Author Topic: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums  (Read 272458 times)

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #50 on: 2012-11-18 20:55:06 »
I'm adding the water at the moment (no waterfall yet). It's actually much trickier than I anticipated, for combining the sense of depth, the transparency, and the reflectivity of the water all at once. And I think this sort of materials requires that I work with raytracing. For that matter, including the actual index of refraction of water makes some funny effects.
On another note, I had a scare this morning with my laptop playing dead for 2 hours. Once it was back on, I had the urge to back up all my stuff on an external hard drive, so if I fry my laptop all won't be lost  :P  Probably I'll end up buying this new PC earlier than I originally thought   ::)

LeonhartGR

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #51 on: 2012-11-19 00:01:37 »
I can donate 10 euros to your project. You can make exchange if you wish. Just send me a bank account that's compatible with a Greek bank.

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #52 on: 2012-11-19 18:08:53 »
I can donate 10 euros to your project. You can make exchange if you wish. Just send me a bank account that's compatible with a Greek bank.
I appreciate the thought. That won't be necessary though  :)

By the way, I'm afraid that completing the scene will get delayed - even though I finished the lake area yesterday (only the waterfalls are missing). My laptop is failing, most likely I'll have to get it repaired, which may take some time. If it is beyond repair, I have everything backed up, so we're safe on that respect.

KaidenJames

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #53 on: 2012-11-19 19:31:42 »
Glad to hear that it is all backed up. Your work is to fantastic to lose! Hope you can get your rig fixed up man!

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #54 on: 2012-12-02 16:26:49 »
Hi guys,

I have some news, and some questions...
As far as the EALS scene is concerned, my laptop reached its limits for handling particle systems (flowers and grass) plus a smoke simulation (waterfall). Currently, with my hardware, there's no more work I can do on it. So, hellbringer616 is kindly helping me out by providing his computing resources in order to carry out the smoke simulation, then the render. There should be more update about this by the end of next week.
Thanks to SpooX almighty walkmesh/camera exporter, I started to work on a new scene (mds5_i, item store in the sector 5 slums). Here's what I made this far (many elements are not subsurfed yet, so don't worry about the polygonal look of cylindrical features).


Most likely I'll be able to get to texturing fairly soon. Now, for texturing, I have some questions where I hope you'll be able to help me out. Considering the original picture (below), as you can see many elements have kanji writing on them, but the low resolution makes them very difficult to read, so if I could have some input on that, it would be great. My girlfriend helped me to decipher some (she has some basics in Japanese, my own knowledge amounts to nothing in this area), it will be good to pool our research notes.



- On the main pipe, there are 2 kanjis (first guess, from a chinese friend: 'The first kanji on the pipe is 迚, which means "very" or "Some way or another". When used with  a negative verb form, it means "cannot/unable to do something". I can't make out what the second kanji says, or what that is between 迚 and the second kanji. For now, the closest I could find are 敦 (drink, liquid) and 飲 (industry).')
- On the cardboard boxes, there are 2 kanjis, no guess.
- On the shelf, there's a sort of green bowl/cup with 1 kanji, most likely it's 茶, which means "tea".
- On the shelf, there's a big brown pot, with at least 1 kanji (best guess: 漠 (vague)... probably there's a second we cannot read).
- On the doormat, there are katakana & hira (アイテム の)which seem to read "of item(s)", and below some kanji (from chinese friend: 'On the carpet, it looks like the second kanji is 良 (good). First one could either be 馬 or 烏. (horse or squid)'
- On the poster, there are katakana in red, no guess so far.

Any help will be much appreciated. By the way, I'm expecting to find similar issues on a bunch of scene (japanese writings practically unreadable), so if anyone has knowledge in this department, that would be awesome.

SpooX

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #55 on: 2012-12-02 18:00:43 »
Quote
The writing on the jar reads “China” (漢), possibly the first character of “Chinese Medicine” (漢方).
The writing on the pipe is “Welcome” (迎歓). While “Welcome” would normally be written 歓迎, the the characters are read from right to left, as is done traditionally in Japan. Thanks to Qhimm for reminding me of this.
The welcome mat reads “Torishima Item Shop” (アイテムの鳥島屋).
A lot has already been deciphered....
Hint:Look Here
 8)

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #56 on: 2012-12-02 19:17:25 »
Very nice! I didn't know so much had been already done. Thanks for the tip  :)

UPDATE: modelling for that scene is practically done, so here's how it looks like (50% of final picture size)



For the cardoard boxes, I'll texture them (most likely with UV textures) before duplicating them all over the place. I was thinking of using a cloth simulation to let the poster fall into place (there are a bunch of rivets underneath). There are also a couple of sheathings I want to add around some cables.
Onward to lighting and texturing!

I hope you guys like it so far.
« Last Edit: 2012-12-03 14:15:02 by Mayo Master »

DLPB_

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #57 on: 2012-12-04 14:24:32 »
Can we get another 100 of you guys?  Then we'd really be rockin'  8-)

magochocobo

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #58 on: 2012-12-05 14:47:31 »
The only I can say is beautiful!!!
I really want walk in the Aeris house :B

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #59 on: 2012-12-05 17:09:14 »
Can we get another 100 of you guys?  Then we'd really be rockin'  8-)
Thanks for the compliment! Though as Ulpian pointed out, we're really understaffed.

The only I can say is beautiful!!!
I really want walk in the Aeris house :B
Thanks! As for walking inside the house, it will be possible eventually  ;)

mystery_editor

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #60 on: 2012-12-05 23:39:26 »
The progress across the threads is amazing... Although I can't model, I'm happy to run renders and such for people if needed. At least I can help like that!

I'm actually attempting to recruit some game-design grads into doing work for the projects, but the comment that I most get is "If only I had more time"! Any ideas for combating this remark? :\

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #61 on: 2012-12-06 01:24:07 »
Thanks! Well, maybe you can also check outside graph-design grads... I mean, I hope it doesn't show too much, but my experience with 3d modelling software amounts to 4-5 months (I actually pretty much started because I wanted to help Team Avalanche!), and my background is not that of an artist.

paul

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #62 on: 2012-12-07 13:47:47 »
Mayo Master your work is outstanding! I can't believe for one minute that you only have 4-5 months experience in this!

Do you think you could explain how you became so good so fast? As a newbie I have attempted to line up blender cameras to field images and to be honest it seems impossible :(. Also getting the scale to be correct seems to be extremely difficult too, do you have any tips/methods?

Finally how are you getting the textures/colours to be so close to the original? Are you using GIMP to make textures from scratch? What rendering engine are you using, internal or cycles?

Sorry for so many questions, can't wait to see the final render of the house field :D.


Vgr

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #63 on: 2012-12-07 14:50:43 »
Some people have natural talent in something, even though they just begin. Or they learn fast, like I do. Sometimes real life helps (concerned people will most likely understand or guess what I'm saying, so I will not bother to explain more).

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #64 on: 2012-12-07 17:42:07 »
Some people have natural talent in something, even though they just begin. Or they learn fast, like I do. Sometimes real life helps (concerned people will most likely understand or guess what I'm saying, so I will not bother to explain more).
You might say my education and job required that I'm a fast learner, so that certainly helped. Also, from my point of view, I would believe that people familiar with CAD software coming from engineering or architecture backgrounds could transition to "artistic 3d modelling" pretty fast.

Mayo Master your work is outstanding! I can't believe for one minute that you only have 4-5 months experience in this!

Do you think you could explain how you became so good so fast? As a newbie I have attempted to line up blender cameras to field images and to be honest it seems impossible :(. Also getting the scale to be correct seems to be extremely difficult too, do you have any tips/methods?

Finally how are you getting the textures/colours to be so close to the original? Are you using GIMP to make textures from scratch? What rendering engine are you using, internal or cycles?

Sorry for so many questions, can't wait to see the final render of the house field :D.
Let me try to answer all these questions... but for reference, you can also check out how I progressed on my very first scene (it's in the "Field scene screens (non bombing mission) gallery" thread), you'll see that there's a lot more fumbling around.

I would say that, at first, you have to be patient about getting the basics right. Make baby steps before you try to run on your own. Initially, omega_res_novae pointed me to the following wikibook, which helped a lot in the beginning.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
In the aforementioned wikibook, I personally went through the first two units entirely before starting to model on my own, even though it itched to do it before that. Then I really started with very simple objects (a beer can, a crumpled piece of paper, a trash can), and when I decided to model my first scene, I picked one that looked simple. As a noob, you have to be able to take satisfaction from completing very basic modelling, while being humble before the gap that separates you from true 3d artists (I think it's healthy to keep that mindset). As you take on gradually more complicated stuff, there are two sources that can be very helpful:
- Tutorials around the net. There are LOTS of those. I personally favor the tutorials from Andrew Price at Blenderguru.com, I like his teaching style.
- Real life. More explanations here: after I started to do 3d modelling, I would almost say that I took a completely new interest in just "observing the world" (yeah, I was feeling a bit nuts sometime). For example, I could stare at a tile for 10 mins to study how it was made, how the light was interacting with it, what affected specularity and reflections, etc. You can get a lot of information just from observing everyday's life environment.

Now, to your more specifically technical questions:
- Aligning the field screen and the camera IS a real pain. I managed to do it manually for my first scene, it took ages. To do it manually, generally the idea is to draw two parallel lines along each axis to get the alignment right, but it is very difficult. Which is why SpooX's walkmesh and camera data exporter is such a powerful tool. I strongly recommend you use it. If you don't have PSX discs to extract the data, ask me what field you'd like to work on and I can send you the Blender file, much like SpooX did for me while he was building his script. All that's left to do is adjusting the focal distance, but with the right alignment it's not difficult to do.
- About texturing: that's actually the thing I find the hardest. In my first "man in the pipe" scene, I must have redone the texturing of each object more than 15 times. I think one difficulty is that your colors are a combined consequence of both your texture colors and your lighting. To dissociate these components, I try to get a particular color reference. For example, in the scene I am currently working on (mds5_i), I know the top of the medkit has a white diffuse color (all RGB at 255), and the red cross on the side has the RGB of 255, 0, 0, in terms of texturing. Your lighting is what will make the difference between these texture colors and their RGB values on your rendered image. I find it easier to set the lighting from reference colors in the scene, and then work on the remaining textures. Of course it gets more complicated when your scene has several light sources (something I did not anticipate when I started "the man in the pipe"). Now for texturing, because my artistic skills are rather limited (I'm not unable to draw with paintshop or GIMP, but it's not my strong suit), I tend to prefer working with a combination of texture images (cgtextures.com may be your friend) and procedural textures. For example, the cliffs on Aerith's house outdoor scene are entirely made with procedurals. Also, combining the textures using "Multiply" instead of "Mix" can give pretty good results (I used that a lot for the roof of the house), in a way you can have a texture pattern with any color. As for color matching, if your light setting is correct, then it's a tedious looping process about going back and forth between rendering your model, compare it with original picture, see the discrepancies, adjust the texture colors in your model, re-render and so forth. At least that's how I do it. Don't forget that texturing isn't just about setting a diffuse colors, something like bumpmaping is almost as important. But if you're good with GIMP, more power to you because you can have much more accuracy with UV mapping.
- Finally, I simply use Blender's internal render engine, we don't need anything more fancy than that. Or at least, the improvements I can make to a scene are much more depending on my own improvements as a 3d modeller, than on the use of a fancy render engine. Besides, I don't use cycles, mostly because cycles is meant to help your rendering processes via GPU usage, and my graphic card sucks.

I hope all that helps  :)

paul

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #65 on: 2012-12-08 10:38:42 »
Thanks for your response it helps greatly. Already know some basics but I'll work through the book you linked and start doing that guys tutorials. It sounds like the observation is a vital point which I didn't appreciate until now :).

Interesting that you are using blender internal - I know cycles gives much more realistic lighting. But looking closely at the original field scene it has very black and sharp shadows which is not something that cycles would generate as this is not true to real life as the light is not refracting as much as it should be. I guess back when FF7 was actually created the rendering tech at the time may have been something similar to blender internal in relation to lighting, I've never really noticed until now.

If you could send me any walk mesh/field image to try I'd love to give it a go. It might be a long time and take many versions before I can come up with anything that's release quality though, I guess that will be part of the challenge :). How many hours per week do you think you spend using blender? I guess you also spend a lot of time outside of blender thinking of how things could be done when looking at real life objects?

Edit: I can't send PM's:

"You are not allowed to send personal messages." :'(

I'd like to try the reactor 5 tunnel :).
« Last Edit: 2012-12-08 17:41:54 by paul »

sl1982

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #66 on: 2012-12-08 18:19:34 »
You may send PM's once you reach 5 posts. The limitation is designed to prevent spam PM's.

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #67 on: 2012-12-08 20:13:31 »
How many hours per week do you think you spend using blender? I guess you also spend a lot of time outside of blender thinking of how things could be done when looking at real life objects?
It's hard to tell, because it's highly variable (I had weeks with 2h on Blender, some others where I went crazy and spent about 30). I'd say about a dozen hours on average. As for the time spent in contemplation of real life objects, well, it's more like I see things with a new eye (or wondering "how would I model that?") when I do mundane things (walking from home to work, doing the shopping at the local store, washing the dishes), it makes life more interesting in a way :P  Unless there's something very specific I'm looking for (in which case, the internet is also filled with reference pictures), I wouldn't go out specifically with the purpose of "observing real life in order to apply the knowledge in 3d modelling". Besides, it's currently -30 C in my place, so I wouldn't go out at all :P

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #68 on: 2012-12-15 19:30:58 »
As promised, some progress update on my part. I'm being a bit slow (though I was fairly busy these days), but I hope my hours in contemplation of brushed steel pipes have paid off  :P
Even if it's not related, I anecdotally found out that the convoluted and obnoxious key-card system of the Shin-Ra top floors is actually pretty realistic  :o

Anyway, enough rambling... (click for high-res)



At this point, I consider the textures of the cylindrical pipes (with the obvious exception of the painted "welcome" kanji) to be done, as well as the medkit, the yellow-black cable box, and the red pipes on the top. The main light source is done, but the ambient lighting will be adjusted last. Everything else is WIP.
I hope you like it so far.

saftle

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #69 on: 2012-12-15 19:46:33 »
Awesome work. I personally prefer the japanese writing on the pipe compared to the english writing though.

Keep up the great work!

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #70 on: 2012-12-22 18:46:15 »
Update... boxes!
I tried to write (I had some help for this) stuff that made sense on the carboard boxes, if someone fluent in Japanese can confirm whether it's fine or I have to revise it, that'd be nice (the writings correspond to "Shin-Ra", "Shin-Ra Pharmaceuticals", "Antidote", and "Potion", or at least that's what I aimed at).



I'm done with all the pipes and the wall (though I may have to adjust the location of the steel plate joints of the wall), the last was a real pain to texture so I hope it's fine for you as it is now. I'm wondering if adding a touch of dirt on the carboard textures would improve anything. I think the most tedious part of texturing is done at this point.
I hope you like it.

alloy

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #71 on: 2012-12-23 01:53:58 »
Everything looks too clean lol..  so of course i say to make the textures look more used up rustic and what not.

Though that would take up a pretty large amount of hrs of tedious work... Id say do it!

... But actually this time i have a solution. You should look up how to implement a Dirt Map into your scenes with blender.

I actually looked up one way...

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?183082-Dirt-maps-creator

Pretty simple process that will make a huge difference in aging your scene



« Last Edit: 2012-12-23 02:39:27 by alloy »

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #72 on: 2012-12-23 03:57:51 »
... But actually this time i have a solution. You should look up how to implement a Dirt Map into your scenes with blender.
I actually looked up one way...
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?183082-Dirt-maps-creator
Pretty simple process that will make a huge difference in aging your scene
I can look into that if it can improve my texturing. However, with my inexperience, the "pretty simple process" is far from being straightforward (I've never done any texture baking before, I don't even know how to do that). I hope it will be worthwhile.

Everything looks too clean lol..  so of course i say to make the textures look more used up rustic and what not.
Can you be more specific? When I look at the original picture it doesn't seem that dirty to me. This may be the slums, but the guy has to have a decent place to set up a business. On another note, I have made quite a bit of real-life observations about how brushed steel pipes should look, and where not stained they retained all their specularity and reflectivity.

alloy

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #73 on: 2012-12-24 00:42:55 »
Nah not bashing on the metal work of the textures in general. Just trying to make a case for you to use a dirtmap shader on the scene. It will give the overall scene a more natural subtle "lived in" feeling.

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #74 on: 2012-12-28 20:02:41 »
Ok, after much sweat and blood and many Ambient-Occlusion baked dirtmaps, a new update that I would consider quasi-final (click for high-res):



So, unless I have insightful advice, I consider everything to be done except the painted kanjis (i.e. the "welcome" writing on the pipe and the "chinese medicine" writing on the big brown jar) and the posters (on the wall and on the door). For these elements, I will rely on the help of my girlfriend who has better 2d drawing skills than me, so that will come later. However the UVs are already set, I just need to update the texture images and it's done.
Let me know if that looks fine to you.