10-Year-Old Challenge - Moutrave

[moutrave]

Hey,

So after thinking about what I was gonna do...I finally started to "model" one of the modules with Maya.

I'm not showing anything just yet...as it really sucks ! :)

I'm very new at modeling and this would be my very first attempt at creating a scene with my own assets...scary !! I'm especially struggling with UV's so far...

I'll try to make something worth showing tomorrow...

The idea of the scene is, very roughly : 3 passageways leading to 3 towers. 2 side towers and one in the middle, that is bigger and whose top is a big fight arena in the form of a circle (final boss fight). Fighters can chose any of the 3 towers to begin their "fighting journey", but it has to end on the middle tower. each of the 2 side towers are linked to the central one, via sky passageways on different floors. The challenge is different in each tower (various types of specific monsters with special abilities etc, RPG style), but equally difficult.

But of course there won't be a gameplay :) (yet !) so let's change the subject.

If I do it right, it should look ok. The whole thing will of course be set underwater, with other buildings surrounding the towers in the background. I hope to create a lot of modular assets to create different buildings in little time...again, that'll be a first try, I hope I can make it !

[BasketQase]

Awesome! Sounds fun : )

[Deltathunder]

Underwater scene Love those :).Sounds like a great idea Moutrave,Good luck with your modeling Im sure they will all turn out fine.
Bring on the images soon .
Good luck.

[moutrave]

Hey,

Spent about 9 hours today starting the thing...modules are very simple, no textures yet, only a little screen of the maya objects and the Unreal scene. I'm made a water distortion post process material that I've applied to my world properties, but I guess it doesn't show on a still picture ! With movement it renders fine though. Bad thing is : the editor crashes when I try to rebuild the lights. If I remove all of my meshes, it doesn't crash but the light build fails. If I place my meshes in an empty map, the lights build ok with no crash...Maybe it's caused by the foliage I've added, and its interaction with my meshes...no idea, but I'll investigate that. In the meantime if anyone has any idea, please share ! :)

So here are the shots. I don't think i'll go a lot further on the modeling part. Of course there will be somedetailing, but I don't know if i'll have the time (and the skill, obviously !) to do something very detailed and good looking.

That's it, see you next time !
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/Maya.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnrealScreen.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnrealScreen02-1.jpg

[moutrave]

I modeled a first iteration of a module that I'd like to use to make the side towers (obviously the ones in the previous screenshots were temporary, they can and will be used for the background city though). I took some inspiration from this type of modular architecture

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=467062

Love the idea. Anyway, under Maya and of course, untextured, here it is :

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/EssaiModule01.jpg

Tomorrow I'll put that in Unreal, start on the background city, which should be easy. I don't know what I'm gonna do about the central tower though. I'll see.

Then this week end I will work on the hardest part...the textures and shaders !

[BasketQase]

That modular concept is really interesting!!

[moutrave]

Thanks for replying :)

I feel like I'm the only one trying at this challenge. I still wonder if it is still up :)

Although I would finish it even if it wasn't :)

[WarrenM]

I think Alex has an announcement coming on this so I'm waiting. In the mean time, I'm consuming ZBrush tutorials and reading a ZBrush book to get ready. :) Just got my license a few weeks back and it's awesome fun!

[moutrave]

Thanks for replying :)

I feel like I'm the only one trying at this challenge. I still wonder if it is still up :)

Although I would finish it even if it wasn't :)

[moutrave]

Wow double post. Thank to my awfully slow work computer !

WarrenM : good luck on Zbrush ! Nice to write a book about it.

[WarrenM]

Reading a book, not writing one. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say about ZBrush. It would be a very short book. :P

[moutrave]

Haha when in the meantime, I have to learn how to read!

[BasketQase]

Yeah, Alex has some plans for the challenge. I'm pretty excited! So it IS still going, but there will be some minor changes to it soon. :D

[moutrave]

So should I stop workin at all in the meantime so as to not temper with the time limit and so on? :d

I'm pretty curious about the challenge changes ! Let us know soon :)

[Deltathunder]

Keep going Mout..
Warren learning the Z.Well done..Best progs around.

[moutrave]

Ok well I kept going a bit

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/test.jpg

I erased the whole previous landscape + the foliage actor and remade them from scratch. I think it looks better now and most important : it dosn't crash anymore on lighting build and the framerate is correct.

So I instanced my modules a lot, especially the main one for the side towers. Still need to texture though...even though I've made my own material using a cubemap for the reflection on the domes and the inter-tower connection modules.
I think it looks better with 4 towers and I still don't know if the main tower will remain the same...but I'll think about it later. I still have a looooot of work to do. And stuff to learn !

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen03.jpg

[AlexG]

Hey Moutrave,

I'm moving this thread to the main challenge forum.

There have been minor tweaks to the rules but nothing major.

Keep going. You doing great.

[moutrave]

Thanks Alex.

I feel a bit bad about starting early but well, I progress slowly and the crazy talented veteran artists out there are gonna gently pulverize me so, I guess it's almost even :)

Great idea turning this into a full blown challenge !

[Duruk]

The layout of the towers look spot on.
Thanks for the great idea of the contest. I would never have thought of doing a design contest for the age group of 10 years old.

[BasketQase]

Really nice work so far! The landscaping looks like you're underwater even without the background done. Nice color choices!

[moutrave]

Thanks Basket !

Unfortunately I had no time to work on it this week...and even less this week end ! And i'm seeing some pretty cool stuff around too. We haven't had a chance to see what you were doing though :p I'm pretty sure it's quite cool, just like before :)

[Deltathunder]

Aww updates plz Mout.Looking forward too seeing what you do this Comp.

[moutrave]

Hey Delta !

I'll start working again tomorrow :) I have to define the background and craete other assets for a part of the city yet to be revealed (and designed precisely...)

I'm still thinking the story up. I had several ideas but I thought they were kinda complicated to grasp for children, so I'll write it down during the week on my thread once it's clearer !

[Deltathunder]

Complicated is good makes the young think.
Hope too see some updates soon.
I loved your work on the last comp real unique style.
Good Luck Mout in this 1.

[moutrave]

Thanks Delat. Loved your work too ! :)

HAd some ideas this night, I'll start modeling some new stuff tonight...!

[moutrave]

Hey,

Here's a little update, quickly :

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen05.jpg

The story draft is that the four side towers + main one are the only remains of a destroyed civilation, obviously not adapted to life underwater ! they were very advanced, but a "tbd" cataclysm struck them and well, here's a tiny bit of what remains of them. Many many centuries later, their evolved descendants, much more adapted to the harsh underwater life, have gladly colonized the planet and adapted to the underwater life. They also discovered the remains of that city, that seems to be coming from a time that no one remembers, or even seems to know about.

As a highly spiritual "specie", they made the "5 towers whose name is still to be determined" a symbol of faith of some sort, and more particularly, a symbol of courage and strength
...and freedom !

The new civ is, just like us, separated in various people classes. This is a "city" of common people, outcasts even, a lot of them monks, orphans, exiles, fighters looking for challenges, even outlaws and so on. They worship the towers as much as they fear them and want to go away from them, as they also represent the doom that struck the old unknown civilization.

Each year a tournament is set up. The one who reaches the top, is said to be taken to a legendary beautiful place that no one has ever seen, located who knows where ... but the legend says that this so called paradise is located above the water, on the only piece of land remaining on the planet.

Of course, nobody has actually seen or heard from the previous winners, if there have been some ! Because every year, the end of the tournament is signaled by a blinding flash of light coming from the top of the tower and heading upwards like a neverending beam. That's it. What does it do? What does it mean? To find out, you actually have to be a part of the annual fighters batch et try to reach the top, while braving the many dangers of the towers...

I realized this is totally a mix of the kind of movies I loved when I was (a lot) younger. I sure loved it ! Anyways, the terrain will be a lot larger to accomodate the background properly so it doesn't look so close and the main scene so small. The new modules are habitats, built especially around the old towers by the ",new people". They are designed for life in water. The conduit that go from under the dome to the ground have been built for the sole purpose or reaching the passageway leading to the main tower. So the candidates just jump of and are "sucked away" there, just like Luke is when his hand gets cut off and that he slides along a tube (that always fascinated me, go figure !).

Anyway, the texture on the 4 towers are totally wip, I was just testing out my UV. I hope to have the finale layout by the end of the week, then concentrate solely on textures and lighting for the next week.

Bye !

[channie]

wow I love it! Keep up the great work you're doing so far!

[moutrave]

thanks :)

I forgot to say that the jellyfish-like habitat's domes will be translucide and will show the "village / small city" that lives inside of them

[moutrave]

Damn the image has disappeared...:'(
I'll have to upload it again tonight.

[moutrave]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen06.jpg

Yesterday's update...more tonight.

[Duruk]

Oooh nice love the mushroom..ish..

[moutrave]

Yeah they are definitely mushroom-ish / jellowfish-ish underwater habitats...I'll try to make them more believable as habitats though, an inside village + a transparant dome should do the trick...I hope !

[moutrave]

I haven't accomplished half of what I wanted to do tonight. The reason is that I spent a while trying to figure out how to make just one part of my texture translucent, and not the other. I still can't figure what I did wrong, as i did place a texture with part of the object's UV grey and the rest black for complete opacity. Still, when i link it to the opacity link of the material editor, all the object become transparent ! If anyone has an idea, I'm listening :). else I'll roam the UDK forums to find out more about this. Shaders are great, but man it's complicated !

At least I have made the landscape bigger so the scene feels more open ... maybe too much, as once again, the editor crashes when I rebuild the lights ! As soon as I make my terrain bigger, it does just that. I'll try to reduce it tomorrow, in the hope that it will still look ok in terms of proportion (but then again, nothing looks in proprotion in this map :)).

Tomorrow for real, I'll double the passageway to the tower and put it to the other side. I also have to make an entry sas at the end of those passageway, where all the "conduits" coming out of the habitats are joining to drop in the challengers.

And most important, I'll design / model the interior of the tiny "bubble cities" inside of the jellyfish-like habitats.

When I re-read myself, I think I sound very weird :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen07.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen08.jpg

[Deltathunder]

Show us your material set up.
I gotta say this is look great,well done Mouts.

[moutrave]

Woooh thanks Delta :) that warms me up !

So here my material setup for this one. On the opacity link, I've place a texture representing my UV's with the grey part supposed to be translucide, and the black part opaque. The bland mode of the material is set to alphacomposite. And still, all of it is translucent :(

But then, I'm no expert in shaders at all, so if you have an idea what I do wrong, i'll gladly take it !

Thanks !

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/MaterialSetup_Dome.jpg

[Deltathunder]

Blend Mode should be set to opacity mask.that should work for ya then Mout

[WarrenM]

If you're wiring into "Opacity" you should set the blend to Translucent. If you wire into "Opacity Mask", then set the blend to Masked.

Either way, white is opaque and black is transparent.

Should work!

[moutrave]

Nice thanks !! It works now. Happy :)

[moutrave]

First 100% custom textures of my life...the least to say is that my learning curve is steep but well, I have a lifetime to learn right ! The green emissive glow on the main tower doesn't make any sens. I'll fix it tomorrow. Also, I still have to add another effect on the side towers main window. Again, tomorrow.

I also hope that tomorrow or my wednesday, I'll be able to at last model the interior of the bubbles...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen09.jpg

[Aldighieri]

Nice!

[moutrave]

I've created the simple modules that make up the villages around the towers...I got the idea from a cool website named graphic-now.com. I hope nobody takes offense.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll texture the villages domes and will retake the textures, as they all suck, no exception :)
I will also try to fix that issue preventing me from rebuilding the lights...editor still crashes every time i try since I've made my terrain bigger.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen10.jpg

[moutrave]

Today i've discovered that the light building crashes becfause of Landscape only with the 64bits version. so tomorrow I'll go back to the 32 bits and I should finally be able to build the damn lights !! So that'll be a perfect opportunity to make a lot of lights tests and tweaking.

Anyway today i've reduced the landscape, added some more background, modified the emissive on the main tower, made the textures for the "villages inside the bubbles" from scratch, deleted and remade the foliage and added rocks to it. I also made a bubble texture and created a particle system out of it.

Obviously nothing is polished. tomorrow, first light pass, build, terrain smoothing, background polishing, and hoplefully, I'll shoot a video and post it here.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen11.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen12.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen13.jpg

[thomthom44]

Looking verry good mout! Good luck,

[channie]

keep it up Mout' ! The mood is top notch :o

[Aldighieri]

Brilliant! And shiny, too!

[Duruk]

Looking great.

Altough its a bit too much bumpmappy for my liking in the last image.
Did you use Crazybump ? If so tone the bump level a tiny bit down.

[moutrave]

You're right, I overdid the bumpiness on these textures :) I'll follow your advice. thanks !

[moutrave]

Hey guys...I hope someone can help me as I have a little bit of a n00b problem : I need to create a second UV set for the lightmap, because obviously right now, the lights look like hell on my meshes.

I'm using Maya, and i have no clue how to create a second UV channel ... can a Maya conoisseur tell me a bit about the process?

I haven't found a tutorial on the net...except for 3DSmax...

Thanks in advance !

[ObliviousSight]

How about this?

http://waylon-art.com/LearningUnreal/UE3-10-LightMaps.htm

I'm not a Maya user myself but I hope this helps. The piece I think you want is about 3/4 of the way down the page. :)

Hope it helps and sorry if it doesn't.

[moutrave]

Ok never mind I've found out. really simple after all.

[Demonizer]

moutrave I'm really amazed by your work....a pure imaginary underwater world.good job

[moutrave]

ObliviousSight : Thank you ! That helped me have a better lightmap :) I'm keeping the article as a eference now

Demonizer : Thanks a lot ! I hope one day we'll have a chance a seeing your amazine work again !

[ObliviousSight]

Glad it was of use!

Keep up the good work, I'm enjoying seeing this come together. Good luck.

[moutrave]

Thanks :)

Tonight I spend all my time trying to figure out how to make my new algae mesh move in a "windy" fashion using a material. I failed. I found another shader tutorial, but I need the august build. I'll take it tomorrow and see what I can do...

I know I should "dirty up" my towers. I'd like to use vertex mesh paint but I still can't get it to work. I know I'm supposed to use a material allowing vertex color paint...Again, I'll see if I find something tomorrow (and if anybody has a trick for that, please share ! :))

I've also quickly modeled some sort of submarine...but without Ikomnen's talent. I'm posting a screen anyway :) UV's and texture tomorrow !

Lots to do tomorrow then...I guess that 'll be a 3 days work.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/UnrealScreen14.jpg

and the LoLSubMarine

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/LolSubMarine.jpg

[channie]

Looks breathtaking as always ;) You may need to tweak the length of your propellers wings for a better overall feel of your submarine.

[moutrave]

Thanks Channie :)

I just did as you advised. It does look better !! Thanks you <3

[moutrave]

Ok I won't post anything tonight as it's all been done in the rush and it looks bad...in these times I regret to have a full time job and to only be able to work on side projects from 9pm on evenings ! That sucks.

Anyway, I've implemented the submarine...I still have that material problem that makes the "done in 2mns" texture look even worse than it is. Problem is : I create a material, I plug an opacity map to the Opacity node (all white, but a chunk of grey for a little translucency), I set the material blend mode to Translucent, and it looks good on the preview, but in game, it make all the other parts of the mesh translucid as well, even though a bit less than the chuck that is meant to be.

I don't know what to do, and I have no time to try and figure and out more so...I guess some things will look bad. I won't film these meshes from a close range !

[jason hutchins]

I was just digging through some of the posts to take a break from rebuilding my scene and I noted you were trying to get some wavy seaweed or something. So I decided to show you how I got my grass to wave around in my san zhi, taiwan scene
This is how I set up the grassy diffuse and spec
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9730051/underwaterFortress/wavyGrass_diffuseSpec.PNG
and this is what makes it all move .. but you have to make sure to add the wind thingy in the environment as well.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9730051/underwaterFortress/wavyGrass_wind.PNG

I had to kill 100 ninjas for this information[I studied a ton of tutorials], I hope to see you put it to good use :p

edit: the green vert color is what I used to vert paint the bottom of the grass. What this does is make the whole mesh wiggle with the sine wave, so to keep parts of it still you have to vert paint those with whatever color you select there. :geek:

[moutrave]

Woah thanks mate ! I had no idea there actually was a wind actor to drop in the map, I guess that's why nothing I did worked ! Anyway, you've been a great help and it's really nice to share this. I'll try and put it to good use tonight ! :)

[jason hutchins]

np, this is what I think makes game artists different from movie artists. If you look at the industries as a whole you often see a lot of snobbery and backstabbing in the movie industry, but all I've ever seen from the game industry is love for the people around you and the generation coming up behind you. :)

[moutrave]

That's right :) I love the spirit too !!

[moutrave]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/FinalShot01.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/FinalShot02.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34080668/UnderCity/FinalShot03.jpg




The distant future, long after all life has deserted the surface of the earth. At least, that's what the new human "underwater" society believes.

That society had to adapt to life underwater after a cataclysm long forgotten. It's not easy, cities are scarse, but there are remains of technology and various clans have formed, each of them having their own beliefs.

This particular "city", if you can call it that, has been nicknamed "Omega" for lack of a better word. Here people come looking for a new beginning or an end, that depends on the outcome of their journey. Outcasts, outlaws, religious fanatics, warriors eager to fight : all this type come here because of the strange and old legends surrounding the five towers that are planted in the middle of a small crater like plain.

Whoever can reach the top of the middle tower and defeat whatever eveil they find in between and underneath the great final dome, is said to be transported in the only remaining surface land that exists.

Of course no one has come back to tell the tale. But people keep coming once a year, and at the end of the 3 day long challenge, a blinding light flashes out of the dome, along with a screeching organic / mechanic sound that would creep rambo out.

Yet no one know what happens in there afterwards. that's why people keep wanting to find out !

[moutrave]

I wish I hadn't had so many tech problems : the env is far from finished, and certainly is not polished. i will keep on working on it afterwards and will try to make it a lot better :)

Anyway, I had a lot of fun participating, and congratz all participants, again, there really was some cool work and I was glad ot be a part of it !

[moutrave]

Men the lights suck...when it refuses to build the lights because of the damn foliage, I didn't really have a choice. And I keep answering to myslef. I guess I'm going crazy. Not the best end of challenge I've made (then again, it's the second challenge I do: ))

[ikomnen]

Hey,and video?

[Thrice]

Love the stacked towers! Great work.

[moutrave]

I just got up, I have to take my flight to Montreal, I don't have time to reduce the size of the video and less post it...I'm out of luck since yesterday So no video I guess :(

[moutrave]

Unless I can post it from Montreal this after noon...

[Aldighieri]

Nice work!

[moutrave]

Well, I failed the submission I guess : I didn't let Dropbox update prperly at home, so now in Montreal, I can't get my UPD and UDK map in order to shoot a new video. That's sad...but well next time I'll a better video shooting process...

I'll still post when I get back on the 7th, out of the challenge obviously, so I least it'll be there and some will see it !

[Duruk]

Nice underwater scene and Happy Birthday Moutrave.