rts artwork

Cool work there man. Feudal japan is a great era when designing :)
I dont know about this but I have always associated feudal Japan with deep reds and browns and gold. I dont know about the blue colour of the roof or the white stone for the colour of the building. I dunno, Im probably just talking crap!! :)
But you have done a really good job, especially with the mesh :)

Thanks Makk!

Hehe, nah you're not talking crap, I first thought the colours were kinda odd as well, but I found out that they're pretty normal. Here's a reference pic, obviously this restored... but it kinda follows the pattern of mouldy roof / clean walls that is seen in a lot of humid places. Basically people paint over the mould regularly, but it's too much trouble and too expensive to redo the roof every year. The roof is maybe a little too saturated for my liking, but I've been told to up the saturation, as rts games rely on a strong colour palette and the bulding may have run the risk of being "a bit too drab" in comparison. Hope that explains the weird colours :)

here's the piccie:
[IMG]http://www.jacobleetai.com/cgchat/osaka1.jpg[/IMG]

cheers.

i think that it looks very nice.

i can see where the lead artist(?) is coming from wanting the roof to be very saturated. if you have different teams that use different colours, then you need to make sure that a team's colour really stands out. that way you wont end up confused between your green building and an enimies blue building.

i would be very interested in seeing any more that you have done.

Hey thanks Aven. (great high poly work by the way!)

The advice came from a forum moderator, but I guess you could call him a lead :D I'll try to put the archer up soon (trying to be historically correct mean lots of research) It will be less complex than the commander so I'll tackle that first.

It is a good looking model, but the texture count seems overly large, I would have thought for an rts that a single 256 x 256 would be suffice. And looking at your textures, nice as they are there is a lot of stuff that could have been reused rather then having separate textures for barely different details. I would suggest that you muck around with the UVW?s a bit and drop any thing that is too close to repetition from your texture. I think you could get it looking just as good with bits chopped from these three maps and compiled into a single 256.

But still a good looking model.

Pantmonger

Hey thanks Pants, I'm glad you think it looks good. The specs were set by Ensemble in the states, they are looking to hire and tied in these specs to a competition. I guess they're interested in seeing what everyone can do at that level, even if it's a bit loose.

Yeah I agree having this budget is a bit of a luxury! But I think it's a big call to get all of this onto one 256 [:P] To do that I would need to raise the polycount considerably as well.

Thanks.

man i thort that looked like a painted miniature that id seen in my mates collection,.. ( tries to pick it up )

thats wicked man,.. it looks alot higher than 910 tri's so youve done a sweet job with the mesh.
the textures are sweet to,.. although i agree with pants about the uvw's. But hey if those are the guidelines,.. soak em all up man [;)]

hehe cool, and thanks.

I bet my Wacom that this can't fit onto one 256, with the same texel res. A lot of the reason why it can't is because of the roof texture... there looks like a lot of repeating elements but the shading would look off if the tiles were kept the right scale, or the tiles would look off if the shading was right. Maybe 2 256's, with some extra polys, but not one.

[:p]

cheers.

bet your wacom huh... Sounds like Sumea Challenge #5!

Seriously though, cool model. I really like how much more complex the textured view looks compared to the wireframe view... nice work.

cheers

I see your Wacom and raise you a Smeg.

I'm retracting my offer for the wacom. Sorry Malus, and no offense smeg [;)]

Here's the archer unit. Again it's probably over spec'd but at least this way I can show them at a decent res in my folio. The polycount is 498 (500 limit set by compo) and a 256 w/ alpha.

[IMG]http://www.jacobleetai.com/cgchat/archerwip9.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://www.jacobleetai.com/cgchat/texwip7.jpg[/IMG]

The idea here was to keep things simple so the unit is clearly visible and indentifyable at a small res. I think I'm pretty much done here, but am open to suggestions.

edit: just thought I'd do an image swap here. there's still a couple of hours work to do on this one...

Looking good there Jacob.
Good job with getting all that on to the archer texture. Although, his face doesnt get much of the map. Compare to the amount the hand/wrist gets. Also the legs look a little to long or the feet are too small.
Keep up the good work :)

Thanks for the help Makk.

Yes the uvs are not the best for the hand. I think I had them smaller in the uv layout but then just scaled them up to fit snug. Thanks for pointing out the feet... I think the weird design of the clothes makes the legs look long, the crotch is actually well below the top of the slit but of course you can't see it from this angle :/ and the belt is somewhere on his stomach. Agreed it looks a bit strange :D

Cheers.

Im surprised the face got as much space as it did.. its for an RTS right?

Just a suggestion regarding his sleeves; i'd try to visually seperate his arms from his torso. You could do this either by upping the contrast, changing the sleeve colour or perhaps running a stripe down the side (maybe not a stripe). I know nothing about the costumes of the period, so these suggestions could be taboo, but it would certainly make it easier to see what the archer is doing from a distance.

I really like it.

cheers

Thanks Daniel,

Yeah I think the face was a bit of overkill for an rts unit (especially seeing as it's all under a helmet anyway) but I want to show this as a folio piece so went and did it anyway. I am slowing down on this one tho so will leave it and come back to it as there's a bunch of stuff I still have to do.

Yeah that's a really good idea for the sleeves. I will have to think about it tho, even the badging on his shoulder is fictional but it needed something there. I'll try out a few things, maybe a stronger highlight or crease down the sleeve would do just enough.

Thanks!

Can't say I know much about modelling for RTS games. Nice work though, I like it. The textures on the building especially are lovely. The only thing I might suggest is to increase the contrast of your shadows. They seem a bit faint to me right now.

Good work[:D]

Thanks... I'm going to leave this project until the 15th or so. I'll make some tweaks before submission.

[IMG]http://www.jacobleetai.com/cgchat/comp1.jpg[/IMG]

The buildings colours can be changed to match the units if need be... the larger unit with the flag and fan is the commander.

Thanks [:)]

Looks very nice. It would easily be one of the better looking RTS games available.

The only real problem that I can see is that path on the building is quite difficult to see and could do with a bit more contrast to help it stand out.
Really love the character models, as Aven said, chuck them in any quality RTS atm and they would fit just right :)

Goood luck with the comp btw, out of all the entries yours seems to be the most clean of them, it would fit really well into the new 3d total war games etc. While most people seem to be going for the ultra high contrast warcraft look.

Cheers Afro, got some time to work on the textures some more. There's some really good entries coming in late for this one so I want to tighten things up a bit more. Made the ramp darker and made the shadows more contrasty, also gave the colour a bit of a boost. This is probably pretty close to how it'll be submitted I reckon.

[IMG]http://www.jacobleetai.com/cgchat/comp2.jpg[/IMG]

I'm starting to get tired of these models, even after leaving them for a while.... got some new stuff in the works [:)]

Know what you mean, looking great now, fixed many of the problems I was having distinguishing the ramp and area the building was resting on from the walls.

Are you in the comp? If so what's your entry there?

shit it's late.

I did not realize the comp was on till quite late, mores the pitty.

very cool! reminds me of the console game onimusha