[UE4] Fantasy adventure environment

Jonny10

Hello fellow counter of polys!

As part of my minor I'm putting together a game environment, alongside of some workflow experiments. This screenshot of Dragon Quest XI pretty much inspired the whole thing. I love how you can tell the kind of game it is just by one screenshot, my personal goal was to achieve the same effect.

I feel like I'm almost satisfied with the looks. After which I'm going to add some non-natural structures.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions as this is project is much of a learning experience.



To avoid cluttering this post with the dozens of development pictures I have, I invite you to visit my Trello board for detailed workflow snippets: https://trello.com/b/rTA3hBaP/production

Jonny10

Went for another pass on the lighting and post effects. Originally I had all my foliage materials coming out of a Substance, so I could control the overal color and leafs. Instead now I've changed it to work with Material Parameter Instances which I find move stable.

I like this amount of bloom, but it is blinding when looking at a water reflection, not sure what I can do about that.

KingKellogg

Liking it so far, keep it up.

NodrawNT

I love it, I can't wait to see more goodjob !

Optinium

The latest picture looks a lot more appealing due to the blooms colour. I'd maybe try and get the same effect though with other post process effects like a colour LUT or a filter with a reduced bloom effect, should make things a bit clearer and avoid the blow out with the water.

MercurialForge

Two thoughts:

1. Assume the game will always be under heavy bloom and down tone the water material to work under those constraints.
2. Apply some self illumination to the objects to localize the glow. Then tone down the bloom.

Cheers!

mrgesy

If you want to match the reference, I suggest you increase your contrast (increase the highlight crush also). Add some blueish atmospheric fog to the scene to add solid atmosphere. Also your scene is looking very bland and lacking some good shadows (especially your grass). You don't need such an intensive bloom, just adjust contrast, get a bright directional light, adjust color grading,etc.

I'll stress this again, your grass is not working at all. It's missing base shadows, highlight on the tips and color variation. You need a gradient on it, not just 1 solid color. Work on your foliage and the scene will come to life. Keep it up!

griffiti

Really liking the look you've got going so far. For me the bloom is distracting. I think you should have a bloom but have a bluer sky instead. Give a reason for the bloom  

Fenyce

looks beautiful! I'm curious where this is heading.
And give a bluer sky a chance, it might help. And I love the look with the bloom, it looks so soft and like inside a dream.

artrynk

Very intresting technique with tree leaves shading
Little  advice: Sun is not white,shadows is not  black in this daytime, maybe it still WIP

Jonny10

Thanks for your comments everyone! I appreciate the insight, definitely helped me steer my tweaking sessions.

This assignment is due on Friday so I spent the last few days on the lighting and post processing. Honestly, it was pretty nerve wrecking. Between the slow light baking iterations and the infinite directions I could go with color grading I ended up tying a knot in it. 

In the next few days I'm going to be working on my matinee flythrough, as a presentation of the scene. Here's a piece of it (with a few annoying blades of grass haha)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIx4sv-FlSA&feature=youtu.be