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[STAGE] Killer Instinct 2, HELIPAD, Dloud

polycounter lvl 15
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DLoud polycounter lvl 15
Holding my spot for now.

So I'm thinking I'll take this sci-fi-ish scene with the helicopter etc and re-create it as a 1920s mill town with an early helicopter concept representative of that time period (think the wright brothers but a helicopter).

Off to collect some references.

EDIT:

Showing the most recent Image here.

RECENT.jpg

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  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    So I've found some good examples of the scene.

    It's a bit hard to see well. There's some stacks of barrels on the left of the stage. The corner of the building is broken apart to create a place where you can launch your opponent off. In the background are some futuristic smoke stacks (oil refineries or something?). There's also an microwave antenna array on the edge of the building.

    I think I'll be able to translate these items into their 1920s equivalents of sorts.

    helipad_ref.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Got some references together. Here's what I'm going for.

    building_detail.jpg

    I'm having trouble deciding which kind of flying vehicle to go for. Both shown below are representative of the time period. The one on the left is the George de Bothezat Helicopter. It was build for the United States Army Air service. The ones on the right are various Auto-Gyros and were created by a number of folks during the time period.

    Which looks more interesting and will play into the scene better? Thoughts?

    aircraft_detail.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    The images I posted before were a bit hard to see. I figured a video is in order for those who aren't familiar with the stage. Skip to 3:05 in the video to see it.

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeHf_77xZ_s&playnext=1&list=PL0D0FFC2660016E71[/ame]
  • wizo
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    wizo polycounter lvl 17
    Cool,

    Finally some KI Level art!
    I'd say that anything representing WWI or WW2 would be a nice fit to the refs you've found. And you would be keeping the "feel" of the level, but in a different time.

    Looking foward to this, best of luck!
  • Mark Dygert
    That could be awesome, looking forward to seeing this progress.
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Thanks for the kind words guys.

    So I've got kind of a rough blockout. There's a helipad roughed in a bit. Pieces may change. I haven't blocked out the aircraft either. I'm leaning more towards the Auto-Gyro though.

    I'm debating on how to create the helipad given the fact that they didn't exist in the 1920s. I'm thinking a combination of I-beams and wood. Thoughts? Crits welcome of course.

    helipad_blockout.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Few more shots to show my progress.

    I'll be using vertex painting to blend between some dirty/grungy brick and clean brick as well as tar covered boards (for the roof) and the clean(ish) boards shown here.

    brick_material.jpg

    wood_boards.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    So I'm running into a problem with some of the wall pieces. Lighting is off around the static mesh seams.

    I'm using UDK btw. Anyone able to offer a suggestion?


    wall_face.jpg
  • itsmadman
    what ever your level looks like man you have to do that zoom out thing that they always do in the beginning of levels in kI. it was so epic when i was a kid :0
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Concrete Blocks to use in various places

    concrete_blocks.jpg
  • Mark Dygert
    About the seams, if you turn off the normal map are they still there? If the seams disappear when he normal map is off then its a baking problem. You should bake your modular piece with a module welded on either side.

    For those extra pieces you move their UV's out of the rendering 0-1 space so only the tile in center will be captured when rendering. Then when you're done you delete the extra modules and export your center piece.

    What this does is properly align the normals on the edges as if there was another piece there. Or to put it another way, If you bake a single piece it will shade like a single piece. If you bake with pieces surrounding your module, when you get it in UDK it appears seamless.

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77539
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    About the seams, if you turn off the normal map are they still there? If the seams disappear when he normal map is off then its a baking problem. You should bake your modular piece with a module welded on either side.

    For those extra pieces you move their UV's out of the rendering 0-1 space so only the tile in center will be captured when rendering. Then when you're done you delete the extra modules and export your center piece.

    What this does is properly align the normals on the edges as if there was another piece there. Or to put it another way, If you bake a single piece it will shade like a single piece. If you bake with pieces surrounding your module, when you get it in UDK it appears seamless.

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77539

    Thanks so much for the assistance Mark. I've tried what you mentioned and am still having issues.

    When Turning off the normal map in the material, the problem persists. If you look at the bottom of the image, there's a seam on the concrete piece. The material there is just a placeholder with a grey color plugged into the diffuse.

    I've tried checking the vertex normals in my 3d app (maya) and they all seem to be perpendicular to the face.

    Currently the only solution I can see (one I'd like to avoid) is to build the building in maya using the modular pieces and merge the verts together. Then I'd have to use a huge lightmap texture in order to get high quality shadows.

    Any other suggestions?
  • S2Engine
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    S2Engine polycounter lvl 10
    I'm not sure if it's the best or only solution, but when it comes to modular pieces like that in UDK, it always seems like an easy fix is to build a separate mesh that covers over the seam area. It could be a column or a pipe or anything similar to add interest to the silhouette of the modules as well.
  • Gannon
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    Gannon interpolator
    I'd assume you're vertex lighting those walls which is most likely why those seams are showing up. Switching to light maps or doing what S2Engine said would be another easy route.

    Good start though, the rectangle blocks look a little wavy personally. Other than that keep doing what you're doing.
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    @Gannon - Thanks for the advice. It was set to vertex lighting. When I set the UV channel for the lightmap UVs, it didn't seem to take the change and wouldn't update. I ended up deleting the static mesh and reimporting. Seemed to work after that.

    And yes the concrete needs a little work, I'm going to go back and smooth it out a bit.

    Thanks for the help.

    wall_face_fixed.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Most recent update

    scene_layout1.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Working on trying to set the mood/feel of it. Crits welcome

    scene_layout2.jpg
  • S2Engine
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    S2Engine polycounter lvl 10
    Cool, the new additions help quite a bit. I like the warmth the lighting brings to the scene and the modular backdrop buildings, as repetitive as they currently are (I'm sure you're planning on breaking it up) help to put the stage into context. It's feeling very East Coast-erly to me, which is a great style. I could be wrong but the barrels seem like they're a little large, compared to the door for example. Can you toss some characters in there to get a more clear sense of scale?
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Thanks for the feedback S2Engine.

    You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I currently live in the Boston area. Many of the surrounding towns were once a big part of the textile industry. Suffice it to say, I have a lot of real reference around me.

    You're right about the repeating elements, they'll get broken up as well.

    Good catch on the barrels. I've scaled them down a bit and dropped in some characters for scale.

    Here's a couple more pictures.

    barrel_scale.jpg

    scene_layout3.jpg
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Clock tower is almost done

    clock.jpg
  • protomd
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Most recent update:

    scene_layout4.jpg
  • JordanW
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    JordanW polycounter lvl 19
    Be careful mapping brick to complex shapes like your clocktower, right now it looks like it has brick-textured wall paper wrapped over it instead of having nice seams and corners. It could be the lack of AO or something, maybe figure out how to get some edging detail in there, you could unwrap a 2nd UV channel and paint like an edge lightening/corner darkening mask that you use in the material to add structural detail.
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    @JordanW Thanks for the feedback on the brick. The wall in the foreground was UV'd in such a way that it has some variety in the brick texture over the detailed areas. The clock tower, being somewhat in the middleground/background, I did a very quick UV job on it.

    I also have a vertex paint material set up to give some variety to the brick throughout the scene. I haven't painted it yet however :( Planning on doing that at the end to add some polish.


    Also, we have barrels!

    barrels.jpg
  • rambooze
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    rambooze polycounter lvl 7
  • ltd
    really cool barrels :)
  • S2Engine
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    S2Engine polycounter lvl 10
    Some totally cool barrels :)

    A bit noisy, but I'm sure they look pretty great in the scene. Speaking of, can we see them in there? :poly124:
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Sure thing! I've finished the roof entrance door. I'm thinking the Graffiti looks off there. I'm going to play with its placement and add a few more graffiti pieces to add some variety. Thoughts?

    scene_layout5.jpg
  • S2Engine
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    S2Engine polycounter lvl 10
    Barrels are looking ace here!

    IMO, the reason it looks off is partly because it's got way more color than the entire rest of the scene. I think if you add a lot more graffiti it'll start to feel less out of place overall, and it wouldn't hurt to bump up some of the color variation elsewhere too. The window frames, for example, have a really nice green, but it's barely noticeable because they're not getting much light. I'd try to increase their pop more. Also, the brick material could probably benefit from some shader-based variation. Chris Albeluhn has some good stuff on that here: http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UT3_Adding_Brick_Variation.html
  • Mark Dygert
    This is pretty cool I like it.

    The DOF is a little strong its making it look a little miniature.
    What about adding some simple silhouette props to the back buildings to break up their super straight roof line? Nothing material heavy but just something like a AC unit or a water tower?
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    I'm still here working away!

    Oh man, getting down to the wire. So, my fiancee and I closed on our first house! Great news for us. However, it's put me waaaay behind on the contest. That coupled with moving and family visiting from out of town means I won't be able to push this as far as I'd like for the contest.

    All delays aside, I've made some great progress in the last couple days and will continue to refine the environment after the contest is over.

    Let me address a couple of the comments:

    @S2Engine: Thanks for the comment about the barrels. When I was making them I figured barrels are seen in almost every FPS game out there. If I'm going to do it, they need to be sexy. Hoping to add some more color in there with some graffiti and the helicopter. We'll see how far I can go before the deadline. I also took your suggestion with the brick. It really needed some help. I followed Chris Albeluhn's tutorial pretty closely with some revisions of my own. I also added a vertex painted variation to the brick and reworked the normal map. I'm liking the results.

    @Vig: Yeah I hear you with the background. I plan on throwing some of my existing assets in the background and arranging them in interesting ways. I'll also put some of the lights I have back there and maybe board up some windows, etc to add some variety. I'll have to see what I can do without spending too much time on things with the deadline coming up.

    Thanks again guys!


    PS. here's some more updated shots. I think I'm going to stick with these two camera positions for the final shots. Thoughts?

    scene_layout6.jpg

    scene_layout7.jpg
  • S2Engine
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    S2Engine polycounter lvl 10
    Pretty cool, any way you can get a shot of the whole stage at once? I'm sure it means losing some up-closeness, but just curious how that all looks together compositionally. I still think the brick normals could use some umph; depending on what the map looks like you could benefit from building a scalar parameter in the shader to multiply the Red + Green channels by and then appending those results back together with the original blue channel. Or alternatively do a height map for some bump offset action. Congrats on closing on the house!
  • DLoud
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    DLoud polycounter lvl 15
    Phew, just got my entry in. Here's the final submission shots.

    Overall I had a TON of fun in this competition. It's the first 3d art competition I've stuck with to the finish. I really had a wonderful time and learned a lot.

    It's also the first environment I've done in UDK so it was a huge learning experience. I'm extremely happy with the progress I've made and will probably continue to work on this environment after the competition.

    Thanks to everyone who commented on my thread. The feedback really helped.



    Beauty Shot 1:

    DanaLoud_Brawl_Beauty1.jpg

    Beauty Shot 2:

    DanaLoud_Brawl_Beauty2.jpg

    Construction Shot:

    DanaLoud_Brawl_Construction.jpg

    Texture Sheet:

    DanaLoud_Brawl_Texture_Sheet.jpg
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