[UE4] Tibetan monastery interior

Toku

Hey all ,I have decided to start a new environment project for my portfolio. The foundation of the piece is a concept created by JC Park, However I would like to develop on it and add some details and props to give it a more realistic appearance. I will update this progress thread when I have reached a new milestone and would really appreciate any feedback you could give me.

Current Progress:


Concept painting & Mood Board:

Toku

Asset Breakdown:
[1] Cloth Banner
[2] Wood Pillar
[3] Wood Supports
[4] Gold Spire
[5] Gold Centrepiece
[6] Stone Pot
[7] Stone Seat
[8] Cloth Tie
[9] Gold Block
[10] Stone Stairs
[11] Stone Shrine
[Not marked] Carpet, Gong, Scroll racks

There are also some props around the statue which I dont really know what to call!

I have described the material and form above. Studying the concept it seems like there is this transition between blue and gold along the stone surfaces as they move towards the centrepiece, I think the impression is that the material used to hew the stairs/platform/shrine have gold veins running through them and the objects placed on top are forged from the gold. That or it could be bounce light from the golden Buddha which is shading the surfaces. (Possibly an opening for skylight above the statue) Either way there are two main colour combinations which are Red & White, Blue & Gold. Moving forward I will build the inside walls of the monastery which are not shown in the concept, as well as place some scenic pieces behind the pillars so it doesn't look unnatural during a fly through. 

Bletzkarn

I like how you're adding process pics. Looking forward to end result

Raayaar

Cool, I'm excited to follow your progress!  

Toku

Thanks guys. I have decided to get the material definitions down first  I spent about half the day trying to get the scene to match the ref before I realised the artist had painted it with a 2 point perspective system, and even though the vanishing points lined up, it looked out of scale from different angles. These were made in Substance Designer/Painter. I created the stone using the Marble smart material in Painter and modulated some of the masks/layers to get the desired look, The wood was created by Rodesqa on Algorithmic Share and also adjusted slightly to get the desired look.

Stone (Polished Marble with and without gold veins): 
Wood (Beechwood with and without paint): 
Wicker (Roof weave with and without beams):

Cloth:

Gold:

Material Cubes!

Toku

Moving forward I need to standardise these textures which may mean reprocessing some of them. I want the texture samples to represent 1-2m² of material in UE4 so I can easily map them onto surfaces without having to eyeball it. But the second problem is that if the texture is that small, its gonna repeat a lot across large surfaces and give an unnatural look. Looking for ways to avoid this repetition. Current ideas are: Blending two textures with vertex paint (means a lot of verts), increase UV tiling on the material so I can overlay a larger texture which adds large scale variance (means UVs on meshes are gonna be different) or decals (rendering/performance issues) 

Also read this and they have some nifty ideas for adding variance and bevelled edges on meshes. Hopefully I can use these techniques and the ones mentioned and get some nice results. Only issue is what UVs required for one may break the other so I will have to do some studies.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022324/The-Ultimate-Trim-Texturing-Techniques

Toku

Okay some more tests.. made a normal map and put it on a decal actor so I could break up some of the repetition without using a new mesh. It has to be a flat surface because the decal uses planar projection and it stretches over curved surfaces. also shading is kinda messed up apparently I need to enable DBuffer in UE4 so it blends the decal normal with the mesh material. 

 For the floor I made 3 textures: Stone blocks (Normal) and a Marble variance (Albedo/Roughness) which I blended on top of the floor with a higher UV scale. the marble variance was super low frequency so there were slight variations to the material across large surfaces but it didn't look much different besides some roughness and hue shifts, Even if I worked on it more its basically gonna be a tiling texture with a semi transparent paint over. There is only so much I can do in UE4 material editor, Possibly Substance Designer but I am not sure how it works with different UV scales inside a substance.

I am going to make a 2nd marble material which looks the same besides striations in different directions, and vertex paint between them, then also maybe use the large scale variance maps. I will probably end up making a modular set of stone tiles anyway because the silhouette needs to be there, but I can use that material on other surfaces in the scene such as the altar area.

Quick breakdown on how I made the stone tiles too, You can quickly sculpt tiling normals in Zbrush and export them into PS with this :>

Twister3

Instead of overpainting in Photoshop I recommend you have a look at this thread instead: http://polycount.com/discussion/107510/zbrush-black-seam-on-tileable-texture

There is a great script for ZBrush that removes the seam completely with the click of a button: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?94752-Useful-small-ZScripts-and-Macros-for-ZBrush-4-amp-4R3&p=848052&viewfull=1#post848052

Keep it up, I like what I see here!

Toku

@Twister3
Ah awesome thanks man, this is definitely a cleaner way of doing things, and thanks. I hope to make some progress this weekend

Toku

Added a vertically tiling trim normal onto the pillars, its just a 45 degree bevel but it makes them look a lot nicer from a distance as it smooths the edge plus anti aliasing at a distance. May be a bit too extreme and I think this pillar would probably have a narrow rounded corner but good results so far, Also created 2 tiling textures and vertex painted between them and overlayed the UE4 macro variation texture over it. Seems like you can't control opacity with the blend mode nodes in UE4 which is confusing anyone know how I can lessen the effect? maybe decreasing the contrast in the texture?

Cay

You can always lerp between the original and the blended output to get your "opacity slider", if that's what you're looking for.

Toku

@Cay Thanks! I used the lerp technique and it gave some better results, also made a smooth bevel for the Pilar which looks much better
L/R: No edge normal, Flat bevel (15% 50% 85%) values in red channel, Rounded Bevel (15-50% 50%-85%) values in red channel