UE4 - Ancient Ruins
polycounter lvl 12
Hi PC,
I am working on this scene in UE4 based on this concept by Shahab Alizadeh (http://shahabalizadeh.deviantart.com/)
Here is a highpoly rock that will be used to make the large rock structures.
The lowpoly with the first texture pass and a detail normal
And the blockout and basic lighting in UE4
Since the actual direction of lighting is strange in the concept I had to change the composition around to get the light to fall in a way that looked good. Also if anybody knows, how do you blur the shadows of a directional light. Thanks!
Any comments and critiques are welcome
I am working on this scene in UE4 based on this concept by Shahab Alizadeh (http://shahabalizadeh.deviantart.com/)
Here is a highpoly rock that will be used to make the large rock structures.
The lowpoly with the first texture pass and a detail normal
And the blockout and basic lighting in UE4
Since the actual direction of lighting is strange in the concept I had to change the composition around to get the light to fall in a way that looked good. Also if anybody knows, how do you blur the shadows of a directional light. Thanks!
Any comments and critiques are welcome
Replies
1) Model out the large forms in maya with a bunch of primitive shapes bashed together. Topology doesn't matter just get the silhouette and large parts in there.
2) Bring it into zbursh and dynamesh it together.
3) Refine my main forms, then start to get my secondary forms in there. This video is basically the process and brushes I use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auk3mKdKEwg. Orbs crack brush is also super awesome as well.
4) The tertiary detail is a little bit of alpha work i zbrush with the XMD set from here http://www.michaeldunnam.com/free-stuff.html. I don't sculpt in the really fine detail, I like to do that in my texture so I have more control, less noise in my maps that I bake.
5) I decimate my mesh to make my lowpoly, clean up a bit in maya, UV it, and bake out my normal map.
6) I put my normal map in Knald to get my AO, Cavity, Convexity, and Height maps super fast.
7) For this rock I used Mari which just got a new PBR viewport and is absolutely amazing for texturing rocks. I use photoshop a little bit to create some different masks from my bakes to do the edge work and some of the directional detail. I used about a dozen different photo textures to paint in different details using Mari.
8) Screen grab from Mari viewport.
Hope that helps. Also special thanks to my friend Hayden (http://foughtabear.tumblr.com/) I learned a lot from him about sculpting rocks.
@Jeff, I plan on using this one rock to create all the mountain structures, and use a detail normal map with a detail diffuse overlay so they work up close.
:P
cheers for the breakdown
I just use CG textures, and use any and every texture that has a interesting patterns in them. Here is a low res pallet of what I used.
Any progress on that scene?
I think you could get closer to the lighting/composition if you pulled the camera way back and reduced the FOV. Would also mean pushing the last rock sprite backwards a bit to get the lighting across the doorway. But the foreshortening should bring everything back together and give you a more cinematic feel like the concept
Unfortunately not anymore, I kind of lost motivation for it. I got my job at Crystal shortly after I started this and since I work on a game with ancient ruins, tombs, ect it makes it hard to come home and work on stuff like this. I have a new scene that I have been working on a bit over the past month or so that I will probably be posting soon