Finished, but not happy!

So I've decided to drop the project a day early because I want to get things sorted before next week. There's a few details missing that are in the concept but overall its not a bad looking representation in my opinion.

Here's mine vs the concept :-

 So i kept the shape of the room and scale of the objects within it pretty much spot on to the concept, the perspective is obviously different and theres 4 main pieces missing from mine (pack of smokes on bar, light beam front right, rope across stair entrance and napkins on back table).

I did decided to do warmer colours for mine as I felt the concept looks very cold despite having warmish lighting but still didn't feel very bar/tavern like to me.

I wish I could of done more and actually finished it to a good standard but I didn't manage my time very well and I was learning new things (mostly around texturing) every day which slowed things down alot at times.

Oh well...There's always next time.

1 Week Remaining!

So I haven't bothered updating the blog while doing this challenge in the last 2 weeks...sorry about that :P

It's been going really fast lately, Thankfully most of the scene is 2-3 different textures so it was fairly easy to get most of the larger assets done.

I've got a pretty decent workflow going aswell. It could do with the refinement but its working ok for now anyways. I basically have all the models setup in place on my highpoly scene with no textures, most of which have already been broken up into there own sections so I can just grab it and export it.

At that point I fix the pivot to help me place the assets correctly again, continued by unwrapping, baking out an AO map ( pure white ambient colour with 2 skylights) then render out a wireframe UV map and a solid color UV map.

Stick the AO, Lines & solid maps into PS. Lines on Screen overlay with 80 opacity, cut out the solid sections for the solid UV map then stick the AO map on multiply between them. (LINES ->AO->SOLID)

This means I can work below the AO, lines and cut out solid UV ontop. This makes texturing really clean and fast. To get the normal maps I've been using Ndo2 which is basically crazy bump but much easier to use in my opinion. I did use the normal maps to get spec maps for some assets but during recent texturing I've decided to make the spec maps myself instead. This is mainly down to some of the assets having multiple texture types therefor I had to adjust the spec & gloss levels by hand.

Here's a pic of what I have atm. Almost finished with modelling and texturing, lighting still needs alot of work though.

First Week Over!

So today marks the end of the first week, leaving me a mere 3 weeks & 1 day left of the challenge.

Despite getting a decent start with the block out and not having to adjust scales to much, I still feel behind slightly..somehow. Even though lot of other people are still on blokout stage and I'm almost finished with my full high poly models, I know texturing is going to take me at least 2 weeks, possible the full 3. This doesn't leave me much time to get lighting setup and change stuff to get a awesome render for the 30th.

Need to stop slacking off watching youtube videos or playing SC2.

Ah well, high poly assets at around 70% - 80% complete and all the mesh's are clean & ready for unwrapping. Hopefully won't take me to long to finish the last of them sometime today / tonight.

Heres a shot of what I got at the moment :

Progress!

So I've spent abit of time on the new project. Got most of the scene blocked out plus some details and now building up the high poly version using the block out as reference and some bit of it as a base. This way I'm keeping everything to ruffly the right scale and shape just with extra details.

I'm also setting myself some ground rules otherwise I could just go all out crazy with the scene.

No assets larger than 500 polys
No texture larger than 1024x1024
Diffuse, Normals, Specular & Gloss maps allowed.

This is basically the same as the 2nd year module they had last year but they we're only allowed a diffuse for each assets but I wanted to try out Ndo2 and get some more detail while using low ish poly models so I changed the rules alittle.

I'll currently in the process of building up the high poly assets but I was starting to get tired of modelling last night so decided to jump into PS and texture a relitively small asset and trying out Ndo2 for the first time.

This is what I got atm, still needs some touching up but happy so far.

Ignore the poly count (top left), that's the whole scene. This asset is only 350 polys but has a Diffuse, Normals, Specular & Gloss map at 1024x1024

Starting The Poly Count Challenge

So its Sept 1st, exacly 1 month till we're back at uni and also the start of a new Poly Count Noob Challenge. You can find the thread HERE

Unfortunately the concept I thought was going to be picked didn't which means I have that concept full blocked out for no reason but never mind. I guess its better this way because now I can see how fast my workflow is compared to others as we all started today.

The concept chosen was this

I was unable to get started till late in the day due to various reasons but I've managed to get a decent enough start I think. Half of it is currently blocked off at the moment but I may add alittle more before I hit the hay. Piping is going to be a nightmare as I suck at it, not to mention the spiral stairs that seem to be abit wonky from the concept.

My current progress (Day 1)

Plan for the next few days is to get this blocked off completely, export it into UDK so I can check the scaling and what not then maybe start looking at making the assets and learning how to handpaint...sigh