props and scenes
Hey all,
I have to say the quality of work and critiques here on polycount are inspiring to say the least. I thought I would finally post some of my work in hopes that you guys could help me crank my skill level up....preferably up to 11 ;] Thanks a ton in advance.
Ok so heres the deal, I have a bunch of urban props that have been sitting around on my hard drive for a bit. I decided instead of letting them rot away I could fix them up and throw them into a little scene. I know this is kind of a backwards way to work as I should prob have a block-in to be working with. But that will be my next step before I push anymore props.
I'm thinking it will be a city liquor store with apartments on the top floors of the building. Simple little curb out front very similar to something like the scene Jason Lavoie has on his site.
Link so you can see what I mean: Jason's city building
So here are the props I have worked a bit on so far:
Next steps:
-find some good reference for the kind of building I am going for
-block out the building and scene
-bring into UDK and light
-start on the tiling textures for the building
-create any other props needed to fill the space
-call it a day
please don't hesitate to let me know if something looks off, could use some work, etc. I really want to get better and I am eager to incorporate your critiques.
thanks again!
I have to say the quality of work and critiques here on polycount are inspiring to say the least. I thought I would finally post some of my work in hopes that you guys could help me crank my skill level up....preferably up to 11 ;] Thanks a ton in advance.
Ok so heres the deal, I have a bunch of urban props that have been sitting around on my hard drive for a bit. I decided instead of letting them rot away I could fix them up and throw them into a little scene. I know this is kind of a backwards way to work as I should prob have a block-in to be working with. But that will be my next step before I push anymore props.
I'm thinking it will be a city liquor store with apartments on the top floors of the building. Simple little curb out front very similar to something like the scene Jason Lavoie has on his site.
Link so you can see what I mean: Jason's city building
So here are the props I have worked a bit on so far:
Next steps:
-find some good reference for the kind of building I am going for
-block out the building and scene
-bring into UDK and light
-start on the tiling textures for the building
-create any other props needed to fill the space
-call it a day
please don't hesitate to let me know if something looks off, could use some work, etc. I really want to get better and I am eager to incorporate your critiques.
thanks again!
Replies
I spent a little time tonight designing the building. I found a building in Harlem I like a lot and drew from it heavily. So the general idea I'm shooting for is the Frakensteined one on the left. Pretty simple, I will have to create a few new pieces, but it should come together quickly.
For the glass, it came down to working the spec a bit. I went with a solid off-white color and overlayed a bit of grunge on top to give the illusion of dirt. Hope that helps.
Hope everyone is having a nice Friday!
Can't wait to see it textured and in UDK.
Also you have the best last name ever.
i think the UDK scale is half life size. so a 6" man would be about 92cm in Maya.
P442: Thanks, I appreciate it! They don't seem to be doing too much damage, but I think I might need to go back and fix my normals when I'm polishing things up.
tharle: thanks! alright cool, I will do a bit of research, I haven't found a character ref I can import into my scene just yet, but I havn't looked too hard.
Ok, so I got it in to UDK and did 2 quick lighting setups. I don't have too much experience making interesting lighting and would really appreciate any feedback you guys could throw my way.
For the day version I set the lightmass env color to a light blue and used a fairly-bright, light yellow/orange dominant directional light.
for the night version, I set the env color to a dark blue and I placed a light blue dom directional light, with a little light coming from within the stair well for a little extra flavor and shadows. I will probably light some of the windows up with emissive's.
sorry for the nasty black bg, any way to change the realtime viewport color in UDK?
I love this, really great texturing, you've really done a great job of it.
Im stunned!
scotthomer and MiAIx: Thanks guys!
So this weekend I have been itching to get back to this scene, but my twin 9 year old cousins were visiting. So things have been pretty busy over here, haha.
Anyway, I wanted to spend some time to explore the night lighting setup again. I want it to feel like a full moon is blasting down on the building, but I'm thinking it may be a tad too bright still.
Any tips for good night lighting?
Hey MrTurtlepast,
first of all, great props. Really well made.
If its not too much to ask, I was wondering if you could give some insight into how you went about making your text, more specifically the highpoly models.
I'm trying to make some currently, and I keep running into problems.
Thanks
I sure there are probably easier ways of create text, but this is what worked for me. I found a reference for the letters and threw that in Maya as an image plane. From there I traced out the letters with the create polygon tool. This way I could get the exact shape I wanted, but it required a bit of cleanup afterwards to get loops where I needed them.
I'm sure some people might cringe at my solution, lol, but it worked for me. Hope that helps!
scene update: I have been stupidly busy with other projects, but will prob be cranking away again tomorrow. Hopefully I will have something to show soon.
That defiantly helps me out. I'll probably give that a try, hopefully it works for me as well as it worked for you.
Thanks again
jordan.kocon: no prob! In UDK go to the actor-classes tab in your content manager.
Expand fog --> highlight height fog -> right click in your viewport and click "add height fog here"
Then from there if you highlight it and hit F4 you will have all sorts of properties to play with. All I did was play with the "light color" option and the "density" Hope that helps. Also for more you could always check out the documentation here : http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/HeightFog.html
good luck!
I feel like this scene has a Blade Runner feel to it.
Keep up the good work.
8FtSpider: thanks, yeah I see what you mean, I might play around with the depth a bit. Thanks for pointing it out.
Mr Bear: much appreciated, yeah not too sure at this point how far I want to extend the scene, but that is definitely an option, thanks for the idea.
ok so, I decided to go in and sketch up what I want the facade pieces to look like. There is definitely room to play around with the details, but at least now I have a little more clarity with the overall shapes and how they might play together in the end.
hope to get some 3d posted in here soon.