UDK Environment: Feedstock CTF
polycounter lvl 10
Hey polycount.
I'm a junior animation student at NYU, and I hope to become an environment artist in the game development industry one day - an aspiration shared by probably a few of the dudes here.
I'm really glad I stumbled upon this forum because I'm in need of some MAJOR environment/hardsurface guidance for a UDK project I've undergone. I've decided to run the gauntlet and build a small UDK level from concept to completion around a simple Capture the Flag game mechanic, and I have found myself swamped with questions:
"Am I making efficent game geometry?"
"How many maps should this asset have?"
"Should I use a tile texture solution or is this an asset that needs it's own map?"
etc.
I'd like to post the work I've done so far on it here, and then fire out some questions about whether or not I'm really doing this properly. I fear that I'm pretty much doing everything wrong as far as optimization is concerned - making bases that are WAY too high poly and not using tiled maps enough etc.
I'd like to do this right, and get started with some idea of what the environment art pipeline is. Because right now, I feel like I'm diving in blind.
The Project:
The aesthetics of the level adheres to a vibrant and stylized art direction (Ratchet and Clank, World of Warcraft, etc) and needs to have some narrative purpose. It's also stuffed with organic and hard surface modeling challenges. The goal is to make a totally badass looking CTF environment in UDK while following these guidelines and learn as much about making game art as possible.
The Level's Backstory:
Mission Name: Feedstock
Time: 13:00
Climate: 78 degrees, Humid, Thunderstorms expected
Backstory: The fertile swamp planet Veritas is home to hundreds of collosal life forms. The preservation of it's intricate ecosystem has been
enforced by intergalactic law and left undistrubed for billions of years... Untill recently.
Two rival mega-corporations, Iron Helix Co. and Xade Industries have found a "large plant-animal-thing" that yields a highly valuable acidic ichor.
Espionage and corproate war ensues on-site amidst sensitive equipment and a giant ticked off vegetable.
Iron Helix Co.: Specializes in the manufacturing of DNA computers and modifiable household pets. The company has been accused of developing slave species for dangerous third-galaxy contractors.
Xade Industries: A household name on many civilized worlds. Xade industries makes everything from appliances, to warp drives, to weapons.
Plant Organism: A spire of organic mass rooted miles deep into the planet's surface. Hundreds of such organisms exist on planet Veritas, and are
homes to many lesser lifeforms that work to preserve these celestial plants... if you could call them that.
The objective:
As an enlisted mercenary for either corporation, you must do whatever you can to thwart your opponents operations while defending your own. Steal generator cells from the opponents Refinery control center and install them into your factory's core. Be warned: the power boost could cause
temporary hazards on the work site.
The Concept Art (Thusfar)
Rough UDK Block in:
The First Modeling Challenge:
The very first thing I want to do is just make these bases. I figured the most obvious place to start is the exterior. Here are shots of their progress, and some renders in UDK just to see how scale is working out.
Xade (Team 1) Spawn Building Exterior : Currently at 20,713 tris
Iron Helix (Team 2) Spawn Building Exterior : Currently at 21,000 tris
The Questions
Am I pushing too many polys for the exterior of these bases?
Because of their curved/organic design It's difficult for me to imagine how they might be modularized / simplified.
What's the best way to go about texturing these surfaces?
The xade spawn base is currently aiming to span 6 texture maps right now. I have a feeling this is stupid, and the goal of texturing these structures is to define surfaces by use of tiled texture maps.
At the same time, I don't really know if I'll end up with more maps that way than the current uv organization.
How can I find the right balance between tiled texture maps and custom uv'd geometry?
I just can't seem to make a decent call here. If I use the tiling method I think i'm going to run into a problem with seeing poly seams on some of the more curved surfaces that cover alot of space. I feel that because of the bases design i'm almost forced away from this method.
I'm a junior animation student at NYU, and I hope to become an environment artist in the game development industry one day - an aspiration shared by probably a few of the dudes here.
I'm really glad I stumbled upon this forum because I'm in need of some MAJOR environment/hardsurface guidance for a UDK project I've undergone. I've decided to run the gauntlet and build a small UDK level from concept to completion around a simple Capture the Flag game mechanic, and I have found myself swamped with questions:
"Am I making efficent game geometry?"
"How many maps should this asset have?"
"Should I use a tile texture solution or is this an asset that needs it's own map?"
etc.
I'd like to post the work I've done so far on it here, and then fire out some questions about whether or not I'm really doing this properly. I fear that I'm pretty much doing everything wrong as far as optimization is concerned - making bases that are WAY too high poly and not using tiled maps enough etc.
I'd like to do this right, and get started with some idea of what the environment art pipeline is. Because right now, I feel like I'm diving in blind.
The Project:
The aesthetics of the level adheres to a vibrant and stylized art direction (Ratchet and Clank, World of Warcraft, etc) and needs to have some narrative purpose. It's also stuffed with organic and hard surface modeling challenges. The goal is to make a totally badass looking CTF environment in UDK while following these guidelines and learn as much about making game art as possible.
The Level's Backstory:
Mission Name: Feedstock
Time: 13:00
Climate: 78 degrees, Humid, Thunderstorms expected
Backstory: The fertile swamp planet Veritas is home to hundreds of collosal life forms. The preservation of it's intricate ecosystem has been
enforced by intergalactic law and left undistrubed for billions of years... Untill recently.
Two rival mega-corporations, Iron Helix Co. and Xade Industries have found a "large plant-animal-thing" that yields a highly valuable acidic ichor.
Espionage and corproate war ensues on-site amidst sensitive equipment and a giant ticked off vegetable.
Iron Helix Co.: Specializes in the manufacturing of DNA computers and modifiable household pets. The company has been accused of developing slave species for dangerous third-galaxy contractors.
Xade Industries: A household name on many civilized worlds. Xade industries makes everything from appliances, to warp drives, to weapons.
Plant Organism: A spire of organic mass rooted miles deep into the planet's surface. Hundreds of such organisms exist on planet Veritas, and are
homes to many lesser lifeforms that work to preserve these celestial plants... if you could call them that.
The objective:
As an enlisted mercenary for either corporation, you must do whatever you can to thwart your opponents operations while defending your own. Steal generator cells from the opponents Refinery control center and install them into your factory's core. Be warned: the power boost could cause
temporary hazards on the work site.
The Concept Art (Thusfar)
Rough UDK Block in:
The First Modeling Challenge:
The very first thing I want to do is just make these bases. I figured the most obvious place to start is the exterior. Here are shots of their progress, and some renders in UDK just to see how scale is working out.
Xade (Team 1) Spawn Building Exterior : Currently at 20,713 tris
Iron Helix (Team 2) Spawn Building Exterior : Currently at 21,000 tris
The Questions
Am I pushing too many polys for the exterior of these bases?
Because of their curved/organic design It's difficult for me to imagine how they might be modularized / simplified.
What's the best way to go about texturing these surfaces?
The xade spawn base is currently aiming to span 6 texture maps right now. I have a feeling this is stupid, and the goal of texturing these structures is to define surfaces by use of tiled texture maps.
At the same time, I don't really know if I'll end up with more maps that way than the current uv organization.
How can I find the right balance between tiled texture maps and custom uv'd geometry?
I just can't seem to make a decent call here. If I use the tiling method I think i'm going to run into a problem with seeing poly seams on some of the more curved surfaces that cover alot of space. I feel that because of the bases design i'm almost forced away from this method.
Replies
First, don't trash your high poly meshes for these bases. You can use them to add some extra detail and then bake out a normal map. That map should help smooth some of the harder edge transitions when you reduce your meshes. Which you need to do. You can definitely drop that down to something far more manageable. Is it high? Depends on what kind of platform you are aiming for. Next gen, maybe maybe not. For Unreal, you should be ok, but it's always good to try to be smart with your use of edge loops and polys.
If those are one off assets, I wouldn't worry about using a tiling texture. Save that for something you'll be using over and over again, and add vertex painting in Unreal to hide that. I really can't tell you how many maps to use, that's something you'll probably have to decide. Just try to group everything by similar materials and UV as efficiently as possible and see what you can do? That's amazing advice right there lol...
These six textures, what sizes are they looking at being right now?
Well that's the best damn art I've ever seen a blind man produce....
seriously though, I know you want some advice, but I just came here to say that this is all incredibly awesome. Art direction looks fantastic, your concept skills are amazing, and this all looks like a lot of fun.
Will be watching! KEEP GOING!
Gameplay wise I think it will be easy to defend but really hard to get the flag anywhere.
You have lots of narrow walkways and few escape routes that it might be hard to dodge enemies once you are on half way to your base. Adding bigger spaces to move on or more walkways/jump pads might fix it. Hard to say thought without testing it first.
Keep up the great work! Will be watching this one
A little feedback is to try split up your large assets, like so
I'm not intimately familiar with UDK but from my experience its usually good practice to break up larger assets to help bring the poly count per asset down, to allow for more asset instancing and allow for re use of assets in other areas/configurations. Can also help with loding due to the fade often being measured from the pivot point, and dynamic lights per object.
Just to say again though really amazing start, looking forward to seeing this progress.
The polygons for the bases aren't that bad. Where you really need to establish a proper budgeting system is going to be in the rock, fauna, and foliage features.
I think if you invested a bit of time blocking out the rest of the scene and walling out some of the visible space for the rock features and terrain, it would really help at the end of the day. Light it, throw in some quick coloration, see where it goes from there.
For the larger rock assets, it could be useful to group them together and manually cull some geometry off of the backsides.
For your texture sheets, you can probably make 2 variants of tiling textures (dark grey metal, white synthetic sheets) and use custom uv'ed assets for the door frames and trim features.
Last thing... Use texture mirroring whenever possible on any of your environmental assets. Can't be stressed enough. Break down your individual doorframes on the iron helix building into mirrored frames and perhaps separate the mirrored sections with a pillar, and so on.
Aside from that, I'm wasting no time here - taking arcanox's advice and throwing caution to the wind.
It's time to haul ass though gray-blocking out the spawn base areas for both teams.
Here's a rough comp of the Iron Helix faction. I spent the day rumaging through UDK tutorials and badgering people for advice. This is what came of it,
Keep it up!
Arcanox used his divine powers to help mortal man and is giving me a hand with my scene: doing some material stuff and early post processing work and probably some rock assets.
The rest is pretty much up to me. For the weekend I'm hoping to get the terrain in order, finish textured both bases and have a prop or two. Wish me luck.
Here's some new shit.
cant wait to see the final piece
the models are great by the way.
Sorry for the overload dude, I'll do that from now on.
(btw, awesome blog)
Colt:poly121:
Anyhow, great stuff, and please keep updating the thread. A real pleasure to watch this thread.
I took some time out to work on a few new paintings + tidy up a game I was making in Unity with a few friends. Then got hit with a crazy stomach virus that de railed me for a few days.
It's January now, hope everyone's had a nice new year - mine is starting with the stench of tardiness! The internship app at Insomniac Games is bound to pop up any day now, and my UDK scene still isn't done. tisk tisk...
Now that i've brought it down to the wire, it's time for ruthless, non-stop 3D action! ...and hopefully some half decent portfolio web design.
Quick scene paintover - searching for the final composition of this area.
3D stuff to follow: I am now working on getting some foliage into the level... I have absolutely no idea how to do this and i've been playing around with making billboard textures and the particle emitter with not much luck. Does anyone on polycount have some UDK foliage wisdom?
3D and stuff
Some flora buddies and props added.
Thanks for the feedback. They actually are mostly just gradients right now. I was trying to get a sense of how certain colors and sillouettes might work in the scene. I'm gonna see what I can do about makin them tie into the world better.
Thanks for the tutorial link - it'll certaintly help!
I'm looking at finishing this area within the next two days so I can move on to texturing the other building and a giant flower prop. It'd be great if I could get those roughly together by saturday. Let's see if I can do it. Thanks for the support thusfar!
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As for the 3D scene its coming along really nicely. Im not a fan of the texture on the horn/tusk things personally- they just stand out a bit too me. But saying that I dont know what I would do with them either
Your plants covering the top of the rock on the right (middle distance) could use some work too- they look very basic/flat, whereas the rest of the scene looks amazing! Keep it up
I thought I would make a spread sheet of some of the meshes that are in the project thusfar so I could get some feedback on the technical side of things.
How's my poly budget? Topology etc. I dont know shit about this part of modeling, and as i've been noodling this scene along I've noticed that I didnt really need the ammount of density I put into some of these meshes. Or am I just over thinking this whole thing?
For some of your long round shapes on your building, you could afford to remove every 2nd loop in some cases. When dealing with the model as well, you can try a shiny specular material to get a feel for what the general appearance of the surface is, or use a completely flat material to get an idea of what the outline of the model is.
A specific example of wasted geometry is on the flower as mentioned before. You have at least 2 loops that basically do nothing in the middle of the leaves. Or the ramp on your equipment bay, there are a bunch of edges that aren't used for tiling a texture segment, so they should be welded down into triangles wherever possible.
I wouldn't say it's a huge deal. Next time, I'd take a little bit of time and remove some geometry and weld some stuff down into triangles before you do all of your UV unwrapping. You could easily reduce the triangle count on most of your assets by 25% and not really suffer any loss of quality.