WIP UDK: Hallway From Deadspace
polycounter lvl 11
Hey everyone I wanted to get a nice straightforward scene for my portfolio that I could also use to learn UDK. Given the number of issues I had with lightmass its good I picked something simple to start with.
Now I want to push this as far as I can by adding in some more decals and maybe some broken glass. Might take some of the panels and pop them off and break up the space a bit more, but not too much.
I want to make sure and preserve the sense of stillness in the scene. I'm look at that as the central quality that sort of informs it all.
Temporary:
I would love to hear ideas about how to push this farther and make it better.
I'm looking to post it up along with all my textures I made on my portfolio so I want it to look as good as it can.
Its based on this concept:
By Ariel Alvarez
Here are my UDK screen shots:
Now I want to push this as far as I can by adding in some more decals and maybe some broken glass. Might take some of the panels and pop them off and break up the space a bit more, but not too much.
I want to make sure and preserve the sense of stillness in the scene. I'm look at that as the central quality that sort of informs it all.
Temporary:
- The glass on the windows
- The rocks outside.
- The lighting (its almost done but its too dark I think, might need some tweaking
- Add some light rays coming through the windows
- Add some decals of bits of paper and grafiti on the walls
- Maybe break one of the windows to and bend some of the bars to suggest violent things happened here.
I would love to hear ideas about how to push this farther and make it better.
I'm looking to post it up along with all my textures I made on my portfolio so I want it to look as good as it can.
Its based on this concept:
By Ariel Alvarez
Here are my UDK screen shots:
Replies
Also, you didn't notice that every other bar is the break between modular pieces (where they bars double up). This is important to your composition to reduce the tiling of the bars.
The trim below the windows is planar, but concept clearly shows it as angled.
Secondly, nothing in your scene is sharp or hard edged. When using turd brown on everything, your metal had better look like metal or you end up with a scene made out of wet cardboard.
In short, you need to use specular in your materials. You might be saying "hey! I used specs." Well, you could have put cows in this scene too, but nobody can see them. For this metal, you need a strong spec with a high spec power to get hot, point point, hard edges.
Adding light rays is easy, open the properties of your dominate light and check the light shafts box
Great feedback, most everything you said jumped out at me. The actual size of the windows though is going to be a bit off because I think the angle on the concept goes outside a normal humans FOV so your getting some perspective distortion going on on the window closest to the right side of the concept.
Other than that I can see everything you listed there.
I really need to tone down the screenspace AO I think its a contributing factor as to why the scene look so non-metalic.
However, I underscore contributing because I do agree I need to play with the spec more. I think the contrast between the panels that catch the light and the ones that don't in the concept contribute a great deal to the overall idea of the scene. I'm going to get on de-noising the texture, toning down the SSAO, and fidgeting with my spec map to try and resolve this.
I'm also going to make the bars thinner like you said. Might adjust the other disparities on as need basis though. We will see how it goes, going to post back here with pics soon.
Thanks for taking the time to write that up
Fixing up the materials proved a little more than I was expecting. I've been learning a tons.
I gutted the scene and re-did the rafters. Then I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to get the metal to work better. I ran the normals through crazy bump to try and get some of the rusty bits to look indented but I think it may have hurt more than it helped.
Anyways I still need to adjust the AO some more and fix the windows among numerous other things. I would really appreciate any feedback anyone has to offer.
I'm REALLY trying to move away from the "wet cardboard" look. If anyone has any input that would help with that please let me know.
Can you post a shader / texture breakdown of that material? I'm really diggin' it.
Could you also post your spec maps? Are you accenting your edges on them? You should probably push your spec highlights further.
I'am dying to see how your going to tackle the background through the glass =p (dying? cuz it's dead space?)
As far as pushing the concept, here is something I think would be interesting:
It would tell a story that happened in this hallway.
But yea, hope to see it finished.
The outside is something I'm mulling over right now. I might throw some plants in there but then again I might just leave it as rocks. It doesn't make much sense to have plants outside on mars.
We will see the important thing is that it look look spooky, still, and foreboding.
I will post my maps soon along with some anatomical updates to the hallway.
Time I spent on this today was mostly dedicated to cleaning things up, fixing minor issues, and coming up with a plan of attack to put all of the finished details in the scene. (more stuff to break up the space/repitition, ect)
I figure that's a better way to go so I can have a pretty firm idea of the final result before I move forward polishing the textures more.
As soon as that's done i'm going to work more on the textures and will post them, I promise. I just need to head out for today and wanted to post what I had in case anyone had any feedback.
Please give me your thoughts on the windows specifically I was having a hard time figuring out how dirty to make them.
Of course any other comments/crits are welcome as well.
Thank you so much for all the great feedback so far
Oh, and i'm also trying to think of good foreground objects, if anyone has any ideas please let me know.
Something I would add would be a silhouette breaker at the end of the tunnel, like an eletrical box on the wall. Something to deviate from the the end of the hall shape from standing out so much. A collar might work well here too (break point of support beams and/or a doorway)
At this point, I feel the windwos are are subjective. Personally, I'd increase the visibility of the relfective properties (be it cube map or whatever) just to exaggerate the effect.
For presentation, the scene is still a little too dark. I'd jack up that dom directional light and nudge the environment color up a bit as well as it's saturation [complimenting the dom of course]),
I think it's an effective tactic for making the scene look old and abandoned, but it just sticks out to be as being odd in this type of setting.
The windows need less blotchy dirt, and a thicker layer of consistent, pretty light coloured dirt -> less transparent windows. Currently looks like fresh dirt splatters, while the reference is old, settled dust.
I'm also missing a lot of small details such as the bends in the pipes, holes and recesses on the lefthand panels and some lines/creases on the window pillars, righthand panels, and floor elements.
Those floor elements should be rotated 180 degrees, BTW.
The <|||||||> light fixtures on the left have the wrong proportions, with your light elements (the white | things) being far too small.
You should also take a better look at the window pillars
Your version is |><|><|><|><|><|><|
While theirs is ||>|<||>|<||>|<||>|<||
This small change leads to your version being inconsistent with itself.
The window pillars you have also have a more square-ish crossection while theirs have a more rectangular one.
You should probably adjust the lighting a bit, making it a bit brighter and a warmer tone. And you should remove the particles all the way in the foreground, because they're in the shadow instead of the light, and wouldn't be visible.
You should also add some fog in the outside world, and I think the rock above the tunnel is actually an overhang, not a distant mountain.
These are all fairly small niggles, but they add up.
Also- I would say you have improved this a lot from your initial design but I think personally some more clutter and stuff to fill the hallway up would make this much more interesting. Right now, it's a long corridor that could be sort of boring for a player to have to walk down. Maybe you could add some crates or break up the walls even more so that they are not straight all the way down.
Foreground objects; I would try guns scattered about; maybe have one leaning up against the wall.. some bullet holes in the glass would look cool and definitely ammo crates or supply crates..heck even computer paneling and such..anything to make the eye wander to catch interesting pieces(the scenery is a nice touch but perhaps you could flesh it out even more..maybe there is some sort of installation in the distance..a satellite maybe even?)
Oh God, please... anything, anything except crates.
:poly122:
Add exploding barrels instead.
Here is a bit of my thought process
Blob In Shadow:
Blob in light:
Here is an earlier revision with out the blob, but just the tentacles. Maybe this is better?
EDIT: on further thought, that blob should be eating the crates.
Hell, you could build a whole game about a blob that was eating the video game world's entire supply of powerup crates...
...:icon3:
My real concern is that 1 point perspective. Really looking for thoughts on what it does to the composition. Does it help or hurt it? Should I keep the blob but lower him a bit so we still see down the hallway?
http://www.youtube.com/user/wrazor#p/a/u/0/2IOlFErpr-8
I'm still wonderng what people think of the composition though. Does the bottom image look better, or is the blob, or somthing else there, look better?
Going to start working on the forground objects and maybe those crates tomarrow.
Also you could use the large window area to show something in the distance. Give more impression of the surrounding: A silhouette of a big colony building.
I imagine a scene where the corridor in front of the viewer is collapsed and through the windows you can see the whole facility going to hell. (explosion, smoke, a collapsed building)
Also you can improve the lighting: You have those windows - use them! Trying out different lightsetups that include artificial light within the corridor as well as natural light from the out side. (A dawn or dusk scenery could do very well)
Also it can be helpfull to add more contrast to the outside elements of your scene. I can think of a blue sky as a contrast to the brown and grey tones of the hallway. At the moment outside and inside use the same color-sheme. Which makes it look rather boring. I would avoid that, although the concept is promoting a brown in brown color selection.
Also, switch the lighting to something besides bright daylight. Even try something like aliens suns that have bright, high contrast lighting amongst darkness.
about the blob...i guess i like the one that has details around.. not just a blob in the middle of everything. But hey... if you take a pass we might just find enough feedback to make something awesome out of it.
I like the detail you painted for the frames... its coming along... the idea is there. So have fun and keep us posted.
There was no blob or oil barrel in Dead Space.
Maybe at the end of the hallway, you could break the hallway and have it open into space? There were plenty of parts like that in the game were you would enter ZeroGravity. Here is an example:
http://www.clevver.com/games/deadspace/photos/139974/dead-space-concept-art-9.html
I would look at more Dead Space concepts and take elements from them. After all, if you show this to the guys at Visceral Studios, you want them to think "Hey...this fits perfectly into our game!"
It's great that you started doing paintovers though. Can't wait to see what you come up with!
The one point perspective was blatant that it made it look like I was trying to say something when I wasn't. So I curved the hallway to make it easier on the eyes and let your eyes move around the composition.
Someone had the idea of making the entire thing raised over a canyon, and I really liked the idea of showing the hallways destination out the window since there was so much space there.
I think at this point it is starting to feel better.
There is still no real sense of scale though in the scene. I tried adding some chairs but it just made me wonder why the hell there were chairs there? It seams like the kind of space where people would be moving to and from a location, not idling.
Unless anyone raises any real good points I'm going to start modeling all the changes I made yesterday, and the try and introduce some clutter after I get this all in unreal.
I don't foresee any more major composition changes, I think this should serve as a good enough foundation.
But, PLEASE, as always, let me know if you have any feedback.
OH and I'm keeping the changes to the windows I made in the earlier paint over, I just neglected to add them here.
I like it... maybe you can make it like this is coming out of a canyon.. so you can see part of the cliffs on the left side to.. so its not so empty... maybe put 2 big moons that you can see in the horizon.. there is a lot you can do.. but i definitely like the bend and the building at the end. Better than the blob haha and crates.
One way I went about adding 'scale' to my hallway scene was throwing in small bits of garbage. It seemed to have helped.
Keep working
edit: one last thing, Also really try to think of the story and where this is at..a colony planet, like the others said: What time of day could you get this looking it's best? At Dusk or Dawn? Right now it's just sorta overcast and you cannot do much with that..I agree with Slave; make some sort of interesting lighting scenario that uses the windows to your advantage..
Small update to the scene. I have a lot more built in max but I spent the day learning more about UDK. Hopefully have a lot more of the revisions in and an actual building early next week. I just wanted to post this so people had an idea of how it was going to come together.
Any comments are welcome. Thanks SO much for all the comments and crits so far, you guys are awesome.
But, yes, the corridor will hook up to the structure in a believable way.
Here are the thumbnails:
Here is a view of the block-in model I have in UDK at the moment.
I'm still very much open to ideas/crits so please let me know if you see anything that's going to be an issue. There will probably be some sort of lift that comes down out of the bottom to hook up with the corridor. I'm going to try and work that out tomorrow.
I also think I might try and extend some of the features backward now that I am seeing this in 2point perspective it looks a bit flat.
Thanks again to all those that have offered their feedback and comments. Its been extremely helpful.
One really good piece of reference I've found for designing the generic "big technical building" are old Soviet radar and radio facilities. Look up Steel Yard in particular, it was a massive installation that had lots of interesting shapes in it besides the main antenna.
DO NOT USE 10. It's wangtacular.
Here's a picture of Duga-3, NATO codename Steel Yard, in Pripyat... better known to telephone workers as the Russian Woodpecker, and to us gamers as The Brain Scorcher. Lots of interesting interior shapes in the components that make up the array:
Here is Skrunda-1, a combined Over-the-horizon radar system:
Flat Twin, another Soviet ABM radar system.
Here is an update of my latest blockin, its taking my longer than I would like but I wanted to make sure everything read well since its such a big part of the composition now and will be my primary focal point. Also have some overlapping there and some more buildings moving around the space so it makes it feel less flat.
Threw some fire particles in there.
I'm looking for feedback tonight tomorrow I'm going to start hammering away on adding all the little details to this and making any changes anyone suggests.
Thanks for all the help so far.
Keep it up!
Edit: whoops, posted this on nate's screen name...this is Keen...
That said cholden's comment about me deviating from my "just a hall" premise is dead right. I need to finish the hallway and then I can add the view.
So that's what I went back to.
First thing I did was do a speed paint of the hallway with a better mood. I opted to use some fabric, I don't know how "dead space" it is, but it does help set the mood. I'm trying to work with the idea more and make it a it more SCIFI.
Maybe its good the way it is, maybe it needs something else, or maybe it should be scrapped. I haven't started modeling it yet and I'm open to ideas.
Next thing I did was go ahead and build the shader for the new screens. I liked them a lot and was sold on the idea so I went ahead and spent a day creating the most complex shader I have ever done, I learned a ton, and even though it sucked up a bunch of time the end result was worth it.
Although I still think it could stand to be improved/polished quite a bit. Please let me know if you have any ideas, suggestions, or better ways of doing things in the shader. Being my first real complex shader I'm sure its a bit of a mess.
[ame]
I've done some more modeling, and changed things around a bit, but I'm not going to bother and post screen shots of that right now. Next order of business is to finalize my paint overs and wrap up the hallway so its a solid scene with a clear mood/message.
Than I'm going to get back to the building.
Any comments would be appreciated I hope to spend a good chunk of tomorrow making sure the speed paint reads well then I'm going to dive into modeling and texturing it and not look back.
Really wish there was a way to make it completely random using a random node in the damn shader. having a mess of sin nodes is really annoying