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Environment WIP - Japanese Maple Scene
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Kiefen Zipf
#1 Posted : Saturday, April 02, 2011 12:49:43 AM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California

Hello fellow Futurepoly people. I'll be using this thread to post WIP updates of my Japanese Maple Scene a few times a week until it's finished. 

This is the main reference I'm basing my environment off of. I'm planning to do a paintover later this weekend or early next week to flesh out some of the ideas I have for it a bit more before I get to deep into modeling everything out. 

Main Reference

Here are WIP shots of the assets I've started on rendered in UDK. I was surprised at how quick it was to learn how to import into UDK once you get used to it. It usually takes people about a week to learn how to correctly import a model into Source on the first try. 

Japanese Maple

Waterside Plant 01

Waterside Plant 02

Tomorrow or Sunday I'm going to learn how to setup Meshpaint on the tree trunk so I can paint the moss onto the tree instead of having to use those crappy low resolution floating alpha shells. 
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Kiefen Zipf
#2 Posted : Saturday, April 02, 2011 3:22:32 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
Tree update! I increased the amount of triangles on the canopy by about 300 since it's going to be the main tree in the scene and it should have a bit more detail. It's still less than 1300 triangles so I still have a lot of room if I decide it needs more detail later.

Also I fixed the bad lighting on the large alpha branches using a Max Script I found last night called SlideNormalThief. It "steals" the vertex normals from an object that you place over something and applies them to another object. So to generate better vertex normals for my canopy I placed a pyramid-like shape over my entire canopy and had the vertex normals from that pyramid shape applied to all of the alpha cards in my canopy.



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Stokes
#3 Posted : Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:29:23 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Instructor

Groups: FP Instructor
Joined: 1/23/2011(UTC)
Posts: 124
Location: Seattle`
great progress so far. I love seeing the stuff in Udk with the self shadowing. I do think the leaves are a little too large at this point. Maybe shrink them down about 50 percent on the actual texture and then recopy those clusters around. The trunk texture is looking really nice!
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Kiefen Zipf
#4 Posted : Saturday, April 09, 2011 1:02:21 AM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California

I've been getting more comfortable with UDK and been experimenting with terrain a lot over the past week. I also learned how to set up Mesh Paint so I could paint moss onto the trunk of the tree instead of having to use those floating alpha stickers or mess around with a bunch of UV channels. Here are the latest pictures of the terrain and the tree. I shrunk down the leaves by 30-40% as you suggested Jason and it definitely looks better.





I also spent some time today messing around with a rock formation in ZBrush. I'll be using this rock formation in the scene along the edges of those raised up sections of terrain. (PICTURES IN POST BELOW)

[IMG]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/Japanese%20Maple%20Scene/rockform01_01.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3360480/Japanese%20Maple%20Scene/rockform0

Right now it's looking a bit lumpy and smooth. Tomorrow I'm going to sculpt on it a bit more and get it into UDK to see how it looks along the cliffs. I'm also planning to set up a moss mesh paint on it and place some smaller foliage along any semi-flat sections that poke out once it's all positioned.

I also replicated this vertex shader so my foliage will sway based off of a WindDirectionalSource actor. You may be thinking "But that won't show up in screenshots!" Currently I'm planning to do a video flythrough of the scene when it's done.

 
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Kiefen Zipf
#5 Posted : Saturday, April 09, 2011 1:13:28 AM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
For some reason I couldn't get these pictures to show up in the post above after editing so here they are.



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Kiefen Zipf
#6 Posted : Saturday, April 09, 2011 6:32:00 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
After getting some tips and criticisms on Polycount (One of which was "lol, at a first glance I thought those rocks was a ball sack sorry hehe.") I did another pass on the rock formation. Here are the results.





I think it's a big improvement over the previous one. I'm going to mess around with it a bit more later and then get it baked and into UDK.
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NickB
#7 Posted : Friday, April 15, 2011 11:35:55 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 4/9/2011(UTC)
Posts: 19
Location: Seattle

Hey i was eavesdropping in class the other day and i think you figured out how to mesh paint in UDK? would you mind slappin up some screenshots of your material editor so i can see how you did it?
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Kiefen Zipf
#8 Posted : Sunday, April 17, 2011 3:22:42 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California

@NickB, here's a picture of the current mesh paint setup for my tree bark. Today or Tomorrow I'm going to look into some more advanced setups. I can post an image of that when it's done if you'd like. 

Zip's Mesh Paint Setup

 

I got the first two rock formations I sculpted decimated and baked. There are a few artifacts here and there but they came out alright. 

Rockform

rockform

rockform

 

I also started to place these around my scene. I still need to make some smaller longer ones to put along the lower cliffs. 

Japanese Maple Scene WIP 03

 

 
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Kiefen Zipf
#9 Posted : Sunday, May 01, 2011 8:03:02 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
Update time!

Started on the other trees for the forest. Not too sure if I'm happy with the bark but I like the yellow. It may seem like a bit too much now but I think it will balance out nicely once I finalize the leaf texture with some slight green on the leaves and I make some smaller green plants for the forest floor.





Next on my list is to research some advanced mesh paint setups so I can get the moss to not look awful on the rocks and to start some of the small/medium plants.
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Kiefen Zipf
#10 Posted : Monday, May 16, 2011 3:33:10 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
Getting close to calling this finished.





Going to spend the week tweaking and refining everything along with adding the finishing touches like roots coming out of the rocks near the red maple and making the stream look like it's flowing.
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Stokes
#11 Posted : Monday, May 16, 2011 8:20:34 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Instructor

Groups: FP Instructor
Joined: 1/23/2011(UTC)
Posts: 124
Location: Seattle`

 those are looking great!! The added haze and foilage are really helping. I still think you need to push the color variation in the surrounding trees however. Try and get  this range even if it means creating a few different instances of your yellowish orange material.
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Kiefen Zipf
#12 Posted : Tuesday, June 14, 2011 12:25:05 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
Finally ready to finish up this scene after I moved back to California and visited Illinois for a few weeks. Yesterday I redid the grass and have been messing around with the fog and color correction more. Next I'm going to make some medium/large green foliage to give the scene a bit more color variation.

Here are the latest pictures.





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Rob Macko
#13 Posted : Thursday, June 16, 2011 11:07:17 AM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 4/4/2011(UTC)
Posts: 12
Location: Seattle

Hey Kiefen,

 

First of all I always thought your scene was going great during class.  I haven't been back to the forums in a minute and as well had not really posted very much so I decided I should finally.  Anyways, for the color it's cool to mess around and see how it looks.  But in these latest screens it looks a bit too purple/red and the ground details feel lost.  I'm not sure if it is me viewing on my girlfriends macbook, but the earlier shots of the forest floor with the grassy rocks bushes and cast shadows those details show up more. Nice job on your scene man
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Kiefen Zipf
#14 Posted : Friday, June 17, 2011 12:47:16 AM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California
Thanks for the comments Rob. I'm still messing around with the color correction and lighting a lot so hopefully that will improve more as I get closer to finishing it. I definitely think the atmosphere overall is improving compared to the earlier shots though. As for the foliage not showing up as much that's probably from the color change. The foliage is a lot more green now compared to the orange from before. I'm still messing around with the textures on the foliage though so I'll try to get it to pop out a bit more.
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Kiefen Zipf
#15 Posted : Tuesday, June 21, 2011 1:50:57 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Student

Groups: 3D Modeling, Digital Painting
Joined: 3/29/2011(UTC)
Posts: 25
Location: Chico, California

Didn't get around to doing the green foliage yet but I thought I'd post an update anyway. I messed around with the lighting and atmosphere some more and set up subsurface scattering on the tree leaves.

 

Here's a shot of the material setup for basic subsurface scattering. If you want to tweak the settings then change the "Subsurface Brightness" or "Clamp -.75 to 1".

 
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Joe Pikop
#16 Posted : Tuesday, July 05, 2011 4:08:52 PM(UTC)
Rank: FP Instructor

Groups: FP Instructor
Joined: 4/11/2011(UTC)
Posts: 3
Location: Seattle
Hey! This is neat. I think you are going a little overboard on the depth of field. It's looking a little too vasaline-y in the background there.
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