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Destroyed City Environment WIP

Hey everyone, I've been following the forum for awhile, but never posted until now. I'm currently a student finishing up soon and hopefully finding a job as an environment artist.

This piece only contains diffuse textures at the moment an I need some feedback. All assets were intended for the unreal engine and the entire set is comprised of 14 2048 diffuse textures.

Any and all feedback is encouraged!

Thanks in advance!

building04.jpg
building01.jpg
building02.jpgbuilding03.jpg
building04.jpg

Replies

  • frubes
    welcome to the boards, not a bad start you have there. Initially i read, "the set is made up of 1 2048 texture" and i was like, thats kinda cool, but actually it says 14! Thats quite a lot for such a small scene as it currently stands, is there any chance of maybe breaking down where you have spent your texture budget? I can only assume a lot of it has gone on the buildings in background.

    Do you plan on branching out from the 2 buildings and small section of pavement that you currently have in your scene? Currently it doesn't sit so well plonked on its own in the middle of all those other buildings and looks a bit out of place.

    Ill be interested to see where you take it :)

    Good luck.
  • -ST-
    Thanks for the comments! The buildings in the background are not mine. Looking through the assets provided with Unreal 3 Editor, it seemed as though the general standard was 1 2048 per piece. So that's what I was going for.
  • -ST-
    Here's an example to show you how my texture distribution is working.
    Here I have 1 2048 dedicated to the corner doorway and the base level wall. Also the traffic light is 1 2048, telephone pole is 1 2048, window piece, etc.

    baselevel.jpg
  • -ST-
    Surrounding area is still being worked on as well.
  • fast1
    welcome ST, surronding area as in the area not shown here yet or in the posts above?clear.gif
  • frubes
    ah ok i see. Well, 1 2048 per building is fine however when it comes to your bog standard accessories and props a 2048 is a pretty massive texture for something so small.

    I can tell you how i would tackle it but of course my opinion isn't gospel so take it with a pinch of salt. I would make 1 x 2048 which could be used for both the buildings as they are both using the same texture set. That would most likely include all the brickwork, cornices, pillars, wood and anything else which is part of the major building structure. I would then create a 1024 (possibly smaller) with different window variations, doors, signs, accessories, and what not on it. By doing it that way you are creating texture sets which can be reused around your environment. This helps develop a cohesive style because your textures tie together your environment. Obviously you need to be careful of repetition.

    Having seperate textures for your props like street lamps, telegraph poles and lamposts is fine and most likely the way to go but i would certainly down res them as 2048 is overkill for a prop. Google pixel density and see how games develop a consistent pixel density throughout their environments. Either that or check the environment wiki on polycount. I think it has some stuff on there.

    Hopefully that helps. I will be interested to see how you develop the rest of the environment surrounding these buildings and how they will tie in with the other buildings currently in your scene.
  • -ST-
    I'm still thinking about what to do with the surrounding area. I am open to suggestions, however I was considering just using assets that are already in the engine to fill in the background.
  • -ST-
    frubes wrote: »
    ah ok i see. Well, 1 2048 per building is fine however when it comes to your bog standard accessories and props a 2048 is a pretty massive texture for something so small.

    OK cool thanks...I may try scaling them down and reworking some detail back in to see how that looks. If 2048x2048 is overkill, then how come it's used in the Unreal assets so frequently?

    Any comments on aesthetics, lighting, layout, etc?
  • turpedo
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    turpedo polycounter lvl 12
    Welcome to the forums. I have to agree that 2048 on props like a light post is overkill. you could get away with smart usage of tiling textures. The scene is looking pretty cool so far. The one thing that stuck out to me was the broken light post that is tilted over. The pole itself would snap and break instead of just tilting over like that and pushing through the concrete. If the brown piles surrounding it is suppose to be the destruction of it then I would suggest taking a step back on that part and looking up some reference of how light post would break and redoing it. Putting some furniture and props in the buildings would make it look more believable as well. The rooms look empty, I know this is a WIP so you might of already been planning this but I just thought I would say it anyways just in case. Other then that I am enjoying the progress so far.
  • frubes
    well, like i said, my opinion isn't gospel but the explanation i gave was for how i would do it when developing xbox live arcade games (much tigther budgets because of the download limits). However, even then i would suggest its simple logic. If you have a building which takes up 4 times the amount of space as a lampost and they both have a 2048 texture then the lampost (depending on lots of variables like uv packing etc etc) will have 4 times the resolution of the building which as you can imagine looks odd and isn't so good. Another example would be if your asset only ever takes up say 512 pixels of screen space. If thats the case then theres no point in giving it a 2048 because no one will ever get close enough to see the extra detail from the map.

    Ultimately theres lots of things you need to take into account when deciding on a texture size, pixel density is just one of them and i can comment specifically on unreal. Im sure someone else can. You just need to work out how big your assets are in relation to each other and how much of that asset will be on screen at any one time / how close the player will get to them.
  • -ST-
    Having trouble getting the normal maps to show up as crisp in Unreal as they do in Maya. Anyone ever experience this? I've made sure that tc_normal is selected and adjusted the mipmap and compression settings, but the depth in the normal map seems to remain shallow in comparison.
  • fmnoor
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    fmnoor polycounter lvl 17
    If you generated the normals in Maya, try inverting the green channel in Photoshop? I think I read that on the UDN.


    As said by others, try tiling the brick texture, and overlay a generic grunge/dirt texture over that using the Unreal Material Editor. It should help give you the same effect, but only use 2 textures...
  • Jeremy Lindstrom
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    Jeremy Lindstrom polycounter lvl 18
    your utility poles are hella huge.
  • s0id3
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    s0id3 polycounter lvl 8
    -ST- wrote: »
    Having trouble getting the normal maps to show up as crisp in Unreal as they do in Maya. Anyone ever experience this? I've made sure that tc_normal is selected and adjusted the mipmap and compression settings, but the depth in the normal map seems to remain shallow in comparison.

    Can we see your material setup? Are you just plugging your normal straight into the normal slot? If you did you probably want to bump up your normals with a multiply and constant 3 and mess with the numbers till your pleased with the result.
  • -ST-
    s0id3 wrote: »
    Can we see your material setup? Are you just plugging your normal straight into the normal slot? If you did you probably want to bump up your normals with a multiply and constant 3 and mess with the numbers till your pleased with the result.

    Awesome, plugged in the multiply and constant 3, looks much better. Thanks!
  • Bulls_eye
    good looking environment, it you can bring it into zbrush and make the edges look like concrete that has broken of the walls it will look hella tight.

    I would suggest if you put trash around the buildings on the ground, you know like papers and debris that has fallen from the buildings
  • imb3nt
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    imb3nt polycounter lvl 14
    I agree with Dekard, the power pole compared to the building's door is pretty crazy but an easy fix none the less.

    Looking good so far though. Post more as you progress!
  • nfrrtycmplx
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    nfrrtycmplx polycounter lvl 18
    Hey ST,

    About your normal map problem, make sure you're importing it as a normal map. If you import it as a standard dxt compressed texture, it won't work.

    There's a drop down menu that pops up when importing textues allowing you to choose compression settings. The menu is labeled "Import as" if i remember correctly.

    Cheers,
    This guy
  • slipsius
    It's looking good. I would say it really needs some debris on the ground though. Hard to believe the buildings would look like that with nothing on the ground below
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