Some dock work and some beacons!
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Monday, 8 April 2013
Sea Defense - Back Ground
Following the last post I have some updates to the back ground and dock area!
These mountains are generated in world machine, duplicated and placed around to get a bit of variation. I aim to have a small low poly 'town' in the center, to be viewed only at a distance. A few towering structures in the center and then small satellite farms off outskirts. Smoke and other small fx to be coming from these areas! The town center itself will be on a hill with the outer buildings and houses etc on the lower grounds.
Scene updates:
Here are some shots of the dock area I am currently focusing on:
And some updated shots of the other areas:
Until next time!
Scene updates:
Here are some shots of the dock area I am currently focusing on:
And some updated shots of the other areas:
Sea Defense Progress / more method.
Following the last post I made about the Sea Defense scene I realized I left a few things out:
Firstly the normal map I generated from the high poly zbrush sculpt of the cliff (which was also used to generate the low poly though meshlab) I applied this to the low poly's 2nd uvw channel. This was overlayed over the top of the vertex painted tiled rock sculpts (1st uvw channel).
The result of this was used in the shader to filter in the grass by using the normal maps Z-UP channel and mixed with the meshes Z-UP to mask the grass into the diffuse. The end result of these can b e seen below:
The large normal map from the sculpt also held an alpha channel with a cavity map that was used to overlay the end result's diffuse. This was done to high light the edges of the larger shapes, it really helped bring out the weight of the cliffs.
Water:
The water shader is based on an idea I had on how to go about getting some nice tessellated waves, this was basically 3-4 heightmaps that were different scales / pan speeds controlled by how dark the output is.
I used the output of the height maps to mask the white foam for the wave caps which added a bit of realism. When the waves crossed over each other the output got whiter and so the white foam caps came in more.
This was working pretty well but I ran into a lot of problems that my brain couldn't handle. The result of the tessellation can be seen here :
Pretty bad quality video I'm sorry.
This was the base I used for the water in this scene, but instead of going down the tessellation road I used the wave set up on a normal shader.
After ditching tessellation and keeping the wave setup I worked on the depth blending to pop out the sand bars under the water. As well as depth blending for the shore foam, which has a bumpoffset to put a bit more life into it.
The waves are passed through a lerp with the alpha being a splotchy low res map that scrolls in the opposite direction to the waves to give it that sort of rolling foam feel, it worked to a degree, mainly in breaking up the solidness of
The wave caps:
The reflection is fairly transparent and desaturated then run through the normal map for its distortion. I changed the waves from simple grey scale heightmaps into nice volumed normals through crazybump, this brought the wave caps and
depth of the wave into line, made a bit more sense.
The Uv's for the water are bent in and around the geo from the cliffs and the beach / dock etc, again to put a bit more life into it.
WAVES:
Here's the hack, it's just a bunch of low poly planes on top of the water plane - vert blended to pop in and out:
I hope this breakdown makes sense. I tend to ramble a lot!
The Cliff uvw:
faerin: Cheers! I hope to do some up close shot around most of the areas, I think maybe adding a few props, like barrels, cannons, rope and a ton of decals should help alot. and vegetation!
tottot: Thanks! I ended up taking crazybumps displacement map into zbrush, polishing it a tiny bit, then baking that, and overlaying it with even more crazy bump love from the same tiled ref texture from cgtextures! A lot of back and forth trying to get the bigger shapes to read well.
toolpaddz: You are right I didn't use world aligned. For unwrapping the uvw I used the normal relax in max. I got very lucky as to how well they came out, there is a lot of pinching here and there but it's hidden in all the noise
Here is a shot of how varied the angles are:
More Updates to follow!
Firstly the normal map I generated from the high poly zbrush sculpt of the cliff (which was also used to generate the low poly though meshlab) I applied this to the low poly's 2nd uvw channel. This was overlayed over the top of the vertex painted tiled rock sculpts (1st uvw channel).
The result of this was used in the shader to filter in the grass by using the normal maps Z-UP channel and mixed with the meshes Z-UP to mask the grass into the diffuse. The end result of these can b e seen below:
The large normal map from the sculpt also held an alpha channel with a cavity map that was used to overlay the end result's diffuse. This was done to high light the edges of the larger shapes, it really helped bring out the weight of the cliffs.
The water shader is based on an idea I had on how to go about getting some nice tessellated waves, this was basically 3-4 heightmaps that were different scales / pan speeds controlled by how dark the output is.
I used the output of the height maps to mask the white foam for the wave caps which added a bit of realism. When the waves crossed over each other the output got whiter and so the white foam caps came in more.
This was working pretty well but I ran into a lot of problems that my brain couldn't handle. The result of the tessellation can be seen here :
Pretty bad quality video I'm sorry.
This was the base I used for the water in this scene, but instead of going down the tessellation road I used the wave set up on a normal shader.
After ditching tessellation and keeping the wave setup I worked on the depth blending to pop out the sand bars under the water. As well as depth blending for the shore foam, which has a bumpoffset to put a bit more life into it.
The waves are passed through a lerp with the alpha being a splotchy low res map that scrolls in the opposite direction to the waves to give it that sort of rolling foam feel, it worked to a degree, mainly in breaking up the solidness of
The wave caps:
The reflection is fairly transparent and desaturated then run through the normal map for its distortion. I changed the waves from simple grey scale heightmaps into nice volumed normals through crazybump, this brought the wave caps and
depth of the wave into line, made a bit more sense.
The Uv's for the water are bent in and around the geo from the cliffs and the beach / dock etc, again to put a bit more life into it.
WAVES:
Here's the hack, it's just a bunch of low poly planes on top of the water plane - vert blended to pop in and out:
I hope this breakdown makes sense. I tend to ramble a lot!
The Cliff uvw:
faerin: Cheers! I hope to do some up close shot around most of the areas, I think maybe adding a few props, like barrels, cannons, rope and a ton of decals should help alot. and vegetation!
tottot: Thanks! I ended up taking crazybumps displacement map into zbrush, polishing it a tiny bit, then baking that, and overlaying it with even more crazy bump love from the same tiled ref texture from cgtextures! A lot of back and forth trying to get the bigger shapes to read well.
toolpaddz: You are right I didn't use world aligned. For unwrapping the uvw I used the normal relax in max. I got very lucky as to how well they came out, there is a lot of pinching here and there but it's hidden in all the noise
Here is a shot of how varied the angles are:
More Updates to follow!
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Sea Defense
So after being scared off by the rocky rockyness of the sea monster project I decided to mess about with some methods that might work forthis kind of thing, I decided to go with an awesome concept I found in my inspiration folder, it says crytek on there so I assume it's from the crytek dudes:
The method I ended up using was something fairly crude but effective, a mix of zbrush - meshlab and a nice relaxed unwrap:
Taking this mesh into UDK and vert painting it with different tiling rocks I got a result like this:
The second big challenge was the water, initially I tired some tesselated water but the reflections didnt come out too well as they werent based on the tessleated mesh but instead the low poly. So i went with a more than likely overly complex water shader with additional scrolling wave planes:
Anyway, here is the scene as it stands at the moment:
I will update this in the near future!
The method I ended up using was something fairly crude but effective, a mix of zbrush - meshlab and a nice relaxed unwrap:
Taking this mesh into UDK and vert painting it with different tiling rocks I got a result like this:
The second big challenge was the water, initially I tired some tesselated water but the reflections didnt come out too well as they werent based on the tessleated mesh but instead the low poly. So i went with a more than likely overly complex water shader with additional scrolling wave planes:
Anyway, here is the scene as it stands at the moment:
I will update this in the near future!
Sea Monster, Dead in the water
The Sea monster project was side lined for something similar that I will show in another post!
Monday, 10 December 2012
Next Project: Sea Monster!
The general idea is a 'sea monster washed ashore' scene, a horrid slimey
sea monster beached and dead in a small cove along some cliff faced
coastline. I am hoping to learn a lot about tessellation on this, as
well as trying my hand at some realistic ocean water.
At this point I am unsure as to which engine i will go for but am leaning more towards UDK than the cryengine, simply because I am more comfortable in the udk. Time will tell i suppose!
Anyways here are the references I have slapped together so far.
This is the style of cliff face / coastline I am aiming for:
I am going for a darker / less tropical climate. A very northern coastline.
-
This is the mood I'm aiming for, edge of a storm / cloudy with light breaking through every now and then:
The water / waves won't be anywhere near as rough as the ones in the mood reference!
-
The Sea Monster:
I will most likely be leaving this to the very end of the project so that I don't get distracted with it, the shape is enough for now, a big serpent from deep below. Although the image in the bottom right of this ref sheet is a lot like the final mood I'm going for!
Finally here is the block out with a messy paint over thrown in:
the tall box is reference point for size of a human.
The 'small' details like seaweed, crabs, birds, vegetation, weather effects will all hopefully add to the life of the scene.
At this point I am unsure as to which engine i will go for but am leaning more towards UDK than the cryengine, simply because I am more comfortable in the udk. Time will tell i suppose!
Anyways here are the references I have slapped together so far.
This is the style of cliff face / coastline I am aiming for:
I am going for a darker / less tropical climate. A very northern coastline.
-
This is the mood I'm aiming for, edge of a storm / cloudy with light breaking through every now and then:
The water / waves won't be anywhere near as rough as the ones in the mood reference!
-
The Sea Monster:
I will most likely be leaving this to the very end of the project so that I don't get distracted with it, the shape is enough for now, a big serpent from deep below. Although the image in the bottom right of this ref sheet is a lot like the final mood I'm going for!
Finally here is the block out with a messy paint over thrown in:
the tall box is reference point for size of a human.
The 'small' details like seaweed, crabs, birds, vegetation, weather effects will all hopefully add to the life of the scene.
Some Recent Work
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