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Modular facade design (MEGA POST)

polycounter lvl 19
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adam polycounter lvl 19
Hi :)

So I went in to the latest challenge we had here at Polycount thinking I would actually finish it. My fiance was away for a few days, I didn't have to work over the weekend, no one was visiting us from out of town, it was perfect.... Long story short, I got caught up in playing videogames and taking some "me time" and totally neglected this piece.

But, here it is! She's finished! Ahem.. right.

I still want this piece to be as educational as its purpose was for the challenge so I've taken a bunch of pictures and will do my best to explain myself as I go.

Before we begin, you can check out the original thread to get caught up. I'll be stealing some text from my original post over there to paste over here as it'll save me time.

Overview & the Goal
I'm going to enter in this challenge with a piece that isn't "real world" and stretch myself from my comfort zone. The goal is to create a believable facade that'd exist in a world similar to that seen in Blade Runner or Gunnm.

I'm going to be working with a concept created by a friend & coworker, Cesar Rizo, specifically for this challenge.

To challenge myself personally, I'm going to hand paint the majority of the textures and, perhaps, try and do it in the style achieved by Valve with Team Fortress 2.

Rather than model a simple building facade with obvious modular pieces I'll be trying to elaborate on the idea of modular execution.
The Story
.: Electronic Memory Imprint, World Date: 3030.
:Macro Cosmo - 4th Quarter, Upper West Tribune
I can't remember the last time I sent in an EMI. If this is seen by anyone other myself than I fear I have finally fallen ill and the nano-vaccine no longer works.

If memory serves me right, its the year 3030. The corporations have ceased all further parts development and left us down here to carry on ourselves. They never gave a reason, I suppose they felt they didn't have to, but without any new parts being produced things have gotten especially frightening.

The technology here is aging. Hell, our entire world is aging. It's dirty. I don't leave it often, but whenever I peer through the glass at the front of the shop I see a world overrun with crime, make-shift mayhem, and suspended happiness. Ever since the last corporation left its been a who's-who war over ownership of the rarest parts. Humans destroying the robots. The robots murdering humans.

Except for me its different. I suppose I am lucky. I don't know why, but I don't get any trouble from anyone: Humans or robots a like. It's perplexing, but so long as I am alive I do not dare question this luck.

I've been running my shop now for nearly 120 years. No one can repair like I do. (Or so I like to believe, ha!) Specializing in rare augmentations by way of even rarer parts has helped my reputation around here. I'm up to three full recoveries a day. THREE! However, my rarities aren't arriving as much as they used to and I can't help but feel they will one day stop. The people here are too fickle to wait around for me to find a new source and if this happens business will slow down and I will quickly become nothing but a memory. At least a memory. I hope.

So please, accept this EMI as a tentative final EMI to be read by whomever ventures deep enough in the databank. Accept this EMI, as brief as it is, as testimony to the protests the corporations experienced when they threatened departure. You see, had they have stayed, I wouldn't have had to write this. My shop, no.. my life would have still flourished.

But alas, here it is.

Here is my life.

An image scan of my shop.

[IMAGE]

-MC
References

The Goods!!

Beauty render:

Rendered completely in Unreal Ed 3 the final asset when it was all said and done came in at exactly 20,000 triangles. The buildings in the background were added in to round-out the scene and show it in something of a natural surrounding. Even though they're just copies of the original, I think it helps.
modfacade1b.jpg

Choice close-ups, unlit and diffuse only:
I wanted to show some close-ups of the facade without any lighting or texture passes other than the diffuse. Hopefully, without those elements supporting it, the colorus compliment one another and the piece remains solid. This being my first "hand painted" piece of work, I pretty much second-guessed myself the entire time and am not sure if I pulled this particular goal off.

modfacade2a.jpg

modfacade2b.jpg

modfacade2c.jpg

Here she is in full unlit, diffuse-only goodness:


modfacade3a.jpg

Her wires:

modfacade3b.jpg

Front & side silhouette:

One that will really add character to an object, regardless of its nature, is a strong silhouette. You'll notice that the side silhouette is a lot stronger than the front; more attention was given to the objects placed on the front of the building as I assumed that if this were in a game, the player would constantly be looking up at the building and having strong shapes emerge from there would be far beneficial than the side. If I didn't have a triangle constraint the sides would have had more thrown at them, c'est la vie.

modfacade3c.jpg

modfacade3d.jpg

The stars of the show:

Here's the entire building broken down to its bare minimum (although, to be honest, I may have missed 1 or 2 little things).
modfacade3e.jpg

The texture sheet:

I'm pretty nervous about posting this. As I mentioned its the first time I tried to go for a 'painted' look and I think it could have been a lot better.

modfacade4b.jpg


Things worth mentioning...

You may be wondering where the actual modularily is in this piece. Underneath all of those props is a core building created with modular design. On top of it were props used to dress the entire building core. Those props, to varying degress, were created with modular design. From the shanty balconies to the rusty liquid tanks to the way things were unwrapped this piece was made with one word in mind: reuse.

If I weren't focusing on such a large building within the constraints we had I would have preferred the core areas to use rolling UV's: Where one floor's textures can have their UV's rolled slightly so that its not a repeating pattern throughout. Earthquake's (failed!) entry was going to utilize this technique and I think its really smart.

One thing I could have done stronger was push the "techno junk" element a bit more. Gunnm does this exceptionally well and I think I failed in that respect. I do think it looks "other worldly", but in the end it wasn't exactly what I was after.

This was my first time touching Unreal 3 tech in nearly 2 years so I had a lot to learn there. Thanks to vahl and my buddy Shannon for teaching me a few things. I'm well aware that the grass isn't lighting properly ;) Stupid transparent objects. :(

There's no light maps for this piece. I really wish I had the patients to get that to work in Unreal 3 but I wanted this to be finished and over with. I think the lighting it has holds up pretty strong so I didn't spend too much effort getting lightmaps setup. This piece even has its 2nd UV unwrapped and ready to go. I just couldn't be bothered to figure it out. Ah well, next time...

This was also the first time I never did any post work in Photoshop afterwards. Using an engine, compared to doing most of my stuff in Max than doing it's post work in Photoshop, allowed me to keep it local to 1 file. Pretty handy!

I listened to music while working on this that would 'put me in that spot'. I'm not sure what it was, but a few songs specifically had me feeling like I was thrown in universe similar to Gunnm. If you will, here's the soundtrack for this piece:

Crystal Castle's "Crimewave":
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXkQFjRcjC4[/ame]

Crystal Castle's "Untrust Us":
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGOiIfih8Ls[/ame]

Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s "Battle Royale"
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSAPkhZ--BY[/ame]

Ronald Jenkee's "Clutter":
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ3jVFReOHI[/ame]

Replies

  • Tumerboy
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    Tumerboy polycounter lvl 16
    Woot, fantastic work man. You did a good job pushing yourself, and you came out with something very presentable. Be proud.








    That being said, you're still late, and thus out of the competition. . .







    On second thought, EricV is still going to kick all our asses, so feel free to enter it :P
  • Tumerboy
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    Tumerboy polycounter lvl 16
    LAWLZ!


    "[00:10] MANCHiLD: EricV!
    [00:10] MANCHiLD: Fuck that guy! :P
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: hahaha
    [00:11] Tumerboy: agreed
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: IF IM ALLOWED TO ENTER I WILL CRUSH HIM
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: AND HIS SOUL
    [00:11] Tumerboy: and I'm telling him you said that
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: tell him the above 2 lines
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: in full capital letters
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: underlined if possible"



    Edit: Adam threatened me with beatings if I didn't convince you he was joking Eric. . . please believe me!
  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    yea, thats pretty rad. Just throw a couple hookers outside and it'll be complete.
  • vahl
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    vahl polycounter lvl 18
    cool cool bromester nice to see something finished, and that was I know a good exercise to learn some basics in unreal.

    end of the post is a bit emo, though. BAI BAI !!!
  • EarthQuake
    Is it proper procedure to post emo music at the end of threads?
  • JordanW
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    JordanW polycounter lvl 19
    I think your texturing work is hurting the overall appearance of this. When looking at the beauty render and the diffuse shot the shapes and details of the building are very confusing. Its hard to pick out shapes and what most things are. The solid color model image doesn't really have this problem. I think there are a lot of major paint swatches that are fighting with the 3d shapes you have modeled. An easy example is the tanks attached to the building. They have a LOT of contrast in their color variation and that breaks up the shape so it's hard to actually see the tank shape itself.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    vahl & Joe: Those replies make me want to cut myself :(:D

    Tinman - Ah, good point! I guess on my end I've always known them to be there so I didn't catch this sort of thing. When I wanted to paint 'rust on metal' I guess I had taken that idea a bit too far or exaggerated it a bit too much and ended up losing shape rather than adding information. I'll keep this in mind if I decide to go this route for next time. Thanks Tinman! UPDATE: One additional thing I was playing with for this piece in Unreal 3 was the idea of rim lighting. While I think that would help "pop" some objects out and show their silhouettes it is not a solution to the problem you've pointed out. Thanks again Tinman! :)
  • stimpack
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    stimpack polycounter lvl 10
    I like it! very close to tf2 look, but still unique enough to not be tf2. good use of repeating elements!
  • Jeremy Lindstrom
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    Jeremy Lindstrom polycounter lvl 18
    added to the enviro thread meeester adam, nice explanations...
  • Tumerboy
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    Tumerboy polycounter lvl 16
    don't encourage him.
  • Kovac
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    Kovac polycounter lvl 18
    Fantastic work, Adam. The color palette is absolutely perfect with the lit environment, and I really dig the style you were going for off of it. Seems like it could fit right into a game similar to a futuristic version of The City of Metronome.
  • Ferg
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    Ferg polycounter lvl 17
    nice final, only question is, whats with the video screens? The rest of the piece is this beautiful pastel stylized shop with sexy lighting and color scheme and an some kinda alien language sign... and crappy 1990's PS1 game FMV's playing on the screens?
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Hell ya dude! I specifically searched for 1990 news broadcasts, LOL
  • Ajax
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    Ajax polycounter lvl 18
    Looks great! I think the experiment in texturing really paid off, I like it a lot.
  • AndyLittleton
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    AndyLittleton polycounter lvl 10
    Awesome work man. This thread inspires me. How long did it take you to do this if you don't mind me asking. Just trying to get an idea of where i need to be at in terms of speed. If you say 1 day imma end my misery early.
  • Saidin311
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    Saidin311 polycounter lvl 11
    Pretty amazing, and good learning in here! I've learned so much from seeing the few completed entries and working on my own. More enviro comps plz!!1

    I'm curious to know what your Unreal setup was to get that nice soft shadow across the building without using a lightmap?
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    very inspiring, great FUNKY job !!

    Just ur grass looks a bit off.
    It is too bright on ur beauty render. It also looks like its a 32x32 texture. I would do it at least 64x64 or even 128x128 if it an FPS evniro.
  • bluekangaroo
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    bluekangaroo polycounter lvl 13
    Tumerboy wrote: »
    LAWLZ!


    "[00:10] MANCHiLD: EricV!
    [00:10] MANCHiLD: Fuck that guy! :P
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: hahaha
    [00:11] Tumerboy: agreed
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: IF IM ALLOWED TO ENTER I WILL CRUSH HIM
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: AND HIS SOUL
    [00:11] Tumerboy: and I'm telling him you said that
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: tell him the above 2 lines
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: in full capital letters
    [00:11] MANCHiLD: underlined if possible"



    Edit: Adam threatened me with beatings if I didn't convince you he was joking Eric. . . please believe me!


    thats it...you're DEAD Manchild! bookin' my flight to Vancouver asap
  • Tumerboy
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    Tumerboy polycounter lvl 16
    lol, wow Eric, you're slow to the party. . .
  • indian_boy
    wow man thats awesome!
    love the style and everything!
    and it looks so efficient with the polycount and the texture space alloted etc

    love it!

    awesome work!
  • bluekangaroo
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    bluekangaroo polycounter lvl 13
    Tumerboy wrote: »
    lol, wow Eric, you're slow to the party. . .


    yeah, havent checked the thread since post 1 =/
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    I'm with tinman about texturing breaking up the shapes, but overall, it's neato. Kind of reminds me of the sets from idiocracy.

    I'd like to request a vertical beauty render since this is a vertical piece. Since most of the original beauty is blurry background, it kills my eyes to look at it long.
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