Hi! This is a scene I made recently. It's pretty much finished at this point but more feedback is always welcome!

(here's a quick description, copied over from my website)

"I found this scene in the World of Warcraft Cataclysm beta and felt it was such a strong defining piece that I had to recreate it. I thought I would spice things up and push the ambiance more to reflect the conflict of the new Worgen race and Gilneas as a whole. It was an incredibly fun, challenging and rewarding experience.

The entire scene is created by me. Modeled in 3ds max and painted in photoshop, and finally lit and rendered in UDK. The scene was completed in roughly 3 weeks.
(Textures used no larger than 256x256)"









Here's a quick video containing a better look at the scene and all of the individual assets.

You Tube

(feel free to check out the entire project page on my website)

I'm currently preparing to apply for an environment artist internship at Blizzard, so once again, any feedback is welcome.

Hope you enjoy!

-m

wow thats awesome, I really dig the texture usage too, seems pretty realistic specs to aim for. seems you nailed the style. at first I thought that 1st image was from wow as what you were using as inspiration.

nice work man, good luck with the internship application if this doesnt help you get it I dont know what would.

This is very nice. I think some of the lit areas around the torches could be a little brighter, but all in all very well done. It's not too far from what I would expect to see in the actual game.

The moon looks like it's crooked. I'm not familiar with how these kinds of scenes are set up, but are you using a skybox?

Good luck with the internship!

For what could easily be a dark, muddied scene, your use of lighting is spot-on. Despite the atmosphere, everything has color and definition. Great texturing and use of effects in UDK.

My only complaint would be that the rain seems too flat and a bit fake, but thats a nitpick given an all-around fantastic piece.

I hate to be a downer compared to what everyone else is saying here, but I feel that your lighting is killing this scene for me. Try to stay away from black, you have quite a bit of that going all over your scene.

I'm not sure if I am right about this, but it looks like you're setting some of your meshes to self illumination. Certain panels on the wall seem really bright compared to tile right under it. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is no gradation.

The same thing is kinda going on with the Forsaken banner. The top of the pole is black, but the banner is fully lit like it is glowing.

You seem to be on the right track, just keep it going!

i kinda want to see this fullbright with no lighting.

he nailed the artstyle . my 2 cents.

Cheers...

Oh wow, thank you all for the awesome replies.

I see what you mean Turpedo and hopefully when I get the chance I will be revisiting this piece to tweak the lighting more, thanks for the feedback!

-m

turpedo: sure, a little more can be done with the lighting, but that can definitely be said for WoW too.

imo he nailed the WoW style, spot on.
Well done dude.

Thought it was a screen from WoW at first

A+ !

Looks pretty awesome. Make a few tweaks on this and it's going to be killer man.

I agree about the lighting tweaks Kelvin made.

Turn of SSAO in UDK.

Few more splits in the archway would be nice too,

Change the fog color to match your sky.

The window color seems off for this area. I haven't played it yet myself though, so maybe the blue is correct. But in all the shots I've seen it looks orange.

pretty sure this could get you a job there :P

Looks really awesome, I agree I'd like to see it a snitch brighter. Best of luck with the internship!

That's awesome! Good luck with your internship!

Lovely stuff man, really great.

Best of luck with your Internship application!

I've got a question and a suggestion...

Firstly, this may sound really odd, and I'm not suggesting you redo all the presentation shots since they already look great, but have you tried setting up the scene in Max using Xoliuls DX shader? I know UDK is a 'proper' engine, but I find even with the best of material / lighting setups, you get that 'next-gen this is UDK' look, and I feel that might not be showing off your textures to the best they could be.

Xoliuls half-lambert option works very very well on hand painted stuff and I've found it really displays hand painted stuff fantastically. Might be worth checking out!

And my question;

Did you paint textures before UV'ing? And then just lay out the UV's to get the right textures in the right places?

Again, great work!

I like the overall look of things. Very solid piece of work, imo. Wish you best of luck

There's 2 things that caught my eye immediately.
1) the blue of the flag is kinda harsh, imo. Not overly but just a tiny tiny bit that makes it take away from the harmonic and soft look that I get from WOW in general
2) the ground texture doesn't tile too well with the huuuge gap in between. It was especially visible in some parts of the video flythrough, where it looked reallly stamp-pattern-wise. Should be totally worth to check back on that specific texture !

First off, thank you all for the support and the great replies.

@jeffro: Good suggestions about the fog/archway. At first I did have more res in the archway but I just felt that it took away from that instantly recognizable "WoW" look, so I brought it down. For the most part, the buildings in the streets of Gilneas do have teal tinted windows.

@creationtwentytwo: I hadn't thought of using that shader but I'm definitely going to check it out now. As for the texturing, it depends on the object/tetxure and whether or not they're going to be modular and tiling all over the place. In the case of the wall panels, roof tiles and certain other pieces, I did paint out the texture before UV'ing.

@Acumen: Getting the banner to blend well into the scene was a challenge as it was often competing with the orange/yellow of the clock. I did eventually get what I want and it ended up working well, but another good point that I'll take with me when I revisit this piece. As for the ground, I do agree that it could use a bit more refining. Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to put as much time as I would have liked into that specific texture, but I was happy with the result none the less.

Again, thanks for all the wonderful feedback!

-m

creationtwentytwo - How adequately can the xoliul/3point shaders be used to set up environments, even self-illuminated/handpainted ones? I know they're fantastic for single assets, but I don't know if it makes a great deal of sense to try and set up a scene in it. I can't see that producing good lighting results, and it would be a headache to organize the materials (which wouldn't really store themselves anyways).

Thanks for answering my question man!

Razgriz - Good point. I may have spoke too soon! It probably wouldn't work out as I suggested on a scene this size. The number of materials might not necessarily be an issue since you could set ID's like you would for UDK, the problem would be lighting. IIRC you can only use 3 lights with Xoliuls shader and really it's not designed for complete environments as you say. UDK it is then!

Well theres no question that it is a great project, but I feel that the assets are weak...meaning that they , to me at least, don't convey the Texas philosophy of 'everything is bigger', that Blizzard tends to do on their stuff. I don't think you would want to show this particular piece to them as from what I have read, they look for people who have the skills that you do, without copying from their ideas. I think you could equally apply this same effort to say a generic village, forest setting or cityscape and still get a job offer. I also think your skill set is well beyond the 'intership' level, and should just go for broke...good luck with it.

Looks dope!

Sure some things could be tweaked but ultimately you did the scene justice. I haven't played WoW in three years but you could have told me that's a screen from Cataclysm and I would probably believe you.

Good luck with getting the internship

Great job
I'm pretty amazed with the textures/uvs, nice optimization

I'm not really digging the lighting though and I'd like to see some shadeless pics and wires
Good luck with internship !

Great work. Very nice textures and lighting

Beautiful work! Haha when I saw the first picture on the thread I thought it was a screen capture from the game that you took for reference. Really like what you've done here, excellent painting and really great sense of the atmosphere.