nybt-forum-threads Seraf's Atelier

[Vlasky 1,803]

lol, well I remember when way back we were pressing you to work more on your texturing skills, so that they match you AMAZING modelling skills, and unfortunately you've taken it personally back than. Since then, on Farley post office, you've show that your skills improved a lot. But you always pick white buildings, and whites are a bit hard to do lol.

 

So, I went ahead and photoshoped the club's renders to make sure they match the 2nd pic you've show ans much as possible. I've desaturated the pavilion as well. Now I didn't quite get the result I wanted, but I think it's a move in the right direction. But I'm not satisfied with my result. White stone is hard to recreate obviously Here it is:

 

[edwardjeria 503]

azome texture

[Seraf 1,238]

Vlasky - Yes, fortunately I grow up since then And what can I say, I like the stone facades

 

I worked on the textures, I think they look better now, in fact I'm quite pleased with the color of the stone. I added some details like small trees and plants and most of the missing textures. All that's left to do is texture of front steps and light well and some furniture on the roof

 

[SimCoug 5,972]

I've been looking forward to this beauty!  The flora details are a nice touch

[jmsepe 2,038]

Great work, details are really made clear.

[tonyr 926]

The building is absolutely gorgeous. The flora seem out of place IMO. I think by placing the flora just at the entrance would look best.

 

Less is more....JMO! Hey, I will  DL this beauty in any case! Thanks for the update.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Looking really beautiful

Nice job.

[Seraf 1,238]

SimCoug - Thank you!

 

jmsepe - Thank you

 

tonyr - The plants and small trees were there in building's early years, I loved them the minute I saw them on old photos. I think they make building less sterile and more alive Less is a bore IMO   Thank you for comment!

 

Schriefer - Thank you

 

Almost done

 

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

*___*

Can't wait to download it!!

[tonyr 926]

Sweet!

[Seraf 1,238]

Schriefer - I'm glad you like it

 

tonyr - Thanks

 

I finished the day view, time for nightlights

 

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Really good. I love this kind of building, and you are doing it really well. Thanks

[darn42 1,268]

Everything looks very good except the round topiary which look out of place. They are too saturated, and the shape and shading just don't look real. The only other thing I see that looks strange is the gradient on the dark brick. What were you going for there?

 

There wouldn't be too much car traffic in the back of the building, or really anything that would produce such a dense smoke stains. Even if there were, it probably wouldn't make the bricks more saturated, but less saturated as it darkens. Also, it wouldn't be quite as linear as you have it. If you want to keep the gradient, change it from the color burn or whatever you have it right now to a black and white gradient and make the change a little bit more subtle. Maybe add some noise to it.

[Seraf 1,238]

Schriefer - Thank you

 

darn42 - I don't know guys what you have against those poor trees I can't see why they look out of place to you But seriously - you're right that they are too saturated, I will try to match the colour with plants hanging from smaller balconies. But what's wrong with shape? They are cut into ball-shape...

 

As for brick... I don't know, I just assumed that the lower portion of the building will be dirty when not cleaned regularly and the upper portion will be somewhat ... worn out due to weathering. Also, back of the building is actually wall-to-wall, you can't see it in real life (actualy you could see it only for 4-5 years before it was obscured by building next to the club) so I didn't think that wall that important...

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks great, I do wish the bricks on the back of the building was a little better.

[darn42 1,268]

The main thing wrong with the topiary is the way they are interacting with the light, which looks very unnatural. Because it's such a defined shape that has a lot of variation in lighting, normal techniques probably won't work for the modeling/materials of them. Look at this picture

 

 

Notice how far the light penetrates? It gets darker on the shadow side, but not significantly. The only really dark parts are on the interior of the plant. On your plants it gets almost complete black on the shadow side, which makes them look so out of place. Usually that's not a problem for foliage in sc4 because it's far away, and you can't tell, but you definitely can with such small shapes so low to the floor.

 

One second, the tutorial for the leaf material I was going to show you got 404'd so I'll have to make a quick one, which will completely relieve the problem with the topiary (I think).

[Seraf 1,238]

Thank you Aaron! I will try to improve back and alley wall with the hints from darn

 

Darn - Hmm when I was modeling the topiary I took this photo as a reference:

 

 

Maybe that's the problem? The plants of your photo have rather thin foliage while this one on mine has very thick one. What you think?

[darn42 1,268]

That tree is full sized, though. You are right, though. It does get pretty dark, but after going through an entire tree with very dense foliage. 

 

The biggest problem is that they look out of place, regardless. This is all about illusion. Usually, reality is the best magician, but sometimes it doesn't work out well. I would have had my example done but max crashed on me cause I did something stupid... I'll have it for you in like 5 minutes. I'll edit this post.

[darn42 1,268]

Ok, I'm done. I made one that would be a full sized tree, and one that would be a bush. It's I think 2 meters in diameter, vs. 2 feet in diameter. I made these with the tree you just showed me in mind. The geometry on these is completely unrealistic for sc4, I mean, it's possible, but I used very small leaves for effect, 1" x 2" rectangles for the leaves, and scattered them around 2 different sized spheres. Then for a second layer in the canopy I scaled it down and rotated it around.

 

 

As you can see, the big one gets really dark, the small one doesn't get nearly as dark.

 

These are the most important parameters.

 

 

I didn't realize some of the top ones got clipped. Basically, use reflections in the middle (really, whatever the leaf you are doing looks like), and for these leaves, I used very low transparency. The thing to keep in mind is to turn on translucency and give it a weight of 1.0. This makes it so there isn't any actual transparency, it just works on light and shadows.

 

 

What really makes this material work, though, is putting the translucency shader in the shadow slot. This changes the color of the shadows to whatever you set to be the translucency settings. The more transparent you set this, the more the light penetrates, and the more your leaves essentially are.

[Seraf 1,238]

Darn - Thank you so much for taking time to make this tutorial! I've tried to make a bush with it but for some reason while the facture seems similar to yours, the colors come out very bright, no matter what

[darn42 1,268]

Do you want to post your material settings?

[Seraf 1,238]

You would laugh at my material The settings are practically the same as in standard arch&design except for colors and settings that you showed me I finally found out what was wrong with material (in fact - nothing, it was my mistake ;D) and replaced four of the trees with new version, take a look:

 

[darn42 1,268]

It makes a big difference. This is gonna be one hell of a BAT once you replace all those and tweak the back brick texture a little bit.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Well that's what I call an improvement. Still, I'd consider lowering the number of plans. You don't want it to be an overkill. 

[tonyr 926]

Yes, the topiaries you replaced look great. They look softer,cleaner,lighter,and more realistic. Awesome improvements!

[Seraf 1,238]

Darn - Thank you And thank you very much for your help with topiaries

 

Vlasky - Thank you And I don't know...maybe I should export two versions, with and without topiaries. But I think that without them the building won't look so nice.

 

tonyr - Thank you

 

I replaced the rest of the topiaries and tried to improve the brick texture:

 

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

*__*

 

Great! Will you do the night version now?

[tonyr 926]

I think it's perfect! You have worked hard and it payed off. Thank for sharing this beauty. 

[darn42 1,268]

The bricks look immensely better. Not much changed but it just looks so much more natural.

[edwardjeria 503]

Azome work