Concept Art & Mockups - Aquatic Ruin Mockups Needed!!

Oh my god, the awesomeness.

 

Damn, now I want Sonic 2 in 2.5D!

 

yes.
Yes.
Yes!
YES.

 

Nicely done. Try switching out your direct light setup for one based on an environmental/image based light -- that should take care of the problem of the shadows having different angles (soft light).

 

I was going to connect this to the blue and yellow platform, make the moving yellow platform and step-like platforms left of it, then after all that, I'll start working on the background. And with the background in place it will be much easier to work with the lighting and pull the colors from it.

Might be easier to show what I'll be working on this video that I was using as reference for the colors, because I'm using this map: http://soniccenter.org/maps/sonic_2
for my sprites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soLMaI6AIeE
I want to get 3:17 to the end done, minus Robotnik and the flicky containment device.
I made the tubes at school so I'll be taking that home with me today.

 

MaximusDM, That's some damn fine work right there. It really is amazing, however... Without wanting to sound rude or grumpy: Why are you posting it here? I mean... we're not going to ditch the entire project to suddenly make it 2.5D. You should post it in Creative Works or something.

 

I believe he said he was posting it so people could get a better feel for what chemical plant zone looks like.

 

Perhaps if he could convert the existant Emerald Hill graphics to 3D models, we could continue from there... Or perhaps these would fit better in this project after applying some cell shading? This indeed feels more "HD" than previous foreground work.



I've been suggesting trying CG backgrounds (with 2D sprites for anything that's not an object) since the very beginning of this project. It's just a shame that nobody had tried this yet with such amazing results.

Thanks for the effort, MaximusDM.

 

Well I enjoy doing it, and people here seem to enjoy me posting it and it looks cool. After you make one thing you want to make another because the levels are tile based it is easy as copy and paste, so that give me incentive to finish another piece because it opens up another area of the level. As I said earlier, I doubt it would work with the 2D stuff, but that ain't stopping its awesomeness factor.

And just an edit to ICEknight; I pretty much agree. Sonic has always been a mix of 2D and 3D art work. Maybe not the entire level, but many elements were 3D. Its quite easy to translate such an industrial metal zone to 3D. Something like Aquatic Ruin, maybe not so much. Or at least it would be harder to make foliage to look organic.

 

Dude your 3D Models are beautiful I'd seriously love to see S2HD made that way.

 

Hmm.... what do you guys think?

I only quickly found the latest Tails version[?] to compare it to, but I think it would help if there were more objects that are already done, to give a good comparison - so we can figure out where to go from here:

 

Also, note that it looks absolutely fine WITHOUT rust, 'raw metal' or whatever was suggested earlier. Moreover, I think the rusted look would ruin it.

 

Actually, don't know why, but I like it, the styles seems to mix pretty nice...
Maybe if using a shading a little more metallic for the color? Or a blue-ish metal color?

...In MY opinion, we could use that little renders to make CPZ, since its a metallic zone, and Sonic team always used 3D objects for zones... I think we could draw some zones and render others, for example, EHZ is already perfect like its right now, but I think this looks pretty good too and don't clashes with the style anyways...

Of course we can always mix 3D objetcs renders with "painted" zones too...

 

If you squint it looks like it goes together. =/
I'm sure if the shadows were consistent or non-existent, it would help. I can do that, I just tend to render like that because it gives it depth. To make it work it needs to look flatter.

And I'm not exactly sure on how to achieve that. I do need to texture some things, like that metal plate of galvanized metal. I only did the stripes because that was a must. And it was kind of a mess too because I later found out that texture files need to be a certain size or Maya does funky stuff with it by screwing with the resolution. So when I get more around to texturing I'll make put it all on one file at the correct size. Then it was hard lining it up because it was blurry until I rendered; Taking like 10-15 seconds each time just to see if it lined up.

I dunno if anyone (Gambit) can help me out to answer that one.

To Elratauru,
I can always render in vector (I would need to look up how to do that again, and see how that turned out. I know its a render output setting, but the thing is making it look good)or just as I did now from a 2D perceptive view, blow it up and let you photoshop people have your way with it by trying to make it look flatter to match 2D work.

 

If you provide me with an OBJ of your models I'll show you what I mean.

 

Like I said before, I'm going to do some more modeling and when I do the background I'll be setting up my lights based on that. I haven't done image based lighting so I'll look into that. I've never done it, so I'd like to do it myself, not to be selfish but rather to make it a learning experience for the future.

 

eh... I... I guess I'll post it here then?

 

I like it but I find the metal to be slightly green in colour and grungy. Could it be slightly more silver and metal looking?

Looks good overall though

 

I'm pretty sure I pulled the lights colors straight from the background. If you look at that it has a distinct green/gold reflection. In fact, I think it should be more green. Although this portion of the level is right near the magenta water/chemical so it could reflect that more. I think there is a magenta light point up, a gold color from above and a white and red coming from the back. There are no green lights. Its actually overly shiny, when you look at it in the 3D view. I purposely didn't include the top of the platform because it almost looks like a mirror, that and there really isn't much to see.

 

Which reminds me, are the artists strictly recreating the tiles, or will there be exceptions for certain parts of the level? Specifically, will the be making special tiles for metal near the (Mega Mack?) to reflect the phosphorescent qualities of the fluid?