UPDATES- 26/5/2012 [WIP] Photorealism: Project Amazonia

[ThePriest909]

Great job here!
I'd only use static meshes instead of landscape for the large rock/Mountain shapes in order to cover the texture strech.

[ambershee]

Texture stretch shouldn't be a problem if you map them properly

[ThePriest909]

Texture stretch shouldn't be a problem if you map them properly

I meant the texture stretch from the extreme landscape tweaks

[MOTHERJAVA]

^Definitely. I get so caught up in the details of everything else that I often forget to take a step back and notice things like this.. I've considered using meshes for these areas, though ideally id like to just be able to fix stretching on the landscape.

What's the best way to correctly map textures to avoid this stretching? Normally I tweak the rotation/mapping scale of my "cliff/far rock" layer to better fit the areas where there are steep angles, but this is more of work around. Id love a better solution.

What do you guys think of the cover shot?

[ambershee]

You could look into planar texture mapping / projection or handling texture coordinates in world space. It's something I'm presently experimenting with for different reasons, but don't have any results yet.

The cover shot is pretty awesome. Is this an actual game project now, or still just hobbyist / portfolio work ?

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks! I tried once to use projection for this purpose but I could never get it to work. Maybe I'll take another stab at it.

This project was and is purely a hobby/portfolio piece, and more than anything was meant to be a sort of learning experience to see how far I could push myself, with rather limited knowledge of udk, to produce a high quality photorealistic natural environment.

That being said, I would not turn down the chance to contribute it to a game project if an attractive opportunity should arise.

[KingCobra]

Damn dude, great progress

[Spoof]

24/5/2012: Project 'Poster Shot': I'm currently removing my shoes and socks, ready to wade through that shoreline. No carnivore fish please, I value my toes.

[Private Tux]

24/5/2012: Nicely done for the cover shot! Very clever.

[Bpopovich23]

Amazing stuff. Great Job!

[UDKStormed]

WoW!!! Looking great... I wish I could make my scene look like this. How long did it take you on this? Excellent work!!!

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks. Give it enough time and dedication and im sure you'll get there.you can see from the old pics at the bottom of the first post that things didn't look good at first.

It took me about a month for this scene( 2 months so far if you include learning udk basics etc) while working on other projects. Id say 75 percent of that time was pure experimentation/learning + lots of trial and error with foliage/water shaders, and 25 percent on actually setting up the scene.

Post processing also took a long time to get down, as i really used it heavily, and it is what truly brings the scene to life and makes the lighting 'pop'.

If you look at the oldest pics, you can see how much things have transformed in that period of time, and all the tweaking and experimentation is definitely evident in how drastically different it looks now.

Any suggestions for improvement?

[MOTHERJAVA]

two colorful pics added

[alvarofer0021]

Looks even better than cry engine 3!

[MOTHERJAVA]

The scene is definitely crysis-like, which was not unintentional I admit. I really wanted to see if I could create something on par with the immersive and beautiful crysis mods out there, primarily because I prefer using udk to cryengine and knew that udk could handle this just as well.

[stevelois]

Damn it !!!

Update pics look stunning !

And yes, better that everything I've saw so far on Crytek engine 3. You can be proud of what you've achieve with this level

[Private Tux]

26/5/2012: The colors are extraordinary and high quality (), this project is more and more better than CryEngine 3 also. Love it!

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks for all the compliments.. Very encouraging..

And according to the poll it looks like people love their sci-fi here.lol

[Private Tux]

And according to the poll it looks like people love their sci-fi here.lol

That's the way it is, mate. Science fiction is people's total favorites; judging by the book, film or anything. Love to see the genre in the UDK soon.

[MOTHERJAVA]

I guess its expected that on a video game forum, sci-fi will always be the favorite. Since I come from a Vue/Terragen background, realism has always been my strong point. Still, im sure in this industry it would be pretty valuable to be fluent in the language of science fiction..

[skwisdemon666]

I voted for scifi but it doesn't matter what you do next, it's sure to turn out amazing. I'm glad you've proven that cry isn't a better engine, it just depends on who is using it, once and for all. You have a load of talent for aesthetics. If you wanted to try a mix between urban and scifi, you could try to make and abandoned city or something.

[DwunkenPenguin]

damnnnnnn, beautiful work man, just beautiful.

[stevelois]

Bog suggestions,

I want to promote your work by posting your pics & blog link at my blog. So I took a look at your blog, to realize there is nothing about you (about section completely empty) & the pics are all small / tiny, no way to look at them fullscreen

I dunno if you intent to work in the industry but with that talent & UDK knowledge, it would be to your advantage to describe more yourself & also permit fullscreen view of your pics.

[MOTHERJAVA]

Hey Steve. I'd love for my work to be featured on your blog. In terms of my portfolio, I sort of just slapped it together and intended on fixing it up eventually, but with the kind of feedback I've been getting It'd certainly be in my favor to update it asap. When I'm home this evening, I'll re upload larger images and fill out some personal info. thanks for bringing this up, I really appreciate it!

[MOTHERJAVA]

I added some new large screenshots to my portfolio as well as some basic info. still need to finish uploading other work and projects..

[MOTHERJAVA]

Also, any further criticism/suggestions are welcome as always!! Let me know what you guys think of the new shots.

[juanitudev1]

Not to sound like a broken record here, but great job, Dan!
Good work is good.


Would you mind posting up some of your texture flats? ( diffuse + normal )
Screenshots in 'lit mode' would also be awesome to see how poly-dense the scene is.


It would also be awesome to see screenshots without all the post-processing, to see exactly how much the PP is contributing to the final look of the environment. Plain-jane shots without PP would allow for better critiques on the actual art itself. As it is, it's hard to do so, more so than what everyone else has already mentioned.


In my opinion, I would clamp down the black range in your tonemapper. It is usually never a good idea to have 100% black in your scene. On monitors that are not gamma-corrected, your art work will appear overly contrasted and may not look as good as you intend it to look. For your black range, I would keep it just above 0.2 - 0.3, instead of pure 0.

Have you thought about posting this on Polycount? It is a forum specifically for Game Artists.

Suggestions on the portfolio:
http://gdcvault.com/play/1015491/Kil...rtfolio-Killer


Keep it up!

[MOTHERJAVA]

Hey juanitudev1, thanks for the great suggestions! Probably this does belong on polycount, content wise, your right about that. I'm gonna put together a thread there in which I'll include texture flats, detailed lighting/lighting only shots, and definitely shots with no pp whatsoever.

Also good call about the tonemapper. I'll try and reduce it while keeping the sharp contrast going on -its something I've been thinking about.

I'll link the thread here once I've uploaded everything. I'll have a look at the portfolio guidelines doc as well. Thanks again for the tips and constructive advice, its greatly appreciated!

[MOTHERJAVA]

Just thought I'd mention, in case anyone is interested - that I do still plan on creating a thread on polycount where I will include all the aforementioned textures and lighting only/no postP. shots as soon as I have some spare time, (been extremely busy with work and other things).

Thanks for all the comments, and as always, further questions, comments and critique are more than welcome

[XstreamTech]

You sir... deserve alot of money, I'm loving what you are doing, I love the blue water material you have and its just amazing what you are capable of pulling out of UDK.

[Tom Shannon]

Awesome work! I love the translucency and color. I only have one comment: Whya re all the shots taken from the 'dark' side of things? I know you get some nice rim lighting, but in a game, you can look 360 degrees, it has to look good from the other side too!

[joshua.fontany]

Awesome work Dan. I would look forward to that polycount thread.

Also, you up for any collaberative work? I can pull IRL sattilite DEM data into UDK pretty easily now (and there has recently been a huge increase in resolutions, and it's free! our tax dollars at work). So I've been thinking about modeling the Isle of Skye (or similarly dramatic location) with all the effects, etc, cranked up. It would be great to compare notes.

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks guys!

@Joshua - sent you a pm.

@Tom Shannon - that's a very good question. I think it was (somewhat unintentionally) just a result if me trying to find the best looking shots I could capture.

Still, in the next update (not sure when that will be) I'll include a video that demonstrates a 360 view of the scene.