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[WIP - environment] wild, wild west

yodude87
polycounter lvl 5
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yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
hello you guys :)

new environment on the go :D old west inspired.

for now its just some buildings, still lacking some usage, dirt etc i guess... wanna leave these details to the final stages. as for now, just trying to get a nice feeling of a "city", not some scattered wooden buildings as i see in most west themed works.

crits are more than welcome, mainly at this early stage of works :D

2v2iqvn.jpg

1442yq8.jpg

6g8x02.jpg

more updates to come.

Replies

  • chriszuko
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    chriszuko polycounter lvl 12
    Im not sure if there were giant cities in the wild west, I could be wrong. I do however recommend turning on ambient occlusion in your bake settings, because some areas of the house are really lacking some shading.

    Also with the building on the right, there is a bit of weirdness going on with the pillars.
    I see first that there may be reversed normals on the top piece of wood going through them. Also, most likely whenever the building was constructed, the board that is underneath connecting the pillars wouldn't be sunk into the them, but just nailed right onto the side of them.

    Good start, keep going and lastly I would suggest you blockout the rest of the scene first to get a better feel of what you are wanting to go for.
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    chriszuko wrote: »
    Im not sure if there were giant cities in the wild west, I could be wrong. I do however recommend turning on ambient occlusion in your bake settings, because some areas of the house are really lacking some shading.

    Also with the building on the right, there is a bit of weirdness going on with the pillars.
    I see first that there may be reversed normals on the top piece of wood going through them. Also, most likely whenever the building was constructed, the board that is underneath connecting the pillars wouldn't be sunk into the them, but just nailed right onto the side of them.

    Good start, keep going and lastly I would suggest you blockout the rest of the scene first to get a better feel of what you are wanting to go for.

    thanks for the reply chris :D

    yes, the rail piece do have inverted normals. mostly my laziness when uv'ing on max. will fix it tomorrow tho.

    as regards the board you mentioned, i used this pic as a guide:

    2hol0g0.jpg

    the boards go through there though... will make a nailed version of it tomorrow, and post here for comparisons sake.
  • chriszuko
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    chriszuko polycounter lvl 12
    Well you don't need to do that then, I can see in the reference that what you have is correct, but you should take some of things that make the building stick out in the pic. For example the top trim pieces and the little bits that are sticking out from the sides that add a neat silhouette.
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    nighty mood :)

    wrytmu.jpg

    thought about going for a night theme...western nights feel a LOT more moody than days. "unforgiven" comes to mind, the scene where olgan's body is displayed inside a coffin... indeed im thinking of adding some rain to the scene, with some puddles scattered here and there.

    to add:

    assets (benches, haystacks - cubes and cylinders, wires with lamps hanging, wagon, wagon wheels, rocks, assorted plants, and background mountains)

    post process effects (dof, bloom)

    weather effects (rain)

    buildings.

    thats it for now. every suggestion is welcome :)
  • Doughnut Bear
    looks good so far man, though it appears as if there is some green mist? idk if thats intentional though
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    what, those green marks on the boards? forgot to mention it, its a bug related to udk. cant figure the reason tho. when i screencapture it doesnt appear, but when im working on the viewport its there most of times... and this is a viewport screengrab :poly135:
  • itsmadman
    i will subscribe to this. Would you mind putting up your textures sheets. I think you already your going to need to put some random barrels and assets around to make it really feel lived in and foliage will be very important to giving it an down to earth feel. also the background horizon is very important to get right in desert scenes seeing as you can see all the way back there cuss the desert is so flat
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    small update.

    scratch the "wires with lamps hanging" idea. doesnt give a nice illumination, and feels awkward.

    there you have the scene as of today.

    iqv9c8.jpg

    2emn6tk.jpg

    added: sheriff building, wheat sacks, "thing where you knot your horse at", lamps, alpha planes with sand/plants, tweaked ligthing.

    stuff yet to be done:

    foliage

    rocks

    mountain background

    rain planes (tried it already but didnt get a satisfactory result yet)

    ground variation with horse iron marks

    buildings such as bank, bar, hotel.

    last but not least, posting a couple tex sheets:

    6p466e.jpg

    2mpzeh3.jpg


    not the best sheets around, but figured since they would be used for modular pieces. any problems were fixed with alpha masks, AO and detail normal maps.

    crits welcome, fire at will :)
  • Oniram
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    Oniram polycounter lvl 15
    your normals look flat and your spec maps look like they have lighting baked in? id suggest not just using straight up images for your textures. at least for the normals/spec. for the normals you can pull off some pretty convincing shapes by making bevels in photoshop and using nDo to make them look like they are going in/out. in general it seems like your textures (for spec) are just desaturated and messed with levels, and even not in some cases. if you're into just straight photoshop texturing, you may want to take a look at some of philipk's tutorials and see how he goes about making his textures. he's got some super helpful stuff on his site.

    http://philipk.net/tutorials/materials/materials.html
  • Steen
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    Steen polycounter lvl 16
    Overall it's looking pretty good, but you're losing me where I can see shingles on the underside of the eaves. I'm pretty sure that would just be wood there with shingles only on top of the roof. I would also have some of the lettering on the sign show in your spec map. I think it would make it read a little better as paint on wood.
  • Miller02
    Hey man, was just looking through your screens and i noticed a few things.

    Im guessing this is in udk, if so you def should use a terrain actor and build up some dirt around the edges of your mesh where they hit the floor. you want to ground your buildings make it seem like they have been there a while.

    also by adding the terrain you can get rid of the sharp horizon by adding some small hills and a few shrubs.

    meLwpg4.jpg
    this is gonna be more like arizona or utah ^
    6a00e551fcd88688340111684be033970c-800wi
    this would be a lil more like california

    also i feel like your spec for your shingles are way to high. they're wood right?

    lastly its in need of some ao, in udk ( content browser - change search to types - select post-process chain - open the UTPostprocces_console)
    any changes here will affect every environment you do, so if you do another environment and need to change ao its there)

    Other then those its coming along very nicely. Ill subscribe and check your updates. Keep Going!

    what kind of lights do you have in here?
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello there you guys :)

    kind of long time without an update :S had an accident here at home, was getting ready to sleep, right before i did it, i passed away. hit the wahbasin hard with my face, and went straight away to the hospital, had to stay there 48 hours under observation. luckily i didnt break any bone, and got away with a few scars an hemathomas in my face, around my eyes, in my nose bridge and my forehead.

    so, got back to my scene as of yesterday, and started updating it. there you go what i got so far:

    2899e1w.jpg

    25a8ark.jpg

    new additions:

    plants, shrubs, cacti and rocks as fillers: still studying a good distribution of these props around the scene so that it feels alive.

    straw/hay packs (thinking of adding haystacks too, similar to those seen in assassins creed)

    fireplace in the leftmost building

    tweaking in the sheriff building

    some "wanted/reward" decals around

    tiny lighting tweak.

    as for the question on what lights im using, im using a single dominant directional light. mostly like the standard "night" scene in udk, but with a few tweaks in color/intensity.

    as for the terrain, im keeping the flat one for now, as im trying to concentrate more in the single assets. when im done with them, ill start a nice terrain actor to make it feel more natural :D
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    couple hi res shots:

    2dlniva.jpg

    bdrtav.jpg
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    the major problem with the night shot is that there is no integration between skybox and the scene itself in term fo lighting.

    Your skybox is quite dark and has bright moon which suggests strong contrasted lighting consisiting of dark lue skylight and white-ish directional light.
    Right now it looks like the scene belong to cloudy afternoon setting while the skybox belong to the night setting.

    Also what could be cool is to extend your ground/terrain cauz seing it's edge is kinda pitty (especially on the 2nd shot there ground is cut right after the houses).

    You also need something on the horizon. First thing would distance fog with smoe sort of mountains (to break the straight line of the ground). Sky itself can't have just the same stars and clouds touch the horizon cauz it looks like we are observing the sky like ancients did - standing on the flat disk and seing the sky sphere around us ;)
  • PogoP
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    PogoP polycounter lvl 10
    yodude87 wrote: »
    hello there you guys :)

    kind of long time without an update :S had an accident here at home, was getting ready to sleep, right before i did it, i passed away.

    Oh man, sounds pretty bad! Glad you're feeling better now though.
  • Steen
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    Steen polycounter lvl 16
    Oh man! That fall sounds like it was pretty rough. Glad you came out of it with no permanent damage.

    I'm on board with Matroskin about the lighting and your background scene. I would also see about finding a way to make the re-use of your models a little less obvious. I'm noticing the repetition on the grunge on your window frames. Maybe it's something you could add with decals or additional props?
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    Steen wrote: »
    I'm on board with Matroskin about the lighting and your background scene. I would also see about finding a way to make the re-use of your models a little less obvious. I'm noticing the repetition on the grunge on your window frames. Maybe it's something you could add with decals or additional props?

    muerh3.jpg

    2vt8v2a.jpg

    2lvfn6u.jpg

    hey there you guys, me again :)

    updating a bit based on the tips and advices :) doing the windows tomorrow.

    wont take longer writing here cos im gonna go sleeping now, 3 am already here... good night everyone, and as always cnc's are welcome!
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    ah, much better :)
    The background adds a lot to credibility, and the contrast in the lighting makes it nicer too.

    Though u still got some shadow artefacts.
    For example the shadow from the house on the 1st and 2nd shot doesn't really show up while it should have been a long shadow behind the house.
    From what I see the problem is that lightmap resolution on your terrain is too low. Plus I think u r using DominantDirectional light which makes those vector type of lightmaps which dont work well in this case. I'd suggest that u replace your sun by just Directional light - it will produce better quality shadows, but don't forget to rise the res ;)
  • BrettLewis
    Looking great, lighting and background do add much more to the scene.
    Maybe add a couple more props or some plants/ weeds on the ground to break up the flat surface?
  • Sean VanGorder
    Just wanted to say great job taking critiques and using them to improve your work. The new sky makes the whole scene 10 times better.

    My concern now is that your textures are all getting lost into one big blob of brown. It's hard to differentiate different sections of the buildings. Maybe up the brightness and contrast of the diffuse a bit and play with the spec some more to help it pop.

    Keep up the good work man.
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    thanks a load everyone for the tips and crits, improvements are showing little by little thanks to you guys :D

    had a bit of a struggle today with lighting... indeed didnt model anything, just stood all day here trying to fix the shadow problems, without changing the initial setting so much, as i think it fit the scene well (tried the directional light, but it gave me much lighter shadows, as opposite to the dominant one) .

    a whole day later, i came out with these (nevermind the crappy shot position, its just to show how the shadows came out along with the new lights):

    33madsm.jpg

    lfm02.jpg

    as always, cnc's are more than welcome :D
  • Alberto Rdrgz
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    Alberto Rdrgz polycounter lvl 9
    Great job dude keep it up!

    One crit at the moment... Get more creative with your props. You have one rock and one tree, at the very least you could copy them around. and add a bit of life and variation to the scene. That may also lead to ideas for new pieces. :)
  • Bart
    It's comming along nicely :) A little bit more of Wild West foliage would be great here and there but I bet you already have it planned... Oh and a rolling tumbleweed !
  • z0ltan
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    z0ltan polycounter lvl 13
    Looking pretty sweet. One thing that might be interesting is adding in some ruts or grooves where the wagons would normally travel on the road between the buildings, or even a slight depression where normal travel would start to eat away at the road. Looking forward to more updates!
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    tiny update :) building a salloon can be overwhelming xD

    1yu7hs.jpg

    351bcc4.jpg

    tweaked the floor texture, adding some horse steps, variation of texture, foliage, etc; tweaked a bit the terrain actor too.


    tonight/tomorrow will be modelling a whell, wooden handrails for the saloon, and some other fillers. cnc's are always welcome :)

    edit: there are some shadow artifacts in the sheriff building because i didnt build the lighting, i just screengrabbed it. when i build with lightmass on, it disappears. so no worries :)
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello there everyone!

    time for updates.

    nmantj.jpg

    282l007.jpg

    35d7xqg.jpg

    additions:

    boxes/crates (who doesnt like them? its like lens flare, gotta love'em xD)

    saddles

    well

    finishing the saloon (handrails, doors, windows, stairs, etc)

    foliage

    material tweaking


    to be added:

    more foliage variation (trees and rocks)

    other fillers (chairs, bottles, etc)

    one or two more buildings

    final post process, as this one is just the AO.

    cnc's at will :)
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    some hi res shots.

    n71xtz.jpg

    34q2z9i.jpg
  • Bart
    I am liking it however I got an issue with the scale of everything. It feels like there is no breathing space. Think the road/space between buildings should be a little bit larger. The Well is definetively too big compared to the house it sits next to. Whats up with the industrial brick building ? :)
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    haha i knew someone would ask :) i did search a bit for references of banks, and none of them were made of wood (and it makes sense after all). so i guessed brick would be a good choice. it seems a bit modern indeed, so im open for any tip that might help me give it that old feel :)

    as for the scale, the scene is a bit stretched indeed... but when i think of resident evil 4' well in the village, it wasnt so small! gonna do some look up anyway, and tomorrow will post a fixed scene as regards proportions.
  • Bart
    A good place to look up would be cities in Red Dead Redemption. Have a look at screenshots from Armadillo. See how wide the road is and how the bank is a mixture of wood and brick :)
  • Miller02
    @yodude87 - hey man first off great job with all the updates. I posted early on with shots of terrain. really glad you got some of those aspects in.

    couple things
    - the texture you have for the terrain - im guessing its just one - think about mesh painting some other dirt, maybe one with a normal that looks like foot/wagon/horse traffic.
    - whats your environment color at? as well ass the scenes highlights/mid tones/and shadows? you can find these in your world properties. i ask cause it seems like most of the objects in shadow are super dark. so for instance your last screen you posted - seems like a hitching post and a couple crates in the foreground. try and lighten them up using this method, if you add a actual light it wont give the same feeling/effect u are going for.

    Very good work though its coming together great. Ill keep a look out on your thread. just been busy here finishing up 2 scenes for graduation =D

    good work post soon!
  • SgtNasty
    My apologies if this has been addressed/answered in an earlier post.

    Every image you've posted, even the hi res ones, are really blurry. It's super hard to see any details or anything, especially with your fairly high contrast lighting. I don't know if it's the aliasing, or what the problem is, but I've looked at your images a few times and just have such a hard time seeing it.

    JDVdq.jpg

    This image is sort of a perfect example of what I mean. I can't see the foreground objects at all, they are almost completely black. I can't crit the other elements of the scene though either, because most of them are too far from the camera. If you wanted crits on lighting/rendering/atmosphere, this would be a good shot. But from a modelling/texturing standpoint, it's tough.
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    @ miller02 - thanks for the tips on the terrain, they did help me loads :D
    ive got actually two textures on the floor, indeed one of them has horsesteps on it. maybe it isnt noticeable, gonna try and make the normal a bit more deep so that they get seen. the wagons are a good idea too, gonna give it a shot.

    about the scene color, its not a dark one, something along the lines of pink to keep the afternoon feel.

    @ sgtnasty - thanks for the inputs :D ive added a skylight, to make the scene a tad brighter. guess it does good with making the shadows brighter. posting a hires shot, tomorrow ill post others, as ive been working here all day and gotten so tired (didnt sleep yesterday).

    23qxzmf.jpg


    cnc's are so welcome as always :D
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    okay, stupid me, now i know why the images were all blurry. it was just me putting a wrong setting when importing the pics (instead of standard i would put 17" screen at tinypic). sorry you guys, wont happen anymore :S

    as promised, there you go the other pics.

    8yf47o.jpg

    28c0dp2.jpg

    2r6gv82.jpg

    105oc4o.jpg

    will improve the shadows further with AO and a good post process chain.
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    hello you guys

    im on my brother's pc as of now, and i came to check the thread. to my surprise, i realized the screens were superdark... while on my notebook they feel just right. dont know wether my pc is really bright, or his is dark. any input would be of help.

    if mine is bright, its a calibration issue, will fix it. let me know how it looks on your pcs, so that i can have an idea :D
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    alright, guess it's getting there :D

    update time. pp chain (bloom, enviro color, desat, ect etc), props, fillers, terrain tweaking (still have to do some minor tweaking), brighter mats, and some more stuff i dont remember. thks a bunch you guys for the tips, they really helped a lot. any crits are more than welcome, as always.

    6id5dl.jpg

    5vq6fa.jpg

    igauc1.jpg

    25gvsk9.jpg

    2z8pvnp.jpg

    246j4gn.jpg
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
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