types of decal cards.

    Even taking the same wall and just doing a texture change with a different material will go a long ways.
  • yeluis
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    yeluis polycounter lvl 17
    lots of gloss going on, starting to come together. try and add a slight color to your spec, it will help a lot to sell it better
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    I'd also tone the spec on the wall down...waaaay down. Unless a torrent of water just rained down, there's no way it would be that glossy. Otherwise, looks great smile.gif

    The texture mirroring on the pillar bothers me though. Either try and hide that by tucking it into a corner, or spare the texture space and paint another side.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    yeah i wasn't trying to pimp anything. that was a wip shot from something i am working on. The spec is way off on it and yeah the pillar gets embedded into the wall so i probably just showed the bad side.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Ok this is definitely making sense now. Thanks guys. Jesse, if it's not too much trouble, could you post your diffuse for this?

    Also Adam I sent you the .obj of the scene to your gmail. grin.gif
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    compfun.jpg

    I've seen a number of scene's like this before and always think that, while technically good, they could always use a bit more 'mmph' to really grab the viewer.

    For your piece here I tried adding a dramatic angle to the camera and focus on the road. What's down there? Why are we looking at it? Who's bike is that? Are any of these buildings important or are they JUST buildings?

    I also added some shapes to the far building on the right to help its silhouette. Nothing kills realism more than a straight edge. And while to us, looking at the real world, we may seem nothing but straight edges that is never the case. Since we can't get down to the nitty-gritty angles for a real-time videogame we can 'fake' that illusion with large bends and angles in what would normally be thought of as a straight edge.

    Also, I used a wide angle camera lense (35mm) to make the road seem longer than it is. This also created some non-parallel lines to things that are near the edge of the frame which I think helps making things look less straight. A wide angle can also add drama where there normally wouldn't be.

    Consider these elements for your final shot so you can add a rather interesting aspect to what normally can be a 'plain' (but good!) idea.

    Now, for the overall scene itself.

    You've got a lot of flat surfaces where a beveled edge would really happy catch some light. And, on everything that you've twinned (re: two identical windows beside eachother) consider breaking their mirror up by opening up one and closing the other.

    None of your details are smaller than a basketball and this scene needs a lot of that geometrical noise. Streets are dirty, buildings are old, people are filthy. And try and not have a flat wall like you do on the far right. A general rule-of-thumb I use when working is if the surface if flat for more than 3 meters then I've got to put something there to break it up.

    I'm going for dinner now but I will try and write more later

    Keep going!
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Adam, I love it man, this all so very helpful. Really taking everything to heart and I'm going to try and push the scene a lot more. I really dig the perspective but I was planning on putting this into Unreal 3, so I don't know how I would achieve this kind of look. But uh, I'll see what I can do.
  • Honolulu_Ninja
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    Honolulu_Ninja polycounter lvl 17
    Keen: I think you can change the FOV in UE3 rather easy so you can achieve such an effect as Adam made in his example.
    You simply move around the camera with ASWD if I recall correctly, have'nt touched ue3 much in a while though so I might be wrong. :/
  • gamedev
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    gamedev polycounter lvl 12
    Looking better Keen. And yea, tweaking camera settings such as FOV is pretty easy in UE3. You could even drop in a custom camera actor and look through that and not mess up the default cams.

    Keep it coming!
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    nice looking stuff Keen.
    Somewhere at the beginning u asked how to do hanging bushes/plants.
    Here is a mesh layout as an answer to ur question:

    hangingbushsz0.jpg
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    really like the way this is going hehehe , Adam, that angle is awesome wink.gif
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    nice environment start.
    about the hanhing plant.... it depends on how you are gonna use them but plants like that can be very expensive due to over draw, in my experience i found that giving each frond more tris and some shape can allow you to reduce the no# fronds which can much reduce the overdraw compared to screen coverage. this allows you to cover whole sides of buildings etc without it framing out
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Well I've decided to move on to texturing just to keep myself excited about the project. As I texture I'll continue to add props where they are needed.

    Currently this is just a quick mock up of a color scheme I'm thinking about going with. It's rough I know, but it helps me see what I want to accomplish. I'm not the greatest when it comes to color schemes so any suggestions or critiques would be good before I get detailed with it.

    Lastly, with the bush in the back (the green glob back there). I'm going to go with modeling most the bush and adding planes to push the silhouette as was suggested here http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=260200&an=0&page=0#Post260200.
    Does it look like I could pull it off the way I made it?


    v6.jpg

    Adam I did move around my geometry to avoid the straight lines, still have more to mess up but I'm going to texture most of it first (read your post in GD).

    EDIT: Also, when in UE3 I plan on making this a night scene. Just FYI.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Looking good! Lot's of optimizing on the mesh still needed, but otherwise its looking PIMP.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Believe it or not I'm still working on this thing. I recently got an art test from Bottle Rocket Games, a big one too, a full scene. Still waiting to see if I get the job. That and I'm trying to learn UE3 with much help from posting in technical talk.

    Anyways, I'm starting to get the hang of Unreal and getting models and textures inside it. Having trouble getting nice lighting though, anyone have any tips or tutorials for ligting? I would like the scene to have a full moon with warm lights shining from inside the buildings. But by just adding lights the whole building lights up rather than just where the light source is coming from.

    progress2-1.jpg


    progress3.jpg
  • Saidin311
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    Saidin311 polycounter lvl 11
    I'm no expert with the lighting, but I'd probably set up a whole environment lighting using a direct light or skylight first and then build your window lights off that. You can still use a direct light (which is the sun essentially) as a very dim mood/moon/night light as well just tint it blue and reduce the brightness.

    Although is this built in a subtraction? It's best to use the new additive stuff.

    I can't tell, are those lights inside that building?

    And I'm not really sure but maybe you could fake some window glow with a little emissive material work? Maybe have 2 or 3 windows just have a faint emissive glow, and then stick an actual light over top one window to make it look like lights are on in that one.

    I'm glad you're keeping with this though, I can't wait to see the final!
  • alexk
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    alexk polycounter lvl 12
    maybe you can try scaling the lights or messing around with the light radius for each light in UE3 so it doesn't light up the whole building.. lookin good though
  • Cody
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    Cody polycounter lvl 15
    Wow. Great texture job there. Can we see some flats?
  • Armanguy
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    Armanguy polycounter lvl 17
    jesse how did you go about making those wall textures and normal maps? would love to see your work flow smile.gif
  • vertexguy
    I really like the angle Adam gave to the shot on the scene. It's definitely a lot more interesting that way. The main thing I think that looks off in the scene is the lighting. You need more shadows worked into the mesh through baking or vertex color. Take a look at the gray brick trim around the door entrance as an example. There should be a heavy shadow close to where it meets the building on the left side. Same with all the window frames. Because there is isn't one, it looks very flat. Also it looks like there is a strong light source somewhere out of frame that is casting down on the building. Architectually I'd like to see a few more details in the structure of the building so there isn't so much flat wall surface.
  • Loren Broach
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    Loren Broach polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the feedback. I probably asked lighting questions too early on in the project. I'm going to go ahead and get all the models built and textured and in unreal before I focus on the lighting.

    Vertex guy, I plan to add alpha planes with grunge on them to the buildings later. Also I'll keep adding models where areas seem sparse.

    Cody, my flats don't have much detail in them at this point, I'll post them later when I've added more to them.

    Anyways, here's a second building, I'm cruious what you guys think of the buildings. Think color scheme between the two buildings work together?

    progress4.jpg

    progress5.jpg
  • Cody
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    Cody polycounter lvl 15
    I think the color scheme works fine, and it's all shaping up very nicely.
  • Hourences
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    Hourences polycounter lvl 18
    I dont know if its your intention to build a photo realistic Brugge, but the real one has flat streets afaik, and your reference pictures seem to be from all over Europe.
    And clay bricks are a very popular and commonly seen building material in Brugge, not entirely reflected right now.

    The board at the door says Olhallen which is Norsk for "the beerhall" as far as I know. Norway lays more than 1000 KM from Belgium.


    Your lighting issue comes from interpolated vertex lighting, read this : http://book.hourences.com/tutorialsue3lightmap.htm to get an idea about lightmap baking in Unreal.

    Optionally also go over this : http://book.hourences.com/tutorialsue3modeling2.htm as it can be beneficial to split meshes a certain way, for the lighting.
  • motives
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    motives polycounter lvl 18
    I think the main issues are that
    #1:
    you skewed it to much and dont have the polygons to support it. For example, whats those things going down the wall? the really segmented looks kinda throw it off and i cant identify it. is it a drainpipe? same goes for the corner of the building. In general when you can count the polys on an object it aint got the right shape smile.gif. the road kinda suffer from it aswell. Add more polys so you get away from the blocky look. Also i would do some studys of real structural damage and how buildings "set" during time. Things happen for a reason and the more you understand it the more natural your buildings will look
    #2:
    you got scale issues. compare the decorations on the balconys compared to the wallamps for example. Also i cant help thinking the stones around that door looks way thick aswell.
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