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[UE4] Cyberpunk City Environment

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Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
Hi guys. Yesterday I started a fun project - cyberpunk city environment in UE4. Today I completed rough blockout in 3d package.

This scene will be sat at night. Also there will be rain and lots of emissive things too :D.

I made a little plot for environment:
The scene takes places in imaginary Hydar City. A few days ago there was a series of terrorist attacks on public buildings.
Our character is private eye looking for person who allegedly disappeared during the terrorist attack. He just leaves an apartment of that person in Residential Level 02B and head to Pyramid in search of clues.

References:
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The Pyramid is main focal point of the scene.
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City in background:
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Small courtyard (tree will be neon)
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Start point, apartments
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I also added lights, just to illustrate better my idea and mood of the scene.
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If you have some ideas or cretiques feel free to give me some.

Replies

  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Top-down view. I added walking area.
    cvzhWZq.jpg
  • Matt_Billeci
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    Matt_Billeci polycounter lvl 7
    The lighting is feeling really flat and a little boring. Try and figure out a mood for scene and light to that. A good idea would be to check out some sci fi movies and look at how their cinematographers compose their lighting.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    I really haven't mess with lighting yet. I only finished blockout, transferring stuff to engine now. I know lighting is very important.
  • M4rius
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Recreated all assets (mostly modular) in Modo and placed them in-engine. Soon will go for rough detail phase. I'm pretty satisfied with scene scale now.

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  • cubitstudios
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    cubitstudios interpolator
    Early days, but I'm looking forward to seeing this as you flesh out the details.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Ok here's some detailing. Lighting is completely off as well as billboards. Will focus on them later.
    First time used 3D Coat as texturing tool. After some time I really enjoyed working with it.
    Also puddles is little bit too much I think. But it's ok for now.

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  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Made some assets and billboards.

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    Screenshots
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  • EpicBeardMan
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    EpicBeardMan polycounter lvl 8
    Lighting and reflection play in the scene is really interesting. Gonna keep my eye on this project.

    Cheers!
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Some new pics:

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    Weather and effects still wasn't presented here. Lighting is under heavy WIP. Having hard time creating rain particle system look right. Will be working on background buildings soon.

    Really liked Modo + 3DCoat combination. In Modo I use boolean + smooth shader workflow.
  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    This amount of fringe (chromatic abberation) is way too much. It hurts the eyes and makes things hard to see properly.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Yep, I experimented with post effects, forgot to turn them off. Fringe is cranked too much indeed, thx for reply.
  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    I like the other parts of your new post process setup though. It creates nice mood.
  • Shogun3d
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    Shogun3d polycounter lvl 12
    I'm digging the direction of this, watch the saturation values of your scene.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    This week I made some dramatic changes to concrete shader, added cafe/bar interior (I'll add props later), finished some assets and billboards. Also finally added rain PS and fog sheets. Next week I'll focus on lighting (need some really decent lighting) and background (skyscrapers, skybox).

    I think I need to crank down bloom intensity in postprocess, what do you guys think?

    Below some screenshots:
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  • Ubuska
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Today Andrew @thoughcrayfish reworked lighting in the scene. Post-processes also being reworked.

    Now I need to add background buildings, add some props, throw in some movable props for dynamic shadows (cars, vent fans, etc) and I think I'll call it done.

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    What do you guys think?
  • clinington
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    clinington polycounter lvl 10
    Nice progress! Some of these more recent shots remind me of Blade Runner and that's never a bad thing :D The lighting and reflections are starting to work really well. However, I think that the ground in these shots looks too clean and empty at the moment. Are you going to add litter and clutter?
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    I really hoped to get that Blade Runner feeling, glad this scene give such associations!
    As for the ground, yep I plan to add some litter and dirt. Maybe some trashcans, some plants, fire hydrant and all that stuff.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    OK, here's some progress so far. I maded props, effects/ @thoughcrayfish made lighting/post-process changes. Finally fixed windows, now it looks much better, not like emissive paper :D.
    I really like how junk worked out.
    Still gonna work on background buildings and bar props. For tat I will look at example UE4 scenes, if you can give me useful info or some tips, please do.
    Also give me some thoughts about mood change.

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  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Up for critiques/ideas. Anybody interested in some wireframe shots?
  • pixelpatron
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    pixelpatron polycounter
    Rework your lighting model completely. Suggestion on process.

    Remove/turn off all your billboards. (temporarily) I want you to tackle this scene using just directional light and ambient light, and fog. Don't worry about little street lights or any little point lights at this point. Report back with what you deem interesting lighting when you've done the following:

    An easy process for lighting is to do the following:

    Turn off directional light (temporarily), tweak ambient to desired level of darkness. Basically you want this value to be your darkest dark. Meaning in the absence of light what is this value? It'll basically be what the viewer would see in a darkly lit area, obviously you wouldn't want pure black, so it's the value and color represented at it's darkest point. (think of a basic cube, like q-bert cube.....there is a fully lit side, a medium halfway side, and the dark side of the cube.) Your ambient light should be your dark side value, your darkest dark but still has some value or light to it so it's not black.

    Once you have the ambient, the next step is your directional light and fog. Then big large point lights in a few key spots to blow out certain elements...used sparingly.

    Like I said, start with that, and report back with your progress. (an easy way to nuke your neon signs is to just temporarily save a version of the shader or texture with a black image)

    Once you nail that part of the lighting, THEN you can add all the frosting. (the neon, the little point lights, emmiseive textures.) There are far too many environment modelers/artists who skip the cake/foundation part, they throw down the frosting on a lopsided uneatable mess and call it a day. You skipped to the frosting part without having a solid foundation.


    Good luck.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks for your input and useful advices! I will post my lighting progress for sure.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Reworked lighting and post-process from scratch.
    Added props and effects. Made background building (will make more).
    Added parked and flying cars placeholders.

    Actually, I think in editor it looks little bit brighter. Anyway, we will boost ambient light little more, so it won't be that dark.

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  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFW519UH4EE[/ame]


    I guess I can call this done now. There was some things I do not have time left to do, some things I can do better, but I hope you like the result. I have still a lot things to learn.
    I want to make some highres/wire/breakdown shots later and maybe Sketchfab models.
    Also I will share this scene in a couple of days.
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    Hey, everyone always has something to learn. This came out pretty solid, a neat crossover between Deus Ex and Blade Runner, keep it up!
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
  • frmdbl
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    frmdbl polycounter
    I think you need to work on your texturing and pay more attention to details, but the design of the level is pretty cool and at that scale polishing it is hard.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    Yeah, I think I will try to improve my texturing skills. As for details I tried to push details as much as I can, but it is hard indeed. This is another area for improvements for sure.
    Looking back I understand that there are things that I wish to rework, but I glad that I pull it off eventually, next time I hope I'll do better.
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    OK, here are some final highres screenshots I made.
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    Also I uploaded some props in Marmoser Viewer, so enjoy.
    https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344250
    https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344180
    https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344077
    https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344033
    https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344212

    I shared this environment, so if you want to download, hit this link:
    https://goo.gl/sNj49u
    Unfonturetanely, archive is 2GB (mostly uncompressed textures).
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ECKCAAFvrTTnl1SEJJU3VWUU0/view?usp=sharing
    Cheers and thanks for reading!
  • Enviromist
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    Enviromist polycounter lvl 8
    huge work man! how are you going to use it?
  • Goten-trunk
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    Goten-trunk polycounter lvl 12
    looking good , love to see more .....
  • Kid.in.the.Dark
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    Kid.in.the.Dark polycounter lvl 6
    I think right now, the rain effects are a complete overkill in my eyes... it's coming off really noisy/distracting... I feel it's necessary to tone down it's density in refraction quite a bit as well... as right now they feel like bullets dropping from the sky when close up and electric sparks flying from somewhere from a distance. On an off chance here, if you've intentionally made the raindrops more visible for stills then don't because effects like rain I tend to find are best used subtly and usually come out more obvious once in actual motion.

    I still feel as if your environment right now has too many dark spots which is really uncomfortable to the eyes. If I could kind of explain a theory which I generally think about almost every second I'm creating anything in my environments is that the general idea of how a lot of 2D concept art works is that they use things that resemble things to enable the free-will/self interpretation of their viewer's minds/eyes to their advantage. Having areas that can be seen and not hidden by shadow will always allow your viewers to self interpret, but the moment you deprive your audience of a piece of the composition with really dark areas there you can't make anything out can often actually emotionally feel like a missing piece of the puzzle. That's why I feel like it's so uncomfortable to look at pure black or pure white when you're looking at it side by side with a surrounding that's full of detail most of the time.

    Evidently your areas probably aren't pure black or pure white but it's more on the issue about not being able to see anything in those shadows what so ever.

    Still on the topic of your lighting, One example I can point out on where the lighting isn't working is your third from the bottom screenshot. I can't really make out any of your building details from 12'o clock to 6'o clock within that screenshot, and generally everything on the bottom half of that section is pretty ambiguous still. It's just what I can see so far.

    But that is a opinion, but it's what I work with :)

    Either way this is coming along nicely and shows much potential, so keep at it!

    Hope that helps!
  • Ubuska
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    Ubuska polycounter lvl 8
    I think right now, the rain effects are a complete overkill in my eyes... it's coming off really noisy/distracting... I feel it's necessary to tone down it's density in refraction quite a bit as well... as right now they feel like bullets dropping from the sky when close up and electric sparks flying from somewhere from a distance. On an off chance here, if you've intentionally made the raindrops more visible for stills then don't because effects like rain I tend to find are best used subtly and usually come out more obvious once in actual motion....
    Thank you for feedback, but as you can see by the date of posts, this is my old environment. It's not even in my portfolio anymore. Your points are still valid though and I'm working on my lighting skill right now.
    I'll make cyberpunk environment in future and will raise the quality for sure, so thanks again for input!
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