UDK Ancient Hall Of Worlds WIP
polycounter lvl 5
Lastest images
Hi everybody!
Since its summer now and I have ALOT of spare time, I decided to ask what you guys think of this project I had in mind. I will be updating regulary as I make new stuff so that you could follow and give input.(if you want of course)
Here is the idea: An ancient temple hall hidden somewhere not deep underground. Inside the temple there is a Hall with 5 different big statues where 4 of them represents the buddhists, egyptians, mayans and sumerian. The fifth one represents somekind of life giving otherworldy entety holding a glowing sphere sitting on a throne. The 4 others should also hold a seed which represents a piece of life given to their people by this entety.
The purpuse is to learn UDK and create some nice portfolio material, hope you like the idea and that you could follow this thread giving me feedback such as: what to improve and so on, feel free!
Thinking of having some water driping down from the roof hole also some godrays giving it a nice light effect.
early wip in udk, just to get a feeling for it, statues are just some 5 min blockouts
Floor sculpt, basic no cracks or anything yet
2 stair modules no texture just a dark AO, VERY WIP
Something that will be on the walls, perhaps holding some torches or something like that.
Wall piece, wip only Normal+ao
Thx^^
Hi everybody!
Since its summer now and I have ALOT of spare time, I decided to ask what you guys think of this project I had in mind. I will be updating regulary as I make new stuff so that you could follow and give input.(if you want of course)
Here is the idea: An ancient temple hall hidden somewhere not deep underground. Inside the temple there is a Hall with 5 different big statues where 4 of them represents the buddhists, egyptians, mayans and sumerian. The fifth one represents somekind of life giving otherworldy entety holding a glowing sphere sitting on a throne. The 4 others should also hold a seed which represents a piece of life given to their people by this entety.
The purpuse is to learn UDK and create some nice portfolio material, hope you like the idea and that you could follow this thread giving me feedback such as: what to improve and so on, feel free!
Thinking of having some water driping down from the roof hole also some godrays giving it a nice light effect.
early wip in udk, just to get a feeling for it, statues are just some 5 min blockouts
Floor sculpt, basic no cracks or anything yet
2 stair modules no texture just a dark AO, VERY WIP
Something that will be on the walls, perhaps holding some torches or something like that.
Wall piece, wip only Normal+ao
Thx^^
Replies
[imglink]http://s23.postimg.org/3ph7mkdrv/UDKWIP_02.jpg[/imglink]
some of the new assets
[imglink]http://s7.postimg.org/67suyk4kb/Wallhead_01.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://s7.postimg.org/78t3noljv/Stairwall_01.jpg[/imglink]
Thought that water will poor down from this jaguar head statue down into the pools on the sides
[imglink]http://s7.postimg.org/6i0dhwj6j/waterfountain_Head_01.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://s7.postimg.org/owawlvvh7/Pool_01.jpg[/imglink]
next up roof pillar and some fooliage!
[imglink]http://s7.postimg.org/872plsit7/Untitled_1.jpg[/imglink]
continuing working with the pillars,stairrails and the throne statue
Time for texture work and to add some foliage and work with vertex blending ALOT!;)
Please tell me what you think: should i create the 4 statues or should there be something else instead of them?:)
Scene WIP
[imglink]http://s13.postimg.org/kcwx5z9gn/Ruins_02.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://s13.postimg.org/dc8xd77on/Ruins_01.jpg[/imglink]
Zbrush shots
[imglink]http://s13.postimg.org/n8a0cudgn/Pillar.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://s13.postimg.org/bgm521iuf/Snakestairrail.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://s13.postimg.org/kad1j55t3/Throne.jpg[/imglink]
will add some more unique,broken parts to the floor and walls and some vines/roots
still not sure about the 4 statues..
Please feel free to comment, would really appreciate it some critics
[imglink]http://s22.postimg.org/muw3haffl/Temple_01.jpg[/imglink]
[imglink]http://s22.postimg.org/fg6rowtk1/Temple_02.jpg[/imglink]
There's also pretty much no distinction between your surfaces, the whole scene blends together
awsome looking
Hum i see what would you suggest to be able too fix the issue? was thinking of changing the base rock texture, maybe would help you think?
what i did is to tile some rock surfaces that i had in my photo collection
then i blended them together, as i now see they seem to noisy...
in order to be able to get some shadowing above the actual rock surface-texture i used:
1 AO for details(created when baking from high to low-poly)
1 Cavity map
1 separate AO without details just for the sake of shadows(baked using lowpoly+lowpoly)
1 prtP/prtN normalmap that you can bake using Xnormal.
what i did with it then is Basically:
1: Desaturated it
2 Used overlay to get the "fancier" shadows than a usual AO/Cavity map creates(my opinion)
3: set opacity to approximately 50-60% so that the effect wouldn't be to strong
hope you understand what i mean, if not tell me
"edit" also forgot to say that i use vertex paint in order to get the moss and the white moss spots(not sure what they are called)
Use color variation to help the user distinguish the objects from eachother and help the viewer itenditfy the form of the object, probably the easiest way to explain this is to put the green moss on the up-facing planes of the model:
(You probably want more contrast between the moss and some than this though)
Color differences don't have to be extreme but they should be different enough to tell where the floor ends and a wall begins.
thx for taking the time making the gif too^^ il get on fixing it right away!
I think the some of the beams of light are looking too much like spotlights tho, sublety could be key there
What this guy said!
Well pretty much, I think there is a lot of visual noise from the ZB noise generator, which is masking a lot of the hard work you have put into the sculpts. I would tone this down in the Normal and let the diffuse and spec pop them details.
The gif is a great interpretation of how the moss should form on your assets in the scene, this can be done easily in UDK using vertex painting, and using an up-vector. I got so far as a quick model in Max when it crashed... Typical max behavior, but I did make a quick shader in UDK for you to have a play with and reverse engineer.
Heres the files, did this in a rush and meant to name it PC_ANC_HALL but looks like its now PC_ANA_HALL, so oops...
http://www.filedropper.com/pcanahall
Oh, how the shader works, it uses the Normal map and changes the tangent normal to a world normal, using the constant vector to tell it to use the up vector (Z) and then you can control the falloff of the moss in the following constant. This creates a mask you can then use in a LERP, Linear Interpolate. This blends the Diffuse and Moss Diffuse together. For more control I have added a Vertex Painting Control, using the Red in the Mesh Paint you can now paint the up-moss rather than let it apply to the entire model. Just to give you more control
i see what you mean, im currently using a vertex paintable material with 3 textures:
What i didn't quite get really is why there should us an up vector(Z) for the moss? is it because of the behavior moss usually have in the real world?
Im not sure but might the problem be that the current stone texture(diffuse) is just to grainy/noisy and almost looks like moss itself? (sort of eats the details out of the normal/diffuse map?
I notice that if i just create a different one the contrast between the 3 moss textures and the actual stone-diffuse increases greatly!
tell me if i'm wrong
Thx!
If you have the time / willpower to go back before the noise generation you could rebake all the sculpts and reclaim that detail. Take the bakes AO, Cavity and give your diffuse some extra pop. Taking that noise generation into account means you will then receive these details in these maps after baking.
I would do the following:
1. Rebake all the sculpts without the noise.
2. Retexture the assets using your sculpted info using the AO and cavity and a cleaner rock texture for the diffuse.
3.Re-import these textures back into UDK and see how well did on the sculpts themselves.
4.Ndo a nice smaller rock noise for the noise detail, something tileable and less strength in the normals.
5.Re-approach the shader and add the diffuse and spec from the new bakes and then add both normals, the sculpt detail and the tileable noise. Mask the RED and GREEN from the normals ( a tex coord for the tiling of the noise to control its size) and add then multiply each RED and GREEN with a constant, (1) for now, and then add the two multiplies together and using an append vector append the add and the blue channel from preferably your sculpt normals.
6. Take a look, now using the constants you can adjust the amount of detail in your noise and sculpt normal information, 1 is basically keeping it the same and lowering it will reduce the strength and raising it will increase, but be careful how far you push the increase, a subtle increase is all that is needed, if even.
7. After you have nailed the noise and sculpt normal strength you should find you shall have a nicer cleaner result keeping both the sculpt information and just enough noise for the viewer to read it as a rock material.
8. I would then add the vertex painting controls, I added the Up-Vector because it added the moss detail in a more subtle yet aesthetically pleasing way whilst remaining believeable and controllable, only after this would I add another layer of vertex painting for moss on other areas for a tiny bit of extra detail.
Removing the strong noise from your normals is definitely going to improve the entirety of your scene, but fear not, it may not be in the diffuse anymore it will remain.
UDK's Lightmass has a fantastic feature in that it actually adds normal detail into the lightmap, you can see this visualised in the detail lighting view at the top of the viewport.
Hope this helps
Also you mentioned to make a detail normal-map for the rock, well that's basically what i have problem was that i did set the scale to - so the detail became larger(ugly)
Changed the size today and result is now so much better!
About the noise generator: Yes after a few test today i see exactly what you mean about the detail loss, too bad you have to bake twice(or just bake once and go with detail normal-map)
What i did was to bake export a HP with just a little noise from zb(20-35%)
you also mentioned that i should use an constant(1), well i use a constant(3) currently to control RGB, allows me to pop out just a little extra from the blue channel on the detail normal-map
Also trying out to add the Up-Vector moss but no success yet there is so much stuff in the material hard to keep track of everything X)
Thx alot! I'm kinda new here too you know, joined last year
And this is actually my first UDK project(if not counting test and playing around learning the engine)
After checking out some really good tutorials and giving it some time experimenting with it(especially materials)I must say it is a great game engine, everything has it's pluses and minuses of course but overall its good.
Want to try cry-engine but not if its worth the time with my current time limit.
Will fix the statues and the chair now
Please feel welcome and say what you think
Yes you are probably right, anything specific? So i can tweak it for portfolio
- I feel the ivy is too washed out. It's lacking color really.
- It would be cool to see more overgrowth and color in the scene as a whole. Adding some more moss or ivy around the statue would but interesting but I also just thought of destroying the upper roof near the statue and having some sun beaming through with some overgrowth seeping through and wrapping around the statue. Also would add some more visual interest on the ground with some rubble.
- The lighting needs some work.
Just some suggestions
Thx alot for the visual feedback can see it in my eyes!! ;D understand exacly what you mean, i think i will fix this as soon as im finished with the next project, you know you get kinda tired of doing the same thing for a long time. I guess it'l be better if i return to this with some fresh pair of eyes in a couple of weeks or so
Saw you portfolio and totally understood what you mean by washed out, it needs some more love
thx alot,HIGHLY appreciate your feedback!!
aajohnny has a few good tweaks, but nothing major definitely worth a try to tweak that lighting a bit and the post process a tiny bit... and once your lighting is broke you could give his suggestions a quick look!
Looking forward to the next project
Any special/detailed suggestions about the lightning? (i mean like color/strenghwise) maybe some pic to know what you guys look for?
Thank you guys helps alot! highly appreciated!