Hey, long time no post.

Recently I've been working on another environment set, this time teaming with James (Gwot) who is doing the character for the scene. If you've seen the movie Underworld you might recognize this scene from the end of the movie where the final (re: boss) battle happened. Like the Towers set I did I didn't want to feel constrained so I worked with above normal specs and went loose on the texture count. For the environment, the average texture size is 512x512 and the triangle count weighs in at around 12.5k

Two of the aspects of environment work I wanted to learn about with this is to get an understanding of effective lighting techniques, and set composition to tell a story. After doing the Towers I've made it a goal to always do scenes that tell a story in a single frame - rather than stale shots of fire hydrants (whoopty-doo).

The following is two shots of composition tests, taken to near final post.
PLEASE SEE IMAGES BELOW!

Wires:

http://brome.toogeek.com/stuff/crap/...ab_wires01.jpg
http://brome.toogeek.com/stuff/crap/...ab_wires02.jpg

James will be showing his work shortly I believe.

Someone had to do it, I started on selene's head as an animation practice. I was going to finish her up tomorrow getting the body started & done. James is going to create her if he didn't already correct?

Critic:
Dark in the entrance area I dont know if this is just suspenceful lighting to make the renderings more mysterious looking until the final result?

The wolf is looking great... he has a massive neck area though it still looks fine.

EDIT:
Here's the head if there is any interest:

Can't wait to see the rest of the designs and the final end results.

Nice job overall so far on the final battle scene. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Wow, good work man. Nice textures and the polies you used look very efficient. Only crit is that its looking a bit dark, but the mood is definitely there.

Great work! The depth blur looks really nice in the background on the second shot.

bromenstein... Underworld was on TNT today, and I channelsurfed into it right before the finale scene rolled up. FIRST thing to my mind when it came on screen was "hey, brome's scene was lookin pretty good compared to this last I saw it". [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Thanks guys, I'll post more as more comes.

$!nz: He's doing the wolf, that's all. Selene won't be in this one :P

environment looks good, but there is something wonky about the werewolf's neck.

yeah, ghost is right it seems fat or too long...but it looks good.

Ah, yah wolfy's neck. I moved it down for the shot as there was a nasty break in the mesh where Gwotto hadn't welded it altogether yet.

can we see wires overlapped on the textures? I've watched you grow in terms of your texture ability for a long time now, and I can see you've been improving in great ways. congrats.

Looking great! If this is going to be a single shot from this angle, there are a bunch of detail pieces and time you put into the upper part of that scene that isn't being shown except for on the wires shot. All those polys could have been put in the rubble piles.

Are you trying to keep this game ready art or just going for a nice high poly static shot?
What program are you using? Max?

Even if this isn't art that is going into a real time engine you can still save render times.

Add a bit of reflection to the concrete, it will help give the scene the damp look the scene you are copying has.

Play around with volume fog, a little goes a long way. A thin layer of fog over water is sometimes a nice creepy touch and helps the sometimes harsh transition between water and world.

Push some of the pieces of rubble in the piles out to the edges so they effect the silhouette and the transition from concrete pillar to rubble, and the transition from rubble to floor. Or add more so they help break up those lines.

Looks pretty promising. I'd put some more effort into the rubble. You can easily break it up by intersecting some loose pieces in each pile.

Also one your pillars have a big chunk chipped out which looks great but then the broken pillars with the rebar off to the left look really plain.

Mesh is place-holder. He needed something quick for his lighting and composition so he got it very dirty.


Might as well do a progress update too then...
UV mapping is done, currently sculpting, and messing around with XSI hair to come up with something that works for him.

Mudbox progress:

The wolf looks really cool, just looking at the theorectical anatomy (althought this is really stylized), first thought is such tiny pects for such big ass deltoids and biceps. Reminds me of when body builders that use steroids only work out one muscle group.
-Neil

For the restraints you gave yourself, that's pretty damn slick work, Adam. If you could have spared some more texture/poly space, I would have a few suggestions:

- Where the rubble meets the ground - decals of smaller rubble might helped blend it. Right now it's very clinical in appearence.
- A lot of the bevels you have on the pillars, the ground, etc - all very uniform. Makes those elements look very tell-tale cg.

But like I said, for the restraints, VERY nice [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Gwot, I can't comment on the anatomy since I don't know it :P But I think the wolf looks damn cool [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] Can't wait to see it finished.

Why four digits? Dogs have five digits just like us.


I love to see some sort of a blending between a real dew claw and a human thumb. But then i like more of the werewolf in london. Also id make his chest huge then have it then collapse in after the rigs end like dogs do. And like everyone else make the pecks bigger or give him extra nipples...

TGZ: Um, because he's a werewolf and he can be whatever the hell he wants? You realize asking why a giant half human half wolf monster has 4 fingers is kind of silly?

I know what you mean, just poking at you.

Environment looks pretty great!

And the mutt too!

Very nice Adam. Personally I dont understand the current tastes for prolific DOF and I think your scene looks waaay better without. It makes the scene look like a small scale model to me. But to each their own [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Yowzers thats a damn nice bit of mudboxing Gwot. He feels super top heavy, and that he could barely hold that bulk on those tiny feet and legs, but I get that that's a stylistic choice. Very nice so far.

I like them both so far. 4 digits can be fun sometimes. Can't wait to see further progress.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Daz: Yeah he's pushing it a bit on the top, I agree - was sort of loosely running with the bulk of the big werewolf dude in the first movie as my inspiration. It's bugging me a bit, but I decided to just push through on this and see how it goes, then maybe do a more slimmed down version at a later date if interest is still there. I'd like to animate it too at some point and the bulk may get in the way of that in the end.

I'm adding hair/fur too so I want to see what gets covered up/hidden in the end, or exaggerated too far, depending on the length in some areas.

This is my first foray into the XSI hair sim so I'm just sort of winging it right now and not too concerned about the mesh for a bit as I'm finding hair in itself is a pretty big task on its own.

The modeling is excellent, but the Character looks too stylized (oversized upper half) for the background, which looks much more realistic. I think it would fit together better and be far more menacing if you went for a more balanced character.

im not really feeling that broken of cement pillar with the rebar. It looks very sawed off and removed rather than broken off. The other damage you got to the pillar with the top layer of the cement works really well though. But anyways, would be cool if you could use some more polys on the top of that pillar. Perhaps a different texture with a more cracked up/broken feel to it.

I would also agree with daz about the dof. It takes away some of the massiveness and scale of it all.

Real nice work so far though, looking forward to updates!

Goddamn, I love the composition its very dramatic [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Keep it up the both of you, id love to see more come of this.

About the bulky upper half. If you remember the wolves in underworld mostly ran on all 4's. True they where lankier than what is show here but I like the style. When you think about the balance of the character on all 4's it doesn't seem as top heavy.

I agree with TGZ about the hands, 4 fingers and a thumb/dew claw would be pretty cool. With 3 digits where there should be 4, you have to wonder at what point in the transformation did a digit fall off or meld into another one?

I also agree with Daz about the DOF, it gives the scene the wrong kind of effect, it also takes too long to render sometimes and might not play nice with atmospherics if you decide to use any. Normally you get the DOF effect when the camera has a hard time focusing on the entire scene such as with tiny objects. So people are used to seeing this type of camera distortion on shots of tiny things.

There are other effects that can be used that won't make it look like the camera is having a hard time focusing on the whole scene and give you the separation of character and scene you want. You might want to do two sets of renders, one of the background slightly blurred using normal blur features in max or use something like DeFocus and then composite the character into the shot.

Also play around with some advanced lighting set ups like Radiosity to help the lighting along.

One last thing don't forget about water ripples around his feet =)

Good suggestions on the enviro all!
Vig: The wolf will definitely be comped, as Adam is working in Max and I'm in XSI.

I'll be sure and add the 5th digit for the hands and feet... enough of you are mentioning it, I'd feel bad for not taking advice. =D
I guess I just got lazy and figured it probably wouldn't even factor in to the renders originally. =D

I'll play with the upper body bulk some as well and post a variant to compare.