Sketchbook: Luxap

Luxap

Hiya guys!

It's about time I keep a journal on the progress I make on all of my environments.
I will be focusing on environments and props most of the time, there will also be some Unreal related stuff such as blueprints and shaders setups perhaps but we will see about that.

For now just some environments I already finished
in order from most recent to oldest.

Hangar 62
Made for the search for a star competition
http://gradsingames.com/search-for-a-star/sfas-rs-2016-art-projects/ 
Some cool stuff came out of this one



Biggest project so far, used every trick that I could and experimented with a lot of new stuff on this one.
http://polycount.com/discussion/161823/ue4-ice-cave

Archviz assignment
First steps into more realistic rendering greatly inspired by the works of koooolalala the master of archviz in Unreal 4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=157P9gXQVWQ



Pedestal assignment, the idea was to make a pedestal to then present a character on. I took more of an environment route though haha



Personal work, a little test on lighting and on texturing

1VS1 modular level
My first steps into Unreal and into modular level building, learned a lot on this initial project.

more progress can be seen on the Unreal Forum:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?53921-Modular-Level-Textures


I would appreciate all the comments and critiques you have for me so please leave them here

Luxap

And the first update is going to be on my artstation challenge that is due to next week. 

For a full progress blog thingie please visit the artstation submission itself:
https://www.artstation.com/contests/the-journey/challenges/3/submissions/799

Latest update, still need to add some color to the background and update the buildings in the back.


Any feedback is more then appreciated!

lophead25

Colour palettes are looking sweet and the lighting looks well controlled, keep it up

Luxap

Thanks @lophead25 I definitely will

Final update on the artstation challenge!

Finalized this one today, not really happy about the end result, If I would do this again I would spend way more time blocking out and refining the shapes. This was maybe a bit to ambitious haha, but it helped push my limits again.





Onto the next project!

lophead25

Good atmosphere, only problem im finding is the focal point isnt quite clear with all the lights good job tho

Vilmore

Very nice luxap!
someone should hire you

Luxap

Thanks @lophead25 I totally feel you on that one, there is something about this scene that I don't like either but other people liked it, but I'm gonna leave it anyways, time for something smaller. And thanks

@Vilmore Hiya! Thanks haha I'm still a student at the moment though, and doing an internship at frontier developments, I'll be starting there as a perm in August! So stoked

And here is something to fill up the space, I have been looking into some substance tutorials lately, mostly from gnomon workshop and decided to learn and take my time making these assets, so I can start building my own asset store, things like generic textures and stuff!



Im doing this as a procedural so I can still edit the very beginnings and come up with something new, so thats pretty cool. Also testing tesselation in unreal engine 4.

Cheers for the comments guys!

lophead25

Looks good, texture seems a bit clean on the way they extrude out, as the cement transition looks too clean and you could have some bricks slanting into the cement as they have chiselled off. Also its a bit hard to see the texture from that lighting and shot choice

Luxap

Thanks @lophead25 Still is still a work in progress though.
You are right about the camera and lighting and such so here is a small update.



No color information yet, as I still need to refine the shapes of the stones and need to make some small pebbles and such for the dirt, and then I can see how I can blend them both more nicely.

lophead25

What you using for reference, the gapps between the bricks look very uniformed and odd

lophead25

P.S teach me how to light, your lighting looks badass and atmospheric

Luxap

Thanks @lophead25 for you feedback, these are actually cobblestones, I also made some bricks and got a bit derailed and made some security matting as well, all of these are still WIP though  

If you want, sent me over some private messages with some screenshots if you need some help with projects or something like that, I would be happy to help

Cobblestones


Bricks


Security matting


I love substance designer so far, really having fun experimenting with combining nodes and such!

lophead25

ooo will do, also substance designer is really nice for cracking some quick tileables from what i learnt, and the node system is endless... Keep it up

Luxap

Working a bit more on the cobblestone texture itself now, tweaking the shape and getting some color in there, experimenting with nodes instead of just mindlessly watching a tutorial like I did on the creation of the height. Gotta let go and take a leap! That's the best way to learn.

Feels good to get back at these after a couple of long days at work.



Now its time to get some color variation in there and do massive amounts of adjustments and then move onto the roughness map!

@lophead25 Yeah it really is man, having a blast with it!

Luxap

Testing out Iray, and more iteration on the cobblestones!

The difference between Iray and OpenGL is pretty big though...

IRAY



OpenGL



There is going to be some balancing involved when getting it into Unreal engine and getting the response correctly.
Looking forward to pushing this more, might differentiate the dirt and the stones more, but I'll check it in engine first.

Mossbros

Yea Iray tends to blow out the highlights, have higher displacement subd and make gloss values much more shiny. If you want to have the Iray result you should work with it. 
But if you plan on rendering in engine its best to stay away from it. 

Luxap

Mossbros said:

Yea Iray tends to blow out the highlights, have higher displacement subd and make gloss values much more shiny. If you want to have the Iray result you should work with it. 
But if you plan on rendering in engine its best to stay away from it. 

Yeah cheers for the heads up @Mossbros!

Did some more testing with tesselation on landscapes and imported meshes, also created some addaptive tesselation to approach the performance side of things as well.
Was fun to create this little thing and to experiment with some things as well.

( also had some trouble with lighting in the scene as well where the shadow would be displayed correctly and that took me some time t figure out as well haha )

A wireframe down below, the distance on which they fade out is fully adjustable, so I could maybe even try and get rid of some loops on the base plane itself.


Then I got started on some foliage for a re-useable asset for all of my scenes. I first started out in zbrush using fibermesh this gave me some good results but I hated that it didnt have any uvs or that I had to spend a fair amount of time unwrapping them. So I looked around some more and found myself a neat little maya script called SpPaint3D ( found here https://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/sppaint3d ) 
It basicly lets you paint with whatever models you have in your scene.

So I ended up with 2 variants ( for now ) that need a bit of tweaking still so thats on my list first =D



And also set up my shader with a vertex color setup so I can add some lost brick easily.



Tweaking the foliage and adding new variaty is up next!

Luxap

Hiya guys!
Updated the grass I made and added in some basic other foliage.
I am also testing out speedtree to create all of the foliage from now on, its a pretty neat program!



Adding in some different meshes and testing how the light reacts to them,
Need to do some more work on all of them because they feel a bit to toned down and non-responsive.

I ran into some trouble when comparing the speedtree models compared to the other normals meshes,

But still, this is a fun project to work on in my spare time

Any suggestions or feedback is greatly appreciated

Luxap

Its been a while since I updated this ( I actually forgot to post the last post until today... derp) as I was moving and needed to get al sorts of things done first.
But I'm back on this now that I'm kinda settled.

Did some testing with dynamic lights today, needs more experimentation though!



Also added some blockouts for some future meshes! Love working in speedtree!

Feedback and comments are welcomed, as always!

Luxap

Did some more work tweaking the shadows, looking a lot better now!

Some more speedtree stuff coming up!
Here is what I got planned so far (adding to this list frequently)
https://trello.com/b/qLMGLP5U/foliage-project

Let me know your suggestions!

Luxap

Did the textures on the ferns in the last couple of days, as well as some testing within a small environment as well.

Got some good feedback on the ferns already, seed to put some more time into the SSS part of the texture, so that's where I'll be spending my time on next

Also spent some time on a water shader I still had from previous projects, tweaking some values, looks good in full light but kinda sucks in the shade
What I'm gonna do is probably start a new shader and see what results I can get out of a new beggining.




Thanks for watching and all your comments! =D

Luxap

Made some more progress on my personal work, spent some more time learning/experimenting with Substance Designer for the bark and landscape texture.

Still a lot to learn tho!

Also did some experimenting with some settings using Simplygon new Cloud thing, it worked really well for the stuff I tried with that! 


I also started on another project with some other people, and started doing a quick blockout for a first sketch we made for our new project, this is very early WIP and I just used some meshes and blueprints that I still had.



Cheers for stopping by!

Luxap

Updated the scene, added some smaller foliage, some initial blockouts for the rocks and added some World aligned moss growing on top of them.

It feels like I am getting closer in terms of lighting, still not quite there yet tho!

To give you an idea of where I am going with this I added one of my references.
Looking at this I need to darken the color of the leaves a great bit, and balance the SSS a bit.



This is the latest iteration

The thing I will be focusing on next is to add more color variation, add a proper ground texture and fill the ground with a bit more ground foliage as well.

Gonna keep on iterating on this!
Feedback/comments are more then welcome as always!

Luxap

Some more work done on the textures and the lighting,
Added some clovers and updated textures on different foliage.

I am a bigger fan of the lighting and the AO now, adding the clovers did a lot.
I still need to replace the clovers with some ivy on the trees.

Still need to add a lot more color variation tho.
More to come!

Eric Chadwick

Looking good so far. I'd suggest darkening the ground, and using a more contrasted ground texture (leaf litter) if you want to approach the reference.

Luxap

Eric Chadwick said:

Looking good so far. I'd suggest darkening the ground, and using a more contrasted ground texture (leaf litter) if you want to approach the reference.

Thank for the feedback Eric!
I did that as soon as I saw this and this is what I got but forgot to upload it, so thanks for that It did help a lot!



Did some more texturing and added a bit more color variation to this, also did a bit more work on some assets and the general layout of the scene itself.

I am currently the stage where I am going to choose the light direction for my main shot and then I am going to add some other time of day shots with some more variaty to showcase the scene some more en then do a flythrough or something in the likes of that.




If you have some feedback on this please feel free to do so!

Looking forward on doing some more to this and finishing this scene

Thanks for viewing!