Smell lovely, don’t they…
Pictures, pictures pictures. First out is a screengrab from Unreal engine 3 with the low poly asset using a temp diffuse texture and first bake from the highpoly. Gonna have to rebake it cuz of stretching but it shows some progress.
Diffuse looks like crap atm, just threw on a random rocktexture from CG texture so that is subject to change
Below are a few screengrabs from maya after having baked the second peice.
wip wip wip
So I need to update my portfolio. Started working on a scene, and this first post is posted about 10 hours in.
First mock up, with assets prepped for mudboxification.
Started sculpting
Tossed on a new rim light shader to see better and continued sculpting. Rearanging alot of stuff
More detailing
Tried baking it to a low res model. Looked like crap
Sculpted this far then decided to scrap the terrain and go with a modular approach insted, so today i’ve prepped a bunch of low res models for import to Mudbox. Will post progress when there is anything worth showing.
I’ve decided to make all the terrain in mudbox so I some time making a very simple base mesh. Still got some areas left.
Also decided to change composition of the picture a little because there was such a big empty area in the upper right corner of the picture just below. So i tilted and moved the camera a bit, as can be seen in the picture below it.
I’m still struggling a bit with the composition but it’s some progress atleast.
Before we start: the mod is out so go download it.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-haunted
I opened up Stronghold and flew around on the map in the editor for the first time mid-production of Canyon, just to get a feel for the level. It was a very different visual experience compared to Canyon.
TH-Stronghold
Exterior
The first thing I did was to remove all the lighting, re-save the map with -lighting01 at the end and toss in a few directional lights and alter post process effect. But I’m getting ahead of myself, lets start off with a comparisson shot:
Once again I was reminded why I joined up with the Hegi and Schlauchi because the map was just so incredably flat. The image had no depth, no sense of scale and was just a bit uninteresting to look a.
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So this is after my first initial quick test and I showed it to the guys…. Now, when I start doing lighting I start with the big lights. And you know what the sun is? It’s a big fracking light, is what it is. So this is a scene with only the sun and an ambient light active along with a supporting backlight (directional light)
I got the feedback”TOO PINK!” and, yea… it really, really was. =D
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I reduced the pinkness of the overall scene but still wasn’t quite happy with the colors
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Continued tweaking it and looked at some reference pictures Hegi sent over that they had used during the development. At this point I removed the ”temporary” light setup and worked out a more final light setup that I then could use all through out development. It was between 6-7 Directional lights and a skylight. The sunlight actor and 4 of the other directional lights had shadowcasting on, the rest did not.
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Flew around the map and came to this corridor/alley kind of deal that I really liked and saw that the shadows were too dark. To those familliar with the term ”white out” this is the same thing, only with shadows.. What has happend is that the lights combined with the post process effects result in some of the shadow-areas being all black. I guess we can call it a ”blackout”.
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Tweaked the post processing towards and got rid of the blackouts and adjusted the lighting towards a more green/yellow/orange setting that I kind of fell in love with.
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So at this point I was getting pretty happy with the lighting so I made a comparisson shot. Here is a view of the lighting in the original level.
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And here is the same view with my new lighting. People said ”oooooh” and ”aaaaaw” and then got thinking… ”Wow, that looks really dreamy. I want to go quest in the tallest tower and rescue the princess!”
I was really pleased with this lighting but as both Hegi and Schlauchi pointed out it was far too fairy-tale-goodie-goodie and not nearly enough ”demon spawn coming to kill you!”
Back to square 1…
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A quick adjustment to the post processing resulted in this quickie test towards the more demonic/hellish lighting that was requested.
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Same as above
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Same as above
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I wasn’t very happy with this redish lighting but I realized that the old lighting was too dreamy. I kept tweaking it and kept making adjustments, trying to find something that would make the guys happy while still speaking to me in the same way the dreamy lighting did.
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Tweaked Depth of field, saturation and blackouts on the interior on the right in the picture
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The new lighting with the bridge area, with continued tweakings on the post process and over all look.
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Back in my favorite alley. Neither I nor the other guys in the team was very happy with the colors of the lanterns…
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So I changed them and continued tweaking everything.
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Placing and tweaking god rays for the entire map was done all through out the process, mostly just as placeholders that I’d return to later and tweak to final. As I was flying around doing my thing I came across this nice alley way that I had crossed oh so many times before. Here I saw the redness of the lighting and also got feedback from the guys that the overall exterior lighting was too dark. Adjustments had to be done…
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And here’s a picutre after those adjustments. Other than tweaking colors in the post processing I also adjusted the depth of field once more.
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Pretty alley…
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And here is the pretty-much-final lighting from the same point of view as the original comparisson picture you saw the begining of this post.
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Interiors
So for both Canyon and Stronghold I’ve used two sets of Post process volumes, one for exterior and one for interior. Getting these to work well together along with the ambient lighting (that is global for the entire level) while maintaining some kind of nice contrast between the two settings has really been the most troublesome thing in Stronghold. I did not make the exterior first and interior second but worked on both and finished them both around the same time but for simplicitys sake I’ve devided them up into two sections to make it easier for you, dear reader, to follow the progress.
So once again, a picture from the lighting from the original set up that existed when I first got the map.
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The first initial quick test to see what I could do. I added lights and fooled around with them slightly but mostly tweaked post process effects.
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In TH-Canyon I reduced the saturation in the exterior when compared to the interior and for funsies I decided to try and go the compleate opposit for Stronghold. The reasoning behind this was that wheras Canyon has a fairly dry and monotone setting Stronghold is a castle setting, set high above sea level and takes place during a sunset. So the outside should be really colorful and whats the easiest way to have a contrast against a colorful exterior? I figured I’d make a very desaturated interior.
This was a really, really bad idea from the start and I never got it to look even slightly good.
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So I went in the compleate opposit direction. I cranked up the saturation and tried to figure out how to best do this set up. A problem I had that I half-and-half ignored at this point was potential blackouts. I was too far away from finding a good theme for the interiors that I just spend time messing about, looking for references and trying shit out.
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Added in a bunch of blue through post processing but I wasn’t happy. At all. I didn’t know why and that, quite frankly, pissed me off.
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Removed the blue, went back to thinking ”Well maybe I can make the desaturated shit look good if I…” and then fooled around with post process effects, reworking how many of the directiona lights cast global lighting and just… Well… Tried to find something that worked. Finally I gave up for the day and sat down to watch a movie, and it’s a good thing I did….
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I watched Underworld: Rise of the lycans and I quite enjoyed it but more importantl, the lighting in the movie clearly illustrated how I should approach the interior of Stronghold.
You see the result above.
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Tweaking…
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Tweaking…
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Sleepi… Er, I mean tweaking….
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More tweakification!
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And VOILA! An interior lighting that I was happy with AND that had a nice contrast from the exterior AND that Hegi said ”Yes, I like!” and Schlauchi said ”TOO DAR.. wait, thats okay.”
Win win win win!
I also made some extra subtle smoke effects for the torches near the end that really made them pop, I think.
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Lighting Stronghold took me about 2 2-½ weeks.
A big shout out to the other guys working on the TH-team for their continued guidence and support (and bitching and nagging) in helping me make their project more awesome.
