Environment scene Docks

A-Train · Jan 2009

Started out as the Splash Damage test, and I decided to expand on it a bit to make it a little scene. Congratulations to those artists out there that landed jobs before xmas in the London area. I remember reading about a polycounter that landed a job at Rocksteady working on the new Batman Arkham Asylum game...totally rad! Artists here are really talented, and i've learned a lot from taking a quick look (whilst working away) at what others have been up to.

From what I heard from my game recruiter (who I haven't heard from in a long time, hopefully I still have one..lol!)
I wasn't accepted with my test at an earlier stage in Nov 08'
So I kept working on the scene even after not being accepted and it's going to be a little scene for my portfolio. It was a good learning experience, and after a long while working on it, i'm going to move on. During the time I used xNormal quite often (jogshy you rule!) and learned quite a bit from EarthQuake's tutorial on high & low poly workflow. It was honestly my first environment working with high and low poly models for assets and certain building elements...so I think it was a good learning experience overall. Feedback is greatly appreciated, and I'd dig hearing comments on what others may have done. I definitely feel that there could be a large damaged area of the ground by the front area near the platform with rails. I was trying to go for a Silent Hill style with the textures (very gritty and dirty).

*EDIT* 186 Textures total (62 diffuse,62 normal,62 spec)
Tri's 24,400

Today i've been trying to get it to work in the Unreal Editor, but with no such luck (so far i've had a few UV problems, that are unexplainable). So I set it up in 3ds Max with standard FX shaders. I really wanted to get the real-time lighting of Unreal Editor, but I just started to learn it in the past 2 days. Hopefully get it working at some point with the help of you UE3 veteran polycounters.

Thread with my problem is here:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=59572

All images are 3ds Max Screencaps, with FX shaders. Sorry for the uneven
lighting (1 to 3 omni light constraint per object, so it's definitely not a real-time lighting solution like Unreal Editor would have given me).

Cheers! I'll be working on a new project starting this week. Crossing my fingers for a job in the UK in this new year (gotta get back to it).

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOWKgHafI/AAAAAAAAAWE/Wyi4C5ois3g/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP97.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOVe-SQeI/AAAAAAAAAV8/DkD-dcaRtQ4/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP96.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOWWajVEI/AAAAAAAAAWU/duCLnGyUuZk/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP99.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOWOdgQ2I/AAAAAAAAAWM/zPCupO6PG9Q/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP98.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOzS3ycrI/AAAAAAAAAWk/LG4F8E12BO4/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP101.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOzkHwGlI/AAAAAAAAAWs/kfzFeoketqw/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP102.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDO0YVifaI/AAAAAAAAAXE/rI8tU0B_9CU/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP105.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDOz3c4ykI/AAAAAAAAAW8/laPqybhi074/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP104.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDPcqBcgAI/AAAAAAAAAXU/ycf16e3I90Y/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP107.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDPcE7Ko5I/AAAAAAAAAXM/va7_W7MNkxI/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP106.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDPdWFyobI/AAAAAAAAAXk/rtXrH2MeeNU/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP109.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDPcwwEwEI/AAAAAAAAAXc/inrUM-51gz8/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP108.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDP39YPUtI/AAAAAAAAAX0/uvNaShLIdNw/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP111.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDPd6vjlKI/AAAAAAAAAXs/K3iJohAQTj4/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP110.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDP7Nd_enI/AAAAAAAAAYE/90KIOfe1eMY/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP113.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDP4ZwPYjI/AAAAAAAAAX8/HmnNgeRAGHk/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP112.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/SWDP7lvRogI/AAAAAAAAAYM/R9YK99elKb8/s1600-h/CompleteMap.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/ST5ayvbzAuI/AAAAAAAAAUc/VwvhlE4MG84/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP82.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xp_5Vf6lSqI/ST5bTGAJhqI/AAAAAAAAAUk/eoOmu9o9CWM/s1600-h/Art+Test+WIP83.jpg
Art+Test+WIP113.jpg

renderhjs · Jan 2009

is you post broken or are there no images,- and the big empty space is on purpose?

A-Train · Jan 2009

renderhjs

Of course it wasn't on purpose. I can see the images, I suppose I'll have to repost them all. Thanks for the heads up.

renderhjs · Jan 2009

I see now text links,
very nice composition Maybe add a render as well so the textures are not that blurred

A-Train · Jan 2009

A yeah good call man, because of Max's post processing depth of field thing.
Maybe I can turn it's settings off, that would work as well.

alexk · Jan 2009

A-Train wrote: »

192 Textures total (diffuse,normal,spec)

Does this mean that there are 64 sheets for diffuse, 64 sheets for normalmap, and 64 sheets for specular? Can you post some sheets?

Also, hope you get your UE3 problem fixed, looking forward to seeing it with better lighting. Some textures seems really blurry, but I guess thats 3dmax like someone mentioned

adam · Jan 2009

Take the full URL, and either hit the Image button when making a thread or wrap [ IMG ] [ /IMG ] tags around the URL's.

bounchfx · Jan 2009

ur doin it wrong.

I don't think there should be spaces between the [ ]'s and the text in between. so like (URL) (/URL) substitute ( ) for [ ]

Art+Test+WIP83.jpg

edit: oops, see below.

bounchfx · Jan 2009

right click your image > copy image location > paste that into your reply with the img tags around it and voila:

..and it's gone again. wth? lol I tried. it was working for a bit Art%2BTest%2BWIP97.jpg

A-Train · Jan 2009

ok rad man, i'll do it right now!

alexk · Jan 2009

just a suggestion, you can always use free pic hostings sites like http://imageshack.us/ if you don't have webspace

A-Train · Jan 2009

Thanks!

DrillerKiller · Jan 2009

happy new year man, how's the u.k? cant see anything though

Sage · Jan 2009

Looks great to me, the textures might have too much noise, but I like it.

Alex

pliang · Jan 2009

I can't see it still, might just want to copy image URL with photobucket.

renderhjs · Jan 2009

images are gone again for me too
on a sidenote within the url of the images I spotted
.../90KIOfe1eMY/s1600/Art%2BTest%2BWIP113.jpg
%2 ,- did you perhaps used spaces in your filename or other unique characters? - better never do that for web stuff as it causes often trouble. Better use underscores like
Art_Test_BWIP113.jpg

acidrain · Jan 2009

He actually has %2B in the URL, which is the URL encoding of a + sign. This shouldn't actually cause any problems.

I think the real problem here is that Blogger probably doesn't allow you to hotlink to images hosted over there. Your best bet would be to host the images with Tinypic or Imageshack.

A-Train · Jan 2009

Everyone: Now that I've provided some links, hopefully a few folks can take a look (I realize no one could properly see the images before...or very few at least). Please give crits! It helps me get some learnin in before my next project post. Thanks, much appreciated!!

Sage: Thanks man, always dug your stuff. Solid texturing.

renderhjs: naw man I would just use a filename like 'WIP113.jpg' with no spaces or additional characters. I think it's just a blogger issue, i'm going about getting an imageshack account. Hopefully it's free.

DrillerKiller: yee man! Happy New Year. Hope all is well for you, your friends and fam in the new year

I gmailed ya, so take a look (also added some links in this thread, as you and no one else were able to see the images).

AlexK:
"Does this mean that there are 64 sheets for diffuse, 64 sheets for normalmap, and 64 sheets for specular? Can you post some sheets?

Also, hope you get your UE3 problem fixed, looking forward to seeing it with better lighting. Some textures seems really blurry, but I guess thats 3dmax like someone mentioned "

Yeah there are 62 diffuse, 62 normal, and 62 spec's. I'll throw up a (few) real soon. I'd like to get it to work in Unreal Editor, but i've ran into a slum of issues with it. It's been about 3 months working on the thing on and off (in between that I was packing and moving and saying my goodbyes from Toronto, CAN to the UK). I want to move on to a new project for now, and i'm going to ensure that I get the new one in the Unreal Editor. Then i'll definitely go back and get the dock scene in there (within the next few weeks). I had some polycounters send me private msgs with tutorials on Unreal Ed, so once I get up to speed with the problems and fix em... I'll update this thread when I have some real time lighting going on.

EDIT: Chugged through the material problems from 3dsmax to Unreal Editor and was able to solve the problems. Just have to get the thing imported into a bsp construction cube and light it. Once I get that part wrapped up, i'll post some images from Unreal Ed.

A-Train · Jan 2009

Update* Working on night time lighting in Unreal Ed:

Mark Dygert · Jan 2009

Ok finally get to see this, nice work!

Crits:
- The 2nd smaller dock down by the boat, should be a floating dock. It rises and falls with the tide. The posts on the end aren't tie offs, they are long guides anchored to the sea floor. The dock slides up and down them. What looks like concrete blocks on the art test, are actually floats. Don't worry, a lot of people get that wrong =/

- Some of the damage doesn't make sense. The concrete post that frames the building has damage on the side closest to the building, kind of odd and hard to imagine happening without damaging the building. It also looks like the concrete was dented in like metal, when it would break and chip off.

Evaluate your slime...
- The texture running around the top seems to be squished and repeats quite a bit. Might help to stretch that out?
- Some floors have more slime then others, the flooring is pretty clean for being so close to slime covered walls.
Things like awnings would protect a certain amount of the structure. I'm not sure how many overlays or decals you're using but it might help to add a few around places water would collect and run off. It would help sell the cleaner parts under the awning.
- The middle floor is pretty coated in slime, but the ground is pretty grime free. The lowest floor, and be it the wettest and most prone to algae stains is pretty clean.
- You can also put simple shadows in a second UV channel that will help with occlusion and will better marry the pieces together, and help give the illusion of more slime in some areas, like where walls and floors meet, behind and under objects, inverse corners bla bla bla.

- The tires are there to protect a boat from bumping into the dock, if they hang under the over hang, then the boat is going to bump the dock. Overhangs like that are pretty dangerous, a boat could be pushed up underneath it.

- Whats the point of the gate in the middle, if you can go under it when the tide is out? You probably would be better served by a flood gate type door? I could kind of understand if you reused some fence pieces, but the gates look custom?

With all that said, its looking good! I'm glad you got your posting woes out of the way!

Matroskin · Jan 2009

ah, the night scene looks very promising

I would suggest that u add shadowmaps to the mesh right from the beginning if u r already testing some light. Shadows will change a lot your impression form the lighting.

Floor has some patter feeling so u could maybe add some more IDs to create a trim along the edge or add a couple of decals with some garbage etc.

Water needs some work (especially caustics effect of the walls that r touching the water surface), but i know u r just starting to set up the scene.

It comes along great in any case.

A-Train · Jan 2009

Vig, thanks for the crits man! I enjoyed your crit, you gave me some things to think about!

I won't repond to everything, but I'll definitely look into improving areas.
I do agree some dirt maps could help break up the ground (add some slimy areas, and puddles). Here's a shot of the texture around the top area. It's properly UV'ed to the correct aspect ratio. Maybe from a distance, it doesn't look so great though.

"The building has quite a bit of slime around the upper most top floor, and gets cleaner as it goes down."

"Each texture has a lot of slime and overall starts to look less like dirt and more like the natural color of the building, kind of destroying the dirt/decay look. It helps play up the dirt and grime if there are cleaner areas to contrast against."

I agree with both. I made some areas slimier, and some areas a bit more clean to give it some contrast. Maybe due to the texture compression things are just getting muddied up? I was adding bits of grime, and dirt build up throughout my texture sets to ensure they all worked together and looked visually appealing. Perhaps it didn't work out.

"Whats the point of the gate in the middle, if you can go under it when the tide is out? You probably would be better served by a flood gate type door? I could kind of understand if you reused some fence pieces, but the gates look custom?"

I like your idea about the flood gate. I reused the fence pieces.
My intention was to have this as an industrial dock, yet slightly fortified.
I have some cigarette alphas on the grounds in front of the doorways where workers would come out to have a breath of fresh air. In terms of design I was look at eastern european structures and thinking of something akin to the designs found in Bablyon A.D. Not really futuristic, but had that industrial fortress look. I actually have some soggy newspapers on the grounds with Bulgarian written on them (a Bulgarian friend of mine suggested it...hehe).

"Also things like awnings would protect a certain amount of the structure. Its important to think of the roles gravity and water would play on your structure. Are there some areas that water would be channeled (inadvertently or on purpose) and what would those areas look like? Slime and water flow down the building, but the floor textures are clean?"

I have a question for you or any UE3 users. How do you go about creating slime puddles for the Unreal editor? If you have an alpha, the normals and specs don't show up an alphas can't be lit either. Any work arounds?

I think some algae alpha maps, dirt maps and water puddles could improve things. Maybe some splashes of water, and trails of it leading to various areas. Adding and removing dirt is a fine art in itself. Hopefully get better at it with more and more project work. Thanks for the comments and suggestions!

seforin · Jan 2009

a-train : hey man this is definitely coming together versus last time we spoke keep up the progress I wanna see this finished!

A-Train · Jan 2009

Seforin! Yeah man, i'm pretty much wrapping it up for now. I've been on this project for way too long.

Matroskin, my fellow Canadian! If you have any caustic knowledge please share.
Any ideas on how to create an alpha and be able to have it lit in the scene?
I would add more dirtmap, puddles, and dirt buildup along where the walls connect to the grounds (but seeing as all alphas cannot be lit, it looks rather strange).

As for garbage, there's a pile of it in the fence enclosure behind the scaffolding. Assorted newspapers and trash are on the grounds as well, perhaps I should add a few more clones of those objects. As you aren't seeing them, that gives me the tip off that I should add more.

Here's a slight update, just fooling around with learning how to do some animated water. Not a huge improvement, but i've been mostly reading up on Unreal Ed.

DrillerKiller · Jan 2009

Hey man,

Looks like its coming together, I do have a few crits though.

-your textures are a bit muddy, too much black in them

-not enough variation in your materials, it all looks like the same stuff, vary it up with more wood/brick/metal

-not enough contrast with your shapes, no clear point of interest

- a little lifeless, could do with a bit more clutter, more reconizable objects

- looks like a ww2 bunker. Is that intentional?

That being said, i think with a little more work you could have a nice piece, keep it up!

A-Train · Jan 2009

DrillerKiller, thanks for the critique man.

Originally it was an art test for a company in the UK.
They wanted a focus of concrete, metal and wood which I had put attention towards (wooden boat, concrete walls and slabs, metal gas cans and oil drums etc). I feel some brick would have been nice to break things up.

With the night time lighting I can't see the material definitions clearly.
So not sure if you can (maybe that's why they appear muddy and black). Have a look at the URL links I provided at the beginning of this thread. They'll give you a better idea of the textures, without all the lighting on them. Maybe you did, and you feel that they aren't different enough. Not sure. Unreal Editor also compresses all of the textures, but I'll have to spruce up the textures to accomodate that.

My intention was to have this as an industrial dock, yet slightly fortified. In terms of design I was look at eastern european structures and thinking of something akin to the designs found in Bablyon A.D. Not really futuristic, but had that industrial fortress look. You know I dig WWII stuff, I wasn't going for that particular time period really...but definitely a fortified bunker.

I thought it had an interesting shape...maybe not...damn.

Edit* Angles:

Matroskin · Jan 2009

A-Train, in UnrealEngine3 polygons with any type of alpha can have normals, specs etc along with shadows.
Make sure u have the shader set to Translucent (if u want to have smooth alpha) and that your alpha channel (or image mask) is plugged into opacity slot.

Also if u will ever do projected decals and will have issues with that check 3dbuzz.com in "how do I..." videos for UT3. Also here is a thread that i participated to on beyondunreal forums responding to one guy's question regarding decals:
http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=180616

Anyways, u can always just use floating polygons if u want, that should work great on flat surfaces. If u still will have troubles with normals and lighting on them just post a screengrab of your shader setup

renderhjs · Jan 2009

I made a quick paint over because I dont like the clich

Mark Dygert · Jan 2009

"clich

00Zero · Jan 2009

that is very very cool. 2 things that stick out right off the bat:

1. (obviously) there is no background. some fog or slight bluish mist and maybe big silhouettes (oh sweet this forum has spell check) in the background such as old half sunken oil tankers or an oil rig would give this a finished feel.

2. water isnt reflecting the object immediately above it, nor is it seethrough (at least it doesnt appear to be). i dont know how you can do that in unreal 3...the real time reflections i mean. but if you can find out, it would definitely help.

P.S. dont the default water materials unreal 3 comes with slightly reflect objects that are right above them? or was i just imagining?

if you cant get that to work, maybe you can cheat and copy all your objects and flip them upside down and do fake reflections . haha, very very bad alternative. but i think they used to do this in older games to simulate mirrors and stuff. probably isnt the right choice here.

whats_true · Jan 2009

@renderhjs
*random thought*
That color scheme looks like its from Fallout3

Agree with the contrast in the lights. Makes it look a bit flat. Also, seems a bit empty.

Pope Adam · Jan 2009

Hey RenderHJS; I like the paintover!~

I think the scene looks super solid and I really like the lighting. the orange may be a bit over-intense right now, but aesthetically works very well.

A-Train

A cube map would maybe help your reflections on your water.

here's an imageo n how to make one in Unreal. You may already have this information, but it could help in putting together your water shader? Not sure.

Looks cool man! I really like it.

A-Train · Jan 2009

@Everyone: So many comments! Great

Well I'm moving on towards a new project, but feel that I should continue working on this one (on the back burner) to add/tweak some things people have mentioned.

@PopeAdam, Thanks man. I'll definitely take a look at this for my scene.

@00Zero: Thanks! At the moment, i'm very new to UE3 and i'm learning about water, skyboxes, etc.
Hopefully be able to impliment a starry sky at the bare minimum.

@DrillerKiller: Can I get a few more direct suggestions on the objects you would like to see in the scene?
Is there anything you think could help improve the scene to give it life?

@Renderhjs: I really appreciate your input (and paintover!), although your lighting scheme is very purple. I agree with Vig on the subject. With lighting I tried to make an effort to show off the original tones/hues of the texture work while still flooding key areas with light (I personally feel I can't see the definitions of materials within my light setup or any setup for that matter other than super bright day time lighting). In your paint over, you have married all colours together, but I feel there is more lack of definition behind the various materials. It is impactful though and I feel that's because of the lights eminating from the portholes. It gives a sense of storytelling, but you would probably need a light house bulb to produce that amount of light.

I find your dirt decal interesting. Although I don't see how grime would spill from the upper top floor all the way to the ground surface with an awning being there (preventing the water from pouring along side the wall surface).

I enjoy paintovers as visual feedback from a critic. If at all possible could you define some of the shapes you are using, as I'm not sure what some of the paint strokes are representing (underneath awning for example) I'm seeing it as a dirt decal, but perhaps you meant it to be a post? Thanks for taking some time to do it.

I do find the hanging wires interesting though, they act to break up some negative space. The extra lights on the exterior radius of the structure are nice too. Thanks for the feedback.

A-Train · Jul 2009

testing testing...

For a larger version, follow this link: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NVBVBm4La4M/SlU-X-KS2II/AAAAAAAAAA4/phqnJSmTkc8/s1600-h/docks+test.jpg

Environment scene Docks

Replies