"The Zoo" ( Decadence) (Updated 1st nov)

Looks very interesting, but whats with the neon toxic waste looking leaves?

yeah the trees are ... irradiated? The rest of the map looks good and not dark on my crt monitor.

Sweet and scary

I find the leaves quite cool - make them a real lightsource

more polies on trees would be good - the big one on buildings too. Leaves looks unnatural but I guess it have to be like that. Good and nice

Looks really nice, I think the glowing trees are a nice touch, will look better once you've added other vegtation to the mix as well

Quote from D3ads

Looks really nice, I think the glowing trees are a nice touch, will look better once you've added other vegtation to the mix as well

+1

I would argue that the idea they're irradiated isn't sold as well as it could. A cool glow around the leaves would be very nice, especially if that glow was animated on/off slowly.

At the moment, it just looks like someone's put the selfillum line in the vmt for no real reason....

I think the trees would look a lot better with grey spiderweb leaves instead...

You could have loads of small plants that give off light instead, having those big trees just look weird.

I'd also work on the color of the light emitting from your flame. looks good otherwise, its dark enough and bright enough

Really good start! Congrats on keeping the deadline.

Crits:

Besides obviously glowing way too much I would say the trees/toxic water idea needs even more care. Try to get a better blend between the leaves and trunk. I think it would look more convincing if the bark sporadically glows around the areas where the leaves grow, as that would make for a smoother and more natural transition. Maybe a new shape for the leaves and another attempt with the trunk design? Nice job on getting translucency work on the leaves by the way.

One thing about the skybox (which, not to forget, looks very nice): with that kind of angle of lighting I really miss crisp normal map highlights as well as more defined shadows over all. It feels a bit too ambient at the moment.

Also, try adding some wallmark detail (leakage, cracks, dirt around transitions etc) to the buildings to spice them up a bit.

Good luck with the rest

Yeah looks good But please, stop using BASE02 cause that font was cool 3 years ago!

That middle building in the first screenie (or the one on the right in the second) screams of HL2's trainstation plaza. Its geometrically as flat as Hl2 (a flat brush with a normal map on top) whereas your other buildings look better with variations. I would rework that one

I like the town and the originality but i'm not convincing by the Glowing trees, it doesnt make much sens.

If a tree is contaminated, that's weird that all the grass/bush around is not, I think you should give less contrast to the contaminated environment so it would naturally blends with the non-contaminated stuff..

Nice : D !!

The skybox clearly looks rendered from a dome shaped mesh with a cloud texture on it. As for the toxic leaves, is it additive ? It should be "$translucent" 1 and "alphatest" 1

-Felix

i agree with furyo and i think JohnSmith has an interesting point, allthough i still think the leaves are quite a nice touch to your environment.

You need to make the other plants glow!