Hey everyone. So my not so little Invasion project is going on a little break for a bit. I'm going to do a smaller scale scene that shouldn't take terribly long to complete, and it'll give me a break from the scale of Invastion. Also, I've been wanting to work on this scene a ton lately.

Here's the concept. It's from Ben Proctor.


And here is what I have so far. It's a very modular scene, and I'm hoping to have this all done in a two or three weeks.

FYI, I think his site is down

Looks like it's coming along well so far. I suggest for you to increase the samples or final gather of your render it seams to be smearing objects and shadows, at least on my monitor.

good start... to be accurate you should take a look at the concept ...the dimensions are not right atm... the right wall needs to be taler also the left wall is much higher...

Very nice and I love the concept art. I think you should add more rings/edges (don’t know what they are called) on the pipe hanging down there to the right. On the reference it’s denser/tighter then yours which imo looks better.

@MooseyG: I will...if I make a Maya Render, I'm planning to just UDK this for now. Those renders are just there atm. But thanks for the input.
@Spatz: Will do and make a few different adjustments to the heights of the walls
@mkandersson: Good point. I will do that. I think I'm going to high poly that and try to bake a normal from it instead of hoping to use an image on it...just to see how it goes.

I've got a progress shot for y'all. Currently in phase 1 of texturing. I'm going to get all these base textures laid out, then I'll run though the diffuse maps again with the detailed lines for the concrete and Iron, and other little things like that. Add a bit of dirt. You know.


Edit: Wow look at that pixellation. Stupid Jpeg. Though the shadows do really look a little too soft and spotty atm.

Composition looks promising, but any possibility to add some some elements to draw the eye? Concept and 3d looks nice but was thinking a beam of light at the far end would make it more interesting.

I think with some nice hard surface painting the pipes will look really good.

I think you mistook the water for a concrete floor. Look, in the concept there are ripples around the yellow tube.

Would be cool if you went for shading/rendering like the concept. With outlines and all.

Oh snap. Snader, that's a nice catch. I thought it was an inlet for the pipe. Well, I suppose I'll have to fix that. I could also have some water flowing over a concrete floor. At any rate, I'll fix that up after I finish my first texture pass.

Kodde, I was actually thinking something similar. I wasn't going to go for a 100% toon shaded look but more of the look Adam's doing in his current project thread. I wouldn't lay it on as heavy, but a slight tinge of stylization could do this scene some good. I'll be adding lines to imply panels in the texture soon.

Off to a good start, but needs some work.

- The hose, right now it looks more like metal duct work than highly flexible tubing. It looks like you added ribs to a cylinder/spline and forgot to bow in the hanging parts between the ribs. You have the loops to do it... Most of that look should be coming from the model.

- The pieces of the tube are also evenly spaced and pretty rigid, notice how it stretches and sags in areas because its so flexible. The ribs force the cloth/plastic to hold some sort of cylinder shape otherwise it would completely collapse. Theres a bit of a struggle to keep that thing in shape and in place.
You need to dig in and illustrate that struggle especially since its a bit of a focal piece.

- You notice the cord attached to the pipe trying to keep it in place, that should help give you some idea how flexible and fragile this tube is and how hard it is to keep in place. There needs to be some pull around the place that the cord attaches, it needs to effect the model.

- This piece is a window into the larger world around this scene. It seems to be a half assed fix and with it looking like a rigid metal pipe you lose that.

- The little tanks sitting on top of the vent, you could toss two loops around their center and bow it up a little bit, it would build a little bit of style and honestly if you're hurting for the polys they could be optimized a bit to compensate.

Sorry to sound like a dick but you gotta nail this stuff.

Vig actually gave really solid advice. (no surprise there) +1

You're missing the support beams on the right wall that connect from the wall to the ceiling. It's hard to crit anything else at this early of a stage.

I think you should check out borderlands for the style. I mean the concept screams that to me. Plus it wouldn't be a half bad idea to do a bit of a stylized piece for your portfolio since the other two you're working on are pretty realistic.

@ Vig: Note definately taken. Here's another picture from last night just to give an Idea where it's at. But your crit still remains the same. I'll jump into that pipe either tonight or tomorrow and make the needed changes. It seems like a lot of your crit is mostly on that one element, would that be safe to assume?
And don't apologize for being an Ass. Better you crush me so I can get better than you baby me. I don't need that.

Vic, I do have them as you can see in this updated picture. I had them for quite a while actually, just out of view on accident. Style wise, I can try. I'm a little worried about execution on my part for it. I'll research some more, but I hope I can still use my image based textures.

Originally Posted by Rurouni Strife

It seems like a lot of your crit is mostly on that one element, would that be safe to assume?

Yea they did, but there are other things here and there that could be changed too I just didn't have time to write up more. Now that I know I'm not wasting my time or have to coddle ya, we can get down to brass tacks.

The brackets that hold the pipe on actually have a little shelf inside for the pipe to sit on.

I'm not sure why you clipped/floated the big boxy concrete support into the wall but didn't do the same for the vent. I would break the vent off and use a geometry tile for the slanted part.



I think you could work a little more modular and kick up a few variants.
The white lines are geometry seams.
Green = same base for left and right walls. The tile repeats maybe a few variant tiles or textures to help break up the repeating.
Purple = Slant tile.
Red = Wall tile, this can be used all over the place, I would actually modify the concept a little and have the lighter boarder be be in the lower green tile and the red tile would be purely concrete.
Blue & Yellow = floating bits.

If you work on a grid and snap to a grid it will make things much much easier.

The textures are a bit noisy, reading a bit more like peperoni than concrete. Imperfections are great when used sparingly especially when trying to match the concept.

The edge on the boxy concrete support could use some defining, you can do that in the texture or with supporting loops to help coral the smoothing/shadows.

The bolts on the vent in the concept are bigger than what you have, and in general I think some of the other finer details need to be larger. Try to work on a minimum detail size and don't fall below it. If its 5 units make sure the smallest detail isn't smaller than that.

Got an update from today:


-I've removed the unique geometry wall that Vig suggested and threw a cylinder in there for the moment. It needs some extra TLC.
-Added some bowing to the two small blue tanks. Don't know if you can see it probably need another view. Or more bowing.
-Scaled up some screw sizes
-All base textures are done except for one set, which I will do after some reworks.
-Added some place holder water with a Maya ocean shader. Left in the concrete floor too, kind of like that idea.

To Do:
-Yellow Tube
-Work on and work out Vig's modular suggestion
-Finish textures and attempt a sort of style. Liking a Borderlands type idea
-Edit/redo textures to be more similar to Vig's suggestion.
-Lighting. Lighting.
-Set up a camera so I have repeated render shots instead of being a loser and using just the perspective in the viewport. Duh that takes like two second to do.

Btw, everyone who comments and crits I really appreciate it all.

Here is an updated WIP from the weekend and this morning. Change log included. Lighting is still WIP and probably won't be fixed until I have the UDK version all done.


Changes:
-Yellow Pipe edited
-Lighting edited
-Walls now made up of tiles with changed texture sheet for variations in the texture
-Static Cameras for repeatable render results
-Wall Textures

To do:
-Still feel like I want to work on that yellow pipe but not sure what to do
-paint over base textures and finish diffuse maps
-create the spec and normals
-Exports to UDK
-Unique models

Great work so far, can not wait to see the finished product
I'll add some crits when it's further along

for the yellow pipe why dont you make it so that its nearer to the wall. i was thinking it would give it a more "stiff" feeling. Also it doesn't have that underground and dirty feel of a sewer. there should be grime and dirt in the walls, faded paint and maybe some glowing eyes of rats or something kinda like this http://www.vagabondish.com/wp-conten...-sewer.jpgfeel the rats arent there but i think it still gives a more "dirty" feel to it. One last thing industrial lights maybe?

marlfox8, your link is broken. Fail. Lol. I have added grunge and dirt to the textures for my next update but I also want to keep it lower than you would see in a real sewer because I really love how the concept conveys this cleaner looking environment. It's like the waste from these people isn't absolutely shit.

I will totally check out moving the pipe closer to the wall. Right now.

That's a great concept to work on. These pieces are great for portfolios. The FOV of the camera in UDK may be different from Maya so you'll have to keep that in mind when you get it in UDK. I think the FOV of the concept is different to the camera in Maya, tha's maybe why it doesn't look exactly the same.

With good lighting in UDK this can look great.

Personally I would make the water flat. The waves look too obvious.

I would get this into UDK as soon as possible. And maybe add temporary textures in UDK. The UDK textures can give you a good benchmark to aim for. For example I found my walls in my sci fi corridor scene in my portfolio looked rubbish until I applied a UDK material to it. Then I realised that it needed reflections and more spec.

Thanks for the tip on the water Serp! And yea the FOV is totally different I feel. The one I'm using in Maya atm is 70mm camera preset. It's not by design, I felt that for the moment it looked good enough and it let you see everything better than the standard FOV. I actually have a second camera with a 35mm Anamorphic setting that I haven't rendered from yet.

UDK is actually up next. I'm going to probably bring it over tomorrow morning after I finish up diffuse textures and then I'll make a separate Normal and Spec for UDK than any Maya render I might decide to do. I've definately noticed that UDK and Maya have totally different ways of using or rendering spec and even normal maps.

I'm pretty tired so this will be quick.


Everything is ported into UDK. I had to scale stuff up some, that's why that guy is there for. You are looking at Diffuse only textures except for the yellow pipe which has a normal map. Floor is that concrete floor from earlier. Water is much later.

There are a few obvious things I need to fix and I'll get to it tomorrow. I had a suggestion from vcortis about making this in the Borderlands style. It sounds really awesome but I have a question. Should I paint the outlines on to the diffuse, or should I use a shader technique?

Looks good so far Rurouni. Did you have any problems with the placement of your meshes in terms of grid lock and what not? Or did you not create the assets with the Unreal grid in mind?

EDIT: I only ask because I'm going to be creating a large scene in UDK and don't know if I should design my pieces modularly to fit on the grid in Unreal.

doeseph, absolutely create them with the grid in mind. I'd say that I had the grid in mind but I didn't quite execute it the correct way. So I've had some grid lock problems here and there. If you look up, Vig has an excellent suggestion about minimum units and I highly suggest you do that.