Deserted Asylum - Level In Progress

This is a view of the current level I am designing in Max. This is not in game. It will be exported once it is finished. I am very unhappy with the material around the doos so if anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears. Crits welcome.

*Updated* Here is the latest render with all of your suggestions incorporated. Thanks for the advice everyone. The encouragement has really got me pushing the limits. What do you think so far?

From what I can see I like it.

I think the ceiling looks a little too clean though.

Thanks. Needless to say the rendered scene looks good. Once I export it and import it into WED it looks bad, the textures get washed out for some reason. I've been wondering why. Anyone have any ideas?

The textures are blurry, there is no deeper details and it lacks life.

I'm sure that there's lot to improve!

I like it, gives me feeling of the old PSx games

What sort of details are you talking about? You mean like furniture and stuff. That's still in the works right now. This is just the basic floor layout. I'm working on props even now. I plan on using this in my portfolio i am putting together. Once it's finished I'll probably donate it and all assets to the community. I'm sure someone can use it.

lighting is the key to success. don't set the game time to midnight, but in the late evening, where the sun is low and orange-red. add light beams, dust, dirt, shadows from the window frames, furniture, pictures/dirty squares where the pictures would have been, add destruction to walls and ceilings and get some tiles out of the floor.

there's several things to make it look more "realistic".

first of all, when you can waste some more polies, try rounding the edes of the pillars, maybe cut away some bits too in that...

now the textures/materials:
The doorpost looks incorrect, change that to something that fits the environment (search google for reference pictures).
Another very important thing missing there is blending of the textures, if you look at the floor for example, good image, wall, good image, together.. too blend.
Try making the wall texture look more worn, you can see a hard edge on the bottom, towards the floor, try blending the texture with a dirt mask towards the ground...
If you wanna add some cool new effect, make dirt sprites and randomly place them over the ground, makes the ground look different as well, and in general look a bit more interesting.
and as said, the ceiling looks waaaaaaaaay too clean!

without bragging about my own skills, because they are far from great, you can still search for the sewer textures i once made, see what i mean with the added dirt everywhere.

regards,

for some reason imageshack doesn't show it to me... anyway it's a cool idea for a creepy level, i really liked asylum in Painkiller, you may use it as a reference

Something else I've noticed is that the scale of the ceiling texture seems a bit too big. Also as said the door post texture seems a bit odd.

So far so good though.

*bump* update with new pic

yes, that definatly looks lots better, still, there's things to change ofcourse but we are here to help you out ^_^

first of all, the wires, you are allowed to have more faces in there to make them look less edged and more rounded :P scale them down as well, like half the size it is now.
second, what's the white thing? again looks too clean, and kind of doesnt fit the environment, might wanna remove that, and put a broken panel model on the floor below the hole...
the roof definatly is improving, but scale it a little smaller, it is just TOO big now (like, between the current size, and previous size).

though the walls have been improved, rather then just blending it black, try adding some more "gross" things there, brown/green spots in general do well (again, can be solved with simple sprites, but make the transistion as less noticeable as possible there, as if the ceiling blends the walls, which blend the floor, that should be best for horror levels!).

doorposts look way better now!
and the fire exit is a cool addition

the pile of dirt in the background looks way to big imo, might wanna change that for (again) a sprite with a texture on it that's worn out, if you have no clue on how to achieve that, i can make you one, so you can test with that a bit.
and again, in general, add more dirt, that's the clue

great job so far, and keep it up! love seeing this develop.

regards,

definitely an improvement, more of that. next step, try to experiment with materials(specular/normal mapping, reflectivity, ambient coloring, ...), for cables, walls, dirt, debris etc.

I was wondering if someone could tell me why i'm having issues when i export this to FBX and import it into WED. If i apply a normalmap shader to it and hit it with dynamic lights it get really funky. And if i bring other objects into the level that where FBX there bumpmapping transfers over to the level. Strange.

The plausible aspect of the screen looks quite good to me, lighting is indeed the key to realistic scenes
Of course, a render shot in Max is never the same as when using the scene in 3dgs' WED. I see you're having problems with exporting this (which is the initial problem that scenes never look the same from Max to WED) thus I advice you to pm some experienced users about the exporting and compability functions from Max towards 3dgs.
Exporting can be a pain in the a*s when not using the right technique(s) ^^

Cheers

Frazzle

You have to change/implement shaders. 3DGS doesn't use multiple shaders for light like MAX does. The only way to get the scenes to look similar is to almost completely change the level. I had the same problem when i imported some shaders from MAX, they just don't look the same, the lighting engines are just too different.

All the textures you see in the scene are hand painted by me in photoshop. I'm not using any shaders or materials from Max. The only problem I have is when I add the shader in wed. If only the level geometry is loaded no problem, looks good. Add another model, say for instance window panes, and the bump mapping from the windows transfers to the level geometry. Very strange indeed. The level does look pretty good in WED though. I just need to get the light issue resolved and igure out how to use HDR. Soon as I have something plausiable to look at I'll post some more screens.

Moving along the latest screen shot(see first post) shows another area with a square entity used for dynamic lighting. I do not have the spotlight for any objects active yet the light is still projected as though it is a spotlight??? Anyone ever have this problem? I have tinkered with everything and can't figure this out.

as far as the doors go you might want to just make them use a texture that looks like actualy trim (lines and nails to make it look accurate)

I've already dealt with the doors and facing issues. My main concern now is in-game lighting problems.

Well, i don't think I'll be doing anymore work on this level as I just joined up with Spearbang Productions(see my signature). So as promised here's the final model for members to use and abuse as you want. Have fun with it.

Asylum Model

Thanks for the contribution. But I tried to download for about a half hour and finally gave up for now. MEGAUPLOAD defeated me.
I hope it works better later.
Thanks again,

sorry bout that jimfox. if i can find another place to put it i will.

i can host it.

Edit:
Here is it:
Asylum Level

Thanks Fear411.