The Art of Polygon'ing

 

  pretty crazy how far this stuff has come! great for spawning ideas.

 

I felt like i really needed to nail the visual style now or forever this will look like poo. After tons of tweaking on the post process volume and lighting changes this is looking very much like the final target I want to achieve with this scene. Next time I need to remember to hit this stuff early! I also started to realize that when its only half baked assets in there, it looks like ass. Once I started doing more refined buildings, things started to come together, like silluoutte and layers etc.  I was reluctant but forced myself to semi finish the buildings, and adding the roofshapes really helped even though it was a pain in the ass.  I started to also frame some sections. I need to remember to try and rule of thirds everything, not sure why recently i stopped caring about composition.  

Was pretty close to shutting down this project, but when you decide to grind through the "ugly" phase of a project it usually turns out half decent.  This is around 15 hours about a third of the way through what i would expect a small scene like this would take.  

So I baked out a roof tile and slapped them on some planes to see if that can salvage the scene. It didnt really do much...  

I tried changing the trim sheet to all white and it made the windows pop nicely. Again here I am just looking for anything small that can keep me going, instead I should be finishing some buildings.  

  So here is where I stall and dont work on the buildings, instead I just try slapping on materials and changing colors. It helped a bit, but didnt really give me confidence in the scene.

Just taking all the models and textures and slowly applying it to more buildings after the initial orange one was done. I felt like I didnt want to work on the buildings and got frustrated by looking at the scene. This is a point where i felt like throwing in the towel. Next time I know not to get distracted and just put my head down and work. Sometimes i feel like im very impatient, like I made one half decent building, but why does my scene not look good? Ofcourse because its only one damn building, work on the others!  

Started working on a main trim sheet and window atlases. Next time i feel like i could get away with using photo cutouts to start.  

  Spent the time making the vert blend shader, this is going to be pretty important to have in the entire scene.

  Working on the initial building kit. This took alot longer than I imagined for some reason. Maybe just not used to doing buildings. I felt like I was too careful with this stuff and being too restricted with modular parts.

  Lots and lots of imagery gathering. And starting on the first main building. Also tried out some color tones in the scene with flat materials.

Refining the blockout a bit with some colored lighting and foliage. I know that greenery is gonna be a huge component so i tried to lay it in early. Tbh in the end it was kind of a waste of time.