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Wildstar Desert Environment (Cory Loftis Concept), UDK

polycounter lvl 11
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Dvolution polycounter lvl 11
Hey everyone! I came to the realization a while ago that my portfolio was entirely lacking in the environment department. So I went on the hunt and ended up deciding on actualizing one of concepts that Cory Loftis generated for Wildstar:

desertpaint.jpg

I'm hoping that I end up doing it justice. : )

Some goals I have for this project:

1) Generate a quality environment for my portfolio.
2) Get better at generating hand-painted tileable textures.
3) Various UDK learnins' (vertex color in engine, texture blending, particle effects, etc.)

There are others, but I feel like those are the primary ones.

I've generated a prioritized asset list for the scene (subject to change):

PRIORITY--1:
Terrain Textures:

Sand
Cracked Clay
Rock (same as monolithic stones)

Plants:
Palm-esque Bulb Tree
Palm Tree (combine or build this in conjunction with Palm Bulb Tree; build Bulb version, remove bulb for regular Palm version)
Red Flowers (primarily on bones)
Viney Red Fire Flowers
Medium Cactus
Large Cactus (huge thorns)

Rocks:
Large Monolithic Rocks
Small Rocks

Bones:
Skull Variant 1
Vertebrae Variant 1
Rib Variant 1 (scale and adjust to create multiple variants)

Other:
Skybox
Rocky Billboard (for background)


PRIORITY--2:
Terrain Textures:

Moss/Lichen

Plants:
Bare, Scraggly Tree
Spindly Cactus

Rocks:
Boulder Variant 1

Bones:
Skull Variant 2
Dorsal Spike


PRIORITY--3:
Terrain Textures:
Dirt
Rocky Dirt

Plants:
Small Yellow Ground Flowers
Small Tube Plants (next to fire flowers)
Small Bulbous Cactus (or modify medium cactus to use for this as well)

Rocks:
Boulder Variant 2

Bones:
Skull Variant 3
Rib Variant 2
Tail Bone

Other:
Wood Rope Bridge


With that asset list made, the first thing I did was block out each of the Priority 1 assets (the little rectangle on the right is player scale, I modified it a bit from the concepts established gargantuan scale):

block%20outs.jpg

From there I picked three assets to make first, a "small" asset (the large cactus, a "medium" asset (the bulb palm tree), and a "large" asset (one of the monolithic stones). On top of this I started noodling on the first terrain texture, cracked clay.

Here are the shots of the Large Cactus as of now:

Hi-Poly
Large%20Cactus_Hi%20Poly.jpg


Poly Paint
Large%20Cactus_Poly%20Paint.jpg

Low Poly Texture Progress
cactus%20WIP.jpg

Low Poly in UDK
cactus%20in%20engine.jpg

Textures:
Cactus_DIF.jpgCactus_NRM.jpgCactus_SPEC.jpg


Palm Bulb Progress:

Hi Poly
Bulb%20Palm_Hi%20Poly.jpg

Poly Paint
Bulb%20Palm_Poly%20Paint.jpg

Low Poly in UDK:
Bulb%20Palm%20WIP_UDK.jpg

Textures so far:
Palm_Tree_DIF.jpgPalm_Tree_NRM.jpg

I'm going to use the bottom right corner for the trunk tile. Similar to the set up I used on the cactus map.

Here is where I'm at on the terrain texture that I started:
Cracked%20Clay%20WIP.jpg

Haven't started on the large monolithic stone yet.

Still trying to work out a plan of attack since I've never tackled a huge rockface like that before.

Anyways, I just wrapped up my thesis artifact, so now I can dedicate more time to this project. : )

Comments and critiques are always welcome. Thanks in advance everyone! :D

-Jordan

Replies

  • Skummel
    Diggin the fun painted style. cant wait to see were this goes :)
  • low_seb
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    low_seb polycounter lvl 12
    nice painted texture ,its start very well
  • DInusty
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    DInusty polycounter lvl 17
    really cool so far man! push ur spec a bit hotter :)
  • murph
  • guhhh
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    guhhh polycounter lvl 9
    Great work so far..... i like the way you plan your workflow, i will start one this weekend as well!!! I'll be following this thread!!
  • Jessica Dinh
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    Jessica Dinh polycounter lvl 10
    Really cool! Nice planning and progress so far:]
  • TorQue[MoD]
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    TorQue[MoD] polycounter lvl 19
    That's looking awesome so far. You're spot on with the models and the textures are gorgeous! Can't wait to see how this looks when its done.
  • Dvolution
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    Dvolution polycounter lvl 11
    Skummel and low_seb: Thanks guys!

    Frozan: No problem buddy. I agree, the spec needs work. The normals are kind of getting lost on the cactus. The palm bulb doesn't have any spec on it yet either, which isn't doing it any favors. :poly122:

    murph: Thanks man!

    guhhh, Jessica, and TorQue: Thanks much. :)


    I'll have something to post tomorrow night. Went to Industry Giants this weekend and sat through two Environment master classes today, so I'm amped up and have a lot of new things I want to try this week!
  • Lily
    This is really awesome!
  • Dvolution
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    Dvolution polycounter lvl 11
    Lily: Thanks very much! :)

    Slow updates on my part. Need to speed this up. Especially if I want this to be included when I start applying to companies in a few short weeks. Thesis is still consuming a lot of my time. Anyways, I wrapped up the various palm trees, made a lil' cactus from the big cactus protrusion and applying the tile I made, and made the spec adjustments that Frozan suggested.

    Here it be:

    1.jpg

    2.jpg

    And here are the palm textures:

    Palm_Tree_DIF.jpgPalm_Tree_NRM.jpgPalm_Tree_SPEC.jpg

    Still have a little square of space left. If I encounter anything small I need along the project, I'll squeeze it in there. Also I should note that though I'm displaying these at 512 in this thread, the actual maps are 1024 in UDK. I have no clue whether that is unreasonable or not. The assets are all player scale or larger though so I figured it was alright.

    Next I'm going to be starting on the terrain/landscape so I can get a real scene blocked in instead of using a default UDK scene.

    Like always, comments and critiques are welcomed! Thanks everyone. :D
  • bounchfx
    great start! I always liked that concept, and your execution so far is looking good. I'm looking forward to seeing this one come along.
  • Torch
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    Torch interpolator
    This looks f**kin sick, please keep going with it! :D

    EDIT: By the way, what file format/import workflow are you using for the textures? Was wondering how you got them to look so sharp in UDK.
  • Dvolution
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    Dvolution polycounter lvl 11
    bounchfx: Thanks very much! Hopefully I don't disappoint. :D

    Torch: Thanks man. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary with the textures. I transfer/bake and paint them all at double the resolution I intend for them to be. Then I resize, run the smart sharpen filter over them in Photoshop (obviously this needs to be adjusted per texture, one setting doesn't work universally), and save them out as Targas. When I import them I don't change any of the import settings in UDK, except for the normal map, I change the compression settings to "TC_Normalmap". Hope that helps!
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