An exercise in modular textures - Scifi lab UDK

[Snefer]

Edit: Updating with link to download and video
Download:

http://www.torfrick.com/ScifiLab.rar


35470093



Soo... I have been doing alot of remapping of UVs lately, and I wanted to try to see how far i can push things with one modular texture.

The goal is to make this entire scene using one 256*512 texture.

Sofar I still have some of the texture left to use, because I will need to add some more details and custom stuff to it when I build more props. I realize this is not really the best way to build an environment, custom stuff is almost always needed, but its a good exercise to see just how far you can push things, and how much mileage you can get out of one simple texture. Also I know that the style I have chosen is probably almost optimal for this kind of work, but it can be applied to most situations.

Here are some early WIPs and a few props:

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile1.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile2.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile3.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile4.jpg

[jeremiah_bigley]

Well damn. Really nice work... You can't do this and then not show us the texture. :P
How much planning was involved?

[passerby]

man snefer your fast, this and your last scifi scene, and your the king of modular textures too. I like your use of lighting/shadows and cubemaps to break up the tileing a bit.

is the glass it's own shader and texture or it is on the original texture sheet.

[Jernej]

love it!...keep it up :)

[Razorb]

ya this is awesome! polycount should do a fun environment challenge with the same texture requirements : D!

really inspiring stuff mate, MORE MOREEE!

[coots7]

geez awesome work. that's super efficient, and the texture quality from 256x512 is really clean and nice. I'm shocked I don't see pixels

[Ryswick]

Well colour me impressed!

[Belias]

nice work!

[mLichy]

Very cool stuff. :D

[Oniram]

amazing work. can we see the texture? :D

edit: also.. since it looks like your assets are all greyscale.. are you using all 3 channels of the texture?

[cupsster]

nice, very nice! [texture and wires?]
please :)

[Snefer]

Thanks for the comments :] I will do a complete breakdown of the scene after I have got a bit farther and finished the core stuff :]

jeremiah: I will show you the texture, as soon as its done ^^ Still adding stuff to it :D And almost no planning at all actually. Or well, i did think through what I wanted from the texture though, but not realyl much planning when it comes to assets. Im just amking stuff up as I go.

passerby: the glass is its own shader, yes, but no texture. :]

Oniram: yes, I am using all channels of the texture. The assets are not grayscale though, as you can see there is a red wall, and the decals have color aswell. Havent decided on colourscheme for the scene yet though :]

[toxic_h2o]

Snefer you are the man, I'm really looking forward to the break down of this. :D

[itismario]

256x512.... Damn. Impressive. Impressive scene so far even without a texture limit

[Jesse Moody]

using some color tinting to change things up a bit with the red?

Very nice use of stuff here. :)

Take notes people.

Would love to see your texture sheet Snef

[Jessica Dinh]

That is nice! The lighting is perfect :0

[chadabees]

This is very impressive so far. You are so fast and efficient! :D

[fearian]

Christ Snefer you are a MACHINE! Go go go, I can't wait! :D

[Kurt Russell Fan Club]

Snefer, great work! Really smart texture usage and the props and lighting are gorgeous.

Is this normals and diffuse in that same 256x512?

[Gryx]

That's some really nice work, The lighting is really nice. An all on a 256x512 - Are you a wizard?

[Minos]

Looks promising and nice exercise!

[Electro]

Very nice! Are you adding padding in-between each modular piece so there's no bleeding as you get to mips? I'm experimenting with the same technique with my stuff, although I'm not up to the same stage as you yet.

Idea being to minimise draw calls :)

[megalmn2000]

Awesome like always! Can't wait to see more progress! :D

[build.]

I just don't understand how you can be so awesome. Nice and solid so far. I'll jump on the wagon of "show me moar!!" as well. :)

[Computron]

Allright, show us a breakdown of how its done please. What textures do you have in there and what is being done in the shader (diff, spec, gloss, and channels please)?

[sneakymcfox]

Seriously inspiring, can't wait to see the textures :)

[Stertman]

breakdown or it didnt happen!

[Disting]

Very impressing!
Can't wait to see more updates on this! :)

[Gooner442]

great work, love the lighting, wanna see more!

[[HP]]

Snefer I love you.

[Snefer]

whoop, lots of replies ^^ its one normal and one diffuse texture. No specular, gloss etc. Everything is taken care of with those two textures. I will post textures and breakdown, as soon as the texture is finished, im still tweaking and adding to it :] Also have some choices left, need to decide what to do with some technical choices.

here are some more adventures in tilingland, a monitor and a bench. ^^ will post some more updates later :)
http://torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile5.jpg

[Oniram]

are you going about making high polies and baking them down for everything here? or is anything done with just a low poly and nDo or something similar?

[Snefer]

EVERYTHING is made with just a lowpoly. Not a single highpoly model sofar, except for the basetexture (and that is just because thats how i roll, could have done it in nDo in 15 minutes probably...)

[Snefer]

OH LOOK ITS A CRATE! :D

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile6.jpg

[Prophet]

Looking pretty good!

[megalmn2000]

Hehehe! I'm getting pretty excited! :)
Can't wait for more progress again!

[Gyrfal]

Looking great, I was wondering how you were getting the reflections? Are you just using the ImageReflectionSceneCapture actor?

Sorry if the question is dumb, I've been out of using UDK for a while so I'm trying to get myself reoriented.

[IxenonI]

haha cool :)

Curios to see how it holds up with a proper diffuse.

[d1ver]

great experiment, dude! Looks solid so far. Really curious to see how far you can push it.

[Snefer]

Gyrfal: yes, and a cubemap aswell. and some faked highlights. Im mixing it a bit depending on what looks good on what surface.

Some stairs, a ventilation shaft, endless joy of uvmapping! :)

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile7.jpg

[ljsketch]

Awesome stuff indeed. Let's see more ;).

[coots7]

i gotta try something like this sometime. It might also be fun for someone to post a texture and see what other people come up with, be interesting to see the different types of crates/stairs/walls etc and how other people use the texture in creative ways. Are you still using the 256x512 for the stairs and crate and vent? have you started any unique textures?

[adam]

Show the texture as you make progress ;)

[Lonewolf]

http://www.lovehorsepower.com/galleries/44269331/CheeseDS/album/thumbs/funny-pictures-interesting-cat.jpg

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/funny-pictures-proceed-cat.jpg

[Jungsik]

what the..how..??? T_T so good

[SsSandu_C]

Relly nicee! That grate vent makes me want to pull it out of the wall and bypass the guards... stealthy... stealthy ;) I'm kidding. I like how everything is coming along. Lonewolf's cats are right.. hehe

[Skillmister]

Please post the texture :p I'm trying to make a modular building right now and its confusing the hell out of me!

[Alberto Rdrgz]

This is a cool project. :)

[Limewax]

Please post the texture :p I'm trying to make a modular building right now and its confusing the hell out of me!

I am with Skillmister... student as well here, trying to make a kit at the moment and using this as direct inspiration. Such magic must be revealed!

Great work

[Snefer]

Soo... here it is. :D Im still not finished with the texture and shader, got a bunch of things I want to fix/change/add still, but this where its at sofar. I will give more explanation of how I work with it later aswell :]

http://torfrick.com/Art/WIP/TileExplain.jpg

[Oniram]

so in unreal (i assume this is unreal) do you just go back in and add a 0,0,1 to the normals? thats an awesome idea to use the blue channel for masks. awesome breakdown. one question though. how do you go about adding color to the objects? do you just have a couple materials that are just fully colored? id love to see a breakdown of your material

[cupsster]

colored lights maybe?

[Snefer]

Oniram: yes, exactly :) Or you can use the DerivenormalZ aswell, but that costs a few more instructions, for mudular things like this, where it doesnt have to crrect for any smoothing appending a value of 1 works fine :] I am adding colors through some multiplies etc in the shader, right now its pretty simple, one color for the bare metal, one color for the shinier metal, and one color for the midrange of the decals :] That part of the shader is still in progress though, but I will post breakdowns of that aswell as its cleaned up and finalised :]

[Lonewolf]

i have o idea what are you doing here but it sounds smart and your never failed

btw
i really love your drone, i search for a thread of it but didnt find, is there one somewhere? who made the concept?

[m4dcow]

I wondered how you were getting such large areas like on the floor panels out of this texture, and then saw the uvs for some of the pieces, but then wondered why there was no butterflying with the diffuse texture, but this is really cool separating these elements.

[Snefer]

Lonewolf: thanks man ^^ oh yeah, i just randomly started building that, so its in the middle of my scifislum-thread :D The concept was a lunchbreak doodle I made :]
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84867&page=9

[Oniram]

Oniram: yes, exactly :) Or you can use the DerivenormalZ aswell, but that costs a few more instructions, for mudular things like this, where it doesnt have to crrect for any smoothing appending a value of 1 works fine :] I am adding colors through some multiplies etc in the shader, right now its pretty simple, one color for the bare metal, one color for the shinier metal, and one color for the midrange of the decals :] That part of the shader is still in progress though, but I will post breakdowns of that aswell as its cleaned up and finalised :]


ok cool. ive got more questions for you. sorry lol but this is just such an interesting method. as for the generic metal on the lightmap UVs, does that just get multiplied by your AO for each object? and for the decals. are those rendered on planes that are ontop of the meshes? or are they using a different UV set for the meshes themselves?

[Snefer]

hehe, the metal is just multiplied with the AO-layer in the shader yeah. The decals are using a lerp with the alfa, and uses their own UVset :)

[radianceforge]

Ridiculously inspiring.
Are you just modeling to the uvs? Would interesting to see a break down of your process for that if you have time. Or just some of the wires from the statics.

So cool.

[Oniram]

awesome thanks. thats some crazy cool stuff dude. i may give some of those methods a shot with an environment im working on now. :D

[MalloryW]

Snefer, you're a beast.

[Lonewolf]

Lonewolf: thanks man ^^ oh yeah, i just randomly started building that, so its in the middle of my scifislum-thread :D The concept was a lunchbreak doodle I made :]
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84867&page=9

u should have lunchbreaks in the mornings and nights too

O_O

[Snefer]

ChrisPerr: Well, more or less. I make a lowpoly, then I unwrap it until it looks good ^^ I will show the workflow later :]

Some views of the enviro right now, added some lamps, some signs,cotrolpanels for the doors, etc. Crappy light rebake, so some artefacts :]

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile8.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile9.jpg

[cupsster]

I like where this is going... Nice lesson! Straight to top banner! ;)

[Fnitrox]

man you're just so much awesomeness put togheter *__*

that's so optimized it could run on a nokia 3310 and it looks cool too! when i frist saw this i thought "as good as he is this can't really be happening" but...

guess an other thread to end up in the inspiration folder! :D

[Razorb]

yea youre a fookin twat! :D really nice scene, even if it wasnt optimised so much! really great great job buddy! and i am going to echo waht i said earlier!

OFFICIAL POLYCOUNT COMPETITION with specs like this scene!

[passerby]

EDIT: nvm just relised my idea was broken.

[pen]

Your lighting in the scenes you do is always great. Nice work once again.

[Snefer]

Thanks for the comments :] Not quite sure where to go with this scene now. Some lab-equipment and stuff I guess, aswell as a proper backdrop area. Hmm, any suggestions?

[dpaynter26]

since it's a research facility you could maybe put a gurney or two in the hallways, or just some tray tables for test tubes and whatnot :), something to just kinda fill it in but still sticking to the shiny pretty metal look, this environment is top notch man congrats

[commador]

I usually lurk about (I really want to change that) but I had to sign in to say this is outstanding. I've been trying to better understand utilizing UVs with a tiling texture beyond the basics, and I think this thread will provide just that. Snefer, your work speaks volumes to your skills. I feel that merely following your progression in this thread could do wonders for anyone like myself to gain a solid hold on the technique. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing more! ;)

[chrisradsby]

You could probably do some cool stuff with the texture you got there, I dunno, cannisters? Turrents? Smaller robots? Great work so far!

[Computron]

Snefer, that is some crafty ass work.

How do you plan out what to model for the base texture so you can utilize it in this varied fashion? It all looks like it has unique texturing! How do you get it to shade so smoothly and seamlessly when your normals aren't high poly sourced?

If you want it to look more unique and varied, I would maybe look into using some more expensive blend shaders with mesh paint and just go to town with grunging it up. 3D Motive's Advanced Mesh Paint (http://www.3dmotive.com/training/udk/advanced-mesh-paint-with-udk/) course will bring you up to speed in case you don't know what I mean. Your already halfway there with your multiple uv sets, why not put those verts to work with vertex color? You could eliminate pretty much all the seams with this method as well as any apparent tiling.

[Snefer]

I am probably gonna add some wierd casket/gurney-thingys in the room, and some random medical junk, I suppose :]

Computron: I dont really plan out actually, I build what I want to build in terms of shapes, then i force myself to UVmap it until it looks good ^^ And the smoothing is pretty easy, just bevel the edges for the round things, nothing more to it than that :] And i dont really want to grunge it up actually, even though Im up to speed when it comes to vertex painting :] But I have planned to try some other things with the vertex painting though :]

[Electro]

Very nice. Good to see it's like how I'm doing mine atm.. phew! :)

Snefer if you haven't already, this is something i'm planning for mine... is to make the grunge a tiling texture, and all the objects using it, it's just based off world position for verts as the texture coordinates. This allows for things to look more different and if the diffuse itself is kept fairly simple so the texture can be used in lots of different ways, while still having details.

Obviously vertex colours can be used too to create variation of tones and even colours like the feature walls etc.

Really liking it, keep going mooooar! :)

[Snefer]

That would have worked if the texture was bigger, but now I have to have it tiling ALOT to get a proper texel density, and so i cant really use it that way :] Would have worked with a larger texture though :] Yeah, i get colors from the shader instead, but there are a few tricks that Im going to try with the vertex painting. Need to get a better grip of what im doing with the scene first though :D

[Oranghe]

This is really good stuff and i will definitely be trying this out in the near future! :D

[AyalaN3D]

Awesome work like always! Really good job. The reflections play a big role in the scene im liking the setup and love how the light enters the room. I have a question though, how did you setup your shader for the glass material. It looks clean and solid!

If you can give an example of how to go about glass materials in general would be real helpful. Thanks! and continue working hard.

[sltrOlsson]

You'r an animal! It's really great to see this! Would be awesome with a little workflow explanation in the future! :) Keep it up!

[Limewax]

As far as the models, in order to get these UVs to lay out properly, I assume that you add more subdivisions to the models that you made? In essence adding more loops than you need, but creating more faces which makes it easier to UV and layout.... is this a correct assumption?

TLDR: it would be cool to see the wires on some of these models.

Thank you :)

[dtschultz]

That lighting is fucking sick! Thanks for posting up your workflow. That's a great idea to use the blue channel for a mask and just reset the value to one in the shader.

[Snefer]

AyalaN3D: Just a green color with a cubemap on it, nothing more :] Very very basic.

Limewax: yes, essentially. But its not really more loops than I need, I add very few extra polygons, most of the props are at a few hundred tris. Ill post some wireframes and show how I unwrap soon, just gotta get the time for it :]

Added some funnylooking lamps, eh, the emissive is to weak on them right now, will have to crank that up a bit :] Also started working on the caskets/medical bed whatever scifi-thingys for the room :D
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile10.jpg

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile11.jpg

[passerby]

freaking dope and still olny on 1 small texture?

[GoSsS]

Very interesting exercice and really nice execution.
As you said you should have used a bigger texture, but even with this small one, the result is damn good!

[Limewax]

I dont know if the new "lamp" things you added are immediately reading as lamps. I know you're brainstorming what kind of stuff you can add to the scene to make it more believable, but right now I feel like those lamps are working against you. This is mainly because it would be redundant to have that many light sources in an area, but overall their design isnt as strong as all of the other objects.

I must say though... I am digging the accent color wall. Brilliant idea there.

Just some constructive criticism :)

[dpaynter26]

I am probably gonna add some wierd casket/gurney-thingys in the room, and some random medical junk, I suppose :]


Great! :) Excited to see, your work is always such good inspiration

[breakneck]

didn't even expect to see it broken down into RGB channels - very nice.

[rasmus]

Cool, nice to see you do something nice and clean ;) Love the hyper-minimal texture usage, a little goes a long way. A positive side-effect of lazyness too I suppose :) Go slemhosta!

[hamzaaa]

Hey snefer,

this is really awesome work you got there! As I am new to this whole modular thing (actually never did a modular environment myself) could you show me, hrrm show us, your texture sheet and some examples how you mapped the models on it? And maybe also some model wires?
Great stuff, keep rocking! :)
*subscribed*

[passerby]

Hey snefer,

this is really awesome work you got there! As I am new to this whole modular thing (actually never did a modular environment myself) could you show me, hrrm show us, your texture sheet and some examples how you mapped the models on it? And maybe also some model wires?
Great stuff, keep rocking! :)
*subscribed*

check out page 2 (http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89682&page=2) he explains a lot there and give a little breakdown on the texture usage.

[hamzaaa]

yes, yes I read all the pages. But I would be interested in the stated above more in debth. ^^
would be cool if he could show his texturesheet with overlayed UVs of several models to see how he actually UVed them to it.

[Rick_D]

wireframe please

[ikken]

A+++ work, simply stunning

[coots7]

i have a question. Whats the texture density look like for this scene? Do you try to make it fairly equal? Cause you said you just move UVs around until it looks good so i'm curious if that means higher or lower texture density and also are you using controlled UV stretching?

[Snefer]

hamzaa: showing an overlay would make NO sense unfortunately, since it just looks like a mess ^^ an explanation of the workflow is probably much better :]

Coots: nope :) there is INSANE amount of stretching, which is one of the ways this works. Im a bit too tired to post how I do it right now, but ill post an more indepth explanation of the process tomorrow :]

Rick_D: will post some wireframes along with the breakdown, even though they are pretty boring ^^

Have done a bunch of new props, but UDK crashed and im too lazy to rebuild lights, so here is another prop. Still the same texture, etc. Will post a breakdown tomorrow ^^

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile12.jpg

[Stromberg90]

Looks sweet, hoping to see that breakdown tomorrow, would be really interesting :)

[Ryan Smith]

Very awesome R&D.. i'm still baffled you were able to do this with a 256x512.

[cholden]

Sick thread, homie. I love when people get all technical artsy.

[Limewax]

I am quite curious as how to layout the UVs with regards to the UV channel editor smooshing things down to fit within the +1/+1 grid. I am attempting this style at the moment, and using a 1024x512 texture, its smooshing down to 512x512 automatically....

I am using Maya 2012, thoughts? I am digging through options right now


EDIT:
I think I figured it out.... inside "image" on the UV texture editor, I checked the box "use image ratio" then build on the 1k x 512 by that. When I imported to UDK and tested it out, worked like a charm :D Wondering if this is the right method

[cupsster]

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile12.jpg
oh yeah! realy like creative use of texture...

[Snefer]

Soo, here is a small breakdown of how I make a prop ^^ Hmm, makes sense now? ^^

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/microscope.jpg

[Snefer]

Added some quick backdropbuildings aswell as some more props indoors. Added two new rooms aswell, hmm :]

and oh yeah, still the same 256*512 texture for everything. (except the sky, boooooh!)
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile13.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile14.jpg

[coots7]

hey! you're using Modo for your modeling/UVs! YAY Modo! Thanks for the break down. the scene is kickass. unbelievable it's one texture.

[Alberto Rdrgz]

Make the sky with the same texture and i god damn BOW!

btw, this scene keeps looking sexier and sexier.

thanks for the breaks down makes super sense now.

[Gannon]

Rofl, this is brilliant. I can't wait to see what you make next.

[Snefer]

Yay for modo indeed ^^

Sooo... added another feature in the shader, I can now have more colors on the same prop with almost no extra cost. Optimised the texture a bit more :]

edit: oh, and i just colored the wall like that as an example, will not go with those colors ^^
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile15.jpg

[cupsster]

every post gets better.. keep it up! I don't mind to look at some wires too from time to time :) dope stuff

[ParoXum]

Very impressive, this should be released as a tech demo to teach the world texture usage. =)

[Snefer]

Added textures and shaders for monitors :] And some papers, some jars with pills and stuff ^^ Light looks like shit because..yeah. only medium quality rebake :D

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile16.jpg

[Oniram]

very cool. at what point in your process did you create the cubemap for this? or are you using a temporary one? does your material use image based reflections?

[passerby]

very cool. at what point in your process did you create the cubmap for this? or are you using a temporary one? does your material use image based reflections?

pretty sure he said earlier it was a RTT cubemap

[Sharvo]

This is crazy stuff. Thanks for the info on your low poly modeling and uv mapping definatly something to keep in mind for me in projects to come.

The scene looks amazing by the way, even on meduim quality :)

[Computron]

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/microscope.jpg

Why does everything got to be so low poly? Double chamfer dem edges on your highest LOD, gets some specular highlights. Your not rebaking for each LOD so its minor work that will make everything look nicer.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15588298/Herpa%20Derp.pnghttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/15588298/Herpa%20Derp2.png

[Limewax]

Snefer, why exactly do you use a 2:1 texture when using this method? What advantage does going 2:1 give over doing 1:1? (eg: 512x256 as opposed to 512x512 or 256x256, sans the fact that higher res is pretty)

[Computron]

Since he is tiling sideways a lot it can allow for more variation.

[cupsster]

Since he is tiling sideways a lot it can allow for more variation.

+1

[adam]

<3 Updated my slides ;)

[SasoDuck]

Please stop making me jealous





.... scratch that

[Snefer]

Computron: Weeell, I do chamfer my edges in alot of places actually, but not on tiny props and where I have seams anyway :] I prefer to keep the polycount low on smaller objects, and not when I want the edges to be hard :] Also there are tiny chamfers in the normalmap in some places, so I just use that instead for that tiny highlight. But yeah, sometimes I just dont chamfer cause Im lazy and its easier to unwrap this way. But mostly because of the other reasons xD

[Computron]

well, if you have some blanks spaces on your normal map you could map to the edges you could make the smoothing groups do all the work for free without needing any difficult unwrapping for them, do it after the initial unrwap.

[Snefer]

Computron: that is basically what I have done in many places :]

Added some random stuff, filling out the space. For example.. the new ipad 18! :D ahwell. slooow progresss...


http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile17.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile18.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile19.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile20.jpg

[coots7]

how many cubemaps do you have for the scene? are there realtime reflection posiblities in UDK? for instance the last image if it was an animated TV?

[tokidokizenzen]

Amazing stuff. Loving this shit.

[Snefer]

coots: Hmm, i only have one cubemap actually, and two scene-captureactors ^^ (yes its superexpensive but its FUN! :D) and yes, the scene-capture reflection is realtime :]

[Shoy333]

Could you make a tutorial after all this pweeetyy please!

[PogoP]

Hmm while it is impressive, why are you limiting yourself to such a small texture sheet? It looks very plain and boring at the moment!

[danjohncox]

This is totally fantastic work man. Awesome to see what you can do with great, imposed limitations. The color variation for the walls you had, thats still all one material on the model. Not multi material walls?

[Skillmister]

Hmm while it is impressive, why are you limiting yourself to such a small texture sheet? It looks very plain and boring at the moment!

It's no more plain than the majority of sci-fi scenes that use way more textures though really.

[Snefer]

PogoP: i think the plainness is more to the lack of things in the environment and the unfinished state its in, together with the clean style, more than the lack of textures. :]

danjohncox: thanks, yes the colorvariations is still one material on the model, the only things with two materials are the monitors and the glowy beds (one material for glowy, one for normal) even though I could probably solve that in the shader aswell..hmmm. I should do that. But yes, imposing limitations is a nice exercise to force yourself outside of your comfort zone :]

[killnpc]

Awesome work Snefer! Love it!

[bgoodsell]

This is an excellent 101 in modular texture design! Really love the results you got from this exercise.

That being said, is there any advantage of what your doing on a technical level? It seems like your trading texture memory for multiple render passes (provided what i know of how unreal renders objects with multiple uv's is correct.)

So i'm wondering, is it practical to texture objects in this way? I know this project pushes it to an extreme, i'm just curious which method is less 'costly' or whether this is comparing apples to oranges.

[Snefer]

bgoodsell: on a technical level, yes. I am trading texturememory for shaderinstructions (because it takes a few shaderinstructions to assemble everything) but since everything is only using one shader per objects its only one drawcall per object. It also allows me to have larger objects combined together because they share the same shader. (like the bookshelf, with folder, pills, clipboard in it, all the same material) So technically its all very sound, however, there isnt really any point of optimising something this hard, this is mostly an exercise and example of what you can do with smaller textures. :] Optimising is never bad :D

[G3L]

this scene makes me realize the power of lighting, composition and shaders O_O i mean...the size of that texture wow...great job man!

[Disting]

This is really a great source of inspiration!

Congrats on the feature in the recap. :)

[Artist_in_a_box]

This is totally awesome! I have a sci fi scene I had to put on hold a for a while. I was struggling balancing small details and the overall picture and had come to a real slow crawl. This is realy inspiring, I cannot wait to get back to it, brilliant!

[cupsster]

is wireframe view of scene available? :) all pictures moved to inspire folder

[Jeff Parrott]

This scene is so powerful. You're really showcasing the abilities of using an engine for portfolio work.

Is the screencapture actor working properly with the tiledshot command? I had problems with that in the past. Your reflections are coming out real nice.

[Computron]

I was looking around in Halo: Reach the other day and I noticed they used a similar technique on a lot of their maps like Sword Base and Zealot. They use the same trim everywhere but it has no diffuse, only a normal map (maybe an AO as well?). This way they can stretch it out or rescale it to break tiling without anyone noticing stretch marks. Then it looks like they use a second non-stretched 1:1 UV channel for detail normals, this way the can keep the same texel density everywhere even if they stretch other UV channels.


DEM BEVELED EDGES SON:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15588298/Polycount/reach_24480958_Full.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15588298/Polycount/reach_24480966_Full.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15588298/Polycount/reach_24480984_Full.jpg

[Computron]

Is there any easy way to make a beveled edge that is also unwrapped automatically to fit one of these modular textures? You could sweep a spline with genrate mapping coordinates but then you have to cut this bevel into your model and weld it in but that is an assload of tedious work. Any quick modifiers that can perform this?

EDIT: NVM, I figured out if you sweep a 1/4 pipe and use its radius in the edge chamfer operation all the verts stack right on top of eachother making them easy to weld as well as perfectly UV'ed. Adam Bromell was right in his talk (http://www.polycount.com/2011/10/22/toronto-igda-talk-by-adam-bromell/), there is a lot of inspirational learning to be had from people like Snefer (Congrats by the way), thanks!

[devingeesr]

wow awesome work Snefer I got a question for you is it safe to say that your texture is size pixel by poly meaning that a 128 by 512 texture is attached to a 128 by 512 poly mesh?

[Holi]

this thread put a big smile on my face

[sneakymcfox]

Literally just read through this whole thread with my jaw on the floor, really great inspiration and shows quite how wasteful i usually am in my environments :)

[slipsius]

PogoP, I think this is more of an experiment to see how far he can push himself on the technical side. Learning new techniques and see what the limitations really are. But i agree with skillmister, that its no more "boring" than the majority of sci-fi scenes. Snefer has essentially done the same as alot of people, but with ALOT less.

Personally, snefer, I think this is absoultely amazing. I totally missed this thread before. I saw your cybernetics core thread and was blown away, then missed this one till I went to Adams talk at IDGA and he showed it. Amazing stuff. simply amazing. And Kudos for pushing yourself even further. Very inspirational

[Bombshell]

wow, like what your doing. I'm obsessed with graphics programming (mostly lighting and radiosity calculation) always interested in the strangely brilliant!

would you be able to give an abstract and method? just an explanation of the theory and how you go about implementing it?

[dpaynter26]

Soo, here is a small breakdown of how I make a prop ^^ Hmm, makes sense now? ^^

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/microscope.jpg

im lost on your step two, why is the unwrap so fugly for the normal? am i missing something?

[Disting]

im lost on your step two, why is the unwrap so fugly for the normal? am i missing something?

I'm guessing it's because he has tiling details or bevels in in the normal map. He's just putting his shells on the details that he wants for that for that particular area, so no need to make it pretty. :)
The light map UV set needs to be optimized and in the 0 to 1 space in order to get proper light maps.

This is just my guess though, you'll have to wait for snefer to reply to get a 100% correct answer. :P

[Peris]

haha, I love it. I wish more environment artists would try out these kind of uber-optimisation techniques, you learn so much from it :), especially when it comes to being fast and efficient.

[dpaynter26]

so you're saying his normal map itself, the baked image is going to look pretty nasty because everythings stacked up but as long as the light map set is nice and neat its ok? i mean you wouldnt be able to show off the baked normal map when showing off the textures but that works?

[passerby]

so you're saying his normal map itself, the baked image is going to look pretty nasty because everythings stacked up but as long as the light map set is nice and neat its ok? i mean you wouldnt be able to show off the baked normal map when showing off the textures but that works?

you dont understand, he isnt baking with these UV's, he already made theses normalmaps by hand or from previous bakes, and is just overlaying UV's shells on the details in the exiting normal map he wanst to put on his objects.

he working in reverse of what most do, starting with the textures, and making models that fit to and use the existing texture, to allow him to reuse elements in the textures as much as possible.

[Snefer]

Thanks for all the comments! See if I can answer some of the questions. :]

dpaynter26: Yup, Disting got it right, I dont have a baked normalmap. I map the UVs after the existing texture :] It doesnt matter how the UVmap looks aslong as the model looks good. I use the lightmap UVs for a tiling metal texture, and for the lightmaps. Thats more or less how i do it. I have changed the shader a bit since, so I will post an updated version aswell later, right now i have some annoying bugs and crashes when baking lights, no clue as to why.

[vahl]

hey man
First off, awesome stuff dude, also great to see you doing more clean stuff lately.

Now enough with the sugar coating,I couldn't help but notice the fugly lightmap seam on thet microscope (pretty sure there are some in other places, just not as noticeable, and looking at your lightmap uvs, I'm wondering, is there a particular reason you didn't gridmap, or at least straighten those sloped edges on the microscope ? it'a a bit of a shame seeing such a cool piece having nasty lightmap seams :)
also, any reason you use a dxt5 instead of 2 DXT1 ? that would give you 2 extra channels at no texture memory cost IIRC ? or was it just a self imposed restriction of only one texture lookup ?
again cool stuff man :) good to see smart use of high end tech to do heavy optimisation at little to no quality cost :)

[Snefer]

Do you mean the seams when its baked and in the scene? And no, there is no specific reason really, more than lazyness I suppose. I generally try to keep the Lightmap UVs as seamless as possible, but I dont bother overly much with pieces that are angled etc. However, I am not sure if the seams will show when rebaked at production quality. My computer at home is pretty shit and I havent had the time to rebake on higher quality, so that causes seams even wth perfect UVs, so I will have to look into that, if it actually shows :]

And yeah, the only reason I went with a dxt5 was the self imposed restriction :) I actually redid the shader so I got rid of one channel for awhile (the decalalfa), but then I added the monitor-shader so I used upp the alfa-channel again. But actually, I got an idea now, so I miiiight be able to free up one more channel again :D And yeah, the restriction is two lookups, since I have the normalmap aswell. Doesnt really make sense in a real world scenario, but it gives food for thought :]

[timwiese]

Awesome stuff, I had to do this when creating a set of train cars for the last game I was working on. We couldn't use giant texture sheets for each one so we used this method exactly. It's really cool to see you using it for a whole environment. Nice Work!

[Snader]

I've not read the entire thread, so I might be off here. But you're using lightmaps, right? Doesn't that pretty much defeat the purpose of limiting yourself to a small texture?

[sprunghunt]

I've not read the entire thread, so I might be off here. But you're using lightmaps, right? Doesn't that pretty much defeat the purpose of limiting yourself to a small texture?


You still get a memory saving by using fewer textures. Since you need the lighting data no matter what you're doing.

[krateos_29]

This is awesome!

When the final udk materials are done, are you showing them to us? :P

[Snefer]

Snader: Using less memory and fewer textures is NEVER a waste :]

krateos: I will :]

Playing around a bit, added a bunch of new props, and did some optimsation, nothing to really show off by itself really. Im gonna add some traffic in the city aswell, right now its palceholder boxes flying around, but ill get around to building real spacecars instead. Also added a car that drives by close to the window, MMM SPOTLIGHT AND LENSFLARES! xD

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile21.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile22.jpg

[toxic_h2o]

I want to steal you brain and use it for myself. :) I'm curious to know how much time you put into this on a daily basis and how much time have you invested into it so far?

[metalliandy]

Truly amazing...

[d1ver]

sunavabitch!

[Snader]

Using less memory and fewer textures is NEVER a waste :]


Well, sure, I get that. But at this point you use a 512x256 diffuse/normal spec (which is awesome) and what seems to be a 256² for just the microscope lightmap. So in the end, going down from 1x1024² in textures and 10x1024² in lightmaps, to 1x512x256 in textures and 10x1024² in lightmaps gives very little reward for a lot of work.

Maybe it's more effective to look into painted lightmaps and UV them yourself? Or to try and optimize the geo for vert lighting?

Not to say what you're doing is very impressive and inspirational, but it feels somewhat dampened by using lightmaps at the end.



also, it could be considered a waste of time to optimize too much ;)

[Alex3d]

Well, sure, I get that. But at this point you use a 512x256 diffuse/normal spec (which is awesome) and what seems to be a 256² for just the microscope lightmap. So in the end, going down from 1x1024² in textures and 10x1024² in lightmaps, to 1x512x256 in textures and 10x1024² in lightmaps gives very little reward for a lot of work.

Maybe it's more effective to look into painted lightmaps and UV them yourself? Or to try and optimize the geo for vert lighting?

Not to say what you're doing is very impressive and inspirational, but it feels somewhat dampened by using lightmaps at the end.



also, it could be considered a waste of time to optimize too much ;)

The lightmap is a separate UV channel, unless you are texturing using unique UVs. If we are to follow your logic, game companies must be stupid to spend so much time optimizing textures and building game levels modularly...

[Snefer]

toxic_h2o: hehe, I havent really kept track of the hours, i do put quite some time into it. Assets are very fast to make, alot of time was spent on thinking and trying to get inspiration for what to build, and how to work around stuff. I have been trying out alot of new stuff I havent tried before, outside of what im doing with the tiling etc.

Snader: The Lightmap for the microscope is a 64 or 32 texture, and rendered at 50% quality, so it doesnt look nearly as good as it will be when baked at production quality. the largest lightmap is a 256*256, which is for a huge segment of floors combined together. Also lightmaps are not compressed the same as normal dx1 and dxt5 textures, and I can optimise them down to 25% of their current size with a few clicks if needed.

Yes, it can definately be considered a waste to optimise too much, that is why I do this. I have learned some new tricks, explored new dead ends, learned alot. Also, if there is one point where you should spend optimisation, its where the benefits are the largest. Now I have built probably 50 assets with the same texture, the pipeline for building new assets is superfast. I dont need to import new textures, I dont need to create new shaders. Every new trick and optimisation I do now affect 50 assets, instead of just one. Every megabyte is worth alot. Every day of work is worth alot. If you can consistently free up a few 1k-textures from the environments and they look the same, then suddenly your main char can have a 2k texture instead of a 1k, etc.

[The Dag Node]

Impressive!
I understand you have your own shader to be able to separate each channel.

So a texture made in photoshop you have the r-channel using a metal texture, g-channel using the occlusion, b-channel for decals and the alpha is used for the decals transparency.

Then another texture is used for the normal map, but I don't follow precisely. The normals are baked and in photoshop you edit the blue channel, painting it black in certain areas and I don't see why?

On top of this you use lightmaps for each model?(I'm not fully aware of how they are done) but I understand they need another UV-set as you unwrapped them without overlay.

So all this can be accomplished with one shader?
or do you have copies of one shader using the same textures, but change the lightmaps for each model?

Aren't the colors in the scene done as vertex color?`if not, please explain.

Thanks and keep it up!

[shabba]

This is fantastic! Not only is the scene outstanding, but the approach and constraints are fascinating too!

I understand the channels and maps part, but utilizing the different UV channels and the material expressions involved in UDK is what I cant quite grasp. Would you be able to post a preview of your material (even if its not quite done? :poly136:) and how that applies to an example mesh in the SM editor?

This would be of great help! Please and thank you!

[pthomas1172]

Really nice work

[Snefer]

The Dag Node: yes, more or less. But I also removed the decal alpha and put the monitor-textures there instead, and made the decalalfa in the b-channel aswell. The blue channel is used to separate the metal from the flat surfaces, so that I can use parameters for specular, colors, etc, instead of having dedicated maps for that. And yes, all models have lightmaps, since the lighting is baked. All this is one shader, more or less, im using shaderinstances with colorvariables that I can change how i want, so I can get any color-combination i want. I also added settings to have a third color aswell. I am not using vertex color, except for the traffic.

shabba: I will post something soon :]

Long time no update! Added some plants! And made the windows into a animatable material so i can get a cool effect when the windows morph from being pitch black to the state they are in the pictures. Need to sort out some issues with them though, like the shadows. Updated the traffic and city outside, still not done yet, looks alot better in motion though :] will post some videos as soon as I get my internet back, haha ^^

Also haxxed the textures a bit, normalmap-compression was to high so I changed to another compression and rebuilt the shader a bit. Also added some cables, postitnotes, etc. Lots of small stuff all over. Right now the scene looks a bit dark, specially when its static.


http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/Snefer_photo/tile23.jpg
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/Snefer_photo/tile24.jpg
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/Snefer_photo/tile25.jpg
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/Snefer_photo/tile26.jpg
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/Snefer_photo/tile27.jpg

[SasoDuck]

Those windows remind me of the windows in Padme's quarters in Episode II when she got attacked by those poisonous worm things

Great work

[Snefer]

haha, I would have preferred the windows in bladerunnor, but cool enough :D

[SirCalalot]

As per usual, you don't disappoint, Snefer - fantastic work!

I've even learnt a few things just by reading this thread (which seems to be the norm' when looking at your works :P).

I look forward to a snippet of your material tree to better understand how you get such great variation from essentially black and white base texture channels.

[The Dag Node]

Thanks for explaining!
I understand most of it now, but it's quite crazy optimized :D
I now understand how the blue channel in the normal map is used. Btw, how
So you just plug in the channels to the shader and have the blue color derive from the shader to mix up with the red and green from the texture. Then you are free to use the blue channel, in this case to materials(but I don't understand this presicely). The materials are controlled by black and white values? So for instance, black means matte and white means shiny?

I reread all posts again, but I still couldn't understand how you add the color, since not using vertex color. How are the colors applied? :\
Did you change the grey value in the B-channel to black or are you able to just configure the shader to use the grey value and have the alpha apply itself only to this exact value?

When you started out, did you paint and set up the textures as normally in photoshop, then copied each image into it's corresponding channel in a new document? It seems a bit awkward to work with otherwise, if not, please explain.

Well, that's all for now. Looks really nice and looking forward to updates. I was wondering though, this shader, is it something one could get their hands on? I tried some mental mill 2 years ago, but I wouldn't remember much. I guess it's a good reason to pick it up again.

Cheers dude, SKÅL (http://rarebirdfinds.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/bowl10.jpg)!

[Snefer]

Alriiighty, finally have internet in my apartment!

The Dag Node: Hmm, my brain is melted right now, so i cant answer all of it, but yes, i work with the channels in separate documents, then just copy them over to the .tga that is imported into the engine.

Also this scene will most likely be released in some form aswell :] So people can look/laugh/learn etc :]

Oh yeah, added some more stuff to the scene, will record some footage when my brain is reassembled : D

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile28.jpg

[The Dag Node]

Congrats to your internet =)
I see.
Wawaweewaa, that would be awesome of you to release that. perhaps as a christmas gift to all of us =D
Nice update. Just want to play around with that shader and build modular pieces!!

[Snefer]

Yeaaa, just a really crappy commpressed video of me running around the enviro a bit. HORRIBLE compression, but atleast gives a bit of sense of the traffic, the animated windows etc :]

ScifiLab WIP - YouTube

[paulsvoboda]

Been great watching this thread. You've made some really smart choices with so many of your props/infrastructure and have done a great job bringing it all together in a pretty well constructed scene. I know it's not your goal with this exercise but I'd love to see this scene done without using real time reflections and instead cheating it with cube maps/environment maps as that would really accentuate how optimized this scene is, and I can't imagine there would be much loss to the quality.
I also think you could tone down/kill the reflections in areas as such as the floor. The roof and walls both look great because they are defines so well with shape and colour, I personally find the reflections in the floor to take away from that and they become a distraction more than anything else. Perhaps adding colour to the sides of the floor instead and getting rid of the reflection altogether.

This is a very minor gripe, as this is stellar work. There is a lot to take from this thread and I'd love to see you release the map.

[Snefer]

paulsvoboda: thanks : ) I am keeping the scenecapture-actor for the floor, but the cubemap for the walls etc are baked of course. I klled alot of the reflections now, been tweaking lighting and shaders alot now that i am in the end-phase.

Been populating the scene alot more with props now, adding some props here and there, some stuff where the rooms were empty before etc. Have a few tweaks left before Im done with it, just a few props left, also gonna TRY to squeeze the skybox into the texture aswell, hahaha :D Oh, managed to squeeze in lights for the buildings aswell! :]

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile29.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile30.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile31.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile32.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/tile33.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/operatemachine.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/WIP/lightss.jpg

[d1ver]

Looking crazy sweet, Snefer.

Maybe add some big-ass lensflares mass-effect-style? You could do those procedurally stretching the sphere mask. :)

[Snefer]

Thanks :] Yeah, i already have on for when the car drives by, but would like to tweak that and add more, Still think the rendering can be improved quite a bit, and I havent even touched postprocessing yet. : )

[Minos]

Looks pretty cool! Not really digging all the 90 degree angles everywhere though, specially where the walls connect with the ceiling. You could try to break them up a little! The scale also seem a bit off, could you place some character meshes in the scene just so we could get a better idea on that?

I did a quick & shitty paintover with some ideas on how to improve the scale:
http://i.imgur.com/5CpOF.jpg

[Computron]

Looks a lot like the new Deus Ex, which I think used a similar technique.

[okimoki]

This is insane!!!!! Insanely beautiful i mean!!!
Sooo, where are the zombies?? :)

[Snefer]

Minos: Yeah, i hear ya. The scale is pretty spot on though I think, I used centimetres for measurments, so everything should be real-world scale. Now it was so long ago I read in the thread so I forgot to add a character and show >_< next update! I added some more shapes after your feedback, they are in another corridor that I havent shown yet, heh : D

Computron: Yup! They did indeed! : )

okimoki: thanks! : )

Anyway, more or less done with the enviro now, Needs a tiiny bit of tweaking maybe, and cleaning up some things for download etc... : ) There is alot I could add to it, with postprocessing, heavier shaders and more stuff, but I dont want to go overboard with it, that was never the purpose of this scene. Learned lots doing it though!

http://www.torfrick.com/Art/UDKLab/Lab9.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/UDKLab/Lab10.jpg
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/UDKLab/Lab12.jpg

[marq4porsche]

Whoa! Very impressive work!

[paulsvoboda]

This is brilliant! Love your light sources throughout the environment. Makes the scene very interesting. On the first image you either have some bad lightmaps on the cieling near the orangish light or it just needs a production build.

Excellent job though. Really like what you've done with this!

[Snefer]

marq4porsche: thanks : ]

paulsvoboda: thanks man : ] Yeah, I have had some problems with that area, not quite sure why it looks so messy, since this is a production build. Maybe I accidentally set the lightmaprez to low...

[SirCalalot]

Wonderful job, Snefer.
I've been following this for a while and it is an inspiration. :)

In terms of the project ethos; is all of this super-optimisation improving performance noticeably? Or is there not enough going on in the scene to truly put it to the test?

When you're done, I'd love to see some framerate and memory statistics comparing this scene with a duplicate version that uses unique complex materials from some of your other projects.

[Snefer]

The scene uses 1.3 mb of uncompressed texture memory for the entire environment. (not counting the lightmaps or the skydome)

Its kind of hard to estimate how much more it would have used if it was unique instead, but probably 30-40 mb or so.

As for framerate its no gain per se. If it was all unique it would be the same framerate, but if I would have used tiling materials in a less developed fashion I would have had to increase the number of materials and then the framerate would have gone down faster (specially on console) This was mostly a way to minimise texture memory, without having to go down in framerate.

The scene is not heavy enough to bother a normal PC, even an old one. My computer locks the framerate at 120 fps, so... However, the shaders are a bit too expensive for console, aswell as the cubemaps. In terms of object, polycount and texture memory its very cheap.

[d1ver]

Fantastic work, Snefer. This should get a frontpage plug since it's finished. And awesome. And finished. And awesome. And awesome:)

[SirCalalot]

Not sure if should click on link...

[cupsster]

spambot

[Snefer]

yay I got my own spambot, how cute ^^

[HAWK12HT]

Nice work man, loved that shiny reflection on the white surface all over. Just one question did you make ur modular pieces with back faces or just planer, cause from the pics its hard to read. Reason i ask is that I am also working on modular pieces with single 1024 sheet, i have to cover large area and with too many pieces. The problem is SEAMS :/ when two perfectly UVW lightmaps pieces come together side by side. The only solution i have seen from UT3 maps and my own is either chamfer the edges on each side inwards to create a cavity (indent) or put some trim piece on top of the two joining point of two pieces.
Dont wann pull ur leg :D, but I see seams on ur large window pieces when they join. Would b nice to get feedback on that.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-rR05vD9px7I/Tw92SbK_6EI/AAAAAAAAAKY/3HxJ1bUdqco/s912/23rd_Oct_FKMd.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-CahJkdVhAAE/Tw949Cp6d_I/AAAAAAAAAKg/-uJy9FnmjcA/s912/22nd_Oct_FKMk.jpg

[Skillmister]

Love how this turned out in the end!


Also this scene will most likely be released in some form aswell :] So people can look/laugh/learn etc :]


Are you able to show the final material setup? :)
Also

but since everything is only using one shader per objects its only one drawcall per object

Is it actually only one draw call per object even though you use two textures in the material? I don't quite understand this fully and i have a bit to write about it in my dissertation.

[WarrenM]

Draw calls are per material, not per texture.

[Kbrom12]

Are you able to show the final material setup? :)


I agree :)

That would be amazing if you can show that

[Snefer]

HAWK12HT: Cant avoid lightmapseams and seams to 100% unfortunately : / But yes, placing seams in places where you already have seams in the mesh/texture is the best way to hide it.

Skillmister/Kbrom12: sure, I can post it. Ill also release the entire thing for download so people can poke around with it, hehe. :P And drawcalls are per material, not per texture : )

[HAWK12HT]

:) Im so glad to hear that from a pro, on seams. Time to move on making enviors :D

[Kbrom12]

Skillmister/Kbrom12: sure, I can post it. Ill also release the entire thing for download so people can poke around with it, hehe. :P And drawcalls are per material, not per texture : )

Awesome!, thats some great news, I can't wait for this, I feel that I will learn so much from this, thank you :)

[cptSwing]

yeah, looking forward to poking through your scene as well (ooh, that sounds nasty!) ... :thumbup:

[Snefer]

aaaaand video is up! : )) cleaning up the last of the package dependencies : ))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGB-FnpNHO4

[Crazyeyes]

blocked

[zakhar2]

video says it contains content from WMG and is blocked on copyright grounds. :/

[Snefer]

Yeah, its blocked in US and stuff, god damnit! Im uploading it on vimeo aswell ^^

[Money]

Looks really great, can't wait to take a peek into the scene once it's released. I really love the clean art style. :D

Just one small thing, in the end of the video those wheeled tables are a bit above the floor so they appear to be floating in air.

[Serith]

Wow, very impressive stuff Snefer. You've really got modularity on lock down! Very inspiring

[Ark]

Wow, great stuff! :)

[Snefer]

In vimeo we trust. This should work : ))

35470093

[Jessica Dinh]

This is stunning in motion :]

[Skillmister]

Absolute wizardry! Can't wait to poke around the scene and let my brain be a sponge

[Orangeknight]

How many unique mesh's are there? Also how many texture sheets?

[S_ource]

How many unique mesh's are there? Also how many texture sheets?

He used only one 256x512 texture, that was the whole thing about this project i think. And also looks really nice dude, love the light rays coming throut the window, truly inspiring. :) Good work!!

[Snefer]

orangeknight: maybe 100 or so : )

Here is what the texture looks like:
http://www.torfrick.com/Art/UDKLab/Layout.jpg

[Sliterin]

When I watch your metall stuff, I think that can become legendary. I'm serious ;-)

[alloa]

I think that maybe you have create a new trend.
Inspiring work!

[Jeff Parrott]

This thread is so much awesome. I'd say post breakdowns but that's what pages 1 though 8 are. Great job!

[metalliandy]

Well, damn. This is extremely impressive stuff, man.
The video looks pretty amazing...

[Seirei]

As hard as I try to wrap my head around it, I don't realy get how this could be done, I kind of understand it but it's just put together so tightly... wow just wow, realy impressive!

[Gannon]

The scene looks fantastic, great job. You are a material wizard sir.

I need to try out that normal map trick to fully understand how you're generating it. Seems really useful

[Axios]

This is so slick, it's nasty. Top notch stuff. Light shafts may be a bit on the apocalyptic side though.

[cptSwing]

dude. crazy nice.

[raul]

This thread is pure awesome! Really nice work there!

[Wahlgren]

Good stuff!
The video really sells it.

[Walrus]

Amazing work. You da man!

[Snader]

Wouldn't it be possible to clamp the NormalBlue out of the RGBBlue?

[Ron.S]

Amazing job man, I don't completely understand the full aspects of what happened here but its impressive. Is there any way you could release a little tutorial explaining the process and how it would be applied to a single mesh maybe?

[Computron]

Dx11 reflections?

[Snefer]

Thanks for the comments guys, glad you like it.

Snader: not quite sure what you mean?

Ron.S: yup, more breakdowns/explanations will be posted, explaining the entire workflow/thoughtprocess in detail.

Computron: Nope, its dx9, scencapture-actor for floors, prerendered cubemap for the rest : )

[Snader]

Basically, you pump up the contrast enormously until there are (almost) only black and white pixels. Then 'clamp' it so you don't have values lower than 0 (which will subtract when rendering the scene) or higher than 1 (which will cause bloom).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/448525/keep/minitutorials/TextureClamp.jpg

You'll probably have to fiddle a bit with values and maybe your texture channel to get it to work nicely, but it could save you an entire channel, which in this case means an interesting enough 20% savings.

Also, could you give a short description of what all 5 channels do, precisely?

[Kbrom12]

Man I love those videos dude, I can't get over the reflections you got and that hard plastic look you achieved...I'd love to know what the shader looks like to get that look but I can wait till you release the pack!!! :):):)

[Snefer]

Snader: yes, that is how i got rid of having an alpha-channel for the decals. It wouldnt work for the AO though, since not everything that have AO is supposed to be the other material : ) (and a value over 1 doesnt cause bloom, you set that independently in the postprocessing of the scene) also, I am using that channel as a alfa for a lerp, so thats the reason why it needs to be between the 0-1 range, otherwise you will get fiddly results.

The red channel is a tiling metal that I use to get some surface detail, the green channel is an AO overlay, the blue channel is the decals, the alpha is the texture for the screens, and the bluechannel of the normalmap is a mask I use to separate the metal from the painted surfaces, so I can set independent values for the specular, reflective values, etc. : )

[Snader]

Ah, now I see. There are some small differences between your texture and my clamped version, such as the black bar on the left border. My bad.

[Snefer]

Well, there is a workaround for that, I could combine the mask and the AO if I wanted to. Basically have the AO at 50% over the mask, and then clamp the channel at 50% instead, so the top 50%*2 would be the AO and the bottom 50%*2 would be the mask : ) so thats an easy optimisation on the textureside, even though it would add another bunch of instructions in the shader, but the theory is sound. Also when using heavier compression you tend to get alot more artefacts when dividing up your channels like that.

I have done that with mixed results on assets before. When used as a mask it can be quite effective, since then the artifacts are not as easy to spot.

[Snefer]

Ah, damn it. Why did you have to do that :D Now I must see if i can implement it and shave another channel of this ^^

[Jungsik]

sorry to bother you, I cant see your amazing video you uploaded on Vimeo..it comes out white no matter how many times I refresh it, it could be the school computers.
On the other hand, I love you...r work.

[Snader]

I could combine the mask and the AO if I wanted to. Basically have the AO at 50% over the mask, and then clamp the channel at 50% instead, so the top 50%*2 would be the AO and the bottom 50%*2 would be the mask :)

Hadn't even thought of that, yeah. I'd go for a different distribution, though. 12.5% (I reckon 1/8th is faster to calculate than 10% because it's a power of 2) for the mask, since that is high contrast and doesn't need smooth gradients, and spend the other 87.5% on the AO to keep it as smooth as possible.

Heh, technically you might even be able to squeeze more layers together this way. Maybe even all in a single RGB texture ;) Let's not do that right now, though.

[[HP]]

This is absolutely nuts, one texture, a whole scene. You can have the cake, it's all yours.

[allaze-eroler]

that is so amazing, i never though you actually find out how to deal with this ! i'm now wondering if you plan to make a full step by step for 3dcreative or as free tutorial at 3dtotal ? that would be so interesting to read with ! :D

[tekmatic]

Thanks for all the comments! See if I can answer some of the questions. :]

dpaynter26: Yup, Disting got it right, I dont have a baked normalmap. I map the UVs after the existing texture :] It doesnt matter how the UVmap looks aslong as the model looks good. I use the lightmap UVs for a tiling metal texture, and for the lightmaps. Thats more or less how i do it. I have changed the shader a bit since, so I will post an updated version aswell later, right now i have some annoying bugs and crashes when baking lights, no clue as to why.

I am completely lost as to what you just said. Where the hell do you learn these techniques cuz the school I went to definitely do not teach these techniques at all.....can you direct us noobs to the source of you training or is it picked up working in a studio.

Great work mate....very inspirational.

[Seirei]

I am completely lost as to what you just said. Where the hell do you learn these techniques cuz the school I went to definitely do not teach these techniques at all.....can you direct us noobs to the source of you training or is it picked up working in a studio.

Great work mate....very inspirational.

My personal guess would be it's just a matter of knowing what stuff does by using it here and there and then one night you lie awake and wonder: "What would happen if I do 'this' and 'this'?" and you jump up onto your computer and throw stuff together. And sometimes you get some realy crazy stuff that inspires you to do more and as it seems some people invent some reaaaaly wicket stuff, as seen here.

Correct me if I'm majorly wrong here, but as I said I could imagine it pretty much like that. Atleast I have some smaller versions of these moments.
If it's something else, I'd be interested to hear it too! :D

[d1ver]

Sunavabitch! Tor, this is so flipping dope, I'm lost for words.
It even got a little Bladerunner vibe!
I also learned a thing or two.
Thank you very much, man.

[LoTekK]

Heh, technically you might even be able to squeeze more layers together this way. Maybe even all in a single RGB texture ;) Let's not do that right now, though.

Yup, if you were able to spare the precision (or you want to get really silly), you could cram like 8 grayscale textures into 1 channel. You'd definitely have to pay attention to the compression artifacts between value ranges, though, as you've already pointed out.

Shader Fun: Trading Accuracy for Variety (http://teckartist.com/?p=26)

[Reverenddevil]

man awesome work! Very well done!

[Snefer]

cheers guys : ]]

Yup, if you were able to spare the precision (or you want to get really silly), you could cram like 8 grayscale textures into 1 channel. You'd definitely have to pay attention to the compression artifacts between value ranges, though, as you've already pointed out.

Shader Fun: Trading Accuracy for Variety (http://teckartist.com/?p=26)

Yupp, its all just data in the end ^^ But for masks etc its is an elegant solution, dont know how to do this in an efficient enough way in UDK though.

allaze-eroler: there will be some kind of complete breakdown/explanation, dont worry : ))

tekmatic: you pick things up over the years, you ponder things, then you try it :D Its things i picked up at a couple of studios, aswell as thing i came up with myself and things you see here and there that gives you ideas.

Seireri: thats more or like it. ^^

[Ged]

this is very cool, whats it like in terms of draw calls? is it more efficient to make games with more textures and less shaders or less textures and more shaders? I cant even use shaders most of the time when making ios games :(

[Snefer]

Ged: The entire scene is 871 objects, 1084 drawcalls, but that could easily be reduced by a few hundred by just combining things together.

I'd say a mixture of both ^^ The shader is quite expensive, depending on what features you turn on, but i didnt really try to optimise the shader that much. For just the core features, the tiling of materials and specularity etc etc, is 89 instructions, but with fresnel, reflections, etc its 130 instructions or so. For iOs games this would be pretty good I think, since most of the stuff is not expensive, just need pretty cheap shader and some thinking beforehand. I see this mainly as a way to save texturememory so it can be used somewhere else, or just boost the resolution up a few notches, for example, had I used a 1k*2k texture instead this would have been really highrez but still pretty cheap : ]

[marq4porsche]

Snefer this is a beautiful scene. I am amazed that you could get so much with such a small texture size. It honestly looks how I think Mass Effect should look. You're a beast to get this done all so quickly.

[Jonathan]

A little late to this thread, but lovely style, Snefer. Great job. :D

[Crazyeyes]

VERY clever. I'm impressed. Using the rgba channels to utilize essentially 4 texture sets with one cost is cool. I think the only crits i have is with your geo. Abit unimaginative. The shapes are basic and the composition is bland. With the current texture set, you could push the complexity of the scene much further.

[Amadreaus]

Tor, you are an absolute psychopath, and your work makes my eyes bleed in pure joy. Seriously, screw you, you are amazing. :)

[Snefer]

haha, cheers, glad to hear I can make peoples eyes bleed! I think... :D

Crazyeyes: yeah, scene as a whole is not that amazing, I agree, I did not plan ahead enough on this one, and kind of got stuck in the shapes I had. Tried to salvage that towards the end but its the basic shapes that are boring unfortunately. Problem was that I was sticking to pretty realistic shapes for the walls etc, so any fancy shapes for them should have been designed into the architecture and building as a whole, but I kind of missed that opportunity and once it was down to the props I just tried to hide the squareness, and fix the things I could bother with, heh. Lesson learned ;)