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Watchtower - UnrealED

polycounter lvl 15
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Lamont polycounter lvl 15
This is my latest project since I have a lot of free time now and this is my first thread here on PolyCount :P. All I did was google "watchtower" and went from there.

watch_tower_03.jpg

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  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    Mind showing a shaded version? I have a hard time seeing exactly what is going on.
    Looks good from what I can tell, but I want to be sure.
    thanks
    -Andy
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Horray for UV's and placement of all those damn guardrails. Now on to setting up materials in UnrealED and collision in Maya.

    watch_tower_06.jpg
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Joopson wrote: »
    Mind showing a shaded version? I have a hard time seeing exactly what is going on.
    Looks good from what I can tell, but I want to be sure.
    Haha, yeah, I work in non-shaded/wireframe so I can see the points better.

    watch_tower_07.jpg
  • warby
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    warby polycounter lvl 18
    thats maya not unrealed :D
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    warby wrote: »
    thats maya not unrealed :D
    Haha, yeah, as soon as I set up the collision prims it will be.
  • snake85027
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    snake85027 polycounter lvl 18
    haha , oh yeaaaaaaaaaaa, get it on , so is this like hop scotch to the max? Just messing.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    snake85027 wrote: »
    haha , oh yeaaaaaaaaaaa, get it on , so is this like hop scotch to the max? Just messing.
    No, it's hop scotch to the extreme ;).
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    Reminds me a bit of this (the in game asset more than the concept itself)
    http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/images/conceptart/ConArt20070905_15.jpg
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    cholden wrote: »
    Reminds me a bit of this (the in game asset more than the concept itself)
    http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/images/conceptart/ConArt20070905_15.jpg
    That's pretty bad-ass looking concept there, if I had saw that before I found the ref image I am using now, I would have based it on that.

    This is the material for the terrain/building (they will be instances of this material). Smaller props will get a more simplified version of this. The normal map blue channel (depth) is multiplied with the diffuse to give it more deeper look. All texture input tiling params (minus the masking) are exposed to the user.

    Specular map is quick and dirty by using the diffuse, and still looks great and cuts down on artist time making a dedicated spec map (and less instructions/texture usage). I could link the blue channel from the normal map as a mask for the spec map. Control/power of the spec map is also exposed to the artist to tweak.

    If anyone is interested in the materials from this, I can share them when the project is over.

    watch_tower_08.jpg
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    yo lamont do i reakognise that avatar from cgchat days?

    im hoping your going to cut more detail into those cliff edges
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    SHEPEIRO wrote: »
    im hoping your going to cut more detail into those cliff edges
    Vegetation and undergrowth :).
    SHEPEIRO wrote: »
    yo lamont do i reakognise that avatar from cgchat days?
    That's me :D!! Also on GA.org. And I recall your Porko Rosso piece. I dug it a lot :)
  • JasonLavoie
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    JasonLavoie polycounter lvl 18
    Are you trying to improve workflow / speed? Or is this for portfolio use... if its for portfolio use then I say take the extra time and do dedicated spec maps, it will only make your piece look better in the end.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Are you trying to improve workflow / speed? Or is this for portfolio use... if its for portfolio use then I say take the extra time and do dedicated spec maps, it will only make your piece look better in the end.
    Thanks for taking notice. When I do things like this I am thinking about the production pipeline, a dedicated spec map, or even a packed in spec map on one of the images might add a little to it in terms of variance. If it were packed into a map, it would kick it up to DTX5, a MUCH larger texture in terms of memory and size. But if you're bound by memory (as we all are), it's a good solution. If I had never mentioned it, you would have never known or could have made out the difference.

    Even from what is below, I've optimized it and used vert colors to mask out some things.

    I'll make an example material and post images between the two later today.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    SHEPEIRO wrote: »
    im hoping your going to cut more detail into those cliff edges
    I'm pretty much going at the speed of a snail making a cage-mesh that looks good for the first set of tangled vines. Been working on it since last night.

    watch_tower_10.jpg
  • MetalMan123
    Hey mate you might want to break the mesh up, this would only be need if you where worried about culling. also it helps with kit bashing
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Hey mate you might want to break the mesh up, this would only be need if you where worried about culling. also it helps with kit bashing
    It's not a solid mesh, I just had all layers visible. Changed direction anyways after some tests (and trying to get the "overgrown vine look" was not working out). Get more bang just by doing leaves. So I made a few meshes to dress up the model a bit.

    watch_tower_11.jpg
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Update. The path looks like sh*t... I keep putting it off, but I will take care of it, after I do some more veggitation and rubble. I do have a solution for it, it will match the idea for the rubble perfectly.

    watch_tower_14.jpg
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Wow, this is shaping up nicely! Looking forward to the next update.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Thanks BradMyers for the compliments.

    Here is another update. Some issues I have with it so far:

    Even with the lumber steps, the grass needs to be taken care of. Moss on the old parts of the structure, more "lush" vegetation on the ground in key spots... the ground where the stone wall meets needs to somehow anchor it (grass/debris along the edges) I know I am forgetting something now, but I hope to get the tower portion in tonight.

    watch_tower_16.jpg
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Some stuff I did late last night and early this morning before I went to bed. I still have some UV wrangling on the tower bit, the big ass seam on the rocks, add in the wooden structure, moss growing (I have an idea for this one...), grass to break up the ground more, I still did not do anything to fix the seam issue on the grass. I promised myself I would not do anything on the model today, but that doesn't stop me from doing research :D!!


    watchtowerz_00.jpg

    watchtowerz_01.jpg

    watchtowerz_02.jpg

    watchtowerz_03.jpg

    watchtowerz_04.jpg
  • Mtg_kirin
    why are the leaves on the mountain so much bigger then the ones on the tower?
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Mtg_kirin wrote: »
    why are the leaves on the mountain so much bigger then the ones on the tower?
    Faces are bigger. Someone asked what smaller leaves would look like on another forum. So instead of redoing the meshes below, I made the tower ones bit smaller. I think larger leaves gives it that slight fantasy look and a lot more cover without making it too dense and read better, smaller ones would require a lot more to make dense.
  • Mtg_kirin
    haha ya that was me on other forum... thought I had posted on this one.... sorry to be such a drag. I had seen that u made the tower leaves smaller and was wondering why u left the others.

    But now that you say it, I agree does give a fantasy feel. May look sweet when all done

    I love the leaves on the tower though
  • imb3nt
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    imb3nt polycounter lvl 14
    Looking awesome man. Great work.:thumbup:
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Mtg_kirin wrote: »
    haha ya that was me on other forum... thought I had posted on this one.... sorry to be such a drag.
    lol!! No problem man! I didn't make the connection between both forums.
    Mtg_kirin wrote: »
    and I agree does give it a fantasy feel.
    I'll bump the size up on the tower ones and we'll see how it looks together. If it's too big I can bump all the them slightly down.
  • warby
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    warby polycounter lvl 18
    i think the vertex color shadows for the leaves are really not working. what i would do is make the leaves all be a separate object they have their own material anyway so you wont be gaining any extra draw calls by doing this. than set that object to "not" cast a shadow.

    instead build a little decal below the leaves and put a material on them that works as follows:

    -add a texture sample with your leaf texture in it hook its alpha Chanel into a
    -"one minus" node that will invert the white opaque areas to black hook that into an
    - add node and combine it with a
    - constant1 vector give it a little i don't know 0.3 or 0.4 to lighten it up a bit the combined add color goes into the
    -defuse slot on your material than
    -set the material at the bottom of the material editor to unlit and transparency multiply.

    and wonders will happen :)
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    warby wrote: »
    instead build a little decal below the leaves and put a material on them that works as follows:

    -add a texture sample with your leaf texture in it hook its alpha Chanel into a
    -"one minus" node that will invert the white opaque areas to black hook that into an
    - add node and combine it with a
    - constant1 vector give it a little i don't know 0.3 or 0.4 to lighten it up a bit the combined add color goes into the
    -defuse slot on your material than

    -set the material at the bottom of the material editor to unlit and transparency multiply.

    and wonders will happen :)
    I see what you're doing but you lost me from the bold text on.

    Will this be some sort of projector for the leaves?
  • warby
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    warby polycounter lvl 18
    no you would have to put geometry yourself where you want the shadow to go if i still had unreal installed i would make you a screenshot of the material setup :/
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    warby wrote: »
    no you would have to put geometry yourself where you want the shadow to go if i still had unreal installed i would make you a screenshot of the material setup :/
    I'll take a screen shot of what it sounds like you outlined below.
  • Lamont
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Mtg_kirin, I ended up dropping the size of the larger ones on the hillside by 25% and bringing up the ones on the tower by 200%. If anyone needs the scale faces on local I'll wrap it up in a nice gui and post it.

    Somewhere along the way Transform Component lost ALL of it's functionality.
  • monkeyboy_garth
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    monkeyboy_garth polycounter lvl 9
    Mtg_kirin wrote: »
    why are the leaves on the mountain so much bigger then the ones on the tower?

    I was thinking the same thing. It's a bit distracting at the moment. Coming along nicely otherwise.
  • warby
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    warby polycounter lvl 18
    yes thanks for the screenshot your material nodes are exactly right !

    what is missing is at the bottom where it says:

    blend mode: blend_opaque
    change it to blend_multiply or blend_modulate not sure what its called anymore in the old unreal there was also a blend_darken but i think they kicked that out :)
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    warby wrote: »
    yes thanks for the screenshot your material nodes are exactly right !

    what is missing is at the bottom where it says:

    blend mode: blend_opaque
    change it to blend_multiply or blend_modulate not sure what its called anymore in the old unreal there was also a blend_darken but i think they kicked that out :)
    Oh then it's modulate I think. Will mess around with it today. After I fix all the small issues I found I'll post another screenshot.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Done. Gotta call it, every time I open it up, I add something or change something. I almost started the tower over again last night, but realized the root of the problem was the outside was kinda boring, so I added a walkway around it.

    Thanks everyone for the tips especially Warby for the nice shadow idea. I did not use it here, but it will be used in the next project I am starting today and will plan according.

    watchTower_final_04.jpg

    watchTower_final_10.jpg

    watchTower_final_08.jpg

    Preview of my next project: A little of what I used to do combined with what I wish I could have done.

    gsp_kos_ufc.jpg
  • EarthQuake
    Looks like someone gave your tower a nice rub-down with oil. Did it get a happy ending too?
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Looks like someone gave your tower a nice rub-down with oil. Did it get a happy ending too?
    No need for happy endings with soapies, you know that. I did go a little overboard on it, but I wanted to catch some of that spec to make it "hot". I will dig into it since it's an easy fix in the mat instance.
  • Lee3dee
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    Lee3dee polycounter lvl 18
    put a constant node into the spec input in the material editor, then you can control the spec with simple value adjustments.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Lee3dee wrote: »
    put a constant node into the spec input in the material editor, then you can control the spec with simple value adjustments.
    Yeah, I put a scalar param so it's available to all instances. But one of the things I should have done was add another to adjust the tightness of the spec (a scalar to the Spec Power) as well. I also could have made it so I can dull the spec map, but at that point can do that in PS.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Thanks for the input again.

    spec.jpg
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    I haven't read this thread in its entirety so perhaps it's already been mentioned, but the scale of the steps leading up to the tower seem outta scale with the size of the tower itself.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    adamBrome wrote: »
    I haven't read this thread in its entirety so perhaps it's already been mentioned, but the scale of the steps leading up to the tower seem outta scale with the size of the tower itself.
    You're right. I wanted huge wooden beams, but maybe they are too huge? The step size is average 10 inches, which is within Unreal's height allowable for a "step". But the size may be too big on the girth... but I dug it that way.

    Oh yeah, this is the image that got me started, I have no clue how I found it or why I chose to make it:

    harrison6e.jpg

    Then I found more info about what it actually was:

    http://www.scienceviews.com/parks/watchtower.html
  • Talbot
    I'm seeing some good improvements since your first post. Keep up the good work! :)
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