Fantasy Forest

[Frozan]

hey heres the concept for the forest ive been workin on, along with a first render of a fern test and tree model. the last image is in the unreal 3 editor, as u can tell the textures got a bit of a color tone down in that final image. i think it was for the best, looks a whole bunch better.

[Frozan]

heres some more to get you guys up to post on where im at currently.

first one is in the editor with my ground tiles placed in and other trees.

in the next shot i changed out the less interesting trees in the back from better more interesting ones. also took the normal map and lowered the spec maps on the ground.

then went in and added some rock walls. its kind of a forest in a canyon now.

the two before the fern are in maya when i decided that i should now go crazy in maya with what i want before playing with the editor more. its getting a whole lot more interesting now. also added rocks.

and finally the ferns that im gonna end up adding as well i forgot to post those in the last post. your basically up to par with where im at now.

[Gavin]

Looks bad ass so far man, I'll stay tuned to see where you go with it.

Gav

[Frozan]

Gavin - Thank you

Im trying to push my skills further then they are at currently. again thank you. anything you would like to see in the piece?

[Marcus Dublin]

Hey what happened to the Tower? Hehe, I love little workshops such as this they can be really relaxing to work on and fun well. Besides the cool concept that you have I'd suggest looking at a real forest to see how nature arranges things, right now it looks like a forest a 3d artist made and not like something that would actually exist. For starters some integration is really needed, the tree trunks are just jutting out of the ground, add some foliage and rocks to mask this area. If you using tiled textures then then try painting some of the grass and moss where the edge of the tree bark starts, this will help big time! I like the lighting since it has a nice bloom feel to it but make sure you have harsh shadows as well, in a real forest you would get very dark shadows. With that said it's coming along quite well and and I look forward to seeing the progression. By the way if you get a chance add a bit of post processing since your using the UR3 editor, I forgot what tab it's under since I'm at home but you can get some cool mid tones and ambient color shifts.:)

Marcus

[Rain]

To merge the trees in more, I think you should add many vines popping in and out of areas. This would be nice.

I really like how this one is coming along. It's nice to see an environment for a change.

[Gavin]

Frozan, np man. Not much I can think of that I would like to see personally...once the branches and stuff are in place, it'll look much better. I agree with having vines and roots scattered around. Once everything is in place, and this may be thinking way too far ahead, but having ambient "creatures" buzzing around would add life to it as well. If it's a swampy type area maybe big mosquitoes or will-o-wisp's. If it's a little more friendly maybe butterflies or pixies? (Can you tell I'm more of a character guy? :P)

Gav

[TryForce]

Hey, uhm i like that alot though on the Pictures where we see a Broken tree the place where they were broken doesnt look like the would match to each other if you are goign to recover it somehow.
As i would add alot more Darker spots on the trees, but thats all i could crit, looks pretty nice in all just these small things hehe.

keep it up

[Frozan]

so i made some mushrooms that grow off the side and noticed that there style was a lot more appealing to me then what i had currently. so i took some of the colors and brought them into the trees. think it was a good call? personally i think it makes it more fantasy and thats what im shooting for. also gonna be adding that fern with a better color to it to match up. also dif types of grass and maybe strange flowers and what not.

Gav- want to make some tree frogs?

Rain - yes i plan on merging them better with more grass and also a dirt rim that alphas up the tree. also im currently making some thick vines along with cards on them for more details.

Marcus - hey very good call on it looking 3d. the feel i think im going for is similar to the upcoming mmo "Aion" i think the games environments are really pretty and its been a long time of trying to get realistic 3d work. its finally time to break out and make some fantasy. but yes i have been looking at references now :)


as for now heres the trees with there new color tone and also the first types of mushrooms, just a maya viewport screen grab.

[onelung]

coming along nicely, looking forward to see how far you take it.

[poopinmymouth]

I'm liking the color palette and overall feel you have going here. Feels very fantastical and imaginative. I agree that it needs more stuff around the base of the trees to help the transition. Final Fantasy XI has some great work in that regard. You might want to check it out for inspiration.

Keep posting shots, I'm eager to see more.

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)

[Frozan]

PIMM - hey thanks hope u dont mind me abbreviating your name, final fantasy hmm. im going to have to look at this. XI u say. might have to whore that one from thatdon. thanks again ill keep posting. in the mists of moving to new apartment woot!

[Mattimusss]

damn jeremy, looks amazing, strangly enough i'm finding myself doing environments now too... for my job. except i don't get to make fancy enchanted forests...lol.

[Frozan]

matt - thanks a lot for the amazing comment. :) ps u gotz a problem with enchanted forests? :P

[Vikkie]

Frozan, this is looking great, I agree with Marcus's comments :)

[Frozan]

Its been decided that i shall continue this project but as a form of a prop setup tell im done making what i want. I think then ill try and arrange them more on a natural level. i think that might be the best approach.

Vikki - I must agree with Marcus also. he is wise.

Guys also gonna be going off line here for a bit. will be back soon, switching apartments also means i have to switch internet providers.. be back soon. to hold ya off i got the mushrooms to stick better to the tree. also gonna format my posts better :)

night all

[keo]

ah, looking nice! (where's the tower? :P )

Any chance we can get a wide-angle view before you go offline and pack away your computer gear?

[Frozan]

Yeah sure,

heres 3 shots showing the Wire, shaded, and shaded textured.

Also a side note remember that this really isn't an up to date scene also, what ur really seeing is a show casing of props. the moss hanging in the back is also getting a completely new texture thrown on it. i think maybe more color to it some flowers in it and what not. as for the ground im still trying to figure out how i can make it merge the trees to the ground better.

[3dimentia]

Keep it up mang. I never seen the wireframe of this before, with how dense the mesh area is for grass, I can barely see it in the rendered screen grab. Again, keep it up! i wanna see this sucker finished.

[Frozan]

3dimentia - Thanks yeah alpha cards can make things look way out of wack. hhaa thanks for it ill make sure this one is finished then back to my epic tower project.
Small little update. trying to get my cute monster going good also. all i did really was change the variety of texture in the grass. seems to have made it pop a whole lot more. also did a total redo of the vines hanging from the tree stump in the back. along with that the moss on the tree in the back got scaled down as it was to large and details at its previous scale.

more to come soon.

[Marcus Dublin]

The additional foliage is really making this come alive. I was watching one of my favorite fantasy films of all time Legend / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_%28film%29 and I thought about your project since they have some great fantastical forest scenes in the film. It can even serve as a lighting reference when you get to that stage.

Marcus

[kongni]

So are you using the UE3 engine at work or the RoboBlitz ed? Just wondering because I've been itching to see what the UE3 editor can do but I'm not sure about the limitations of the RB ed.

[Frozan]

@Marcus Dublin - thats cool that watching that movie made you think of my work. anywho i need to look into this movie more. if u got any other resources on it let me know but ill be looking into that for lighting for sure. thanks!

@kongni - I am indeed using the RoboBlitz editor to do this. the one thing that i have noticed though is that there is not any real way to control the bloom. That and its slightly buggy. i would strongly suggest it though if you don't feel like paying a lot of money to see your work with nice shaders on it :)

[kongni]

Do you know of any good tutorials on environment creation and lighting in RB? Sorry to get off topic :confused:

[Frozan]

@kongni -Hey np :) sadly environment creation in my thoughts any tutorials in it would lack any form of creativity. also lighting in RoboBlitz all im using are spot lights and environment lights. i dont think there are really any tutorials in either one except the lighting i bet u might be able to find some for the old unreal engine, there pretty much one in the same, the new engine just well is new.

if u need anything else just Personal message me :)

[kongni]

Here are a few tutorials and sites I found a while back that may be useful:

http://tutorials.hourences.com/tutorialsindex.htm

Jesse's tut (posted somewhere in the forum):
http://www.artbyjessemoody.com/ue3_tut1.html

Solid Snake's RB tuts on the Unreal wiki:
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Solid_Snake

You probably have these already but I will post anyway:
official wiki:
http://www.roboblitz.com/RoboBlitzEditorWiki/index.php/Main_Page
forum:
http://www.roboblitz.com/forum/

--Ben

[Bbox85]

You're definately making progress. I'm digging the hanging vines in the back. However, I'm seeing some hard edges where the rocks meet the terrain. You did a little better with the trees the way you covered them up with foliage. I think your scene would highly benefit from a blending texture. You can do so by Plugging two textures (in this case your rock texture and the terrain texture) into a Linear Interpolate and using vertex color as the mask. That way, you can just paint the bottom verts of your rock as white, export the vertex colors with the .ASE, and it should blend in to the terrain better. It'd be nice to see more variations of vegetation too. Let me know if you're having trouble understanding the vertex coloring thing. If so, I'll post a screen shot with the material expressions and what not. Keep up the good work.

[Bbox85]

Scratch that last thing about the Vertex Coloring Frozan. After suggesting it, I tried making a shader in the RoboBlitz editor, and it doesn't seem to be working like it normally should. I'm looking into it however. It's a basic shader and I've used it before... just doesn't seem to be working with the RoboBlitz version of UE3. Lame....

[Bbox85]

Ok, so apparently Vertex Colors don't work on Static Meshes. Super lame. My other suggestion is to make a gradient mask and plug that into the alpha channel of a Linear Interpolate with the two textures you want to blend.

[Frozan]

@Bbox85 - that second one will work for sure. i know this vertex coloring or "alphas" you talk of. learned them at work a while back. We use it a ton for our game.

@kongni - I knew of many of these but this is good to show them again as anyone who might be interested in getting into what i do can learn from these. so thank you!

@Marcus - sweet man! i want to see this movie now, do u know if there is any places online that stream it?


As soon as i get the mini comp monster done its back to the drawing boards of creating different variations of plants and grass to help spice that scene up.

[BuroKun]

Get to work, and finish this Frozan!!!

[Frozan]

hey bbox man did u notice that the unreal engine likes to limit how much gradiant you get out of your alpha? is there any way to increase the bit of it. right now it looks like its around 4 bit.

[EricElwell]

Hey, I think your scene will benefit from some of the insights she has on trees:

http://div.dyndns.org/EK/tutorial/trees/

Very cool so far though! Keep pushing it farther!

[Ged]

wow that looks great, now I wanna buy roboblitz and get workin! hehe

[Frozan]

hey guys just a little update.

a map of the room im creating.
a image of the time line for creation. (post my pipeline soon)
And finally the concept table for the three main topics on the board.
(best part is thatdons father inlaw game that to me :))

just a small update to let you know im not dead and this project is kickin :)

[ThatDon]

Is that a "Art of Midway" book I see?

[SuperOstrich]

Man, this is the first I've seen of this thread. Very nice work. It's cool to see an environment artist taking the time to flesh out mood and personality in a scene. Can't wait to see the end result.

[Frozan]

@SuperOstrich Hey thanks im trying hard to get better at environments. we will see how this project goes.

As u can see in the white board it says that on the 28th concepts needed to be done. sadly i was away from a scanner and couldn't get them in on that date but they are done. so here they are. really rough but hey there concepts, there enough for me :)

on another note i started doing my concepts with actual paper so this is gonna be a bumpy ride for me for a bit but hey all in practice.

[Frozan]

Started on the rocks a bit ago and after thats done just gonna slam out the temple and then the pond props. then see whats left. then its all placement.

[zabuza2k]

frozan i like u work its nice

[Frozan]

small update. roughing of the temple

[EVIL]

looking good! although I suggest doing something a bit more visually interesting as a temple. Its a bit to minimalistic imo, that or I'm way to used to Chinese temples ;)

[Deto]

That's one very impressive enviroment you're making there, Frozan :) I like it alot, the details and look of it is awesome!

The temple looks a little plain as it is as EVIL said already, but... we'll see what you have in store for it :) The ball in the temple looks a bit too highpoly compared to rest of the models..

[Kickflipkid687]

You have some badass stuff, keep it comming!

[onelung]

plans for behind the temple? Trees, mountains ,or just sky? The layering of the rocks on the path is nice.. I agree that the temple might could use some "zaz" perhaps some layering elements? thanks for sharing!

btw: thanks for the pics of your workspace, no idea why i don't have a white board in my home office... i'll be picking one of those up this weekend!

[Frozan]

@EVIL Thanks, yeah the temple is getting a lot more added to it. more spire to it and what not. ohh ill just let the new screen tell ya. Thanks again.

@Deto Hey thanks for the compliments Deto, i am playing on making more vines and things such as moss covered rocks which will be added in the light map most likely.

@Kickflipkid687 Thanks Kick. got to try and keep those deadlines :)

@onelung Hey lung! um whats around it. god rays breaking through the tress that will be all around along with moss and smaller rocks and stones. see the trees in the beginning of this thread those will be populated all around the entire map. very dense forest with a lot of other things in it like when u look up other then the god rays im hoping to get a lot of light bloom as to show the sky as just blinding and the trees coming out of the blinding. so not really being able to see the tops of the trees. along with me not having to make the branches and what not i think it will add a style i dont see often for immersion.

[cookepuss]

Fairly realistic scale. ~10ft doorways by the looks of it.

With regards to that sphere, you should probably rotate it so the pole faces out. You could probably nix some of those cross sections more easily since the vertices per slice are already flattened out along the y-axis.

Not much to say otherwise. It's an interesting design. Surround it with some trees, random foliage, and a decent texture. It doesn't have to be super complex at this level. Actually, it has a really solid feel to it, like those old Unreal 1 or Quake 1 levels.

[Frozan]

@cookepuss Thanks for such a detailed crit. the doors scale i wanted to be slightly larger then normal as it will just be a tomb entrance of sorts that is similar in feel to ones like Indiana Jones.

also planning on elevating it to a higher point of ground so u can get some cool shots of it from within the other parts of the forest.

Thanks again.

[Frozan]

was a little bored tonight so decided to mess with some ideas for the temple. kind of have what i want. now i know where to go from.

[Sordid23]

Good stuff just lacks a bot of detail, maybe add a sacraficial altar ore statue at the top of the stairs and some random obelixes in front of it to make it look more intresting.
I Wil be looking forward to see your progress!

[Deto]

That's going to be one dang nice temple there! I love the concept,its very interesting :) I was somewhat suspicious about the sphere in the wires, but the concept gives it the feeling and place, and it is good! :D

[Frozan]

still a lot to add and im in a bit of a hurry dont want to be late for class hha but here ya go. small little update

[Frozan]

more updates on the temple. nearing a more solid feel.

[TryForce]

i think the edges of the stones and walls are to sharp, other then that i l really like the progress and design so far.

[BuroKun]

@Frozan - I have been watching this for a while now, and this last update is nice....really starting to get there. If anything I would say something about that middle thing on the stares, maybe make it taller, or just get rid of it. and are you ganna put any plants of any kind in this....I think it would be a nice touch to add some here and there, but not to much. and maybe a broken part of the top has fallen of and onto to stares. maybe you could make be the thing in the middle?.....nice work, like that latest pic.....keep up the good work Frozan.

[Frozan]

@TryForce The edges that i wanted soft have been addressed. thanks for pointing that out. getting closer to what i want. :)

@BuroKunThanks for some possible ideas. thansk for compliment also. there will be plants around it as u can see this is in the forest thread. the temple will be deep in the forest in a small clearing.

as for now im gonna go to bed but heres some updates.

[krishki]

really nice work

[onelung]

Is this going to be aged any? Some deteriating walls or pillars would be nice.

[Amethyst]

I enjoy checking your progress and it will be interesting to see what you are going to add before it's finished.....

[Matroskin]

awesome project man!
I remember u asked about getting alpha gradients more detailed in UE. I dont know if u got the solution; however, it is about compression of ur texture. My knowledge applies to UE2, but i think this aspect is not changed much in UE3.

There is DXT 1, 3 and 5 tex. compression types. DXT 5 is the best quality and the smoothest texture. I suggest not to trust texture handling to UE when u import, but to save directly into DDS format from PhotoShop. this also enables u to controll ur MIP maps better. U will just need Photoshop nVidia plugin for that form nVidia`s website.

I am wondering what books r those on ur table, seems like good environment reference...

I would also suggest to add some more dirt and darkening the area around the red sphere`s stone frame. Because now it looks not too convincing in terms of structure. I seems as if the wall is made of concrete and the sphere is just glued inside. But stones cannot offer tht perfect fit and not leave any gap or something.

Keep up the gret job, forest really has magic atmosphere ;)

[Frozan]

just a little update. got the temple into the unreal 3 editor, i have one problem though. some of my uv is strangly out of place. not like destorted or anything but offset almost.

well im happy with whats showing in this shots none the less.

[nec9]

holy hole in a donut batman

[ThatDon]

Those images are very very dark, give us some light! I actually just did a quick levels adjustment in photochop and it looks much better IMO.

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2736/levelswu7.jpg

[Flynny]

Agreed ThatDon ;) Awesome piece so far keep at it ;)

[Matroskin]

but I guess that render was intended just to show the shape, that was not an actual lightning ;) So thats ok how it appears on the original image.

However, I would say that there is one stone texture on stairs that looks a bit like a carpet. Maybe doing it rougher , less tiled and less uniform could change that effect.

[zabuza2k]

wow thats defintli nice

[Frozan]

just a small update. started trying to get things working correctly in the unreal editor.

basic demo shots of some of the grass and rocks along with some terrain just to test in game.

[BuroKun]

nice nice nice.....keep it up

[Pezzz]

Gogogo frozan... nice stuff man! :thumb:

[Matroskin]

good looking texturtes !
However, imo grass looks too evidently flat. It seems that there is not enough transparent stripes in the texture. It looks more like sheets than actual bunches of thin grass leaves (or whatever they r called in English, sorry ;P )

Keep it up, still nice work, man!

[keo]

hey great updates that I've missed! really looking nice, but did you remove the coptic inscriptions on the temple from page 3? I was kind of digging those but maybe set more specifically instead of all over.

[Frozan]

small small update just wanted to do this before someone said something haha, tiled the ground more. ohh also on the temple texture looking different. there was a problem with the UV's getting shifted somehow in the convert to the editor. im still looking into why it did that. but yeah gonna get it back to the way it was and ill see if i can be a little more selective on where the writing is placed. :) thanks for the advice.

[zabuza2k]

frozan u have style XD

[ThatDon]

Ground looks better but it still has a washed out look to it.

[Frozan]

as in the blacks are not black and the whites are not white?
adjusted again, i want to understand.
back to homework.

[Twindragon]

everything is looking great. keep up the good work. I don't see anything that would change IMO. I will wait till you have everything together.

[Matroskin]

is there any way to set grass equally shaded in UE3? I mean just to have overall equal shading over the whole each grass bunch model and not on by-face basis. Because being lit by face reveals polygonal nature of the grass.
I think it is because u placed them manually, like Static Meshes. However, if you try to use it with Terrain (as Deco Layers) it should be fine.

[Frozan]

u think so? i thought even though ur placing it as a deco layer it would still be placing the mesh in the deco layer. which would mean jsut a dif way of laying down the static mesh?

now that i think about it i think it might have something to do with the type of alpha bit. right now it looks like its 4-bit do u know how to change it to 8-bit?

[Matroskin]

The difference between placing mesh manualy and scatering it by using deco layer function is huge.
Again, I dont know exactly the way it is handled by UE3, but in UE2 the difference is really wast.

Basicly, it is way faaaster and more flexible. U can paint ur deco layer spots where u want them, and after that u just tweak density or scale randomness ect. Plus, u can add variation to ur grass by applying color overlay map that will define color variation. Moreover (and very important), deco layers work in a more optimized way. E.g. meshed fade at certain distance. U just get global control over ur grass.
Also in UE2 mesh that is a prart of deco layer gets equal shading over it. For example, u can check how grass appears on the images of my level.

[Matroskin]

I also mentioned somewhere above in this thread how u can get control over texture and alpha quality when u import textures to Unrel Engine.

Get nvidia plugin for photoshop (from nvidia website). It allows u to export DDS filetype. There u can select ur type of compression, alpha quality, depth of mip maps etc. Then, when u import ur texture to UE3 just deselect "generate mip maps" and import it as uncompressed. This way u`ll get ur texture as u compressed it in PS.

[Frozan]

wow thanks man. lots of help there. sounds like ill be able to make my scene a lot more lush and awesome now. ill figure it out in UE3 today and see if its the same as the old one. thanks again.

[Frozan]

Hey guys so i got a hold of gears and started working with the editor to get my forest and temple in. one thing i need to ask is does anyone have any experience in sky maps? heres what ive came up with just mapping a sphere with one that i created. but it doesn't seem to be enough or something? anyone got any pointers? i know its a little to low res also. im working on that part right now but is there anything u guys would like to point out? also its dark cus im trying to get a feel for a night scene.

[ThatDon]

I want to see some stars if this is going to be a night scene.

[Frozan]

lol maybe i should take a screen shot looking up. atmosphere fog u wouldnt see stars at this angle. if any a few right at the top edge of the screen shot. maybe ill put some in just cus it would look cooler. thanks don

[Marcus Dublin]

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "it doesn't seem to be enough or something". Looking at it again I have to say it seems a bit off scale, the clouds themselves look a bit to close to the ground. I'm not sure if it's the way it's mapped or the actual sky dome geometry but I would play with the scale and also look at actual photography of skies. This will help you figure out the scale issues. By the way you can complete map the sky for some nice variation as well, though it would sacrifice some of the resolution.

[bb0x]

can we see your textures for the skydome? I'm guessing you need to resize your texture so the bottom half of the texture is empty... if that makes sense

[Frozan]

yeah i know what you and marcus are saying. ill do that today and submit a new map along with the flat texture of it :)

[Matroskin]

yes, I agree, the sky lacks fogged area.
Also now it seems to belong to vertical plane. The perspective of sky in the texture is different from ur in-game perspective.

Gears editor should now be more fun to work with, eh ;) ?

[metalliandy]

Looking good mate!

Keep it up :)

[Frozan]

small little update. playing with scale some more. figured out some new things with the editor and also working with those. just wanted to show ya im not dead haha.

[BuroKun]

build it and they will come....MUHA HA!

[Matroskin]

hey, looking cool ;) Archit. textures appear to be of a nice size. If the horizon will be covered by some decorations (the forest trees I guess ;) ) the sky will look correct I think.
Keep it up!

[rjfire]

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