Storage Room/Basement Scene
polycounter lvl 12
*latest update in UDK*
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Hi, so I'm tackling this concept, figure it would make a really nice small-ish set.
Some assets:
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Hi, so I'm tackling this concept, figure it would make a really nice small-ish set.
Some assets:
Replies
The ceiling stuff is great.
luthyn : Thanks, an no, no dDO, just good old fashioned photo sourcing and painting. I did use nDO pretty extensively for the brick walls.
@ DWalker / ShockInfinite / passerby : Thanks, and yeah I settled on the method of vertex painting. I have created two materials I'm gonna try vertex painting between:
Painted Wall:
Exposed brick:
I'm pretty happy with how the painted wall mat turned out, but not so much with the exposed brick, so if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve it, please go ahead. Just keep in mind it's gonna be a secondary material that will only show up on some places, so as long as it's not like, "sculpt the whole thing from scratch in zbrush"
Yup, I've actually re-donethe bare brick texture, it has a littel more roughness/variation now. I left a bit of spec on which technically isn't "correct" since there's no way bricks would have any spec unless it's like fresh clay, but it looks better that way I think. Let me know if you think this looks better:
Mr Bear- thanks. env shot coming next, basically once all the primary assets (wall, ceiling, floor, beams, door) are done
Also, I made the VB material a bit better/closer to the concept, now I'm gonna move on to other stuff.
Closeup of beams/upper wall in marmo:
(Unfinished) Concrete floor:
But is it just me or are the normals pointing the wrong direction in your normalmap as to how UDK renders them? They look correct in Marmoset but your shots from UDK looks a little weird. The light from above looks like it actually highlights the edge on the underside of the bricks so try and flip the green channel and see if that doesnt look better
Haha good eye, thanks! I knew something was off about those bricks but couldn't put my finger on it. I knew I had to go around and flip the green channels for most of the materials, but I guess it didn't occur to me it had to be *all* of them lol
Here it is with the green channel on bricks flipped, pretty sure it looks more correct:
beefaroni Yeah the current lighting probably isn't too impressive, I'm still trying to figure out how to light the level, whether I should go with lights that only come from the light sources in the scene or cheat and have lights shine on certain assets to emphasize them (Which I'm kind of already doing for the floor, I placed a bunch of point lights right above to create some highlights)
I pretty much know nothing about lighting a level
[y/n]?
It gets really busy when everything has hardcore rust/stains etc.
@ chrisavigni thanks!
@ Dubzski not sure if I follow, what are the elements that don't look unified? I thought I was keeping it relatively 'clean' (for what is pretty grungy set/concept) But I guess I may have over-grunged it.
And a fire extinguisher, cause why not
Agreed, I think a lot of it is just the shit lighting in my scene, which is something I'm still trying to work out, I've nevr really lit an environment before, like with the door thing I'm trying to find a way to illuminate it in a way that looks "natural" since the lighting that comes from light fixtures doesn't really hit the door at all
As far as the metals, is there a specific asset(s) you're reffering to, or just pretty much everything?
Thanks for critiquing!
thanks, any tips as far as lighting goes?
This.
As for tips, I say bring some of the contrast back in terms of lighting. Right now you have a lot of just scene based illumination, meaning nothing really has a shadow, and everything feels pretty flat. Add a focal point or two with spotlights or omni lights, bring some darker corners back, and just reduce the overall amount of baked lights down. Like I said already, you just have a lot of light in the scene, and this is supposed to be a storage/basement style room. Right it feels kinda like a dentist/doctor's office's lobby or something. Very "clean". Really make the spec work that you have done pop with a dynamic light casting an awesome shadow, and really make it feel as old and rusty as the props already in the scene.
Also, I feel you could definitely scale down the tiling on the ground texture. Right now the tiles feel huge, and kinda throw the immediate sense of scale out of whack.
Cool, thanks for the advice. I'm a total newb to lighting/UDK. So would you say it's more advisable to place my lights on the basis of where I want highlghts/spec to be prominent rather than trying to replicate how the light would come "naturally" in the scene (within reason of course, obviously no lighting shit from the bottom when you clearly have lights coming from the top, etc )
Oh yeah, and scene is lit with dynamic lights only (+lightmap shadows)
it's to take advantage of udk's dynamic spec
I might catch a lot of flak for this, since it's kind of a "Cheat" but.. I just can't stand the way UDK makes the spec/normals look when the lighting is fully baked.
Gonna do my next project in cryengine so I don't have to deal with that bullshit again.
I am the exact same way. I just do not enjoy UDK's lighting in general. Creates a lot more hassle than should be necessary, and I am just sick of baking lightmaps and such. That could possibly be because I am a lighter on last gen consoles right now at work, and all I do is work with lightmaps and old static style lights.
But yeah, I mean, make sure the lighting makes sense, but first and foremost is quality. I tend to have all of my primary lights come from a model or light source that makes sense, and then rim lighting and all other secondary lighting I sometimes BS. Since this is a port piece though, do not feel like you are under any sort of major budgets. Portfolio pieces are here to show what we can bring to a team, not how you can make content that matches what the studio has already released. Push the envelope.
I personally believe in lighting that has an obvious light source. Sorry if I repeated myself and was completely redundant during that rant, at work lol.
Yeah currently I just have the most generic lighting possible, just point light coming from each light fixture. I tried doing some 'specialized' lighting to bring out the spec on the locker and the fire extinguisher but since no one seems to have noticed it probably didn't work out so well.
I just wanted to gather as much lighting tips as possible before going ahead and tackling the lighting in a serious way, so that's gonna be my next major step.
Will do! Well I dunno about the flickering light thing since I doubt I'm gonna make a video for the scene, but I will definitely play with the falloff/attenuation of the lighting
Could you post a pic of the texture maybe and what size they are?
Only feedback I have atm is that the concept seems warmer then your scene, possibly try making the lights more yellow in colour, though I know your changing the lighting anyway.
Nice work!
Thanks for the feedback, and yeah definitely gonna work on those lights
Here's the flats for the things. In my scene they're 2kX1k probably overkill but whatever, its a portfolio piece not a console game, scaled them down here.
As far as process or how I made them, nothing special really, just piling on photo source textures and painting some dirt in where required... I used nDo to add certain texture layers to my baked normals, when this is done sparingly and in a subtle way it can help add an extra dimension of depth and realism to your textures (well in some cases at least).
I could have planed the modularity way better for these and probably would have had to texture less stuff, but whatever, live and learn
Anyways, Here's the ostensibly finished version, any final critiques/tips would be nice
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