Monthly Community Noob Challenge July 2015 (32)
polycounter lvl 7
Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Noob Challenge for the month of July.
Hello everyone. We're back for yet another month of awesome environment art. However, this week does not include a prop challenge because I want this month to focus more on the main concept.
Join our Skype group if you want! Add me on Skype and I will add you to the group.
Me: noble.wulf
You don't have to join the Skype if you don't want to, and you don't need to ask to participate in the challenge, just start working and post your progress in this thread!
Artist - Sam Brown
https://www.artstation.com/artist/sambrown
Feel free to approach either of the concepts however you like but I'd recommend making it as modular as possible to save time and keep things optimized. It's really up to you, and as long as you are learning, it doesn't matter right?
Also if you want to change up either concept a bit, as some people wanted, then feel free. Interpret these concepts to your liking.
There are some things that I would like to point out to for newcomers.
If you only want to do a few props as best you can, then feel free to go ahead and do it. This way you can gradually work on building up to a full scene before diving head-first into the whole ordeal.
Please read all the rules before starting.
When you are just starting out making a scene, it can seem complicated or imposing, so take the time to break it down.
Think about how you can re-use assets, re-use textures, break it down as simple as possible and plan it out. A lot of people will break it down in their own way when they start out their challenge. Gather some reference images as well for different parts of the scene, maybe gather some refs and make it your own.
Take your time planning and blocking out, it will set you up for success later on.
Here are some specifics.
- Try to post one critique for every post that you make. This will make for a better learning environment and help us all grow as artists.
- You must make your own textures, no stealing. We can't keep you from doing it, but the goal is to learn. You can use other textures and images to create your final texture, but please, no blatant copying of another artist's work.
- You must use a game engine to present your work. Unreal Engine and CryEngine are very common engines that can be used, but feel free to use any alternatives that you want.
- You must try your best and finish as much as you can in the time frame provided.
- Post what you are working on in this thread so that way it's a more centralized place for advice and critique. We don't need to have 1000 disjointed threads littering the forums.
- I would strongly encourage you to go and look at other games and see how they make their assets as well as get concept art to give it your own feel, but it must stay very close to the concept, if not super close.
- Please stay away from using Ddo. It's great if you know what you're doing, and for a production pipeline supplement, but other than that, please don't use it. Ndo2 is allowed. This was talked about in the other thread, so please don't complain.
- Well that's about it. If you think that any rules should be changed, or there should be new additions to the rules, please let us know.
Replies
Good Luck guys, I look forward to what stuff is created from this month
So here is the break down, 14 assists seems a bit high for a small environment like this or maybe not? Regardless It will give me practice.
Material/ texture plan is (more or less) done. [purple assets will share "unique" map.]
Now onto the blockout.
So I was doing the blockout but found that things didn't seem to fit in their proper place. I understand that it can't be perfect but I felt that my camera's perspective was off or in the wrong place at least. So I took the image and traced the straight lines within it to find the horizon point that normally would converge unto a single point, but I guess not with this image.The red lines on the right side of the image clearly states a horizon line but the red line on the left defy's that point. The orange line shows where that line and edge should be but simply isn't. The intersecting Blue lines will be were I'll decide to place my camera so its the proper height and gives the right perspective in correlation with the image.
I'm not trying to criticize the artist or anything. I am simply stating that since there is no specified horizon point, that mine and everyone's outcomes will most likely be a bit off, unless people distort their objects to fit the image and perspective.
Also Sorry for the long post
Not bad on the block out but you might want to think about keeping the archway separate reason being, nicer to UV for you man I think you will have a much nicer time doing so. Best thing about doing this scene guys is that there is not too much you need to manage, you have a limited amount of pieces, meaning plenty of time to polish at the end of month!
Good choice of artwork but like many of us, i tried to blockout the scene without success. One of the wall might not be 90° or maybe it's just perspective error for the artwork purpose. If so, i might try to do it without blocking out but it may not look like the image
Why do you need to match perspective to UE? The concept doesn't have right perspective anyway.
I also noticed that while left side has OK perspective the right side is surreal (you could achieve such perspective with something like 160 degree FOV).
As for the approach. On the 1st look it looks right on the concept so I am just gonna eyeball things until they resemble what I see on the concept.
Planning on doing just that. The reason it's merged with wall is because it's gonna use same material and textures.
Progress: Blockout is done. now onto the individual assets.
1. find parallel lines in concept and find horizont from them.
2. Mach concept perspective center and horizont with camera (by default it's in the middle, which is extra rare in paintings.) as well as check FOV.
3. Eyeball a rough blockout with correct scale and start fixing proportions by looking from camera with overlayed concept.
4. after that is done I ditch camera so any further incostincesties won't bother me.
Some DCC have a camera matching function.
Your blockout looks good but I've noticed that you've beveled the lower right edge of the room shell. Whilst doing my own blockout looking closely at the concept I came to the conclusion that most likely the wall would be straight in that area. It particulary shows with your placement of the shelves facing the bed, that looks too far off the wall. Your table looks a bit too large. Other than that, I think it looks pretty good, good job man.
Shouldn't every environment be modular?
It's beveled in the concept as well.
As for the table. I was measuring using the strips on the ground and somehow forgot to check how huge that thing is. Anyway I keep noticing many more issues with my blockout.
Thanks for pointing that out.
What I'm trying to say is that the room may be assymetrical regardless of the perspective issues. Anyway, back to work for me...
I would say that the author intended it to be same, but flat wall would work too.
It is too dark to see, I just brightened it up to see if there are any traces of it before darkening.
I don't see a reason why it couldn't.
Also progress: (can't get reflection probes to work for some reason and lighting is giving me a hard time too so unlit screens for the time being)
Thanks. (There shouldn't be many hi-poly models as I plan on making modular/ reusable textures.)
I know that feel. (if it makes you feel any better, sculpting with tablet is just way faster and none easier.)
They don't complain. :poly142:
Edit: Also thanks for pointing that out.
Done for the day.
The room is wider in the concept. Also there is a block with lights under the ceiling, I think that's kinda important part of blockout too.
Also progress:
I know it immediately looks that way but if you look at the bed for reference you can see that you would hardly fit a second one along the back wall even if you removed the shelves, and that's exactly the trick I have used to determine the room's width at about 5 meters. With the perspective so wrong on the concept it is difficult to get a 1:1 representation and so you chose to represent a wider room so to get a better representation of the space between the table the and the bathroom door, which works really well in your scene in my opinion.
I just decided to stop worrying about the concept and get cracking.
I didn't forget about the lights, if you look closely at the ceiling you will see them
@Mant1k0re - Try making some basic materials in Unreal and drag them on your assets, along with a reflection capture to get that nice-shiny sci-fi feel
@JustMeSR - Looks good, you're very quick!
I've been having a go at this one in Unreal Engine. My Progress so far..
White-Boxing from simple materials in UE4
And my assets in 3DS Max so far, trying to keep it quite modular
Have also made my first star-sphere... Is a bit different from a skybox with the UVs. Found a cool little program called StarScape by Alex Peterson
I have been adjusting the proportions quite a bit to fit the first-person perspective in engine, it feels about right.
There's a lot of promising looking scenes. Understandably the blockouts differ due to the concept's perspective being slightly off. But I think it's key to find the middle ground as there is a big difference between the width of certain blockouts - notably Mant1k0re's compared to Tom Mackie's.
Here's my blockout so far in Max. I'm not sure whether I should make it a little wider. I either adhere to the raised section in the back (which I'm currently basing it off), or the front (which would widen my scene).
I have just had a quick play around with the width of my scene (re-scaling in Max) & it does seem nicer being slimmer!
Kind of suits the space theme by compacting available floor-space
I know the lights are off, I will adjust them tomorrow. It's too hot to work right now...
I wasn't talking about the lights, rather about the block they are attached to.
Nice find.
Nice. (The bed feels wrong, maybe a bit higher and further from the window.)
Nice to see people already at it. I haven't had much time today, at least I improved the lighting.
Looking at some aspects I think you have possibly misinterpreted them?.. Mainly the handle on the side of the drawers doesn't really make sense
Nothing major, and of course we can really create it how we want - just sayin'
To me it looks like the door handle for the bathroom.
I've never made an environment before. I'm finding it hard to do the blockout by making it modular. There is some weird stuff going on with the perspective. Not sure if I'm supposed to push those cabinets to the right of the bed into the wall
Thanks. Definitively fixing that.
Don't worry about that just yet. Blockout is there to get proportions right, so that should be you main concern at the time. You can start planning modularity as you start making assets and textures.
Today I have mostly been playing around with materials & lighting/reflections in UE4.
Gonna get back to modelling the low-polys tomorrow
Duh. Yes, I should have seen it. Thanks!
@Tom
I'm ashamed to say I have no idea what you meant by reflection capture but your comment prompted me to start looking at lights in UE4 while fixing my blockout based on JustMe's comments. And as you can see, I can't say the beast is being tamed just yet...
I will actually start modeling assets tomorrow, I guess the logical choice would be walls, floor and ceilings first...?
And getting quite nice results I see. :poly121:
He meant these 2. They are used to capture their surroundings onto a cubemap that is used in reflections. (place them in your scene for more correct reflections) There is UE content example for reflections, you might want to check that one out.
Whatever you want to make 1st. I like to start "complex assets" quite soon so I can jump to simple ones whenever I feel burned out and later make bit more progress on it.
Progress: Played with lights and materials a bit (again), started making 1st material texture, and slowly progressing with assets.
Your proportions are looking great. Only thing I've noticed is that in the concept the platform has 2 steps and is raised a little higher. What is your FOV at?
I think your proportions look spot on for the most part and also I have the impression you really nailed the angle and FOV, however you did it.
The one thing I noticed is that your ceiling lights seem a little too big.
Grids and proportions are always my undoing.