Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

UDK - modular wip

yodude87
polycounter lvl 5
Offline / Send Message
yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
hello you guys, its me again :D

modular time! ive seen way many modular works on portfolios around, so i thought it would be a good idea to work my skills out with the tech. first approach to it (as i had mostly modelled internal scenes, with no need for modular more than some bsp's with seamless tileable textures).

so, as always, cnc's are more than welcome. feel free to shoot :D

remember its still very early wip, its only the fa

Replies

  • 3DVlad
    Hmm not a bad start. As it stands I would say that I think your foundation and roof trim could pop out more to give it a more interesting silhouette, same goes for the mid trim. Also think about adding some pipes, and grunge.
    Also I can see some places where geo doesn't meet, so make sure you use snaps in max when you are making this, and keep grid snaping on in UDK most of the time on to avoid those .
  • an aggressive napkin
    Hey man, could you show us how you laid out your uv maps? :)
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    specular + normal + diffuse + mask

    14solk.jpg

    the uv's ill post later on.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    this is the uv. im not very used to uv'ing with 3dsmax, so it might have come somewhat disgusting :S

    next time i do it i will do it with blender. best uv mapping tool out there in my opinion.

    mwzm6a.jpg
  • feanix
    Offline / Send Message
    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    Hi yodude! It seems like you're using crazybump to generate your specular map! If so, try using the "texture influence" slider (make sure to paste in your diffuse texture in the diffuse tab first!). You'll find you texture will come out a lot crisper!
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    thanks for the tip feanix!

    i was using pixplant, a freeware similar to crazybump, but as i discovered now that i downloaded the demo version of crazy bump, so much inferior to it as regards output quality.

    made some changes to texture and materials, as soon as i get a satisfactory result ill be updating the topic. as of now im modelling some props for the scene, guessing ill be making a full scene out of this test. hopefully something good comes out :)
  • feanix
    Offline / Send Message
    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    Good to hear, yodude! I highly recommend crazybump. For $100 its a steal. Just be care to learn what all the sliders do as you will need them to produce quality maps. Way to many people just use the first thing crazybump gives them (and it usually needs some tweaking to be just right).
  • VictorSantos
    Offline / Send Message
    VictorSantos polycounter lvl 12
    It's going pretty nice dude, for the tiles could be nice if you make the bricks over the concrete in high poly and just bake the normals and the ambient oclussion to a square plane (It's always better that way).

    But crazybump it's a powerful tool also.

    It's going pretty cool mate! Keep it up! :)

    Cheers!
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello there, its me again :)

    updating. skydome texture still a placeholder, guess that will be the last thing ill add, as some sort of final touch. sidewalk is a placeholder too, as i want everything in the scene to be modelled and textured by me (the sidewalk is an Epic mesh).

    crits are more than welcome :)

    32zt06v.jpg

    edit: how i hate Zfighting...:shifty:
  • Alberto Rdrgz
    Offline / Send Message
    Alberto Rdrgz polycounter lvl 9
    it seems like the scale is a bit off. could you place an unreal character in the scene? that might help you figure out scale issues as well.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    It's going pretty nice dude, for the tiles could be nice if you make the bricks over the concrete in high poly and just bake the normals and the ambient oclussion to a square plane (It's always better that way).

    But crazybump it's a powerful tool also.

    It's going pretty cool mate! Keep it up! :)

    Cheers!

    i thought about doing it that way, but the workflow i was following wouldnt allow me to do that any easy(i started off from the diffuse texture - which were some reference pictures - tweaked it as i wanted, made the diffuse map and extruded/modelled/detached pieces from it in max).

    next time i guess ill be going for the high poly normals. way better details :D
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    it seems like the scale is a bit off. could you place an unreal character in the scene? that might help you figure out scale issues as well.

    sure, will do it and post a screengrab here. hang on.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    it was indeed offscale. had to resize some stuff, and now im guessing ill have to model a special trim to fit the space above the metal doors, or some sort of metal frame for them.

    there it goes, the front grab with human references for size:

    2ng4vm8.jpg
  • cholden
    Offline / Send Message
    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    Can't you just go outside and take a picture of some bricks or Google another brick so you're not excessively tiling it across your texture in that divider section between the two floors?

    Also, running your diffuse through whatever to get the normals/spec is giving a very poor result that, just by me seeing it, employers can tell you don't have a hireable command of current generation materials.

    The scene's not bad, but getting a better handled on these materials is either going to destroy everything you make until you learn it or you can get it right now.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    cholden wrote: »
    Can't you just go outside and take a picture of some bricks or Google another brick so you're not excessively tiling it across your texture in that divider section between the two floors?

    Also, running your diffuse through whatever to get the normals/spec is giving a very poor result that, just by me seeing it, employers can tell you don't have a hireable command of current generation materials.

    The scene's not bad, but getting a better handled on these materials is either going to destroy everything you make until you learn it or you can get it right now.

    goodness, hadnt noticed it was that evident the tiling :poly102: now that i looked, indeed its terrible...

    about the normal/spec maps, will change it. lets see what comes out :)

    edit: turns out that if im to get better mats, it would be easier to start from scratch with the project. well, better having a good project in a long term than a bad project in a short time. will update ASAP, with everything done properly :D
  • VictorSantos
    Offline / Send Message
    VictorSantos polycounter lvl 12
    I agree with Cholden, maybe you can just take a brick tiles from CGtextures or some website like that and work with it thinking of the "atmosphere" you want to give to the building.

    You can also think about decals (dirt, graffiti,...) for the bricks, it's a cool way to avoid the tiling.

    I got an example of modular building on my website (made with painted bricks from CGtexture, google, my camera...)

    http://www.wix.com/victorsantos3d/portfolio#!__portfolio---gallery

    It's something I learned from the modular building training from 3D motive, I strongly recommend this video-tutorial, it's cheap and efective.

    Keep it up buddy!! :)
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    I agree with Cholden, maybe you can just take a brick tiles from CGtextures or some website like that and work with it thinking of the "atmosphere" you want to give to the building.

    You can also think about decals (dirt, graffiti,...) for the bricks, it's a cool way to avoid the tiling.

    I got an example of modular building on my website (made with painted bricks from CGtexture, google, my camera...)

    http://www.wix.com/victorsantos3d/portfolio#!__portfolio---gallery

    It's something I learned from the modular building training from 3D motive, I strongly recommend this video-tutorial, it's cheap and efective.

    Keep it up buddy!! :)

    Indeed Victor, i was think of adding it all AFTER having built the whole structure. thats why it might have this tiled look for now.

    but nevermind, i started from scratch, changing the direction of the scene a bit. as soon as i get something solid, ill update the thread. this time with no crazybump maps :D

    as regards the 3dmotive tuto, you read my mind, thats what im using hahaha
    i recommend it too, its perfect.

    PS: wonderful portfolio, congratulations on it :D
  • Visceral
    Normals and spec looks like they just came straight out of crazy bump generation from the diffuse. I would strongly recoment you redo them.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    Visceral wrote: »
    Normals and spec looks like they just came straight out of crazy bump generation from the diffuse. I would strongly recoment you redo them.

    indeed visceral, you got the point. as i said, im redoing it all. normal and spec all redone, by hand. as soon as i get the model ready i post it here :D
  • iconoplast
    Offline / Send Message
    iconoplast polycounter lvl 13
    You can also get some interesting bricks out of the Acme Brick Masonry Designer, plus it's free, so that's always a bonus.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    iconoplast wrote: »
    You can also get some interesting bricks out of the Acme Brick Masonry Designer, plus it's free, so that's always a bonus.


    whoa, thats really helpful, thanks! :D
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hey there people :D

    got it all done, new modular assets, good normals and spec (at least i think theyre good hahaha), all done and imported to UDK.

    and it was then that my pc decided to give up :S whenever i try to turn it on, i get a SVChost message, and it freezes.

    managed to save everything i wanted in a folder, will pass it to an external HD and reformat my system :(

    guess its gonna take a bit longer for me to update the thread... but i will. as soon as i get back to work, will update you guys, cant wait to receive all those heartwarm drits from you all hahahah

    until then, keep up the good work you all :D
  • passerby
    Offline / Send Message
    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    can you start up in safe mode?

    since it is a svchost error message it is prolly a bad system service.

    so if you can start in safe mode than run services.msc and disable the problem causer it should get you back up and running.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    yea i can start up in safe mode

    might be a solution, gonna give it a shot :D
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    heya guys :)

    posting from a cyber cafe, just to say that i tried the safe mode thing, but it didnt work.

    well actually it was a bit of my fault, as i couldnt find the svc process among so may of them lol :S

    so im reformatting it all. saved the folders i wanted to (30 giga of 3D lol), and will be back in action as soon as the dude is done with the service.

    be talking (and posting) here again soon, until then, rock on :P
  • passerby
    Offline / Send Message
    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    yodude87 wrote: »
    heya guys :)

    posting from a cyber cafe, just to say that i tried the safe mode thing, but it didnt work.

    well actually it was a bit of my fault, as i couldnt find the svc process among so may of them lol :S

    so im reformatting it all. saved the folders i wanted to (30 giga of 3D lol), and will be back in action as soon as the dude is done with the service.

    be talking (and posting) here again soon, until then, rock on :P

    well actually a other good thing to do now that your doing a reinstall is on the partition with the OS only keep things like applications that things you can easily reinstall later and keep all of your projects and data on a different drive or partition.

    been doing that for years it is makes things go smoother when windows is bugging out on you since i can just formate the windows drive an not have to worry about doing big backups or data loss.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    omg got my pc back, 2 hours with it and the ram got fucked up :S

    CANT TAKE IT ANYMORE, GOTTA MODEL SOMETHING, AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH xD

    me needs it
  • passerby
    Offline / Send Message
    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    took a look at your texture flats again, and it seems some of the brick wall is repeating in the texture flat, which is essential wasted space, you should re-work that area of the flat to make it all unique.

    your going to be fighting obvious tiling on a larger mod scene enough when all your texture space contains unique textures, so have repeats in the textures in your texture flat will just make that worse.

    also a other way to add better normal information between the grout and the bricks is to use select co lour range to try to isolate the grout in your selection, than filling that selection with black on a white BG and fixing any errors with a normal brush. after you got that you can blur it a bit to get some gradient info into it and than use a normal filter like NDO or crazybump on that.

    if you wanted too after you made the the image i explained you could fill certain bricks with differnt shades of grey than do a normal filter to make height difference between bricks.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    as soon as i get this damn pc back ill let you see the normals i made. i guess they came out pretty well, but crits are always welcome :D
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello you guys, its me, the messed up pc dude again :D

    i cant believe im fully back at work :D after almost a month of nothing-doing-ness, im finally with my pc. it was a ram problem, process 001 couldnt be initialized (had to take off the 001 ram from the mo bo, and substitute it with a new one... god it gave me headaches).

    anyway, as i said im back, whats better than posting the so promised revamped work. its the same modular thing, so i decided to use this same thread. but i decided to change the theme, and went for something nicer. will be posting the maps tomorrow so you guys can tell if they're good (nothing done using crazybump: all handmade by me. normals extracted from hi-polies in zbrush).

    well, enough rambling, there you go the first screengrab so far. as always, crits, opinions, comments, yadda-yadda and whatever are more than welcome :D

    cheers y'all :)

    2429au9.jpg
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello you guys... update, looking for crits :D

    2lus80o.jpg


    scale:

    3342oon.jpg



    will be posting the tex maps and some stand-alone props as soon as i can. rock on :D

    edit: the black grainy stain on the bottom of the first pic is udk related, nothing to do with texturing. and oh, the sky and the sidewalk will be replaced by something made by me, as well as the tiled textures on the building walls will have more decals covering them so to avoid the tiling effect.
  • keres
    Offline / Send Message
    keres polycounter lvl 12
    Looking good :) it needs a more elaborate roof, though. Maybe even just a trim at the top. Keep it up!
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    updating :)

    2rr5vdc.jpg

    still have to add some buildings, decals and some variation... and some post process obviously.

    crits are more than welcome, mainly at this point where i getting out of ideas of what to place in the scene (looking just for the environment, so no organic modelling).

    cheers :D
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    updated lighting and skydome.

    258os9v.jpg

    still adding fog and some other stuff on plans.
  • tristamus
    Offline / Send Message
    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    Great progress - keep going, I'd say your 40% done / there!
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    update :)

    zebra crossing, sewer lids, lighting improved, shadows, posters, texture love :poly128:, and some other stuff i might've forgotten.

    crits are appreciated :D

    34q1vk6.jpg
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello you guys, tiny update.

    im just over with my exams today, so ill be dedicating more time to this project. hope something good comes out of it :)

    2uf525g.jpg

    crits are welcome :D
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello everyone, update :)

    trying to give the scene some variety, getting out of the "cubic buildings and flat street". next things are some wires, electricity panels, building numbers, and (if i manage to, always had problems modelling them) cars. crits are mostly appreciated. fire at will :P

    2z6xxcp.jpg
  • Alberto Rdrgz
    Offline / Send Message
    Alberto Rdrgz polycounter lvl 9
    looks like ur bricks are stretching right behind that public phone.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    looks like ur bricks are stretching right behind that public phone.

    thanks for making me notice it :D will fix it.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    update again :D

    2aj6h6h.jpg

    still to fix the stretching bricks. will be doing it tonight :)
  • Computron
    Offline / Send Message
    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    Whats your process for texturing?
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    for modular pieces i start up making the texture sheet on photoshop... having already planned how to use the modular pieces, obviously.

    when im done with ps, i import the sheet to 3dsmax, and extract the meshes from the textures (extruding, adding geometry, lines, etc)

    when its all set, i export the meshes and the texture sheets (diff, spec and normal, usually) into udk. there i create the material with all the expressions, adding the necessay extras to it.

    thats basically it.
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    331n4gw.jpg

    fixing lighting
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    updating.

    2wd3qc8.jpg

    cola wall ad, random props, fillers, and stuff.

    using june 11 udk's skysphere with procedural mixed with my old tweaked skydome texture. moving clouds really, REALLY rock. haha

    tried to improve the lighting too, guess its coming a lot better than before.

    plans:

    1) add wires to those utility poles

    2) add something in the area where the cola ad is (a parking lot? children stuff, like swings etc? an abbandoned construction site? what do you guys thinkn would fit better?)

    3) MOAR BUILDINGS

    crits at will :)
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    testing june udk lighting set:

    qzj9sx.jpg

    2zodmxe.jpg
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
  • yodude87
    Offline / Send Message
    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    pp chain, and some other stuff i was planning.

    to do's:

    electric cables

    random graffiti and sticks/posters

    buildings in the background (still thinking if adding them in the skysphere as a texture, or modelling something simple and fogging it).

    2chpu1.jpg

    fc5fz6.jpg

    2eppzpw.jpg
Sign In or Register to comment.