Sci-Fi Scene

[jak_carver]

Jak_Carver how long have you been modeling and sculpting ? This is the most amazing thing i have ever seen !

Wow, thanks for the comment. Just working on my art so I can update my reel and get a new job at a nice studio, hopefully someplace like Bioware, Epic Games, or something like that.
I've been working in computer graphics for about 7+ years now. I first started sculpting with ZBrush since they released version 2.0 some years ago, but off and on. Only recently have I been incorporating it into workflow for just about everything, it's just such an awesome piece of software- no 3D artist should be without it. As for modeling in general, I first began the self taught route back during my modding days with CryEngine and Farcry for the PC. Those were some good old days, not a care in the world and working in 3dsMax till 3 in the morning just having fun creating new weapons for mods and stuff.

[Zersixs]

thats sweet, my friend joined Bioware 1 week ago, here is hes channel http://www.youtube.com/user/RiddlazC but i think you are much better

Have a nice day

[jak_carver]

thats sweet, my friend joined Bioware 1 week ago, here is hes channel http://www.youtube.com/user/RiddlazC but i think you are much better

Have a nice day

Wow, now that's a major compliment, thanks for the kind words. I've seen your friend's work, he is really, really good. What a coincidence that he's working at Bioware now, good for him

[KartoonHead]

it's just such an awesome piece of software- no 3D artist should be without it.

Yes it is! I've been trying to force myself to use it so I can get used to the skillset but really haven't known where to start. I made my first proper ZBrush mesh today, a rock, nothing special but I used ZSpheres to create the base, UV Master to create UVs for it, then Spotlight to sculpt the detail as well as paint a texture, so that's gotta be at least 0.0001% of ZBrush that I know how to use now right? XD

I've really gotta sing Spotlight's praises here, a few strokes and you've not only made yourself a detailed high-poly mesh but also sorted yourself a Diffuse, Normal, AO, Displacement and Cavity map for your low-poly, hit the MultiMap Exporter and BOOM! Mesh and maps, all in a neat'n'tidy folder. I'd been bouncing around allsorts of different packages trying to make a convincing rock and it turns out you can get great results from just a few minutes in ZBrush (I'm confident it'd take me under 10 minutes to replicate my results with a bit more practice). I'd wondered why you've been pushing ZBrush so hard, now I know it's because ZBrush is IMMENSE! (for 'immense' see 'amazing', 'awesome' and 'sweeeeeeeeeeeet')

[jak_carver]

Back with another small, but subtle round of changes to the scene. Namely I made the following changes:

- added custom flares to the interior; tried to limit them so as to not overwhelm the scene with too many flares- can get annoying to the player/viewer

- created higher quality lightmaps

- postFX: did some color correction and minor tweaks, including enabling full antialiasing, MSAA, etc. (DX11 is awesome)








the interior lens flares I think make it look more cinematic and interesting; Unreal's lens flare editor is simply unmatched





I added more contrast with some post FX color correction and changes to the lighting levels. This wasn't really a problem; it was easy thanks to my experience working with renderers like mental ray, which have equivalents when it comes to tone mapping and color correction. If you're familiar working with post ware like AfterEffects, Nuke, etc. this is very familiar, as the way it works is almost identical in theory. Lots of fun, those post FX nodes.



That planet in the background is similar to Mars; cold, desolate, and potentially full of unknown minerals and ore that can be mined and collected. Also like Mars, this planet appears to have inconclusive signs that there once was life...but what happened to it?...








I'm pretty happy with it so far. I already have about 12 cameras setup and animated in the scene. The idea now is to render out a sequence through Matinee, a very awesome animation tool built into Unreal; the possibilities with it are simply staggering. You can use it for anything from animating a door opening for your level, to creating beautiful cinematic sequences that so many games use. I'll be rendering out a cinematic of my own and add music in post for the final reel.

[jak_carver]

Yes it is! I've been trying to force myself to use it so I can get used to the skillset but really haven't known where to start. I made my first proper ZBrush mesh today, a rock, nothing special but I used ZSpheres to create the base, UV Master to create UVs for it, then Spotlight to sculpt the detail as well as paint a texture, so that's gotta be at least 0.0001% of ZBrush that I know how to use now right? XD

I've really gotta sing Spotlight's praises here, a few strokes and you've not only made yourself a detailed high-poly mesh but also sorted yourself a Diffuse, Normal, AO, Displacement and Cavity map for your low-poly, hit the MultiMap Exporter and BOOM! Mesh and maps, all in a neat'n'tidy folder. I'd been bouncing around allsorts of different packages trying to make a convincing rock and it turns out you can get great results from just a few minutes in ZBrush (I'm confident it'd take me under 10 minutes to replicate my results with a bit more practice). I'd wondered why you've been pushing ZBrush so hard, now I know it's because ZBrush is IMMENSE! (for 'immense' see 'amazing', 'awesome' and 'sweeeeeeeeeeeet')

Exactly! I love ZBrush and I wouldn't be able to complete anything like this sci-fi scene if it wasn't for ZBrush. A lot of the awesome games we play nowadays are made possible with ZBrush. Keep practicing, ZBrush is so not technical, the more you use it, the better you get, faster you get, and more you appreciate it. The things you mentioned you learned so far, is not 0.0001%; its more than that. Those are some of the more basic and fundamental tools ZBrush offers, and there is more, but once you master just the things you mentioned, you can still do so much awesome work.

And yes I agree, ZBrush is great for many things, including making highly detailed rocks!

[MatiasCastro]

So, you're interested?

[Zersixs]

Jak how do you get your meshes so high resolution texture. My models look like **** when i stand near infront of them. They are a bit blurry and the texture is awful. Same with my terrain and i dont kno how to scale it down.

Help me jak

[Lord_PorkSword]

Jak, This is some superb work you are posting here! [insert beer here]
Can't wait to see more as you progress further!

[jak_carver]

Jak how do you get your meshes so high resolution texture. My models look like **** when i stand near infront of them. They are a bit blurry and the texture is awful. Same with my terrain and i dont kno how to scale it down.

Help me jak

What res are your textures? If you're using low res textures, like <=512 then yeah they won't look good even when close up. Also make sure to follow good texturing practices, like overlapping UV's when necessary to save texture space, maximizing your UV layout space with efficient UV's, etc. Make sure also when importing your textures to choose correct import settings, if you choose to import with a bunch of compression you can hurt the quality. I also use MSAA, MLAA, FXAA, and general DX11 features to improve quality.
Other than that, your textures are as good as you make them; good textures look crisp and quality, bad ones won't. Texturing is an art in itself so it isn't easy.

[jak_carver]

Jak, This is some superb work you are posting here! [insert beer here]
Can't wait to see more as you progress further!

Thanks for the kind words. I'll be making a video soon. Actually I already did, by using Unreal Matinee to make some camera animations and flythrough of the environment (finally get to see the animated elements of the background, holo panels, and volumetric lighting!)
I have the video rendered out, I just need to take it to post and edit the final video for my portfolio. I'll post on Vimeo and put a link here when it's done sometime next week.

[Zersixs]

i make my textures 1024 and it looks like 512, if i make a box and make all uvs as big as they can get in the uv space they still look really bad. I import my textures to udk as TARGA

[jak_carver]

i make my textures 1024 and it looks like 512, if i make a box and make all uvs as big as they can get in the uv space they still look really bad. I import my textures to udk as TARGA

Have you read the UDN docs on working with textures in Unreal? Perhaps you might be missing some key little thing?
Could also be your quality settings, are you running in a low quality mode or something? There are a lot of compression settings when importing your textures, depending on what settings you use, you can inadvertently hurt the look by choosing wrong settings. Sometimes the default importer settings are not ideal, though usually it works in the first try. In my workflow I setup my textures and materials in my 3D package then export via FBX. In Unreal I import everything with FBX and Unreal sets up all my settings automatically, including correct texture import settings for color maps and for normal maps.
Not sure what your workflow is, but if you describe it, maybe I can help?

[Zersixs]

First off, i installed 3ds max 2012 3 / 4 days ago (i have modeled like 3 months now) and i just started model straight away. I dident change any settings on it. I do like i always do, model, unwrap, texture in photoshop and on all my models the texture quality is bad. Dont matter what 3ds max i use. Here is a video of a door i made 3 weeks ago, Still got the same problem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUsY1ty_XyY

One thing that irritates me on UDK is that when i build lightning all sudden my models have no shadows or very little, you dont see any shapes on the shadow just a round blurry shadow. I had this on the july built also, i haven't found any fix for it. When i look at EPICS props, when you walk close to them the texture changes to a higher quality. It looks so much better than my 10 pixlar textures on my props.... I get so mad

Help me Jak !

Note: You can also check my youtube channel Danuxsy (the link above is to one of my vids ) Maybe it can help you.

Cheers The mad Simon

[jak_carver]

Well the first thing I noticed on your video is that there is a lot of areas with UV stretching. This will always make textures look bad, no matter what, so you need to make sure you are laying out your UV's correctly.
As for why your texture resolution is dropping in Unreal when moving the player close to your static meshes, I really don't know why you're experiencing this. I haven't come across any problems or bugs that could cause this.

For shadows and lighting there are a lot of factors to consider. If you are using global illumination you'll get diffuse bounces of light, so shadowed areas will loose their contrast and depth simply because there's light bouncing around. Also, wha kind of shadows are you using? There are directional lights, point lights, spotlights, then there's dominant lights- all of them have different types of shadows, some even take area lighting effects into account when building your lighting, similar to what renderers like VRay and mental ray do.

I think you should read the following doc thoroughly : http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html
That explains everything regarding lightmass and how lights basically work in Unreal. The UDK docs pretty much answer everything there is to know about Unreal and its different tools. That's where I go to learn everything I know about UDK. Do a search for texture mips or texture streaming, it might bring up a doc that explains how to properly import and use textures with Unreal; this page might be helpful:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Impor...eTutorial.html

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Textu...dSettings.html

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Textu...echniques.html

There's a lot more on UDN. Look over all the docs and go over them, they do a great job of explaining everything about the engine.

[Zersixs]

texture resolution is dropping in Unreal when moving the player close to your static meshes, that line is a bit off, i mean my model have the same texture resolution when im close and far away. That makes
it look bad.

I will look through the links and see if it can help me, thank you !

[MatiasCastro]

So, you're interested?

I wish you the best.
Bye

[jak_carver]

I wish you the best.
Bye

are you bothered or something?

sorry for not using your music, but I just envision the animation more with a Mass Effect style soundtrack in the background.

[MatiasCastro]

Sorry, i post you a link with my music but i never had your opinion about that and I though that you're not interested in my music. Because i'm not offering my composed music... i'm offering to create original music for your Sci-fi Scene. That's all.

[MatiasCastro]

You're interested?

[jak_carver]

You're interested?

Lets talk through PM. I do like the samples from your site, it sounds pretty good. We can discuss the style and everything. Also, I need to show you the final video that way you can get a feel for the entire thing. I have already rendered out a bunch of cinematic animation and stuff, but I have to composite it together. Once that's done, we can add your music to the video and we should have something pretty cool.

I'll probably have the video, or at least an initial draft done sometime this week (trying to manage different things right now that are taking some of my time up). When I have that draft video done, I'll show it to you, prob I will post it on Vimeo or somthing. Then you can see it and get a good feel for it. Thanks for offering your talents, looking forward to speaking with you through PM some more.

[stevelois]

Back with another small, but subtle round of changes to the scene...

Every pic I look at, I just fall down my chair damn it so stop posting so kic*-as* pics or I'll brake my neck &/or my chair if you continue !

I can tell you that all of what you accomplished so far is visually stunning ! You MUST BE very proud of this work because it look like a tripple "A" title made all by yourself

[jak_carver]

Every pic I look at, I just fall down my chair damn it so stop posting so kic*-as* pics or I'll brake my neck &/or my chair if you continue !

I can tell you that all of what you accomplished so far is visually stunning ! You MUST BE very proud of this work because it look like a tripple "A" title made all by yourself

wow, thanks for the comment. I really appreciate that you appreciate my work. I like to push myself further with every piece of work I do, and this portfolio piece was a quite the challenge, as I was trying to get highest quality work possible and as fast as possible, as I need my reel up ASAP as I currently am looking for a new job. I currently am putting it all together into an animation and I'll post the full reel when I'm done; it should be interesting.

[weephun]

Wow, very nice indeed. Can't wait to see the reel.

[jak_carver]

Wow, very nice indeed. Can't wait to see the reel.

Hi weephun,

Thanks for the kind words, means a lot coming from you, really does. If you have a LinkedIn account, would you mind if we connected?

[jak_carver]

Hey everyone,

It's been a few weeks since I last posted updates. I was caught up working on some freelance animation work for a new client. I found some time however, and I managed to wrap this project up. This piece is meant more to be part of my new demo reel, but I decided to make a separate video with just this piece, as well as a breakdown. I'm glad to finally be getting it out there and it was a lot of fun to work on. In the end I made one more change, following some critique from a friend, I added realtime reflections to the glass of the windows; it is very subtle as I didn't want mirror reflections that made it difficult to view the background of space outside.

The final video is 1080p and I uploaded it to Vimeo. Enjoy and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I also added some detailed information about the project in the Vimeo description. Here is the link to the video; I suggest watching it in HD, but that's just me

http://vimeo.com/31193419

Thanks to everyone that provided feedback and constructive criticism.

[merc-ai]

I'm Commander Shephard* and this is my favorite Mass Effect-inspired UDK scene on this forum.

*actually, I'm not Shephard, but the rest is true.

[jak_carver]

I'm Commander Shephard* and this is my favorite Mass Effect-inspired UDK scene on this forum.

*actually, I'm not Shephard, but the rest is true.

LMAO, I laughed so hard when I read this- hahaha that's a good one lol

[Lord_PorkSword]

Fantastic M8! [insert Beer here]

[jak_carver]

Fantastic M8! [insert Beer here]

Guiness sounds good

[stevelois]

Been a while I didn't check your thread. I must say, the video is absolutely F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C !!! Love the music too

A small scene with so much to show, WOW !

I know, you don't know me but just to introduce myself a bit, I'm in the Unreal/UT scene since 1998 as a player/tester, I've played/test & private test hundreds of maps & scene since the years. I started to map for myself in 2009 for UT3 so when I see something like this, I just can be amaze by the amount of work you put into it.

So, after seeing & play I dunno how many project, yours is in my top 10, so this is a very high compliment coming from me

Your video is well made, it demonstrate your skills & I hope you will find something great that fit's you.

THX for taking the time to make this vid, it's a pleasure to my eyes & I'll post it later on at my homepage, a bit of publicity won't hurt

Ciao

[jak_carver]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who gave feedback on my demo reel work. It really helped me improve the reel and show my work in the best light possible, to hopefully, get a chance at a job.

I'm happy to say, that not only was I able to get a chance to get a job, I was able to get a great one after some pretty good offers. This is my first game job and I love it. The people are great, the project is amazing (due to NDA I can't talk about it, but it will be revealed at E3), and the studio is great. I had to move to Los Angeles, but that's alright- it's a great city and people are really nice.

Thanks again for all the great feedback I got from users here in this community, it really did help nail a good demo reel, which directly led to this great career move. If there is anyone out there on the same path, don't worry, there are more game jobs out there than there are people to fill them. All you need is a great reel and lots of passion. Use LinkedIn, it is a great resource, and it is how I found over 4 job offers in only one month. Subscribe to as many groups as you can on LinkedIn, especially game related groups. Sign up for job newsletters from LinkedIn, there are tons of game jobs for people in engineering and in art/animation. Also, companies are craving people who work with and are skilled with the Unreal Engine- being knowledgeable with Unreal can make the difference when finding a good job; it did for me and I'm glad I took the time to learn Unreal.

This community is awesome and so is the Unreal engine!

[Hellclown]

NDA prevents you from telling us which studio was lucky enough to grab you?

[jak_carver]

Prevents me from talkng about the project, but it is a AAA XBox360/PS3 game for Capcom. Should be announced soon, maybe E3. Capcom has some great games in production right now.

[maybe123]

Resident Evil 6?, Just saw the Trailer and looks pretty good .. was just confirmed haha

[jak_carver]

RE6 does look great doesnt it? Lot of great games being released by Capcom in 2012 and 2013. But yeah, can't talk about the game I'm working on.

[DarkSonny07]

Brutal work jak simply brutal wow I felt rare when I saw those pics its like i was here in another past live or so... wow
Me likes your work mate any vid of this masterpiece?

[jak_carver]

Brutal work jak simply brutal wow I felt rare when I saw those pics its like i was here in another past live or so... wow
Me likes your work mate any vid of this masterpiece?

sure, here is a video: http://vimeo.com/31193419

Also will be able to talk about the game I'm working on soon, very exciting!

[Private Tux]

Amazing for the art! One of the best projects you got here mate. Pure solid metal textures and brightness are never loose this touch!

[RaPtOr_v9600]

Excellent job, video is just perfect