Pre-rendered background

[G_Dragon]

I figure this scene is close enough to done, and yet still loose enough to ask for crits.
Also, based off of this image- http://toolkitzone.com/vault/games/images/11983.png

[ndchristie]

Well, you'll want to make your cobbles less deep/shaded, as well as to introduce some broader areas where they've become all but flat together from wear and dirt buildup (this works well in your reference).  Other than that, looking good! finish up your textures and start getting the lighting figured .

[Kidfrommars]

Hi. I don't have much to say but I love khin's work.
I think this is prety nice, but the cobble stones look... blury, and they seem very bright. They hurt my eyes.

[G_Dragon]

Everyone was talking about the cobblestone, so I did some playing around with it.
The scene takes 11 minutes to render.

[big brother]

You should adjust those barrels on the right side so the positioning is a little more organic. Right now they're in a line.

+11

[G_Dragon]

Time to model the props and add some more stuff!

[Kidfrommars]

Great so far!   

[ndchristie]

Hmm, i feel like the path is still far more contrasty and now noisy compared with the rest, and there might be a resolution discrepency.  Is there a version you can use with less grain, finer texels, and less contrast?

[G_Dragon]

You may see some render artifacts around the image. Ignore them, since I just wanted to quickly render out the scene. (2 minutes and 30 seconds compared to 11 minutes)

I tried to fix what ndchristie pointed out. I think it works, but it is still fairly easy to fix. The only thing in the scene that is a temporary object is the barrels, since I'm going to remodel it soon. After that, I need to add in a lamp stand, and maybe a few more models. As for adding people to the scene, I don't know if that is in the scope of this project.

A bit of a side note- all the textures are procedurally generated. So, there shouldn't be a resolution discrepancy.

[G_Dragon]

Lighting now. I think I have maybe a few props left to put in the scene.

[ndchristie]

The feels rather down-to-black, which generally sets no mood and makes the scene just look as though it's been darkened.  Try putting in a few more light sources in multiple hues to pull more atmosphere out.  Also I think that your lamp, if that's what I'm seeing, will want to be brighter, composed of at least 2 lights (one quite bright with a sharp falloff, one dimmer, with a different hue, that spreads much farther out).  You'll also probably want harder shadows in the end to help define your geometry for the viewer, particularly at the cobble border and between houses.

[G_Dragon]

Progress!


There are some weird rendering things happening where certain elements should be dark. I have no idea what is causing it, but I know it isn't really normal. I did some post production after the render (lighting is basically the same as the last one). So, I think that I'm nearing the end of the piece... hopefully.

[alspal]

Looks a lot better, however I feel the colours are too saturated in the dark areas.

[PypeBros]

why is my brain still telling me "past the light, the road becomes vertical" while I know that's impossible ?

The perspective is perplexing here ...

[Gil]

The lighting on the road is completely botched. Look at the bottom part. The top of the rocks is black, the crevices are actually brighter. The curb stones are dark on top and very light on the side where the light doesn't hit.

For some reason, the lighting is inverted from what it's supposed to be.

[ndchristie]

I have no idea what is causing it, but I know it isn't really normal.

I think you're actually onto it - the problem is a bad normal map I think.  Most likely it's as simple as an inverted axis and it can be fixed in your material properties, but it might be interted palette data on the map itself.

Also as far as the res goes you can still end up with mixed texels if your materials are not uniform, or if you've scaled further for one than the others.  I feel like your texture, if it's not a different resolution, is still both noisy and blurry (not sure if there's a word for this - basically looks like you shot on the wrong filmspeed but it's not a photograph so i don't know what to call it).

I still think that your lantern, as th eonly source of light, needs a few more lights set up with different falloffs and more defined shadows.  You skylight should probably be in the sage-slate range too, right now it's like, why are the rooves lit with an orange glow?

[McClaneGames]

[G_Dragon]

Thanks for the picture. I've been sitting on this project for a while, and may pick it back up later. It is time to do something different for now.

[Dusty]

I'll be honest, something about the whole scene looks very off to me. And I didn't want to post this because I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly what was wrong. All I know is that looking at this and it just seems wrong. I think it goes all the way back to the original non-textured version you showed in IRC, but even the colored versions still look off.

This has a very soft, plastic-like look that I often see from works coming from zBrush. And maybe this could have been improved with the textures but it looks almost like you're relying solely on the polygons instead of creative use of texturing and other artistic choices. Also, I notice the scene is very... simple. Nothing has to be broken down into simple geometry because it seems like it's already in this form, and to a perfect degree.

Lastly, I don't think the colors suit their purpose very well. Bright blue(which ends up being a very dark and bold blue at night) doesn't seem like the sort of color you'd find a house made out of bricks being. Typically in games the color variety comes from the roof-tops, not the buildings themselves. That's not to say all the walls should be a boring brown shade, but I seriously think it should be toned down and and let the roofs bring color and life to the scene.

Sorry

Oh, and what's going on with the inverted brick shading on the path?

[9_6]

This doesn't look like a town from high up, it looks like a miniature.
The roofs look like cookies or any other form of pastry. The way the darker parts are make it look baked and the warm colors do the rest.

Maybe it is because everything has such an uniform size, lines up perfectly and is very, very bumpy for something that's supposed to be large that makes it look that way.
This is especially evident in the bricks surrounding the street, they look like miniature stones in a model city.

If that was intended, more power to ya, if not, well, apart from starting over with a lot more flat shapes, I wouldn't know of a quick way to fix this.

[G_Dragon]

Thanks for the replies. I figured out what was causing the weird lighting artifacts. Turns out that using experimental rendering engines is a bad idea.

As for the textures, I'd probably have to go back to the modelling phase and redo a lot of stuff. So, I'm probably going to let this scene stagnate for now. But, I will add more to this thread later.