Blizzard Student Enviro Contest - The Botanists Shack
polycounter lvl 8
Its Finished!
Hey everyone, Nick here, I started working on the Blizzard student environment contest. I know its a bit early but it's going to get really busy around the holidays so I thought I start on it now. If you dont know about the contest check HERE. Also check out their example because something along that nature is my end goal.
Couple things, I have never worked in the blizzard "style" so if you guys have any suggestions I would love to here them. Feel free to ask questions too.
I have never done any sort of texture painting before, so this will be an experience needless to say. I spent over 2 hours scouring though more than 500 threads on polycount looking for any threads that related to texture painting. I found many bad and good examples so I have an idea of what do and what not to do. Anyways I exported my bookmarks and uploaded them so if you guys want a bunch of polycount links on texture painting you peeps can check them out.
Download Texture Painting Links
CONCEPT
I'm attempting to create a run down Botanist's shack. I decided to go with a tree growing out of the center to create a bit more story and personality. I was imagining some sort of accident maybe when using magic or something that caused this tree to grow so rapidly that it destroyed the shack in the process.
The main thing I am concerned with at the moment is the overall shape and silhouette of the building. I really want to nail the architecture before I continue. Also I need there to be an inside as well, so I have to take in account for that.
Here my current WIP of the BLOCKING.
This was one of the roof alternatives I was looking at.
Decided to go with this one. My friends liked it better and thought it still fit in with wow ok. What do you guys think? The building is pretty modular, it can be broken into 4 pieces like in the image above. I'm trying to be efficient as possible with this project. Also thinking about materials and how things fit together.
Starting to think about damage and how the tree is going to interact with the roof and shack. Im trying to keep it simple since it is in the wow style/big shapes, but breaking a roof made with 5ish pieces of geo is hard. It also feels really busy and messy.
It would probably help if there was some shadows.
Here 3 out of many ref photos i am using that were the main inspiration for the building thus far.
Again I am concerned with the shape and silhouette. The foundation is super important because without those things, the building will be boring to look at even with the shiny textures.
I Should be updating this often so check back every now and then.
Thanks for looking.
Hey everyone, Nick here, I started working on the Blizzard student environment contest. I know its a bit early but it's going to get really busy around the holidays so I thought I start on it now. If you dont know about the contest check HERE. Also check out their example because something along that nature is my end goal.
Couple things, I have never worked in the blizzard "style" so if you guys have any suggestions I would love to here them. Feel free to ask questions too.
I have never done any sort of texture painting before, so this will be an experience needless to say. I spent over 2 hours scouring though more than 500 threads on polycount looking for any threads that related to texture painting. I found many bad and good examples so I have an idea of what do and what not to do. Anyways I exported my bookmarks and uploaded them so if you guys want a bunch of polycount links on texture painting you peeps can check them out.
Download Texture Painting Links
CONCEPT
I'm attempting to create a run down Botanist's shack. I decided to go with a tree growing out of the center to create a bit more story and personality. I was imagining some sort of accident maybe when using magic or something that caused this tree to grow so rapidly that it destroyed the shack in the process.
The main thing I am concerned with at the moment is the overall shape and silhouette of the building. I really want to nail the architecture before I continue. Also I need there to be an inside as well, so I have to take in account for that.
Here my current WIP of the BLOCKING.
This was one of the roof alternatives I was looking at.
Decided to go with this one. My friends liked it better and thought it still fit in with wow ok. What do you guys think? The building is pretty modular, it can be broken into 4 pieces like in the image above. I'm trying to be efficient as possible with this project. Also thinking about materials and how things fit together.
Starting to think about damage and how the tree is going to interact with the roof and shack. Im trying to keep it simple since it is in the wow style/big shapes, but breaking a roof made with 5ish pieces of geo is hard. It also feels really busy and messy.
It would probably help if there was some shadows.Here 3 out of many ref photos i am using that were the main inspiration for the building thus far.
Again I am concerned with the shape and silhouette. The foundation is super important because without those things, the building will be boring to look at even with the shiny textures.
I Should be updating this often so check back every now and then.
Thanks for looking.
Replies
Good start, want to see more!
Also, (quick edit)
maybe like it has already been mentioned, have the tree crunching the house from outside, like it's leaning on it.
@Moose: Thanks! It should be fun, I am really looking forward to texturing this, so when I get there, feel free and tell me I'm doing it wrong.
@Jessica: Hey no problem, I actually book marked your thread because your textures are coming out so nicely, I will definitively be using your work as inspiration.
@SimonT & ANP: Thanks for the comments! After looking it over I'm going to go with what you guys suggested, I feel I cant really destroy the roof and have it look right unless I invest more polys. I feel it gets to intricate I am going to loose the wow feel.
@Sirdelita: Thanks man! Checked your portfolio, you have some nice concepts.
@Jeffro: Dude I really like your Medieval house scene, it was in my bookmarks, I will be using your awesome hand painted texture work as inspiration.
@Alberto: I am actually thinking about making the door frame and window sills out of decorative stone. I posted my ref for it below. let me know if you still think it will work. Also you will see more, the question is when will I see more of your work? haha
Update:
Well I'm am going to call the blocking done, unless someone else has any suggestions. I decided to go with SimonT & ANP idea because I could not get the damage to look right with the limited Geo. Is this cool? Does it take away from the interest if its just a tree growing out of the shack instead of destroying the shack?
Anyways I think I'm going to move on to the assets if there are no complaints.
--
To comment on what Alberto asked, this is the type of decorative stone look I'm going for around the doors and windows. I was thinking it could break up the wood and bricks a bit and maybe add some more visual interest?
Here is the base mesh for the tree, going to take it into zbrush next and try my hand at some stylized sculpting.
Quick shot of how the building currently stands with the tree. I thought it would be cool if the roots where pushing through the bricks.
Blocked out how the final presentation might look and the scene at large. Blizzard said they wanted trees, rocks and foliage in a little diorama. I made room for a little stream in front of the shack too. Ignore the shitty pathway I made really fast.
Thanks for looking.
I "finished" hand painting the tree branch texture, next is to paint the branches and body of the tree. This is my first Hand painted texture so any input would be nice. I keep seeing Jessica's work and its just amazing, I really hope I can get something like her's in future updates.
Tiled Less
Tiled More
Thanks for Looking.
I love your idea, I'm glad you went with the tree sort of co-existing with the house instead of breaking it.
Like Shadowforce said you should go with top lighting on your tileable painted texture. Most of WoW's painted textures are top lit as well.
I kind of feel like your house should have more presence in the diorama; it looks kind of dwarfed and small... maybe scale it up a bit so it has more "hero prop" presence?
Top-lit textures also rely on the artist not twisting stuff and always have the texture be oriented the right way as well and on trees it could be difficult though! But yes do it if you can!
Nice work ! Keep going
@Alberto: I agree dude. that actually sounds cool.
@SHad0wForce: Thanks, I'm going to try and remember that when painting. I was actually just looking at your sword thread, it turned out great!
@Sybrix: Yes I agree with you on the size of the building. it is kinda small, I will definitely be making the building larger. I hope you get a chance to work on this contest, I am anxious to see other peoples entries, but so far I haven't seen any.
@Chrisradsby: Thank you, I check your site and that motor storm work is really cool, I especially like those large signs you did.
Concerns:
The contest rules are quite vague, and I was wondering what would be appropriate texture sizes for assets that are made in the "wow" style? Should I go for higher texture resolutions(1024) to make it look nicer since the only thing I'm turning in is an image? Also I'm assuming they are not looking for no other maps besides diffuse, yet these can also be used to improve the final image. o_o
(small)Update:
Just a quick note, I was staring at my bark texture trying to figure out why it look so weird. Staring didn't help, so i decided I ought to do some more research and I came across a post by Mcejn and looked at his tree texture because I feel its successful.
Turns out his texture had a soft spec unlike my super harsh spec. So I softened it up and in my opinion it looks a lot better.
*note UVs are bad I haven't worked on them yet.
less contrast, more contrast, high spec and contrast (original texture)
256x
Thanks for Looking.
Now one thing (and I am not the best with color variation, so here I'm only echoing what others have been telling me xD) is that you could probably add more color into your wood to make it more interesting. Like instead of dark brown for shadows you could put bluish or purplish browns, and for highlight color you could use a slightly orangey-yellow or something. Or add greens in places, you could experiment with what colors work best.
I like the knots, they are cute xD Maybe consider also adding alpha planes of dripping moss or something. Keep it up, looking good so far :]
@Jessica: Thanks, since blizzard didn't give many restrictions I'm just going to make it look good as possible within reason of course. I also added some green in the shadows of the bark which could read as moss or something. Thanks for the suggestions I really appreciate it.
Update:
I managed to get the tree to a point where I feel like I can move on to something else. So painting has really been a struggle its definitively something I need more practice with.
So lets see we have some Soul Cactus growing out of the pots. yes soul cactus, it captures souls in the little white spore things which are used to further the growth of the plant. But! they can also be harvested and BAM you got some souls to enchant or do whatever you want with. I may have been playing to much Skyrim lately. ._.
Anywho I'm really itching to move onto the building so that's what I'm going to do. Only 33 days left o__o.
Textures, empty spaces will be filled with other things.
Thanks for looking.
don't tile in your textures like that bark! It's terrible - any time you're tiling in a texture like this you should just be doing that with your UVs/material instead - memory is expensive, wasting 4x the amount of memory without any new detail like that is bad.
@SimonT: Thanks
@Ghostscape: Hey im not really sure I understand what you mean. Currently the bark texture is at 256x and is being tiled by the MAT editor in udk.
Concerns:
I was messing around with decals to break up the tiling on my textures but for some reason the decal turns the meshes black when I move the camera away from the object. :poly141: If anyone has a solution I'd appreciate it.
Update:
I finished painting the brick textures. One is for the wall which tiles at 256 and the other is for the floor inside the building, that one tiles at 512. Also the plants on the wall are still WIP, just threw them in there quick.
Thanks for looking.
Painted some wood today so exciting. The old moldy/mossy boards tile at 256x256. I also laid out the uvs for the other wood elements and started to texture the large beams.
Thanks for looking.
So there is only one thing to say www.imgur.com, great image hosting site used it ever since photobucket compressed my images.
@Joopson: Hey thanks for the comment, I was actually trying to go more towards mold than moss, but I see what your are saying, I might go back a play with it some more.
@Stromberg90: Yeah I guess so, I'm kinda sad Photobucket died on me. :^( I'm going to try out Dropbox for now.
@Oliver_Farrell: Thank you! Glad you are entering, I cant wait to see what you come up with. :^)
Update:
Getting close to finishing the actually building, I have to texture the door and windows yet. I also need to go back and refine the mesh and a few textures.
Both textures are still wip, I need to go back a mess with the metal more, it looks like poop atm. The roof tiles are only blocked out, im going to go in tomorrow and add the detail to make them hopefully read like wood. *cross fingers*
Thanks for looking. :^)
Otherwise I think it's looking great
Awesome stuff though, you may carry on.
@Xelan101: Hey thanks for the comment, I agree with you, so I added some stone elements alone that edge, I think it helps the transition. I wish my stone texture was better it would do the edge better justice. :P
@Micah: Yeah I agree with you, I tiled it less and I think it helps a little, I might have to redo near the end, well see if I have time.
Update:
Well for the most part the building is done. The textures definitely need some tweaking/redoing, but for the sake of time I'm going to move on with the other assets and if I have time near the end Ill go back and fix them. I change the metal to wood because one I cant paint metal and two I didn't feel like it fit in with the rest of the building(probably because of my paint job). Im learning meh.
Thanks for looking. :^)
The first thing I will say is I do like it overall. On top of that I will also say that some of what i point out may be an issue with how it is being rendered and not your piece itself. WoW is generally rendered with less effects and complexity and usually tones down any effects it does use. The reason for this is because when they made it the tech was more limited and the goal was usability on a large number of pcs. Because of this WoW went with the signature hand-painted look that has become synonymous with the game at this point. The key to this look though is a few simple things.
First, mainly just diffuse textures. With a hand-painted style using bumps and very prevalent specs and other map types doesn't usually look as good as with a realistic style. Often with hand-painted textures the goal is to put as much info as humanly possible in the texture itself and leave the rest to the form of the object. The goal is to make a texture that has so much detail and information in it without the assistance of bumps as possible. This is why you will notice most wow objects do not have bumps or have very light bumps. Larger pieces might disobey this rule sometimes but overall there are very few, if any at all, bump maps within wow. Basically you want to put all the shadowing and detail into the texture and really go for a painterly look with how you do it. Really take advantage of painting techniques and all the info you have at your disposal. 3D Motive actually has a great tutorial on this style that can teach you a lot.
The second big thing to notice about the wow art style is the forms within the textures. Many of the textures in wow have big forms to them. If the building is made of wood, the beams are as tall as two characters, if the castle wall is made of bricks the bricks are 1/3 the height of a character, if the ground is laid with paving stones, the stones are huge. Basically wow gets a lot of its feel from the fact that everything is literally on a grand scale compared to the player. Even the trees are humongous. If you get the chance watch some machinima of wow or check out some screens and really look at the textures and the scale in comparison to the players. A lot of shots don't do it justice but if you can find good ones you'll really see what I mean. Here are some good examples but I'm sure you could find better if you tried.
Look at the size of the floor tiles compared to the players:
http://media.arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gaming-evolution.media/wow-2004.jpg
Look at the size of the wood grains and the boards used for the floor and the benches:
http://www.morearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/wow-horde-level-59-1.jpg
Look at the size of the mushrooms:
http://files.shroomery.org/files/11-23/739275624-zangarmarsh_1.jpg
Look at the size of the background pieces such as the height of the shelf and the scale of the pots compared to the height of the table behind the character. Also check out the wooden beams that hold the ceiling up:
http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/940/940727/world-of-warcraft-wrath-of-the-lich-king-20081111025107574_1226622769_1229124382_1230055716_640w.jpg
Right behind the text in the lower Left corner you can see a guy standing next to the brick wall. Look how big those bricks are compared to him:
http://www.makersofuniverses.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/wowpod1.jpg
Look at the size of the floor under this guy:
http://i994.photobucket.com/albums/af69/Fallenmastr/Barbeque.png
Finally just look at the whole environment surrounding the female character in the center:
http://i761.photobucket.com/albums/xx256/Slouxie/WoWScrnShot_010910_100650.jpg
In wow the textures and forms are all designed to be huge and seem fantastically large so that the world seems much bigger than the player and almost bigger than life itself. Your textures by comparison are much closer in scale to normal textures that you might see in a realistic or semi-realistic setting.
The final big thing that plays into environment pieces in wow is silhouette and form of the model itself. Most building is wow do not have super huge embellishments on them. Many of the buildings will have fancy pieces or things that are there simply to add effect or "detail" but the way in which those ideas are conveyed is very simple usually and the forms are often as simple as they can be without losing the main idea. Yours does this decently but I think the curves on the side pieces that the wooden dowel is held up in are too exaggerated for a wow piece. Try rendering it with an all black texture and see what areas pop out to you as being too embellished or not embellished enough. The idea is to tell a strong story with the silhouette and make it clear what the item should be and, again, add many of the little details with textures.
The final comment I will make is this. The color palette in wow is used in two interesting ways. First, the palette is very saturated to give it that almost cartoonish flair it has. This is important. Even in the undead areas the blues and greens tend to pop at least a little. If you look at trees in the images I posted earlier you'll notice they are usually a bit brighter in terms of bark. This is not always true though so you could probably get by with something similar to what you currently have.
The other thing about the colors is that often wow textures have very little color variation. You will encounter some textures that by necessity have a lot of colors in them but overall the textures in wow are closer to old sprites in terms of color variation. Back on the older systems because of limited resources and capabilities many sprites were designed with heavily limited color palettes. Many wow textures do this too, often focusing on having one main color, a highlight and a shadow, with gradients between. Some of your textures fit this well like your tree texture and wood textures but your brick texture and roof texture both have way too many colors for a wow prop. Try toning down the reds on your bricks and bringing them a little closer to orange. With the roof, go either blue or red. even if it wasn't for the wow style i still think you would want to limit to one because having both is kind of just strange to me.
Anyway, I hope I didn't bring up too many issues or make you hate yourself or anything. overall you are on the right track, it just needs to be tweaked to work better with how the wow style is usually presented. I think if you removed bump mapping it would help a lot. Good Luck and I can't wait to see the final version. Like I said, try and find some machinima or gameplay videos and just turn the sound off while you are watching. Seeing it in action will really help you understand it. I would say in this scenario you really want to try and tap into that style as strongly as you can so that you can start playing with it and expressing your ideas in a way that will really fit what you are trying to sell to.
Everything you said is spot on as far as the WoW style and technical direction is concerned. I have thought about all these things(some more than others) so I will quickly go over my justification for them/thought process. :^)
In a nut shell I am a student and therefor still learning, Im trying my hardest to get as close to the wow style as possible but due to time and my lack of painting skills/know how, Im really just trying to make something cool and polished while keeping it as close to wow as I can.
Trust me I realize everything you have said and if I could, it would be WoW. Im doing my best and thats all I can do. I cant imagine Blizzard expecting students to be able to achieve their style that has taken their artist a long time to master. Note Im sure there are students out there that can and in which case Im jelly.
Complexity and Effects - Yes the buildings in WoW are probably not this detailed or complex, but like I said, they didn't really give to many limitations so I decided I would invest a few more polys to add a bit more
visual interest. The most complicated effect i have going on now is a panning texture and some bloom which i dont think is to bad.Im a huge fan of effects, post processing, particles, etc. I really think they can help take a scene to the next level and add that finishing touch. I do realize that wow doesn't use these as much but since I have them I figure why not use them. I'm not trying to hide some shitty work I made but rather enhance what I already have.
Textures - First off I would like to say that I am NOT using any sort of normal, spec or bump maps. All the textures are only diffuse and hand painted. In my previous posts I admit that I have never painted textures before or have done a lot of painting in general. Painting is something that takes heavy practice to get good. So yes I am aware that the people at blizzard are amazing at getting the forms and detail in there. I'm still a student, still learning and under a time restraint. The size of the textures are smaller than the ones used in WoW, but it seems like in the example they give the scale of the textures are much more realistically sized. I honestly could scale up the textures on my building but they look rather silly, I would have to remodel the building/repaint the textures with large forms in mind, something I should of probably thought about a little more from the beginning.
Silhouette and Forms - I'm really sorry to here that the silhouette isnt working for you because this was something I thought quite a bit about. I know the wood that is holding up the wooden poles isn't really feasible IRL but I thought it added a nice design element, breaking up the sides of the building while remaining functional.
Color - From what i have been reading on the forum, people have been saying to others in that there should be some color variation in your textures to an extent. I may have went a little over board with this. I was hoping for more critiques as far as my individual textures are concerned but at least there's Jessica's Thread. I really want the scene to be vibrant, I want the building to pop and draw attention amongst the foliage which I have yet to add. This was my intentions for the roof tiles, the red and blue sort of stand out and add some nice color variation in the overall brown building.
I want to thank you for taking the time to write all that out, it definitely re opened my eyes to things moving forward. Also if you have any work you have done, I would love to see it, especially since you seem to have a firm understanding of the wow style. :^)
First for the textures overall. I like where you are going with them but what I was trying to say is that I would scale up the bricks on the entry way and make them a bit larger. Overall bricks in Wow are usually humongous so try going with something like that. On top of that the bricks are very small in comparison to the size of the shingles on the roof within terms of the wow style. the shingles on the roof look great for the most part, more on that later, and scale-wise are pretty spot on so honestly I would just scale the bricks up a little to match that more. Consider how big bricks are in real life compared to roof shingles. Even if both are scaled much larger than their real life counterparts you want to keep them the same relative to each other. Also I would suggest more variability in brick size and shape within the texture if you have time but that would probably have a big impact on the look of the texture and would require much more work at this stage so that is up to you.
I also feel the same way about the wood that is above the doorway. The horizontal wood with the moss on it. I like that texture but it would probably be slightly closer to wow if the individual planks were taller. Not necessarily wider but definitely taller.
For the shingles. I really like what you have but I have two comments. one, like I said I would personally get rid of the blue. Alternatively you could also get rid of the red and use it as a contrast to the rest of the building by having a blue roof but I am unsure how that would work. You seem pretty set on that though so obviously I won;'t try and force my opinion or anything. The other comment I wanted to make is I think the depth is a little off on them. If you toned down the thickness I think you would have a better effect overall. As it stands now it looks more like they have a tappering thickness on the end than that they are laid flat on top of each other, flat being relative here. I don't think they need a huge adjustment, probably just 2 or 3 pixels cut off of the bottom of each shingle.
Finally , for those curved pieces I mentioned I really just meant I thought they were a little too embellished. You don't have to remove them entirely or anything like that, I just mean that the curve should probably be a little less exaggerated or maybe not dip so much.
Anyway, like I said before, I am very sorry for being such a dick and I hope these comments make my intentions more clear. Good luck and I really do think you are doing a good job with it. I really like the wisps coming from the growths on the tree and the pink spikes on the cactus plants.
Good job man is looking good!
I ha quick question about the texture size. Can we use multiple textures or it has to be a single 1024x1024???
Thanks!
@DaveSilver: Hey dude no worries, I honestly appreciate you taking the time to crit. Im going to mess with the scale a bit near the end. For now though Im going to leave it. I only have 18 days left and still a lot to do. :^)
jairo0182: Thanks! About the textures I'm not quite sure, they make no limitations so I'm not going to limit my self to one 1024. It seems all they want is an image of something rather low poly and cool looking. I Could be wrong though.
Update:
Finished up modeling the props for the scene. Hopefully I can start the textures tomorrow.
however I'd say the bricks look too 'real' which makes them clash with the rest in terms of style. the planes of the tree seem too apparent at certain angles too.
can't wait to see those props textured
Never the less, seeing as how this is your first "hand painted" scene, I'm sure you'll gain a lot of valuable experience. Good luck.
I think your props have some great shapes. Really looking forward to your textures for them!
Oh also, the ground texture in the shack is beautiful!
@Oliver_Farrell: Thank you!
@benji: Yeah the bricks are an issue. I hoping to change them to cobble stone near the end.
@Mcejn: Dude I love your wow scene. I starred at it for a really long time trying to figure out how you went about things. I think I just need more practice. I'm going to address some of the issues Dave pointed out hopefully near the end to make it fit a little closer.
@Jessica: Thanks, I like your cow and jelly of your scene.
@Snader: idk it does what it wants.
@Andy H: Hey I've been looking at your own scene I'm excited to see some textures on it.
Update: Prepare for some images.
Some things to note, I am planning on changing the brick to Cobblestone near the end. I'm also going to change the roof to one color as well. I'm starting to add the foliage to the scene. The bark on the other trees is just a place holder, its going to be different than the shack tree bark.
Thanks to add yet: Exotic Plants, ground textures, rocks, random forest foliage.
Will post textures when its completely finished because I'm still working on them/lazy.
10 days left.
Thanks for Looking!
The one thing that stands out at the moment is the pot belly stove which doesn't look quite right in the scene. Typically they're made out of wrought iron which is dark grey to black with a matte surface. While you're working with a cartoonish fantasy setting and don't have to worry so much about how things are done in the real world, I think the darker colour would work better in the scene too.
looks great man!
Also, good luck in the competition!
Ever since Marmoset added it, it's become the lens flare of game art portfolios. :poly142:
Make a sky dome and get some ground textures going. So excited to see this finished!
And wow, you really have been busy. How much time did it take you to do all of these?
How many textures are you using for the props? Keep it up!
think overall, the metals are the weakest textured assets. The wood, ceramic, stone stuff is good - could use more dimension in the rendering of shapes, but have nice qualities. The metal overall doesn't feel like metal, but like a slick plastic sheet with some overly exaggerated rust.
with the stove thing, it may help to think of how that object would have been manufactured - and break up parts & pieces with form and detail, add small bolts/rivets, seams, patched metal (with different kind of metal), etc. Its very "samey" all over. I'd also be careful to not do tooooo much rust-edging. when every edge is rusty and has chipped paint, it can degrade from the overall piece.
edit: oh yeah... dem bricks............ don't think you need to redo them completely like you had mentioned before, just desaturate some and push away from the hot orange, maybe add some dimension to them, or moss/grime/dirt. maybe some vines?