[UE4] Dark Soul-ish Castle

Flaw

I just finished Dark Souls 3 and really wanted to mess around with a castle environment of my own. I'll be using dark souls as my inspiration, but will add a few ideas of my own. I'm keeping this environment compact but dense for time reasons. Wish me luck!

Flaw

My first block out in unreal. I wasn't really feeling the arches though, so I made some changes.


Here is my new layout in Max: (These are just block out meshes... All of this)


I started working on stones, because, it's a Dark Souls inspired environment. I'm going to need lots of stones!



I have yet to do any broken ones, so fear not, I will get to that as well.

Flaw

I started to make the fence model that will go around the balcony:

Zbrush


Here's a marmoset capture with some textures on it. I made them with Substance Painter and Designer. 

Flaw

Wire on the fence mesh:

Spencer_Holmes

watching...

The Rizzler

Sweet. Dark Souls 3 had this weird drab filter over everything, hopefully you're going for more of an Anor Londo feel? Beauty in ruins, that kind of thing?

Luxap

Interested to see where this one goes! Are you going to be making the blockout or is this project going to grow in size? Or just a sweet little diorama?

Flaw

Hello all!

The Rizzler said:

Sweet. Dark Souls 3 had this weird drab filter over everything, hopefully you're going for more of an Anor Londo feel? Beauty in ruins, that kind of thing?

Yes, something like Anor Londo and/or Lothric Castle. I'm taking a few liberties, but overall I do want to get that post processing look you mentioned.

Luxap said:

Interested to see where this one goes! Are you going to be making the blockout or is this project going to grow in size? Or just a sweet little diorama?

I'll be keeping the environment the same size as the blockout, I will however be adding a large environment outside around the castle. I'm thinking about using world machine to do it. This would be a good chance to try it out. 

Flaw

I placed the Fence mesh this morning.

Flaw

I also forgot to show this mesh earlier:





I need to rework the base color and use a curvature map to show off more of the detail. Right now it looks a bit flat in Unreal despite all of the sculpting I did. As soon as I get enough time I'm going to improve upon the shader.

3dReaper

I am liking this, favorited/following.

The overall feel so far is spot on.

Keep at it.

Flaw

Quick sculpt before work; the statues that go along the fences. 

Flaw

3dReaper said:

I am liking this, favorited/following.

The overall feel so far is spot on.

Keep at it.

Thank you! I'll see it through.

HashBrownHamish

how did you make the bend in the fence ? Did you bend it in engine somehow or did you model a mesh in your too suite composed of multiple fence parts and bend it in that ? 

kohg

Are those sculptures translating well into good bakes, as in not noisy? They look like it in the engine screens, but i've had problems when triying to replicate a stone like texture with such small details, they just end up getting really noisy in the texture, specially at 1k resolution.

Flaw

HashBrownHamish said:

how did you make the bend in the fence ? Did you bend it in engine somehow or did you model a mesh in your too suite composed of multiple fence parts and bend it in that ? 

I decided to bend it in Max. I'm using 3DS Max by the way.
I path deformed the straight version along the shape I wanted to get the correct bend, then I adjusted the position and pivot a bit so they would snap easily in Unreal. There is a spline tool in Unreal that you can use to do something like this in engine, I decided to do it manually to get more control over mesh placement.

kohg said:

Are those sculptures translating well into good bakes, as in not noisy? They look like it in the engine screens, but i've had problems when triying to replicate a stone like texture with such small details, they just end up getting really noisy in the texture, specially at 1k resolution.

I'm using mostly 2k maps for this environment. I'm happy with the bakes so far, though I almost always feel like they could be better. It helps to bake out a curvature map and use it to get some edge wear on your base color and roughness to aid the normal map a bit. In the end if you want your model to look perfect up close just up the resolution on the maps and add more topology if you can afford it, that will always help for those up close set pieces. 

Flaw

Speaking about normal maps and baking, here is a detail on the floor. I updated the base color and roughness to try and show off more detail. You can compare it to the image a few posts above if you want to. 

When I get out of work today I'll finish that banister statue! Very excited to finish it.

Rutkovsky

cool stuff man! I love DS visual style and looking forward to see where it goes)

Kaine123

Flaw said:

I also forgot to show this mesh earlier:



I need to rework the base color and use a curvature map to show off more of the detail. Right now it looks a bit flat in Unreal despite all of the sculpting I did. As soon as I get enough time I'm going to improve upon the shader.

i think those bevels don't need so many segments honestly. 

Flaw

Kaine123 said:

i think those bevels don't need so many segments honestly. 

Yes, you have a valid point. The difference that they make is really only noticeable if you put the camera right on top of the mesh. I was trying something new when I was making the low poly, but at one point my idea switched and I ended up with a few extra segments on the chamfer. 


Here is that banister/fence statue:
Yes, there are some segments here that could be optimized/removed. However, I decided that this was well enough for my needs.

Nuclear Angel

I like the blockout you have so far, but I think that you could already play a lot more with the lighting and composition of your scene so you have a clear end goal. Also which materials are you going to use? As right now everything is very much the same rock. And I would personally want to find some materials to break it up a bit more. Good luck!