Steampunk Venice... Stuff?

[hadidjah]

I'm making this for my 3D Environments class and it's to the point now where I want to start getting some feedback.

First off, the town hall. It's going to be the focal point, so I really want to make it stand out, but I feel like it needs a lot of optimization (besides cleaning up the clock faces and making the pillars 6-sided instead of 8) and probably some more work in the modeling department. Also some other random assets that I've finished modeling.

Any and all advice/critiques would be really, really appreciate. Thanks!

Town hall: 3358 (see what I mean?)
Globe pillars: 1298 total, about 200-270 each
Traffic Bridge: 248 tris
Streetlamp: 138 tris

[spurn]

looking good, and that's a good idea, steampunk venice

if you haven't, definitely consider congestion and foliage. even if you're doing a river shot, it should be lined by small roomed apartment buildings with lots of wear, doodads and usually around the 5 story height, going straight into the water almost. small boat docks would be attached to those every so often as well, overhangs over some windows, etc depending on the type of building.... blah blah blah

the planetary pillars are cool, looking forward to more. you could really push the silhouettes with some odd bends and contortions, if you wanted.

[Amad]

I think this is a really interesting idea for a project. Your models are very cool, I especially dig the streetlight. The form reminds me of something out of Nightmare Before Xmas.

The only critique I'd give it to revisit the arches on your clocktower. On the small arch shapes going up the main tower sides, you have a lot of geo creating a smooth curvature, while the larger arches only have 4-6 segments creating some pretty sharp angles. I'd either have sharp angles throughout, or give a little more geo to the larger arches to round those out as well. That might just be a small nitpicky thing though, and just my 2 cents.

[hadidjah]

That's a really good point actually Amad, thanks... I'll smooth that bottom one out.:)

And since I guess I should have described this earlier, my actual playblast runs across a canal bridge and through most of the plaza. There are brief views of the canals and the apartments, and at those points you will be able to see boats, steps, docks and so on. In the actual plaza there are a few cafes and a grocer, some open-air market stands, the pillars, gazebo, and a pool with a bunch of artsy lampposts in it.

Here is a lovely over-head view of my entire whitebox. The orange is the camera path, the high complementary teal circles are the points the camera will be lingering on for any signification amount of time.

Thanks for the critiques so far, I really appreciate it!

[Amad]

I like your setup and camera plans. There is some slight asymmetry, which is really cool. I agree with the previous comments... lots of doodads around, small details will really be great here.

Do you have a set budget? Are you going for normal maps and the whole 9 yards?

[rburke]

i really like where this is going but try not to be too overly concerned with a low poly budget unless the class is really forcing low poly onto you. Like say for the pillars 8 sides is fine but you can delete the back faces that are against the building. Also on the pillars again just because they are 8 sides on the main shaft does not mean they need to be on the rest. you can always model by stacking multiple objects of different shapes and size. The small areas where you have created tiny bevels can be done with normal maps as well unless you really want the silhouette to read for those small details. The curved surfaces like the arm extending off the light pole and the arches could use a bit more geo too. In the modern world of games poly count is prob the least limiting factor in performance. Most modern engines and hardware can draw millions of polys in every frame, what becomes more of a limitation is texture memory, so getting some of those details handled with geo is a actually a good idea. The curved surfaces of the planetary symbols should also be bumped up as they silhouettes will read very angular and not so round. I like this idea a lot and your town layout is looking good so far. Try to add some more variation in the altitudes of the plaza areas. Slight altitude differences will make this much more interesting. Some corner details will be nice to for the more square buildings. Like little ledges and overhangs that will really break up the monotony of a flat wall meeting a flat wall.

[spurn]

yea like Amad said, what's the budget if anything? curious what sort of style you're going for too.

also, are you going to put planes for "extending" an imitation of the streets further outside your immediate set?

depending on your style and limits, you can still get a lot out of simple geo too, texturing does wonders of course. in case you hadn't thought about this, planning for tiled textures on buildings may help you with time. i'm not talking about monotonous blocks but more like a few images you can mix and match onto a big UV wall, so you don't sit there giving one building 8 different windows... and such.

[shinjimelee]

just curious, is there a specific town hall building you're using as reference? as you said, the town hall is your main focal point, but i seem to like your other assets more though. see if you can add something interesting to the shape of the town hall that are found on your other assets to bring a more unifying theme. it would be nice to know if or not you're aiming for a more cartoony look as well. also, i feel the clocktower part of the building feels unnatural the way it's sitting on the roof.

[hadidjah]

Burke: Thanks for all the advice/critique, really helpful.:)

Amad/Spurn: There aren't really any poly/texture/etc. limits, I've just been trying to watch my tri counts to get some extra practice. I'm going to be putting in a skydome and several sets of textured planes with building tops, etc.

Shinji: I'm going for a more realistic look with the modeling. I'm a big fan of stylization, but that will probably show up more in the textures if at all...

Here's some of my references for the town hall. It's basically a mish-mash of a bunch of these. I also rounded out those curves and started adding in some geometry for the normal map. Any particular advice on how to fix the clocktower positioning? I'm not quite sure I know what you mean...

[hadidjah]

An updatish sort of thing: everything is unwrapped and I got texturing started (but only started; hence the basic material on this one).

Any thoughts?