LevelEd's Work - All Comments Welcome

Very nice, I like it. Can't wait to see it textured. [grin] Do you work professionally, or is this just a hobby?

Thanks JTippetts. Well i used to be a freelancer but ive just been offered a job with SEGA Racing Studios as an environment artist. So i guess im working professionally now. I have just been modelling these buildings just for practice. As i cant wait to get into SEGA's projects.

Pretty nice! Good use of polys, too.

I believe that "next-generation" games (targeting modern graphics cards, and Xbox360/PS3) actually can use a lot more polys that these that you've modeled, so depending on target, you could go in and spruce it up with more detail where necessary. (But don't put detail where it's not necessary -- that's just a waste of time)

Thanks hplus0603, Yeah im just used to low poly modelling as i used to sell off models to small game developers. Yeah SEGA said to get there models looking top and detailed they use cubemaps. Im not realy familar with this techique although i have heard of it. I was told to look well into Project gotham racing and other racing titles. Alot of there environments arnt realy that high poly.

Oviously the PGR artists have been spending some time on this (below) I only spent 5 hours as it was a speed modelling challange to show SEGA how fast i can work to some extent.

I looked at PGRs Environment



Heres mine (shown in the interview)

not bad work, what platform are you going to be working with? as for your models, they look good, but its hard to comment and critique them if you give us no wires frames to go on (nor do you say if that is polygons or tris). i'd also love to see some normal mapping on these too so you can really bringout the details (although this depends on the platform).
and hplus, you can actually get away with very few polys, most next-gen (well current gen now) models mainly make heavey use of shaders (hence nvidias major jump in shader processing with the 8800). not to steal away from your thread Leveled, but here is a model i'v worked on for a few hours that shows just how well shaders and normal mapping can mask low poly-ness.
i still have a lot of work to do but that well is only 354 polys (566 tris).
so i'd love to see your models leveled with normal mapping. any mention of what game you're going to be working on or can you not say because of nda? goodjob landing a job in the industry, i can't wait to get one myself one of these days.
p.s. are the sails simply planes render 2-sided or are they modled on both sides? i'd just like to know because they look quite good.

Clcik here for the well picture

edit: made image a link to be less intrusive to your thread.

[Edited by - Jarrod1937 on December 29, 2006 9:12:41 PM]

Hi Jarod thanks for your comment. I'll be working with Xbox 360 and Ps3 mainly and SEGA do have plans for the handhelds but nothings comfirmed. The stuff ive been told about SEGA rally will blow any driving game out the water, and there unanounced project they start when i join is full destructable environments. All sounds great. Yeah i mainly normal map although i would need to boost the poly count up as i dont think my models arnt high enough in polys to normal map form hi to low. Although i could be wrong. I'll give it a shot.

Also im dont know what project ill be working on with them, i got training for a few months to get to know there level editors ect. Yeah sails are just a box model but very thin so they render both sides.

I'll prob get texturing the dockside today, i usauly work to this sort of style, Model done for RTS/FPS Company remains to be unanounced at this present time. They have a good concept though kinda like a whole remake on the Full Spectrum Warrior with vehicle, air, ship and more advance troop reworkings. Although there maps are absoulty massive, so models need to be kept under the 2000 region. Each building ive done for them are arround 800-1200. This one is 1204 just over but uses no bump mapping/parralex mapping. There upgrading there engine soon from DX8 to DX9 and im sure they will get a release arround these forums showing the game off.



Heres the wireframe of the dockside you requested.





[Edited by - LevelEd on December 30, 2006 7:09:18 AM]

oh yeah, atleast from what i can see in the wireframe of the dock you have plenty of polys to do normal mapping. you could really add a lot of detail to your air ships and sails that way. and have you tried reducing the sails polycount by just making them out of a single plane and having your engine and modeling app render 2-sided? baslically rendering 2-sided just forces both sides of a mesh to render without any regard to the normals on a mesh, its frequently used for foilage and such.
as for this " i dont think my models arnt high enough in polys to normal map form hi to low.", i would think just your average image generated normal map would suffice really, you don't need anything too special for your models.

Hey that's some nice work there. Good luck in your SEGA job. I was curious what tools you use for modeling/texturing and also how do you go about starting to model one of those environments? Do you create a top down floor plan sort of thing or some other technique? It's just I've started working on some level geometry myself and I wondered if you have any tips.

Hey dom, thanks for the comment.

I use 3ds max 8 & Photoshop

Um to be honest i dont use a level plan or anything these what you see are just from my imgaination. I understand that SEGA and many other industry companies will want me to model off a concept artwork. Some tips would be to keep your models original. Dont keep to the image in your head or the concept to much explore a bit. Add unique things into your models. It also depends on what sort of genre you are talking about for level design.

As i put into perspective that Fantasy type environments need to have some sort of difference to the real world or some sort of feel of magic.

With my city environment this was built to be most based off an urban environment, not to detailed but just the basics and the track.

Its also what you put in your environment which makes it effective. My dockside has two ships yes, but what makes it unique is there are airship docking ports and also a different style ballon. Fantasy is something like a dream world which is magical.

Other games like war games, environments are usauly torn apart. As you can see in my texture pieace houses are dark and dim, some boxes smashed.

Also you will find after modelling lighting of the environment realy add effect to your environment.

Thanks for advice aswell Jarrod. Ill get onto that. Normal mapping is something i need some work in but i have the basics down. Ill get onto it right away. Then ill get a Dx9 Render out.

[Edited by - LevelEd on December 30, 2006 12:55:43 PM]

Hi LevelEd, thats very nice work! I like your city view, - thats like a whole GTA style neighbourhood in 5 hours - amazing, of course I realise it would still all need normal mapping & texturing etc, - but still good!

Your point about having different types of airships and things in your docks, yeah I agree with that, also I like you mentioning the "feel" of things, I think games / levels etc should really try to capture the "atmostphere" of whatever they are trying to do.

Hi Stevieboy, thanks for your comment. Yeah well I still need to normal map a lot of things but i’m concentrating on the environment and its atmosphere.

One game I know gives a lot of vibrant atmosphere but was voted the worst MMORPG. Is Dark and Light. Although that game is bad in gameplay ways its environments from cities and its breath taking views from its procedural terrain using Vworld Tech. Its something for an eye candy capture. Although DnL is not fit to be a MMO maybe just a tech demo :P

But yeah, at the moment I’ve been playing around with the Multiverse engine. A nice MMO engine. I don’t aim to go create the next wow. I don’t even aim to create a project I’m just using it to allow users to connect to a vibrant environment, It only features a few islands and sky harbours but honestly enough my aim is show a lot of AI going about daily jobs within the towns and port sides. Also the Airships to be running on a Waypoint from A-B or A-B-C.

In theory.

Airship 1 will wait 5mins, then deport from point A,
Airship 1 will follow onto point B and land
Airship 1 will wait 5mins, then deport from point B

Its just simple practice plus also it’ll be a full functional 3d work demo so all of you can log in and visit my little world :)

It will be a grey scale project (except terrain) first off and as i progress it will appear day by day to be textured.

Demo is Multiverse using Speed Tree and Ageia PsyX. DX9 rendering.

At the moment I’m modelling the content and will start work on the terrain this week coming. I have plenty more to show. So I will gather my work and get some more rendered off.

-This isn’t a Game- -Just a Small Environment Project-

Players will be able to chat, set up small camps, set up shops, equip weapons.

Vision:

You walk along the beach side and the sun start to sets. You decide to set up camp by a few palms were some fireflies are flying around. You and your friend settle down to cook food over the camp fire.

Well something more intense rather then GO KILL EVERYTHING :P I’m more of a chilled out designer myself and love the environment more than the PVP.

Updates soon!

From my understand, level texturing is usually done using a variety of pre-made textures... you would use a library of textures for all textures of a certain area of the city, and combine them in different ways (adding different dirt masks, etc). Really, it isn't possible to have an environment textured like a character; you need the tiling, you need the repetition. So, really, you figure out what textures you need (wood, thatch, stone, glass, barrel, grass, dirt, for a peasant hut area, say), and texture all your buildings using those materials. At least that's my understanding.

So, for example, you would build a hi-res brick wall, get the normal map and height map, paint the specular and diffuse, and use that texture wherever there are bricks... you could overlay different dirt maps and whatnot via shaders (or even use procedurals... maybe).

Hi Professor420,thanks for the uphand. I'll look into this straight away.

Quote:

Original post by Professor420 From my understand, level texturing is usually done using a variety of pre-made textures... you would use a library of textures for all textures of a certain area of the city, and combine them in different ways (adding different dirt masks, etc). Really, it isn't possible to have an environment textured like a character; you need the tiling, you need the repetition. So, really, you figure out what textures you need (wood, thatch, stone, glass, barrel, grass, dirt, for a peasant hut area, say), and texture all your buildings using those materials. At least that's my understanding. So, for example, you would build a hi-res brick wall, get the normal map and height map, paint the specular and diffuse, and use that texture wherever there are bricks... you could overlay different dirt maps and whatnot via shaders (or even use procedurals... maybe).

that is partially true, but if a building is a center of a level, you may use texturing techniques similar to how you would texture a character. take a look at this guys portfolio video it shows how he formats his environment textures, hardly any are truly tileable, this is what i see in a lot of current environmental artist.

Quote:

that is partially true, but if a building is a center of a level, you may use texturing techniques similar to how you would texture a character. take a look at this guys portfolio video it shows how he formats his environment textures, hardly any are truly tileable, this is what i see in a lot of current environmental artist.

An environment will never be textured like a character, the reason is simple. You will simply never be able to use hi-res enough textures to eliminate the need to repeat textures... there is always the trade off between fidelity and repetition. Carmack's megatextures sort-of solve this, but I can almost guarentee there will be a good deal of repetition in the environments and buildings regardless (due also to artist's time constraints as to technological constraints). If you take a look at that guy's textures, they are no different from what I described, and has been used since 3D began. All the wood siding is a 512 texture, the doors all use the same texture, etc. Characters have very minimal repeating on them, the foundation of environmental art is smart repetition, and it will always be... as long as there is a price to production time, and rendering time, it will never be cost effective to create an entirely unique environment.

Thank you all for your comments. At this present time im working on a new style of housing and shapes im experimenting with. Ive had a decent look into tents and sheets and wooden fantasy huts. I'll keep you all updated with renders and concepts.

Happy new year to all!

Quote:

Original post by Professor420 Quote: that is partially true, but if a building is a center of a level, you may use texturing techniques similar to how you would texture a character. take a look at this guys portfolio video it shows how he formats his environment textures, hardly any are truly tileable, this is what i see in a lot of current environmental artist. An environment will never be textured like a character, the reason is simple. You will simply never be able to use hi-res enough textures to eliminate the need to repeat textures... there is always the trade off between fidelity and repetition. Carmack's megatextures sort-of solve this, but I can almost guarentee there will be a good deal of repetition in the environments and buildings regardless (due also to artist's time constraints as to technological constraints). If you take a look at that guy's textures, they are no different from what I described, and has been used since 3D began. All the wood siding is a 512 texture, the doors all use the same texture, etc. Characters have very minimal repeating on them, the foundation of environmental art is smart repetition, and it will always be... as long as there is a price to production time, and rendering time, it will never be cost effective to create an entirely unique environment.

your exact words were "tiling" and in my mind tiling means you can tile the texture and have it appear seamless. however as you can see his textures are not like that, they do have "repetition" though as you said. basically we're both right, it was just a misunderstanding of terms.

Would it be possible to get any of these level meshes for test scenes that can be used in my engine? I'm not amazing in the art department so it'd really help me. I completely understand if you don't want to. Feel free to PM me about it if you don't want to reply on the main forum.

Sorry Mercury i'm keeping these models for my environment demo. What sort of environment are you looking for?