Rome: Truly AAA Quality Exterior Enviroment Pack for Unity

Sure, keep it. Each asset is useful.

 

I have looked and looked for something like this… even just as normal/height maps. Once you are done with Rome please do Baroque!

 

I agree - Certainly Corn and Chili Peppers were not in Ancient Rome (being New World species), but Rome has been around for a long time and still exists, so It's safe to say they were introduced there at some point!

 

Yup, and Roman architecture can be used in many different circumstances, not just old Rome.

 

The people have spoken! The corn and green pepper shall stay!

 

Sure, generating normal maps or height maps from high poly models is the only proper way. Hand creation for simple surfaces is possible too. I really dont undertand, why 99,9% of assets in asset store uses normal maps generated from diffuse map by some tool like crazybump. Such maps are totally useless (use case for such map is very very limited) and it only shows, that author is lazy, or he does not know what he is doing. Preparing nm+hm in proper way tremendously increases quality of models. Add proper normals and tangents and this is difference between proffesional and kid.

 

I couldn't agree more. Put on top of that using those same shadowy, high contrast photos for PBR and the whole material is a mess. It takes an entirely different skillset to do materials correctly, not to mention a good eye for detail and color balance. Sine I've released my first PolyWorld pack, there has been a torrent of "low poly" art coming into the store that just amounts to single-colored, first-year computer animation student models. No composition, angle work, silhouette consideration.. One of the goals in this pack was to set a high bar that kept the copycats out of reach.

 

Ignore the poorly UV'd props

Today I authored a soil/dirt material in Substance Designer. This gave me lots of trouble but I'm content with the result. I'm also testing how I can make the most interesting ground. Initially I thought modular meshes for the ground would do well, but then I'd have tons of UV seams, no blending, and the props and architecture would have no real physical relationship to the ground. I could make a set of larger prefab pieces, but that might lock in the building placement for everyone which is something I don't want to do.

I'm going to go with terrains, but small ones. No 512x512 terrain here. A 64x64 might do, maybe paired with a 32x32 here and there. You can use pbr materials, blend them, and sculpt the terrain where props and walls meet so it looks natural.

 

And that's where you wish unity had some built in vertex painting tools paired with some good height map blend shaders....
Looks great though, that's an interesting trick to go around that limitation, though with terrain you can blend more materials.

 

I think another engine has all that stuff. I just can't..recall the name...

I actually wrote a vertex coloring tool in Unity that works pretty well. I should publish it on the store for free, but I'll have to add that to the already huge list of things to do.

For those interested, the painting tool was created from a video tutorial on Udemy which I highly, highly recommend. Check it out here!

 

I was worried that this brick wouldn't come out well. But, when you walk away from your artwork for a bit and come back, things fall into place pretty quick. Every substance I create yields a new trick to add to my arsenal, and this grout is no exception. I worked on it for a few hours, only to realize how simple it is to get that puffy result.

 

I am really just continuing to be ready to dump some money on these assets. They just keep getting better and better every shot!

 

Today was Limestone and Stoney Ground day. What's nice about these is that they are made from variants of other substance I have in the scene. The pebbley ground here is just about the same node tree as the stone wall a few posts back, but the stone shapes are more square and recessed. All the albedo values are different of course, but the time spent on both of these surfaces was very little.Really happy with how that limestone came out too. You can just feel it

By the way, if you guys could pass the word along about the pack and this forum link, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm a one-man army here trying to make a living with the asset store. Any word of mouth can really keep me going. Thanks!

 

Cool, looking great XD

Added support for you in my sig

 

The art for a pack like this has so many possible applications, and it's so well done, I don't think you'll have much problem selling it. Keep on it, and when it's complete I have little doubt it will be featured on the main page of the asset store upon release. Everybody will know about it.

 

Thanks for the support guys! And you couldn't be more correct regarding applications. Many of these props and materials can fit into most types of projects, not just ones based around Roman times. The materials shown in these shots are great fits for scifi and fantasy games too.

 

Probably best soulution would be providing some ground textures + mesh streets "lego".

 

Just about done with the tiles for the mosaic. Done with Substance Designer and 3DSMax. Hope it colors well!

*edit updated

 

Gorgeous!!

 

Pfew. Finally got it colored. There are some subtle changes from the last image, namely the tiles are closer together in most areas and the large square tiles are spaced out evenly. It looks great as a floor too!

 

This is a height and normal map of a cypress tree bark I was working on yesterday. It was an amalgam of a previous technique in Substance Designer that I stumbled upon months ago while fiddling around. You never know what weird effects you can get by just randomly combining nodes together, thinking, "I wonder what this will do.."

Here is the final colored cypress bark I'll use on the trees in Rome. All 100% substance!

 

Oh wow.
Can't wait to get my hands on this.

 

Really nice work!

In that case, Dice is probably really bad and just a kid, because they frequently do use normals that aren't necessarily from a high res mesh source. That's not the only way to skin this flying cat. You can see from the frostbite publications.

 

Super impressive

 

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In every fantasy environment, there just HAS to be some hay.. Here I cooked up a shader to blend in and out height-based hay. I'm doing some more decals of different surface types around the space based on this height-based alpha cutout shader as it works nicely.

 

Shut up and take my money Pete!

 

We need that. Awesome work.

 

Same thing here: Decal!

Using the same shader, same technique, I'm able to create normal mapped damage decals.This is just a piece of flat corner geometry, low poly, with a normal map, ao map, etc. The normal and height maps are constructed so that they "bow inward" towards the bent corner so they create fake depth without resorting to parallax.

Here's the shot without the decal:

 

That's brilliant - this shader will help massively, and looks great!

 

Another mosaic tile floor. This one is a bit worn and looks nice in the Insulae section inside the shops and hallways.




Interior walls will have this sort of rock relief wall I cooked up in Substance Designer today. A custom voronoi generator was used to make this which I borrowed from Substance Share and modified it for my purposes. The standard tile generator/sampler/random can't reliably get the jagged layout of shapes.

 

Awesome.

 

Im loving this stuff

 

A thought:

My original plan was to make one big giant pack and sell it in the store, combining the higher and lower class styles. Then proceed to interiors based on the popularity. However, the dev cycle required for getting both in would require the price to be higher.

What is everyone's thought into separating the architectural styles into individual Rome packs? The price would be less, the dev cycle shorter, and you could pick what you want ala carte. They will be, of course, incrementally updated too with new stuff.

 

If I'm understanding you correctly, this sounds like an excellent approach.

I think your Rome packs are likely to be popular, and because of this I think the best business advice is to publish completed packs at full price. You can package up the art as "Roman Art & Architecture Vol. 1 - Temple and Villa" and "Roman Art & Architecture Vol 2 - City Scenes" and then continue to add volumes to the series as you collect enough pieces. Like, "Roman A&A Vol 3 - Everyday Living," which could contain the baskets, urns, food, and other non-architectural items. By categorizing and keeping the packs affordably small, you can probably best meet the needs of customers.

 

Personally, I want interiors and exteriors in all styles - so will buy whether in smaller packs or one big one.

 

I prefer smaller packs. I can choose what I want, although I will more than likely want them all. But most of all, I will get some of them sooner.

One large pack means a very large wait!

Besides, after buying several assets with HUGE amounts of stuff, it is just annoying to have to hunt through them. Knowing that poor and wealthy housing assets are in separate packs would be so much easier to use. I could actually find things.

Thanks for asking, btw!

 

I dont care, I will buy all anyway and to build something decent, all packs will be needed. So if you release in small packs, we have to wait for all.

 

But...we can start building scenes. And when we show off how amazing they look, future packs will become very popular.

 

No, you cant start building scene without knowing whole picture, I mean without knowing what will each pack contain. If you want to make good looking scene without remaking it 10x, you need to know which objects you will use. Not possible to make something from just 10 objects wihout knowing how will other 90 look and what it can offer to you. You have to decide which objects are dominant, etc...Yes, you can build something from part of the whole kit, but when whole kit is ready, you will remake it anyway.

 

This looks great. QuantumTheory, I've been a fan of yours for a long time now. Love that hay painting!

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think that's what I'll do. In the meantime:

I created some windows today. I need to spend some extra time with Substance Painter to get used to its quirks. I'm not satisfied with the normals/heights on the wood and windows. Weird stuff going on. Other than that I think it turned out cool.

 

Clean plaster material for today.



Man that's one sloppy wall.

 

Here's an old wooden door for the Insulae (lower class) area. Creating the metallic substances was fun. This was assembled and painted in Substance Painter which allowed me to bring character to the door. The metallic pieces have soft normals on them too which are sourced in the normal map, not the vertex normals.

 

I started UVing the baskets today. I also found time to make a barrel.

I also made another door for variety's sake.



Everything that's textured, except for the tree, has been done with Substance Designer and Painter with 100% procedural materials I've authored.

 

I started working on texturing all the pottery today. Here's a sample:

 

some of the finest pbr mats I've seen to date. Excellent work.

 

I'm not sure if you have mentioned this before, but around what price range are you thinking these assets will cost? It looks really incredible, I've always been a huge Rome nerd and I would love to use these assets.

 

Killer work. Can I ask if this material was built entirely in substance or did you source and external photography to build this up?

 

The specific price hasn't been determined, but certainly less than 100$.

 

Thanks! Every surface, except the foliage, is done in Substance Designer and Painter. No photo sourcing was done on any of the wall/floor textures except the artistic mosaic tile material with the face on it. That sloppy wall in your post is all Substance.