osed's forest environment (UE4)

osed

Hello!

New year new possibilities!

This is my first environment so its alot about figuring out what to do.

I am aiming for a nordic forest scene and want to make it as realistic as possible.

Still very much to do,including lighting the scene, which I have no idea how to get right :P 

I will try to post as many progress shots as I can  

And as always, throw as much feedback as you can in the comment section!

// osed

osed

here's some progress on tree variations. 
(color of the leafs is wrong, thats something i will adjust)

I really have a hard time to make nice looking foliage, any useful tips on that is greatly appreciated,

also any tips & tricks how to nicely lighting a outdoor environment in UE4 is appreciated

Jaston3D

Fozwroth did an amazing forest environment. He shares a lot of info on lighting and foliage in his thread. I reference it all the time!
http://polycount.com/discussion/158371/redwood-forest-ue4/p1

n4uj

Hi Osed,

I post a quite big critique yesterday but idk why is it gone, maybe because I posted a link of a good tutorial. I basically made these points:
-Are you using movable lights? because if not, you might want to do it, since baked shadows can make the foliage look weird.
-I'm also making a landscape, and my light setup is: directional light, skylight, skysphere and and a light mass volume in the areas I want good reflections.
-Your grass texture pattern is noticiable, that is probably becaus eyou have directional/singular elements on it, if you post an image of it we can help you.
-The more break down you do, theeasiest is for us to help you improving stuff.
-I recommend you to go through the foliage wiki of polycount.

Hope it helps

Juan

Zodd

While there are good critiques already given, here is what stands out to me.
On the birches in particular is the size of leaves, they appear to be too large, while on photo references (least what i can find) they are much smaller and clumped together, and this throws the scale off in general.. while its obvious it is a large tree, when you focus on it it looks like a potted plant size, hope this makes sense.

osed

Jaston3D said:

Fozwroth did an amazing forest environment. He shares a lot of info on lighting and foliage in his thread. I reference it all the time!
http://polycount.com/discussion/158371/redwood-forest-ue4/p1

Thanks a lot! definitely gonna check that out!

osed

n4uj said:

Hi Osed,

I post a quite big critique yesterday but idk why is it gone, maybe because I posted a link of a good tutorial. I basically made these points:
-Are you using movable lights? because if not, you might want to do it, since baked shadows can make the foliage look weird.
-I'm also making a landscape, and my light setup is: directional light, skylight, skysphere and and a light mass volume in the areas I want good reflections.
-Your grass texture pattern is noticiable, that is probably becaus eyou have directional/singular elements on it, if you post an image of it we can help you.
-The more break down you do, theeasiest is for us to help you improving stuff.
-I recommend you to go through the foliage wiki of polycount.

Hope it helps

Juan

Thanks for the tips man!

I dont know why its gone, I didn't see it

No I use baked lights for now, most because of performance related stuff. I'll try to set it to movable and see if it gets better .

and yes, the dark pattern in the moss is caused by the AO map, thats something I have to fix .

can you link the tutorial again perhaps? 

osed

Zodd said:

While there are good critiques already given, here is what stands out to me.
On the birches in particular is the size of leaves, they appear to be too large, while on photo references (least what i can find) they are much smaller and clumped together, and this throws the scale off in general.. while its obvious it is a large tree, when you focus on it it looks like a potted plant size, hope this makes sense.

haha yes, I noticed that as well after having a good night sleep and looking at it with fresh eyes again :P thanks for pointing it out

n4uj

osed said:

Thanks for the tips man!

I dont know why its gone, I didn't see it

No I use baked lights for now, most because of performance related stuff. I'll try to set it to movable and see if it gets better .

and yes, the dark pattern in the moss is caused by the AO map, thats something I have to fix .

can you link the tutorial again perhaps? 

There is a thread of that tutorial on polycount, it is pretty famous around here: http://polycount.com/discussion/92432/3dmotive-creating-foliage-for-udk/p1
I have done it myself and it really helps if you are completelly new to foliage. While most of the stuff in that tutorial is still aplicable, now that PBR has come to the game engines, you might want to avoid baking some light information on the albedo.
Also it is very common to fall in the trap of making very opaque branch/leaves textures, I would recommend you to add more alpha information (more negative space in the texure).
Also, I'm making a break down of the landscape I'm working on, maybe you can find some stuff that might help you there: http://polycount.com/discussion/163629/ue4-landscape-environment-w-i-p-unreal-engine-4#latest

Also the more information you post (textures, materials, screens of the "bad-looking" stuff etc), the easier for us to help!

osed

n4uj said:

osed said:

Thanks for the tips man!

I dont know why its gone, I didn't see it

No I use baked lights for now, most because of performance related stuff. I'll try to set it to movable and see if it gets better .

and yes, the dark pattern in the moss is caused by the AO map, thats something I have to fix .

can you link the tutorial again perhaps? 

There is a thread of that tutorial on polycount, it is pretty famous around here: http://polycount.com/discussion/92432/3dmotive-creating-foliage-for-udk/p1
I have done it myself and it really helps if you are completelly new to foliage. While most of the stuff in that tutorial is still aplicable, now that PBR has come to the game engines, you might want to avoid baking some light information on the albedo.
Also it is very common to fall in the trap of making very opaque branch/leaves textures, I would recommend you to add more alpha information (more negative space in the texure).
Also, I'm making a break down of the landscape I'm working on, maybe you can find some stuff that might help you there: http://polycount.com/discussion/163629/ue4-landscape-environment-w-i-p-unreal-engine-4#latest

Also the more information you post (textures, materials, screens of the "bad-looking" stuff etc), the easier for us to help!

oh nice!

I will try to post some breakdowns later on, right now I have a pretty tight deadline (this saturday) since it's a school assignment

osed

here's some progress:

osed

also did a rework of the old birch tree:

osed

so now the the time is up and I have to turn in my assignment.
I still have to go back and pimp up some stuff before its ready for the portfolio.

any way, this is how far i got during the 4 weeks:

also what causes this errors?

"stuff I want to do" list:

(depends on if it's worth the time and effort to improve the models, and how much work it will take)

*pimp up the birch trees

*redo the tall pine trees.

*redo the fir trees

*make more variations of trees (and forest foliage overall)

*fix the lightmap errors.

*fix the lighting.

*add ferns

*take a real post process pass.