WIP Environment: Old shop

[sheppy]

When doing buildings, I tend to start with texture first, then model. But keep in mind I work on flight sims.

The design is nice but some things you may consider is where will players see this from and likewise, what is the polycount need based upon that design. For example, you have high poly regions on both the top and bottom.

[gsokol]

Nice start. There are just a few unneeded edges and a couple smoothing group things that need to be addressed.

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j203/white99stang281/house_2.jpg

The red lines are where there are edges that you don't need, and the blue is where the smooth groups need to be adjusted.

The area that extrudes from the cross/tower thing that is circled in blue looks to be one smoothing group, which makes the program appear to round out the edge, which is why there are shadows on what should be crisp corners. The other areas are just the opposite, you can clearly see the edges, where if they all shared a smoothing group, that would not be the case.

I don't think the those areas are really too high poly, silhouette of the rounded edges would look a little blocky if you took out some of those loops. I think you can get away with having less edges on the smokestacks as well.

I'm looking forward to seeing this textured!

sheppy: I pass by Frasca everyday on the way to work :) A friend of mine recently worked there.

[sheppy]

gsokol, god it's good to see chambana fellows on this site from time to time. I scoped your portfolio, are you still just in QA or have you upgraded into environmental art? That is assuming you WANT to upgrade. I've been tempted to apply at Volition for a while now but currently working on a XNA game with some friends and, well... gotta be honest, not really interested in crunch times anymore. I think I burned myself out on the concept (two jobs and school) before I even got an industry job.

I do have a question though. I'm environmental art and occassionally vehicle art at Frasca. But with the XNA game, I'm essentially the only artist (and my organic skills SUUUUUUCK) but have NO experience with animation. Know any books that could bridge the Maya to XNA gap or at least a book to go through what would be required to do animation in a game setting?

[gsokol]

Sent you a PM

[GregBurns]

Thanks or your response gsokol. The "unecessary" lines are actually needed - just from that angle they look flush, or they are for repeat textures. I'm not sure what you mean by smoothing groups though? I'm almost finished texturing. I'll post it very soon.

[GregBurns]

Ok I've almost finished texturing the model. Some stuff still to do with the texturing, but I thought I'd post it because you'll have a good idea from what's done. Please give any crits. I'll post the actual texture when I've cleaned it up a bit. BTW I changed it from an old shop to an old pub, as you may have noticed!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/gregorburns/foxandhound.jpg

[gsokol]

Looks great!

I think the green gutter drains could use work, and the reflection in the front door windows is obviously a copied on both sides. Also I think the whole building could use some dirtying up. I don't mean make the whole thing look post nuclear war, but maybe the bottom of the building would have some dirt built up, or the smokestacks would have soot on them, etc.

Edit: After looking again, you do have a little dirt on the white bricks, but I think it can be made a little more noticable.

[Dennispls]

You could work on the transitions between the roof and windows.
They end abruptly and they really stick out.
Honestly i think there are just too many types of materials used for this building giving it an unbalanced look.

[sheppy]

Yah, gotta say I agree with some of the crits here. Problem is some of your textures contrast too much with one another. The other issue I can foresee is this is going to alias like a mother because of the high contrast. I think, as long as you're not using tiling textures, you should go in and add "gunk" or rust and dirt runoff wherever a sign means the brick and likewise, the transition to the roof texture should be painted into the brick itself. You may even want to ignore my previous protest and add in some more geometry to help with the blending.

Of course all of these problems only really become visible to the eye BECAUSE of the incredibly high resolution textures you're using. You could get away with a LOT more but since you're using high resolution, it really puts the problems into focus.

I also noticed a large amount of UV problems but I assume it's just because this is a first pass and that's more of a refining step.

All in all, it's pretty good. Just adding those changes mentioned by myself and others, you can avoid the "tile texture" look and really crank up the model.

[GregBurns]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/gregorburns/foxandhoundrender2.jpg

I've dirtied up the walls a lot more and added more detail