Slick & Clean Sci-Fi Building [UDK]

Minos · Jan 2011

Hi! I just thought I could post some screengrabs from a little building I'm working on. My goal with this is to make a clean & stylish building. So far I have the first floor done and I hope to have the rest of the building done soon.

This is rendered inside UDK with a simple direct light casting dynamic shadows.

Some of the materials:

Please let me know what you think!
- Thiago Klafke

Arac · Jan 2011

This looks fantastic already!

Only thing that seems a little odd is the panels around the door or entrace.

Minos · Jan 2011

Hboybowen wrote: »

your front door glass what is going on there? It seems distorted very pixelated?

It's a silly cubemap but it does its job when moving around it.

Neolight · Jan 2011

Awesome design as usual dude.

Definetly keeping tabs.

Ihazard · Jan 2011

wow that looks very nice, I can't wait to see more progress on this

Synthesizer · Jan 2011

Awesome stuff as usual Minos

Is this going to tie in with your previous sci-fi building? I'd love to see an entire complex in this style.

gauss · Jan 2011

Nailed the stated intention and what's more there's a lot that is very pleasing about this building visually, mostly to do with those warm colors and exposed ducting and such--just the right balance between futuristic and believable, without getting too cold-blooded about it. Thanks for sharing.

SaferDan · Jan 2011

wow this is really amazing

It looks fantastic!

Well done man

warby · Jan 2011

love it

"clean" is very underrated !

[HP] · Jan 2011

It is indeed, nice work minos

KingFurryWobbler · Jan 2011

sweet stuff - hurry up n finish it

d1ver · Jan 2011

hey, minotaur, your sci-fi stuff has a great feel to it.)
I personally find clean, slick stuff harder to execute, then all the grungy uber detailed, so - great choice.) Nothing to crit so far. Gimme more=)

Al Anselmo · Jan 2011

Amazing! I can see a great color variation while still creating a clean and light atmosphere.
This is already good and I'm sure this will get even better!

Keep up with the great work, min0!

teaandcigarettes · Jan 2011

Bitchin!

I've always liked your strong use of colour; the high contrast and saturation really reminds me of Mirror's Edge.

I'm gonna follow this one :thumbup:

Nizza_waaarg · Jan 2011

*additional generic art compliment*

really love that style man, and everything around the windows on the first floor looks awsome, slick texturing all around too. Goin right in the inspiration folder ^^

AimBiZ · Jan 2011

Sweet stuff! You should build an enviroment surrounding the bulding. That would really be ace if anything.

Shogun3d · Jan 2011

Nice and clean, looking good!

JobyeK · Jan 2011

Awesome mino! Looking forward to seeing the progression.

megalmn2000 · Jan 2011

I love the use of colors and forms! Reminds me of the game Mirror's Edge!

ajr2764 · Jan 2011

Well once I saw the name..I thought oh thats the guy who did that other amazing sci-fi piece. I love what your doing with the clean style, I'm a big fan of sci-fi in general. I happen to be playing Dead Space 2 right now and must say I can see this building and the last piece fitting right into the world especially with your color schemes. Keep up the good work.

chrisradsby · Jan 2011

I really like it, great work on the colors, I like the clean saturated look. Hopefully the world will look like this in the future

SimonT · Jan 2011

yeah that looks really good.

roosterMAP · Jan 2011

love the architecture!

Matroskin · Jan 2011

great work!

Simple yet efficient and clean.
Good idea to post material samples btw

I am working on my personal sci-fi thing and actually have spent some time on adjusting metal pannels shader and stuff so your samples provide additional good ref for me

divi · Jan 2011

nice

really liking your style.

Pedro Amorim · Jan 2011

Looks great!
If I had to nitpick.. it would be that the circular vent in this picture http://thiagoklafke.com/misc/temp/b_beatuy05.jpg

needs more segments..
Right now, it seems that you are using the same ammount of segments in the pipes and in that vent. Which is not nice. Bigger things should have more sides.
Other than that, looks nice

paulsvoboda · Jan 2011

This has been said a lot before but this is looking great.
I love your use of colour, the simple, clean but very effective textures and materials and the architecture itself.
The only small thing is I don't really understand what's going on with the door. Maybe try to up-res the cubemap slightly.

popngear · Jan 2011

^^

I was about to say that, but he did first, so what he said

For the cubemap you can try doing a cubemap sample in the editor with a scene that is just a blue skydome. You can bring it into Photoshop after and run a blur on it too so the details aren't so easy to pick out.

lewist · Jan 2011

Really nice use of saturated color and clean textures. Definitely gives me a mirror's edge style vibe. I can't wait to see how you continue the next couple of floors.

passerby · Jan 2011

i like, very clean looking but still looks believable and lived in.

and your colour reminds me a lot of Mirrors Edge especially the red pipes and railing.

pior · Jan 2011

Slick and clean!

Gannon · Jan 2011

Very nice, you should see what you can do to clean up that cube map.

Heartless · Jan 2011

Amazing.

My only gripe would be the yellow. I think it'd look better as grey.

mkandersson · Jan 2011

Very nice! Looks great. Though I dont fancy the yellow colour

JasonLavoie · Jan 2011

ohhh Thiago, you melt my heart good sir

It would be great to hear some insight in how you start these projects, how do you choose a style / how you go about building these pieces and creating your textures.

You've become one of my fav artists buddy, really pumped for this

JordanW · Jan 2011

This looks fantastic, I've always wanted to make something like this. I would recommend using a different method of reflection, The cubemap doesn't hold up very well in screenshots. Maybe try using a 2d reflection mapped to screenspace or something.

Minos · Jan 2011

Thanks everyone, I'm really glad you like my work

Synthesizer wrote: »

Awesome stuff as usual Minos Is this going to tie in with your previous sci-fi building? I'd love to see an entire complex in this style.

As much as that would rule I don't have plans for that atm!

warby wrote: »

love it

"clean" is very underrated !

Indeed!

d1ver wrote: »

hey, minotaur, your sci-fi stuff has a great feel to it.)
I personally find clean, slick stuff harder to execute, then all the grungy uber detailed, so - great choice.) Nothing to crit so far. Gimme more=)

That's true. The thing I like the most about working on clean environments is that special attention must be paid to define the materials properly. Concrete should look like concrete, metal should look like metal and so on.

That's also why I chose to go with simple dynamic lights for this scene. It's easy to overlook poor material definition when you have lightmass with all the cool light bouncing going on.

Minos · Jan 2011

ajr2764 wrote: »

Well once I saw the name..I thought oh thats the guy who did that other amazing sci-fi piece. I love what your doing with the clean style, I'm a big fan of sci-fi in general. I happen to be playing Dead Space 2 right now and must say I can see this building and the last piece fitting right into the world especially with your color schemes. Keep up the good work.

Thanks

I started playing Dead Space recently and although it looks a bit rough in some parts, the materials are pretty good and atmosphere is fantastic! Just wish I had played the game earlier

chrisradsby wrote: »

I really like it, great work on the colors, I like the clean saturated look. Hopefully the world will look like this in the future

Judging by how things go at the moment, the future will probably look more like Fallout though

Matroskin wrote: »

great work!

Simple yet efficient and clean.
Good idea to post material samples btw
I am working on my personal sci-fi thing and actually have spent some time on adjusting metal pannels shader and stuff so your samples provide additional good ref for me

Glad I could help somehow!

Pedro Amorim wrote: »

Looks great!
If I had to nitpick.. it would be that the circular vent in this picture http://thiagoklafke.com/misc/temp/b_beatuy05.jpg

needs more segments..
Right now, it seems that you are using the same ammount of segments in the pipes and in that vent. Which is not nice. Bigger things should have more sides.
Other than that, looks nice

You are right sir, I'll fix that!

paulsvoboda wrote: »

This has been said a lot before but this is looking great.
I love your use of colour, the simple, clean but very effective textures and materials and the architecture itself.
The only small thing is I don't really understand what's going on with the door. Maybe try to up-res the cubemap slightly.

popngear wrote: »

^^

I was about to say that, but he did first, so what he said

For the cubemap you can try doing a cubemap sample in the editor with a scene that is just a blue skydome. You can bring it into Photoshop after and run a blur on it too so the details aren't so easy to pick out.

rdmlegend wrote: »

Very nice, you should see what you can do to clean up that cube map.

JordanW wrote: »

This looks fantastic, I've always wanted to make something like this. I would recommend using a different method of reflection, The cubemap doesn't hold up very well in screenshots. Maybe try using a 2d reflection mapped to screenspace or something.

Agreed, the cubemap looks horrible.

JordanW: I tried to do that in UDK several times but could never figure out exactly how to. Does anyone have any idea how to do that?

JasonLavoie wrote: »

ohhh Thiago, you melt my heart good sir It would be great to hear some insight in how you start these projects, how do you choose a style / how you go about building these pieces and creating your textures.

You've become one of my fav artists buddy, really pumped for this

Thanks Jason

This building started a bit different than my other UDK scene. For this one I gathered a lot of references upfront. I browse several modern architecture sites quite frequently so I have a nice reference folder for that. I also love Syd Mead (I think he's the greatest modern artist) and he has always inspired me a lot.

Regarding movies, nothing is prettier than 2001 imo, so that's also always a big inspiration.

Here are some of the references I used for this:

This building has quickly became one of my favorite buildings, the colors, the materials look fabulous:

I then created a quick mockup model to check composition and try some ideas. The final version looks pretty different though:

Since I decided not to use lightmaps for this, I could overlook some of the planning and work with big collapsed meshes (something I was not used to). I also like to work on both geometry and textures at the same time (always try to use texture proxies!!), so the process wasn't as straightforward as it should be but that's how I work

I hope that helps, please let me know if you guys have any addition questions!

Now onto the top floors and I'll wrap it up as soon as possible.

JordanW · Jan 2011

You should be able to take reflection vector, use transform vector and go from tangent to screen, then component mask of R,G then *0.5 and +0.5 then use that as your image's texture coordinates

salman_fas · Jan 2011

Here a tutorial I made a few years ago about using a 2d reflection. I saw this method was used a lot in Gears 1.

http://www.salman3d.com/tutorials/tut1.html

Minos · Jan 2011

Thank you very much JordanW/salman_fas. I could have never figured this out by my own.

Oniram · Jan 2011

looks amazing. wondering if you could take the time to show the "modularity" (if there is any?) of this.. id be really interested in seeing the method of creation for this.

Cooljay · Jan 2011

Looks very interesting. I like the style you have going on with this building

seth. · Jan 2011

yummy stuff. I can only echo all the nice things that other people have said. Buildings don't normally do it for me ( other half does arch vis so I may have seen too much

) but I do like this very much.

danjohncox · Feb 2011

Great looking piece! How many different texture maps do you have for this piece(not including spec or normal)? And how did you handle things like the wall on the left side, with the pipes. It's got that green strip there, was that just a material adjustment or did you make another version of that diffuse?

Jister · Feb 2011

yumi!
are you gonna leave the upper part all concrete?

Slick & Clean Sci-Fi Building [UDK]

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