Midgar Revival

[LeonhartGR]

I can see some green energy around the reactors there!

[Hellbringer616]

I wanna see this in the opening cutscene so bad. Even just as a partial render haha.

Are you also modeling the inside of the shinra building?

[Mayo Master]

If Killerx20 has the interior already modelled, I'm not entirely sure it would be worth spending the time to redo the same thing.

[Sapphire]

I'm not too fond of modeling interiors, I might just leave that to someone else.

I think i'm finally done tweaking the materials

[Ragna]

I'm not too fond of modeling interiors, I might just leave that to someone else.

I think i'm finally done tweaking the materials

Is that metallic texture badly scaled, or it has the wrong pattern? It doesn't look right to me. Not very realistical for that cool Midgar City model. 

[Mayo Master]

I actually have to agree with Artema here.
Here, the two main problems with your galvanized steel are:
- the scale is way to big
- it shouldn't have bumpmaping. If you want to create some non-uniformity on your reflections, I advise you use some kind of specular mapping.

Did you receive the documents I sent you by email regarding materials? I had been tackling these kind of issues and explained some principles of materials creation for galvanized steel and concrete. I'm afraid that creating materials is something you'll have to be very, very, very patient with (again, as a rule of thumb, 3/4 of my modelling time are actually spent on materials, while it's the 3d meshing that I prefer to do).

[SpooX]

I'm not too fond of modeling interiors, I might just leave that to someone else.

Good morning 
forget the interiors, it's a waist of resources, especially if we want to use it for any animation. I did model the interior of the little restaurant in sector 8, with burning candles and a full kitchen....
Nobody is ever going to see that, so I finally trashed the place anyway. Just takes too much strain on rendering. It will only make sense if we have a sandbox environment with the total freedom to roam around Midgar. But that will take a different aproach and needs a lot of redisign anyway, so that is not in scope. 

About the materials, I'm personally more concerned about mapping, rather then the actual materials. If the mapping is not done correctly you have to revisit all objects in order to fix that. That is a nightmare, especially for the more complex objects. For mapping I would use a colored checkbox kind of texture, however if you don;t intend to do any texturing, I would advise to keep it 50% grey, that will give the best presentation result.

As for the textures and materials, most of Midgar is industrial, like steel, iron, rust, concrete. Abandonned trainyards come to mind, except for the normally growing plants and half covering trees and broken buildings. The Living part of Midgar is also including bricks, french coble roads, neon signs, etc.

And indeed, most time is being sucked into UV mapping and materials. I prefer to model as well. Oh and lets not forget the rigging and animation, and the next part will be compositing of course.

Just keep up the good work.

Which version of Midgar are you on now 3 or 4?

Oh and make backups, and note where you stored the backups...

(that's just some personal advise as my total archive has become quite big over time)

 

[Mayo Master]

About the materials, I'm personally more concerned about mapping, rather then the actual materials. If the mapping is not done correctly you have to revisit all objects in order to fix that. That is a nightmare, especially for the more complex objects. For mapping I would use a colored checkbox kind of texture, however if you don;t intend to do any texturing, I would advise to keep it 50% grey, that will give the best presentation result.

For these buildings and structures, I agree that mapping is important. I think that mapping is very much linked to the process of making materials. The document I sent covers a good chunk about mapping, namely when I made an example for the concrete texture (for instance, when you want to convey the fact that a structure is made of concrete slabs).

[Sapphire]

You guys really prefer the clean style?

[Faendra]

Nop, the dirty one is more realistic !

[Kaldarasha]

With all details (houses, streets,highways, etc.) the last will look better. The first looks more plastic but also like a small sized model of Midgar.

[LeonhartGR]

Maybe with a little dirt but not as much as in the previous screens.

[cmh175]

I think somewhere between the two would be good. A bit of noise makes it look more realistic, otherwise it'll look more like plastic. Great work on this.

[Mayo Master]

Hi Sapphire,

The way I usually go about making the materials is twofold: first, get a sense of how it should look like "clean", and then incorporate textures to make it look weathered. I think that now you got something pretty good for the clean base, which wasn't the case before.
There are 4 types of textures you can commonly use for incorporating weathering elements for outdoor stuff:
- Procedurals
- Ambient occlusion bakes
- A huge "random grime" image texture  like this one for moderate dirtiness. The texture I linked is pretty much the first one I found, so it takes a bit of search.
- "Leaking" grime textures, like this one (although again, just an example), which are difficult to work with because you need very good UV-mapping to place the leaks at relevant places, but help give the best results.

The common way I use these texture is to "multiply" the original material with them to some degree, and I also multiply the texture of the specular map (the one controlling the diffuse/specular ratio). You may have to add a couple of brightness/contrast functions on the way to get the proper tone/shade of material in the end. But the overall result should give you darkened areas which are less reflective, following patterns which correspond to where grime would appear on building (using ambient occlusion bakes is a good help in that respect).