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UT3 & Gears Environment Art

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  • Honolulu_Ninja
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    Honolulu_Ninja polycounter lvl 17
    I dub thee Insane-o!

    wtfzomgbbqthxlol, awesome attention to detail.
    truly inspirational. :)
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    Excellent stuff here. Hey kevin how did you get the hieroglyphic
    writings edges beveled like that with meshsmooth on?
  • Monochrome
    Very nice detail, but I really dont like that kind of smooth tech style. It is actually one of the reasons why I did not buy UT3. I feel the kind of detail and overal shape try so hard to look like something they end up looking more like abstract shapes with nonsensical detail all over it.
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    A few Necris walkways.

    NEC_Floors_STR1.jpg

    NEC_Floors_STR2.jpg

    NEC_Floors_TJunc1.jpg

    NEC_Floors_TJunc2.jpg

    NEC_Floors_CROSS1.jpg

    NEC_Floors_CROSS2.jpg
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    You can't be stopped! Keep it up Kevin, the Johnstone folder grows!
  • RazorBladder
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    RazorBladder polycounter lvl 18
    *stares at all the complex wiring*

    How... the fuck, sir.

    Impressive as always :)
  • Zephir62
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    Zephir62 polycounter lvl 12
    Everything is mirrored, but you did a good job on masking up any repetition. This stuff is flipping ace.

    In fact, it's only critic is that it's TOO complex for the eye to process and appreciate, especially at a quick glance in-game.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    So much shit happening in those models it actually gives me a bit of a headache. Maybe that's because i'm imagining modeling that...

    Too many lofts!!! I dub you the LoftOMatic!

    BTW whats with the mudbox on the concrete? Why not just use a mask and do a normal map overlay on the normals of that detail? Not like anyone would notice the difference when you have five billion wires/cables drooping over it. Maybe its just my disinterest in making so many micro detail that peoples eyes explode apon viewing such detail.

    BTW you must really hate your computer... slave driver! My work comp chugs/growns at a simple 2048x2 in PS and max running in the background. Then again the 50-100 layers in the PS file might not be helping much either.
  • g0th
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    g0th triangle
    Wow, this stuff is insane. Very nice work.

    Thanks a lot for sharing.
  • animatr
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    animatr polycounter lvl 18
    TGZ: we have 16 gigs of ram :) gotta use it all up somehow!

    awesome work Kevin! I like seeing your work hung up in the halls. the more I look at this thread, the more I realize that most of that stuff is yours:)
  • Zipfinator
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    Zipfinator polycounter lvl 9
    Wow!! Looks great. If anything there's too much detail!!! I just started modeling about a month ago, so even trying to think about how you made this confuses me... Hope to see more work from you soon!
  • JordanW
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    JordanW polycounter lvl 19
    TGZ, I cant speak for Kevin's decision to mudbox that piece specifically but it never hurts to fully detail a piece in 3d because you can use it elsewhere in another mesh.
  • Neox
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    Neox veteran polycounter
    You don't need meshtools anymore, all the functions are integrated in max now.

    so how do you divide an edge in it's center? how do you spin edges? didn#t find alot of meshtools functions, i still install them, and to answer the inital question, they are scripts, they still work in max 2009
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    As Jordan mentioned, reuse is a big factor in choosing to zbrush or mudbox a piece.
    There was only ever 1 256x96 units piece of concrete modelled and then deformed into
    all the other shapes so that it tiles with itself and every other floor piece.

    I did push too far with the detail on this set, but I didnt know what was too far to go
    until this piece so it was worth it for that alone :)
  • Paul Pepera
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    Paul Pepera polycounter lvl 9
    Sex!

    Question.. how detailed were the concepts (if any) for those Necris walkways?
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    They were pretty detailed for the floors, Kovacs has made sketches demonstrating how
    parts of the floors could restract and animate to expose more detailed sections underneath.

    It was really clear that he was driving at the notion of the Necris stuff overwriting and melding
    with the turkish stuff that was originally there.

    The backstory that we came up with for the Necris environment was that the warriors would
    take over a hostile environment once they had pacified the resistence there by dropping
    a nanoblack viral bomb which would act like an intelligent environmental virus that would
    grow over what ever it found, mimicing its style and gradually sucking the life out of it so
    it could harness more power for the Necris frontline and not require any 'capture and hold'
    effort.

    With that in mind, we went crazy with wires and detail, Giger meets Islam was the phrase
    I was always throwing out there to justify what we were doing.
    The thing about islamic art is that its as detail intensive as this stuff and if you read up on
    the why's and wherefores of that you realize its all designed to make certain sections of
    itself more readable and clear when seen from the correct distances.

    I think we managed to pull a little of that off but there was certainly still room for improvement
    and there were of course balancing mistakes made but it was exciting stuff to try.

    I have a complete respect for the intensity and geometric form and opulent use of colour that
    Islamic art is famous for, their stuff is just genius.
  • Paul Pepera
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    Paul Pepera polycounter lvl 9
    Thanks for the answer. I definitely feel the Giger influence in these peices; the last Necris peice especially reminds me of one of his biomechanical landscapes.

    Can't wait to see more! :)
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    Hey kevin how did you get the hieroglyphic
    writings edges beveled like that with meshsmooth on?
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    animatr, so that where you went... For the last few months i have been wondering where the hell you disappeared off to. You do realize you left me as the only polycounter here at lith?

    16gigs of ram??!! Fuck, i need to be keeping a better track of the jones's... I was still thinking that 4gigs was alot...

    Kevin, I didn't see/know that it was being reused, good call in that case. BTW what res are those normal map textures in game? Alot of the wire work look almost too small to get properly picked up when mipped down to a 1024x.
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    NEC_Walkway1024.jpg

    You can see here that the wire still read fine at 1024. I started my career making 32by32
    and 64by64 textures on playstation1 and its surprising how much is still readable if you
    balance colour and tone in a more photographic fashion.

    The real problem is more to do with the balance of assets in the scene, a lot of the crazy
    dark metal and wire crazy pieces were balanced out by the light creame coloured low specularity concrete pieces tha the dark stuff was placed on top of.

    Oblast: What piece, tell me the image name and the area of if you are asking about and I
    can explain, I ignored your last request because its so vague I couldn't really address it.
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    Sry the first Nercis block piece where is says "trims" on page 5. They're are strange curved deco writings on there. How did you bevel those writings, because i have a hard time beveling lettering or symbols. Also are those symbols or writings meshsmoothed?
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    Well I make a spline shaped like the shape I want, then use the bevel modifier
    or the shell modifier then chamfer.

    I'm guessing you are more concerned with edge flow, tidying up a shape like that so you
    can then take it into zbrush when its all in nice quads to aid subdivision is the tougher
    part as you need to gradually terminate your edge loops as you get closer to the thin
    corners at the extremities of whatever the shape is.

    NEC_Deco_WIRE1.jpg

    This image should help show what I mean about thinning out your edge loops as you
    get closer to the extremities of the shape. This grad is subdivided already as I was
    prepping it for zbrush, it only had 1 subdivision though, so you can see what edge loops
    I used still.
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    Ah... The Bevel modifier. Thanks a lot for the help.
  • Talbot
    Do you like to use zbrush or mudbox and why?

    Keep up the good work!
  • King Mango
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    King Mango polycounter lvl 10
    lmao... I just told a friend at "Big Studio Name" that I could model just about anything now.
    I had to type that with one hand as the other is busy trying to pull my foot out of my mouth...
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    I use Zbrush, it can handle more polys, the wider array of tools let me do more, I don't have problems with the interface and I just have a reliable and familiar workflow with the thing now.

    I tried mudbox for a few months when at the time Zbrush2.5 was out and didnt have all the new tools it got by 3.1 but there wasnt much between the 2 in order to pic a clear winner.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Any idea when the new site will be up and running? I expect you're crunching like buggery at the minute.
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    No idea, haven't really made time to put new html together, just been rendering stuff
    when theres time and showing it here. As far as crunch goes, its more on the Coders
    now, you know its always them that does the last of the heavy lifting.

    It's a far far more impressive game this time though, its been worth the effort, we'll have to
    get together and play some Hoarde in November :)
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    My pc at home is still out of order, when its fixed, i'll take a bunch of screengrabs of
    the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.

    I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
    more easily how to make new forms.
  • kite
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    kite polycounter lvl 17
    wow super work, love the necris stuff particularly
  • RustyFranks
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    RustyFranks polycounter lvl 17
    you are the artist formerly known as rorshach are you not? if so your stuff has been an inspiration for a long time. if not... your stuff is now a great inspiration :poly108::poly108::poly108:
  • Marcan
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    Marcan polycounter lvl 12
    My pc at home is still out of order, when its fixed, i'll take a bunch of screengrabs of
    the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.

    I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
    more easily how to make new forms.

    +1

    I for one would be very interested to see this as well.
  • Okt
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    Okt polycounter lvl 19
    My pc at home is still out of order, when its fixed, i'll take a bunch of screengrabs of
    the wires of these pieces so you can see how they were put together.

    I always found simply seeing others wires , before they are subdivided, let me understand
    more easily how to make new forms.


    Can't wait.

    This whole thread has insane amounts of win all over it.
  • thegreatjmo
    No second word. It looks beautiful, especially the cannon.
  • Coridium
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    Coridium polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the great post and very detailed explainations. Its really insperational and very good of you to take the time out of your busy shedule to post all of this information, cant wait for more!

    On a side note, you mentioned in one of your earlier posts that your wife was expecting a baby soon, so I just wanted to say congratulations to you both!
  • Pedro Amorim
    just wanted to bump this thread so that Kevin can post some images og Gears2 :D
    eheh
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
  • killingpeople
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    killingpeople polycounter lvl 18
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    the irony in his sarcasm amazes me
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
    Autocon wrote: »
    the irony in his sarcasm amazes me

    touche
  • byder
    Just have to add my two cents to this thread. :D
    Kevin's work is really inspirational! Thanks for posting it up here!
    Its nice to read your processes, and the time spent on specific assest!
    Thanks for the awesome thread!
    ~C :D
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
    Hey Folks,

    I've been putting this thread off for a while as I've been busy with my newest addition to
    the family ...

    Nuala01.jpg

    Nuala02.jpg

    Nuala Johnstone was born 8 pounds 7 ounces at 3.34pm on September 10th
    and really, thats where the majority of my time has been spent lately :)

    She's doing great, growing very fast, freakishly attentive to the world around her
    and unusually quick to develop neck muscles and the ability to turn over within a month
    when they aint supposed to until the 4month mark.

    We're wondering what next frankly but its just a wonderful time right now at home and
    at work now that Gears2 is out and doing well also so thats why I haven't updated in a while.

    I'll see about knocking out some renders soon, but Fallout3 and Gears2 + family is eating
    all my time right now :)
  • indian_boy
    real nice texture job
    wats the poly count on her?

    naw j/ks

    [belated] congrats on the baby!

    good luck!
  • Cody
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    Cody polycounter lvl 15
    Kick ass baby dude! Congrats! :) Those are the best baby facial expressions I have ever seen.

    The second one reads - "What'd you say, punk?!?!"
  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    looks like he is wondering what that thing you are pointing at him is, haha.
    so cute
  • IronHawk
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    IronHawk polycounter lvl 10
    WoW! Good work man! Congrats.
  • hobodactyl
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    hobodactyl polycounter lvl 18
    She's very cute, congratulations!

    Thanks so much for all the insight into your workflow, too, it's greatly appreciated :D
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    congrats again Kevin, little Johnstones everywhere!
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
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