1940s environment Wip

[laughing_bun]

ditto with the normal mapping issues. I think everyone is in agreement about the problems they are just trying to explain them differently.

basically the problem is the photosourcing you used to generate the normals. the bricks arnt protruding properly some of the edges of them are but you have areas across all of the normal that have the same height as the bricks which makes no sense and is killing the effect. You need to take the time and generate a Proper heightmap then crazybump it.

[Zeus]

thanks guys comments are really appreciated

James - Thanks for pointing the uv error thing, its actually not the uvs but a weird affect to do with the smoothing groups, i have to tweak them to get them to display in the engine ok, normally, with the smoothing groups adjusted for max renders those bits appear straight.

Everybody - thanks for saying about the normal mapping, think id looked at it too long and couldnt see it, ill try tweaking the crazybump generated normals a little and seeing how they come out, laughingbun thanks for your comment as that explained the main problem well and i think i know what to aim for now.

[Gephoria]

good work, i agree w/ the normal map for the bricks being screwy, i'm thinking you could add concrete sidewalk cracks in it to build upon that effect you had going on the wall, make it look like the building has been abused.

crit on the first render(the one way up top) the black/darkish tint just below the second floor windows really grabs my attention, not sure if that was what you were aiming for but other than that the building looks great

[Zeus]

Wow, u must have posted right after me Gephoria - the darker part u mention is another smoothing group issue, i think i posted the engine version as opposed to my max version which has different smoothing groups, though i kinda like the effect, like that part hasnt had much sunlight or something lol. Oh and i gotta be carefull with how much individuality i add to the surfaces as im having to mirror uvs and also instance alot of geometry - so dont want to give that away. I like the wear and tear though so will keep adding it where i can :-)

Anyways, ive just tweaked the original map i generated the normals from (thanks James) and fiddled with some settings in crazybump also, its looking much nicer now and would just like to thank TheCorey, he pointed out it looked like there was too much big detail, i was sure the slider was down to 0 but i guess it wasn't on the originals as when i tweaked it i got the effect i wanted! So thanks again!

Its funny how easy it is to miss little things like that, always good to double check, heres some comparison renders:





the bottom render has sharper corners to the bricks and less "clay" effect i think, though the bricks feel a little "scratchy" i dunno how to explain it, im thinking maybe i tweaked the source image and made that too sharp, never the less what do u guys think now?

Oh PS here's the next level i knocked up, smoothing groups will be sorted:

[vladino]

Looking much better now! Good job

The only thing that annoys me now is that the bricks are shiny?! Not sure if it's because u don't have specular map yet or just the setting of the material.

Besides that nice work!

[nistrum]

the bottopm of those two is vastly better.. you will porbably hate me for pointing thios out,.. but your bricks are too big.

[Zeus]

thanks guys, ill lessen the specular on the bricks vladino.

Nistrum, i dont hate you lol, i value feedback, however since a brick is not something that comes in a standard size i dont think its really true to say "they are too big". I am on a really tight budget - i.e. ive got until September the first to write a 15000 word report, create an entire level, implement it into a game engine whilst making use of instancing, shaders and portals and create learning materials on each process for other students to use. On any other project i would probably just have said "ok, ill change them" lol. But this one forces me to make excuses im afraid lol

Anyways, Here's some progress on the rest of the building decided to block it out it a zbrush friendly form first, that way i can see how things piece together for the instancing in engine later. Assume that most repeated geometry will be instanced people, i repeat, instancing is a go:



Each major section will use a 1024 texture map (normal, b&w spec and diffuse)

Crits etc welcome as always

[nistrum]

heheh YOU*R EXCUSES DO NOT PLEASE ME!! lol ojnly kidding, in the endit was only a minor thing. its looking really nice keep it up

[Zeus]

lol cheers mate

[chris89]

you're not planning to do any colormaps? (unwrap of all the objects which will be used as a low res overlay to save some textures and create some more uniqueness)