Natural Selection 2 concept Scene

[Ex-Ray]

Hey All

I've been reading this forum for a while but haven't posted anything yet, so I thought I'll share what I've been killing myself doing for the past 4 1/2 month afterwork.

I decided to do one of those great concepts from Natural selection 2 but gave myself some creative freedom so it doesn't have to look exactly like it, this one here:
http://ve3dmedia.ign.com/images/05/42/54251_NaturalSelection2-ConceptArt-03.jpg

I wanted to practice my next gen stuff (high poly to low poly bake) as I don't really get a chance to do it at work and to prove to myself really.

This is part one of my finished piece, as at the moment my final output is a mental ray render. I do intend to migrate this to Unreal Ed which I'm still learning. Hopefully in unreal the spec and normals will 'pop' out more and I can play around with particles, light beams, cube maps etc and bring it more alive.

There are minor post effects such as the usual, levels, colour balance etc. I did add the smoke, light bloom and haze in photoshop and I hope I can mimic that in UnrealEd in realtime.

I definitely learn a lot on this piece and on hindsight I could have probably reduce the polycount down a little. The whole scene is 25968 tris with 1024x1024 textures and just one 2048x1024.

Hopefully I can post the unreal version soon.........probably in another 4 1/2 months time!

[ninersix]

Looks nice.
If i were to crit i would say the chipped paint in your textures would be better placed along edges and handled areas rather than on the flat surfaces

[mr_flibble]

You've done a nice job there.

A reservation i have though is that there appears to be some contrasting styles in there. For example, the crane arm int he middle and the crates on the right have a cartoon/cell shaded feel to them, as they have some heavy black outlines, whilst the floor and certain parts of the walls have a realistic feel. I think either style would work fine, just perhaps need to marry them up.

I do feel that the the transportation device (can't think of a proper name ) needs a bit more dirt and stuff on it. for something that looks industrial it would have some dust/grease/oil/scratches etc.

these are just small points though, as this is a strong piece
nicely done

[Ex-Ray]

Thx for the crits guys. A friend also mentioned the outlines on the crates as well so I'll prob have a look at what's causing it. I think it could be my AO on the diffuse especially since I cranked them up a bit.

UPDATE:
Turns out it was the AO! I've edited it and uploaded amended version

[Minotaur0]

Looks really cool!

[mr_flibble]

looks a lot better now dude. good job!

[Matroskin]

nice and clean wires.

My concern now is lighting.

The light bulb in upper right corner is the brightest element on the image. It guides the eye there but there's nothing special in that corner. Instead u could have some lights that attract attention to the center piece. And some brighter blue lights in the tunnel on the background, because those blue "windows" look dead and fake right now.

[Kaburan]

Nice job! I think the textures could use a bit more work, some pieces look a bit flat as well as your lighting. Overall it looks great!