My first personal project! Stylised market diorama.
interpolator
Current stage;
Hi everyone, I'm Anya! I'm a second year Game Art student who's finally decided to do a 3D personal project rather than 2D, since I like to paint a lot.
So far I've done some concepts and am in the process of using a whitebox to make edits to my scene, as I think my initial concepts were too ambitious for the tiny little scene I wanted to work on. I want to hand-paint the textures and generally work super hard on the texturing process, trying Zbrush tileables and lots of hand-painting.
Please give me as much advice as you can! So much to learn...
Early ideas;
Colours;
Refined colours;
Populating scene;
First whitebox;
Hi everyone, I'm Anya! I'm a second year Game Art student who's finally decided to do a 3D personal project rather than 2D, since I like to paint a lot.
So far I've done some concepts and am in the process of using a whitebox to make edits to my scene, as I think my initial concepts were too ambitious for the tiny little scene I wanted to work on. I want to hand-paint the textures and generally work super hard on the texturing process, trying Zbrush tileables and lots of hand-painting.
Please give me as much advice as you can! So much to learn...
Early ideas;
Colours;
Refined colours;
Populating scene;
First whitebox;
Replies
@S2Engine I'll definitely look into changing the colours a bit... I think it's mostly the pink banner on the balcony that's really standing out as a particularly uncohesive (that's not a word lol) colour?
This is a rushed and messy concept for the interior area of the shop on the right of the scene. I want it to be crowded and cluttered without feeling dirty. There will be lots of little details, birds in the cages, bird food in the hanging trays, jars and bird toys/treats on the shelf under the stairs, lanterns, etc. I want it to be cosy, colourful, and pretty.
Also, here is the backdrop story surrounding this market; In this world, your caste status is derived from the type of bird you have. To not own a bird is to be rejected from society and end up on the streets. Bird merchants, such as the ones in this market, are rich and well known across the land.
This world and its design, as you may have guessed, is based around eastern markets.
All crits, advice and opinions are more than welcome!
Now to get on with my uni work *sob*. That's why progress on this project is slow, sorry guys.
I like the left hand ones.
I'm going to make a new whitebox and define some more shapes and improve the lighting, as suggested by someone I've been chatting to about it. Then over paint that whitebox and hopefully I'll be ready to get on with modelling properly.
The larger image is my most recent whitebox and I am currently doing a final concept overpainty thing. Still very unsure about colours, so being a bit experimental.
I'll be using 3dsmax, Photoshop, and Zbrush mostly, and I think rendering in UE4? But I want to see what Substance Painter is all about and generally learn some new cool stuff.
This is my inspiration, it's so so goooood;
http://aliceandthetextures.blogspot.co.uk/
Here is my final (but flexible) concept;
It's gone a bit dark and less exciting looking, but I want to bring the vibrancy back through in the lighting and texturing of the model.
Any tips then please fire away! I need all the help I can get here.
I was particularly thinking about do I use diff/norm/spec or albedo/normal/rough/metalness workflow? If I'm going for handpainted textures and not using PBR, what would I do? This is a question that's bothered me for a while now.
I'm sure there will be model and concept updates soon to follow.
However I think it might be nice to add some pipes coming out from the rocky area at the bottom, maybe with some water dripping out? I think it could add a bit more interest to that area
also, ^ this about pipes ^ 100%
You're completely right haha.
That part of the scene has been really neglected and to be honest I haven't thought about it much... But yes, I was thinking of a couple of cracked red clay pipes coming out of the ground and stuff. Going to have to research what goes on under ground in places like Morocco!
Thanks everyone for the compliments and tips so far
Thanks man! I hope I live up to everyone's expectations... :poly122:
Thanks a lot
Started Zbrushing the bottom part. This is going to take me a long while because I'm unused to Zbrush and want to make it look as believable as possible. It's tough but sinkholes are good ref;
Wish me luck!
I've tried Zremesher and Remesh and Dynamesh and all sorts and I just feel like I'm going to have to restart, but I'm quite far in now and don't really want to.
If there's not going to be any camera way up in there, even if you can't subdiv any more it should be fine, really. It's looking good, by the way!
My uni friend talked me through inflating and dynameshing it (it's not 28 million polys...), so it's kinda sorted to a point where I can work into it again, yay! The camera won't be getting close at all, no.
I'll definitely definitely do that next time. This is my first proper Zbrush project and that tip is super helpful, thanks!
Thanks for the encouragement too. It reassures me that I'm not failing too hard
Love the work so far. The palette and the lighting are looking spot on. But i still think you can push your shapes a bit more, and think about some things as you flesh out the blockout and start getting into it. I did a quick paintover with some notes, hope they help.
You have the right idea. But try to just exaggerate certain bits. Hope you don't mind. It would be cool to add some extra organic details, some vines or debris to break up some lines. But its looking really great.
As far as your details on the base you are zbrushing. Don't be afraid to add detail with instanced geometry on top. You can have a base model that you can decorate with simple geometry to give it shape. Let me know if you need an example.
Also, since you're still learning, there's a lot to be said about just starting over and re-applying everything you've learned up to this point. We've all done it. (talking about the sculpt, not the whole project)
And I can't tell, but you may be starting to sculpt detail onto a mesh that is too high res. Start low and build detail as you subdivide.
Keep going!
Thankyou so much for the paintover! Someone I've been chatting to via email gave me one too and was helping improve the lighting and colour palette a little, so this is a bonus
Thanks Jhoythottle! Will check that our, although I've kinda screwed up with the polycount and have a feeling that remesh may crash Zbrush. Damn, I've dug myself a deep hole here. But I reeeeeeally don't want to restart *sob*. I've done exactly what you said though haha, so maybe I should just go ahead and do it?
I sent you a pm with an example and some notes. Hope it helps.
Your support means a lot, thanks!
Having fun with this and I definitely prefer sculpting organic things to the limited stuff I've done in the past. I've found the brushes that really suit me and I think I'm getting my head round Zbrush. Test imported my mesh into 3D Coat so I know where I'm going with this too, so that's good. I'm going to re-make the tile low poly from scratch because I've realised how moronic it was to leave the bottom of the tile mesh open.
Also the mesh is 2.8 mill not 28 mill... I misread it. I so stupid.
Crits welcome.
Thanks
I have a teeny tiny update, but mostly I've been painting and doing uni work lately because this project has been frustrating me. I've sculpted the base *for now*, and have been trying to do the tiles. It's been really frustrating, and taken like a billion attempts. Today, though, I learned about the Fracture Voronoi script, and MassFX for Max. It's so cool, so I'm thinking I might try it to at least make the base meshes for my tiles, to then finish up in Zbrush. Here's a test I did;
I'll try a fancier version using a decimated version of my Zbrush base sculpt, and make the tiles thinner and stuff too...
I have no idea what I'm doing.
As for your scene, it's coming along pretty well! I like the tiles that you just updated, although I'm not sure about the ones on the edge. They look like they would've fallen off to me based on where they are? If you're going for "mid fall" look then I'd have them varied in height/distance a lot more. Keep pushin'
Oh yeah, that was just me testing the MassFX thingymajig and getting over excited about it :P
I'm going to do a proper version today hopefully... That one should have a couple of bits of tile in mid-fall if I can make it look right. Might take a bit of hand-positioning.
To be honest I'm really taking this as it comes. This workflow could end up going horribly wrong and I'll go back to square 1... I'm still prepared to abandon the sculpt of the dirt bit too!
Thanks for the support!
Hope it sculpts in Zbrush ok!
Thanks a lot!!
So, now I can exclusively focus on my diorama (and eating/sleeping/lazing). I've finished the sculpt of my base now, I think, so I've started making a low-poly in 3D Coat. Here's my sculpt;
I'd love to get people's opinions please! Any suggestions etc. I'm yet to go in and put in pipes in the base, and I may get round to adding some ivy or something in the later stages of this project.
The reality is that, actually, you probably won't have much time to polish, and chances are slim that you'll always get an amazing lead that can give you valuable feedback every time. Sometimes you will be just chucking up whatever you can to the best of your abilities, making it work, and passing it on. Sad reality.
You have to think from a gamers perspective too, not an artists; they're not going to stop and marvel at a trashcan. At best, they may stop to blow it up. In the case of GTAV in particular, its in all the little things... Walking into water and becoming wet up to the point where you actually walked into, wrinkle maps, good animations, great composition and color design, shader consistency.
The quality of individual assets doesn't matter so much as them coming together to form a cohesive big picture matters, and you put more effort where the general audience will focus. In this case, characters and explosions. The same way one might leave unimportant areas of a painting sketchy, people will look past it if the hero item/focal point is done well. I feel like, as a commercial artist, while you can always hope for a more artistically fulfilling project, that's something you have to come to terms with putting aside to some extent.
Looking forward to seeing a flythrough, though!
The sculpt's looking good, I'm looking forward to seeing the Low Poly/Bakes, I reckon the best bits will come through more during texture creation. :thumbup:
Yeah, it wasn't the end of the world, but I had higher hopes for it... I felt a bit held back by my team, in the least offensive way possible. Kinda found myself rushing and not being kind to my assets to make them fit in with the overall lower-than-I-would-like quality of the level.
That sad reality makes me sad :P I hope my future careers are at least slightly interesting! I'll be doing as much personal stuff as possible on the side probably.
Game art has completely ruined games for me... I stop and marvel at those trash cans! Then blow them up
Flythrough is done;
[ame="
First time editing a video, be gentle with me.
Sometimes its hard to just play the game, instead of walking around looking at all the models, seeing how they are made and textured.
It also makes you notice the rushed parts more, I noticed a lot of ugly textures and models in bioshock infinite