[UE4] Blackout Police Station

FULGORE

So after about a month of persuasion to make a thread and not just stick to my sketchbook thread (Jimmy), here's what I've been working on - and it's taken ages because I've been trying to get a good result from the lighting.. after working with Snowdrop and actually being able to run CryEngine on your work pc, you get a little spoiled..

It's heavily inspired by that E3 (I think) The Division demo with the police station, and also a tiny bit by Battlefield Hardline. Power's out, apart from emergency lighting.





I still think lighting and composition are definitely not my strengths, so any crits and feedback = super helpful

FULGORE

Added in a WIP window for some variation in lighting (and the heightfog's a little too strong in this)

SaferDan

This is looking awesome! Are you doing anything in particular with your post processing to get that sharpness to your images?

underfox

I think it is really looking good. nice details and Material definition, that chair feels kinda out of place thought and the computer screen looks a bit flat.

Can't wait to see how it will evolve.

FULGORE

Small update based on feedback, mostly lighting changes and small alterations to the walls. I might replace all the wooden chairs with office-y swivel chairs, who knows. And the chunky CRT monitor annoys me too - it looks nice in Marmoset, so I'm thinking that it's a Lightmap related thing. Might chamfer the edges and re-bake.
And I apply an Unsharp Mask at strength 56 to all my renders, that's my secret :P

Deathstick

Nice stuff, I loooove those models you made for the different types of lights.

The only thing I might be concerned with/made aware of is maybe, maaaybe the composition might get a bit too noisy/crazy in the background area, but that could probably be just coming from some of the models being in various states of blockouts versus finished.

Keep it up!

FULGORE

Thanks for the kind words

Got motivated to do some more with this project after work, so I'm trying out different structural meshes (and I've learned a thing or two from an awesome lighting artist here in Newcastle), as a major crit of this environment was a lack of focal point:

(minimal postprocessing atm)



(I wish Epic would either fix light source orientation for spot lights or I could arrange this environment in Snowdrop...)

FULGORE

Highres shot

FULGORE

Bit of an overhaul - after soaking in many game screenshots and videos - modified some existing assets, blocked out some more, made a new structure, tried to make lighting/composition/etc not suck, that kind of thing:



Now if only it was super easy to make these emergency lights have lovely volumetricyness..

AtticusMars

Assuming that desk in the back is real world scale those are some ridiculously low hanging lights

ed_3D

Looking nice man! Regarding the volumetricyness... have you looked into ue4's example projects? I'm pretty sure some of them have a cheap solution involving a panning material and a blueprint, because I grabbed it for myself a while ago. I think it might have been the Reflections demo

Agreed with AtticusMars about the lights, they do seem way too low

FULGORE

Thanks ^^ I'll look at UE4 examples - had a look at the blueprints demo and it seemed a bit over my head.
Shortened the cables on the lights, and added some more clutter:

mats effect

Nice little details agree about the lights but sounds like you have fixed that already. environment feels a little empty at the moment but that's easy to change with smaller props and clutter on the desks and I am guessing you want to focus on the bigger stuff first anyway.

FULGORE

Felt like adding some more small clutter clusters after work - so I'm doing smashed glass ^^



@mats effect - yup, trying to work through this (semi) logically. In the previous iteration I kinda rushed the desks and filing cabinets by quickly using chamfers, edited normals, and plain tiling textures. But I want to make sure when I go over them again, they're done nicely

FULGORE

Small update - worked on clutter and adding window trim and skirting. Still got some placement to fix, and I'm still using scaled desks as blockout meshes for the locker room and a radiator, etc



Edit: annoyingly, looks like the dirt mask for the bloom doesn't show up in highres shots -__- anyone know how to fix this?

Kaine123

With the full white windows, maybe you could add some very vague blobs of slightly less "bright" light to imply there's stuff outside. Idk if it would work well but it's worth a shot

FULGORE

Some fun stuff - doing a damage/vandalism pass

FULGORE

Image-heavy post incoming

A load of WIP shots after some more blocking out of props, placements of grunge and WIP graffiti, etc etc

FULGORE

Slight change to the colours (less of a blue overlay over EVERYTHING) and added in some really obviously fake volumetric cones/glare in Photoshop :P

John Baxter

Nice "temp graffiti" :P

FULGORE

Thanks :P - plan to bust out my old, very dusty tablet for the proper textures

Small update - tweaked the lighting a lot, added obviously fake volumetric cones, since UE4 is a tad behind on the times (and my launcher crashes 100% so I can't access the learning content), and altered the material for the WIP smashed glass

FULGORE

Started to add stuff to the reception office area behind the window - using a marble desk top and a BSOD'd monitor as another light source:

Soldier63

wow I love it! I wish I could be one day as good as you
in between, have you ever thought about recording yoyur workflow, or even streaming! I would be totally the one who would watch!!

FULGORE

I cast Raise Zombie on this thread

This has been totally overhauled, and I'm more and more realising that it's funny how The Division E3 trailer planted the seed of this project in my head - now I'm working on it and still working on this environment :P

Latest stuffs:





More @ Artstation

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@Soldier63 - Thanks really high praise! I'm not sure I could really teach anything that you can't find somewhere else (and better) though :P That said, I know some good tips on saving time. Stuff like doing a bare minimum high-poly and easily adding most of the normal map detail in 2D - that can really, really speed up your work in a lot of cases. Maybe I'll do some write-ups when I get some holidays or something

MNBerry

Really like how this is shaping up! I am really digging the lighting set up. Cant wait until you get some more material work done.

FULGORE

Hey hey,
So this is officially my longest-running project. The first iteration of this environment, according to facebook, sprang into life about a year ago. Since then I've had an awesome job to be present at, and I've completely scrapped and re-done this enviro about 2 or 3 times. But... enough is enough. Ish. Still lots that could be done to it (maybe someday) but for now I'm calling it done.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oxyPm