I am going to be teaching a art work shop at my old college, AI SD about the wonderful world of creating environments utilizing modular assets and the trim textures they are created from. Trying to dispell the illusion that most games are created of uniquely unwrapped static meshes and show the power of trim textures. It will be in UDK.

Going to be keeping it simple as I need to focus on what I can teach in the time allotted as well as actually making the scene. So instead of wasting time concepting something myself I am going to use this sweet Halo concept (cant recall who did it) and will be making just the hallway part using 2 textures. For a normal envio I would of course use more, but for the sake of time and not confusing people I will limit things.

Figured I would make a thread here so that after the workshop people can go here and checkout a more indepth look at it.


Not much to show here at the start, but any good environment starts in the blockout phase so go blockout! The concept has a forced perspective that I am not sure how to achieve in UDK, so idk if I will be able to get that exact look it has. Then again, a concept is just an idea for your environment.

And also the textures I will be using. There just AO/Normals for now in case I need to change things when building the environment and keep myself from wasting time by fully texturing them now.

Crits welcome!

Concept -


Textures -


Blockout -

This might be off topic, but are those normal maps derived from nDo? Or did you back from a high poly? They are really nice and clean

I'll be following this for sure! Excited to see your techniques. Will you be adding more colour to the scene? I'd like to see some more of that blue colour maybe as trim somewhere.

another sci-fi hallway? well, bring it on

@jordan.kocon Those normals are baked from a HP. They are just normals/ao baked from Max and using Xoliul Shader. Finally getting to test out that bad boy out.

Had a little time to work on this today. Detailing out the blockout a little further and refining some of the proportions on things. Important to get those nailed down early so it dosnt bite you in the ass later on. Now its time to really get cracking on this guy!

Anthony when are you doing this? Might make the trip down to sit in on it.

are you planning on giving this same lecture at the art institute inland empire campus as well??? San Diego is quite a trip during school time :P

Update time. Finished up 1 variation of both side walls and a floor chunk. Just simple viewport grabs with Normals/Ao. Might make some changes here and there to these guys but for now there pretty good. Will throw them in UDK next to make sure everything works there, then I will start to finish up the other pieces then make second variations of these walls units.

@Jesse - Its going to be on Aug 25.

@Notes - It was an old teacher who asked me to do a workshop so thats pretty much why its there.

I wish I could come and see the lecture, seems like it be a lot of useful information! And I have that same concept in my refrence folder, I can not wait to see the final product!

Got a few more things done, damn Aug is a busy month. Better knuckle down and finish this guy soon ha! Need to design the back door and finish unwraping things again for lightmaps.

Doorway


Roof


Crappy viewport grab from Max, not how lighting will look or anything.

Going to start working on lighting in UDK, havent finished that back door yet and boy unwrapping things for lightmaps is boring as hell! ha

Not sure why the emissive lights on the right are not actually lighting anything in the scene up as they are flagged to cast light. Still just normals/AO for now, once I dial in the lighting I will move onto texturing/shaders.

good stuff. can you show a screengrab of the pixel density? I'm curious how much squash/stretch is going on here (if any)

Hey Anthony, glad you're doing this AI workshops are a ton of fun.

Looking good so far, but there are a few issues with smoothing and normals, getting some minor banding. Also watch out for those tack on bolts laid over, they're casting minor seams around your maps.

when i worked with my scene in udk using the last release i couldnt make the emmissive lights work, i made some research and it looks like its something epic has broken and never fix again

Playing a little more with lighting, still no textures, but made the back door blue and added just some default no texture spec to get some highlights.

@kaburan - thanks Will, yeah the bolts are just an error from the bake I havent cleaned up. Still have to clean up some of the banding from smoothing though.



@coots7 - here is a shot of the pixel density. It dose get a little bad on some of the trims, but its honestly not as bad as the red makes it seem ha. That is an issue you will run into when UVing like this. You wont have perfect pixel density. It is of course best to strive for taht and not have things too dense or too little, but in the end, its always how the final product looks that matters, not if everything is perfect pixel density.

Update time. Really like the singular color mixed with the grey from the concept. Want to keep that look, but I wanted to jazz things up a little more and pull some of that blue into other areas. Since I will be demoing most of this off I will be keeping things simple for times sake of showing off how to make most of the parts. Might add some extra flair after the workshop which is next week!

looking killer as always auto!!

really want to play around with making an environment like this but udk's material editor makes me want to punch babies at times!

So this is what I'm missing next weekend

Digging the blue/gray color scheme (Personal Fav) but I feel the lighting is holding it back a bit. You should try experimenting with some orange light sources to contrast against your blue panels and as always, it's just too damn clean for my liking

Have you tried using channel textures to cram some masks into your materials to allow you to have multiple variations of some of your more basic trim, lights, and panels? Granted I know you want to keep it simple for the workshop/learning/time reasons (and it could easily run off into a udk materials workshop, but I suppose another time) but it could bring that added flair you're looking for.

For the workshop I will not be covering things like RGB Channel textures. I only have 3 and a half hours and I already know that will be cutting it close to try and show off everything I want too. Not to mention I dont want to overload people with information that they just become confused as I have seen that all too often. A good amount of people want to add everything in the kitchen sink into there scenes when they still dont have a good grasp on the basics and it really shows.

Also right now I dont feel I am hurting for any other variation with the two textures I am using. But this is also a small space so if it was expanded I would use some masks, or more likely another texture. Depends on what the situation would call for.

As for the lights I plan to keep them the more clean white look as the concept. This is because it is a clean sci fi interior and the white lights help give that message/mood off. I played around with some orange because of the blue but it felt out of place for this corridor. Why would they use orange lights as there main light sources? They wouldn't. Might play with it again a little, but wasnt sold on them at the time. Thanks for the feedback though



Update Time - Finished the back door, extended the hallway to go behind the door.

The color on the wall panels is drawing too much attention from the door. Id try switching it back to more neutral colors for the hall and let the door be the color. When you get some bounce radiosity it will sell it even more.

I have no idea how to get bounce radiosity working in UDK

EDIT: Well beyond bounce lighting which I know how to do, but actual radiosity of the shaders? I have no idea how to do that, and I was under the impression that was a new Unreal 4 thing, not something in the current UDK. So getting the blue to bounce onto the surrounding area would be impossible in UDK as it stands now, unless there is a way to do so?

I'd get rid of the blue on the right wall, the floor, ceiling, and upper left wall. Just keep it on the left lower wall and door.

You can exaggerate the light bounce effect by raising DiffuseBoost. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html

Completely valid arguments there Anthony, as I said it could easily run off into a UDK Mats Lecture (You guys should do one by the way ). Either way I'm sure the guys will learn a hell of a lot, it's a great demo scene.

As far as what Zac said, diffuseBoost is only half of the story. You also need to bump up your indirectLightingScale property on your dominant light and then you should notice that your bounce lights will begin to fill in the scene with colors they pick up from the boosted diffuse textures. It works perfectly well in UDK 3 July 2012 Beta. Play around with the values a bit and you should get the results you're looking for.

Couldnt get that lighting to work in UDK, was getting WAY to many errors of not showing up no matter how high I cranked things or just totally blown out lighting if I added a "lighting importance volume" to the scene. And I would get blown out lighting even if I didnt add the Diffuse Boost stuff. Will have to see in the future what is up with that, but for the demo it was not needed.



As for cutting all the blue, I do appreciate the feedback and get where your coming from, but I am going to have to disagree with those suggestions. The concept of course makes the door the focal point of the scene by limiting it to being the only color but that is exactly what I DONT want.

For the workshop I was trying to help students also think about there environments as a whole and not just one static focal point shot. I also wanted to go over tieing in elements throughout assets in terms of shapes as well as color to create a more cohesive world. The addition of the blue on the floors/walls and roof help tie them into the doorway, which dose not, and should not be the focal point of the environment, as it is not some massively important door.

It is just a junction in a hallway, that while being prodomently blue, helps it break off and stand out from the other assets that are prodomently grey. This helps separate the door from the rest of the environment enough to show that this is a doorway that you will go through, but not different enough that it needs to stand out or feel disconnected from the rest of the level.

The blue on the walls/roof and floor also helps guide the player through the environment as I kept most of the blue on these assets limited to a horizontal flow. I did nix it in a few areas on the right that clearly didn't fit, but for the purpose I was trying to achieve the rest worked as I wanted it too. Again its all about tieing all the elements of the environment together in a cohesive and artistically pleasing manner all the while helping lead the player through your game space.


Also, as for a focal point, you want that to be the character/story you give to your scene, not just some random, unimportant door. You want to draw the player in with the interesting story you create to make your environment feel lived in. For the demo I was showing off the basics so I didnt include really any story elements. But again, this demo was to showcase how to build and environment with tiling/trim textures, and not just show a super awesome scene that can be built and bog students down with too much information.

Ok enough words, here is the final shot I finished for the demo. Not frills, its basic as intended to be to give myself enough time build these assets real time for the students. I feel its best to focus on the basics of environment creation as so many lack the fundamentals.

To really make this scene pop I let the students know this was only the first step, adding in that character and story is what will really help there environment stand out from the pack. But again, wanted to keep it simple for the demo for them to get the basics.