Village Houses - Environment Art

jwills

Hey Polycounters,

I've been meaning to expand my Unreal Engine knowledge and get some more experience creating environments for sometime now and I really liked the idea of a medieval / village scene. I came across the work of Gian Bezzola and really liked his concept art so I was inspired to create some modular buildings based on his work.

You can see his artstation profile here.
https://www.artstation.com/artist/gianbezzola

The aim is to make a realistic building with modular sections and slowly work my way across the different concepts, if all works out I'll try and collect them all in a little village scene but for now I'm working one piece at a time and hopefully with this thread, I'll stay motivated to finish.

So far all I've done is block out the main shapes and brought them into unreal to make sure they all slot together properly on the grid. So not too much to see yet.

Hopefully I'll have something more impressive to show you all soon, but let me know if any of the scale feels off on anything

jwills

Progress Update.

Progress is a little slow at the moment as I'm trying a load of new stuff so Im learning as I go and after a load of trial and error I was able to get a decent start on my modular piece with textures.
(ignore the windows, they're next)
Link to a gif


Im pretty happy with the plaster to stone material but I was hoping someone might be able to suggest a method to change the colour/add a new matieral between where they transition , so i can add a new colour where the plaster breaks off into the stone like the image below. Something similar to edge detect maybe?

Other than that, let me know what you guys think, once I have these materials sorted , I should speed up

jwills

Progress update 2 !

A bit of an update for you guys, roof and walls done, aswell as some planks. I had to rethink my modular pieces to avoid over lapping faces and the annoying face flickering but now its starting to resemble a house. Been playing around with vertex painting and colours some more and responsibly happy so far. I still need to change the roof colour and add some moss, and Im not very sure about how the stone base / foundation came out, let me know what you guys think

Meloncov

For the infill of a half-timber, you wouldn't have super nice stonework like that. It should look something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_framing#/media/File:Fachwerk-Konstruktion-2004.jpg. Full stonework would be both too expensive and too heavy for an overhanging second level.

jwills

@Meloncov
Thank you for the feedback! I completely agree, i wasnt happy with the shader over all so i re-did all the textures and blends so hopefully this one will be closer and matches a little better  
Added new Plaster, brick and wood textures as well as some dirt and moss.

Going to start on some props soon Let me know what you guys think of the new materials !

jwills

More Progress!  getting a little closer, had a real busy weekend (black friday  ) but was able to get some work in today.

Added the little wooden box, windows, doors, balcony and wooden flooring and supports.
 
Let me know what you guys think! still need to add more assets like chimney, stairs ect ect

Hopefully the materials are looking better now aswell

jwills

Added new props today, barrel, chimney, stairs and changed my stone base texture as I really wasnt all that happy with it.. thinking the new one is an improvement however I may still change it later down the line. Need to fix the roof light Map UV's and add a few more props but fairly happy with the results.


Nearing the end of this little house now and I'm starting to think about the others. Hopefully they'll be a bit quicker to roll out and may even start to have a scene emerging

Meloncov

How close the corner of the door is to the edge of the wall is bugging me. Visually it's a tangent, and I'm pretty sure it'd cause problems from an engineering standpoint.

The sharp edges of the stairs is bugging me too. The extras polycount from beveling them shouldn't be a problem.

Beard3D Bandit

liking the textures! I would agree that the door frames is nearing that wall quite closely. It's as if it's compromising the structural integrity of the wall itself. Play about with centralizing the door and steps slightly, it might work out for ya.

jwills

@Meloncov  @Beard3D Bandit
Thanks for the Crit guys, you're right i completely missed that, I didnt think about how practical the layout would be . I've budged the door over a little so hopefully it looks a bit more sound.


I've also got abit more progress , I've started on my new house and although its not perfect, im pretty happy with the outcome since it didnt take that much extra work. Reusing tiling textures and instances makes life much easier
Let me know what you think guys!


Thank you to everyone who has helped me so far and given me feedback, I really appreciate it.

Meloncov

The door is better, but still feels structurally weak. I'd give it another six inches.

jwills

@Meloncov
 Thanks Bud, moved the door over a little bit more

Took a bit of a break from this project due to illnesses but im steadily moving through this project. Added new building and still start to work on some terrain textures. Still need to add a few more modular pieces like roofing but hopefully its not looking too repetitive. 

Let me know what you all think

jwills

Update!

Build a few more houses and decided to bring everything closer in to make it feel more like a busy street. Going to play with lighting and landscape materials next

jwills

Update:

Scene is starting to near the end. Added my landscape mat which needs a bit of work but is coming together and I also grabbed some free speed trees from their website and threw them in the background to help make my scene feel more placed. 

I also added some lanterns and fog which hopefully adds a bit more atmosphere, I plan to make it a night scene but I had a bit of trouble with bright backgrounds and glare that ruined to look. Will look into it more soon.



Still need to add foliage as well as a few more props but looking alright so far.

Ashervisalis

I look forward to the night scene and foliage! Been following your progress here for a while. The houses look great! Maybe make the ground a little muddy/less grassy where it meets the houses/walls?

jwills

@Ashervisalis
Thanks dude! I did your suggestion of adding dirt underneath the houses, although you cant see it very much, its definitely there

Did a lighting pass, added foliage, added a post processing volume and added a big moon.

Just a couple of stills for the time being but later I'll get some more shots rendered as well as a little fly through.

A big thank you too @Meloncov  @Beard3D Bandit @Ashervisalis for helping and giving me feedback throughout this project, very much appreciated!! 

If anyone has anymore suggestions or advice I can use for my next project please don't hesitate!

Ashervisalis

Looks really cool, I'd love to explore a town like this! My main critique is the lighting. The lanterns are extremely bright. Maybe also have a house with a lantern that's not on, to add some variation? It seems like a ton of light is coming from the moon to the point where it's a bit too bright (the moon also looks way too big). The second image looks far better than the first due to the contrast; It looks like it's an actual night scene because there are places which are too dark to see. I've never worked with UE (this is in UE, right?) so I'm not sure how the lighting works, but maybe there's a way to tone down the brightness of the lamps bit increase their falloff?

I love the vibe you've got going here. Makes me think of a lone knight arriving in a town late at night, or trying to find Dracula or something. The wood and stone textures also look really cool!

mcgillchris

Nice! Sky might be a bit bright, but good work on the fog and lighting. 

jwills

@Ashervisalis  @mcgillchris
Thank you guys! I toned down the sky a bit as well as the lanterns so hopefully its looking slightly more eerie and more contrast-y. I also added a few lanterns which are switched off as you suggested. Unfortunately a lot of the brightness in the background is being caused by the inter - scattering from the height fog in UE4, so I've tried reducing it however the lower I go the less fog appears in the scene so its still a touch bright but its so I can keep the fog.

I'm pretty happy with my little village scene and hopefully you all like it too, I've learnt a ton and looking forward to my next project!
I've added this to my Artstation with some larger images and a short fly through video which you can check out here if anyone's interested!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qP8gz 

As always any crit or suggestions are very welcome.

gsokol

The normals on the foundation, steps, and plaster walls is way too strong.  They look severely worn and damaged, yet the structure of the house still looks relatively good.

jwills

Thanks @gsokol, your right, looking back they are a bit too much. Theres been a few comments about the textures being too noisy and I do think they have a bit too much going on. Im gathering ideas and references for my next project and I'll definitely be keeping this in mind Thank you again! 

FreneticPonies

The strong whitish yellow lighting from the lanterns look weird and unnatural. Both the wrong color for a lantern and too bright, combined with the sharp cutoff it makes the entire setup seem strange. I'd say if you dropped the brightness the cutoff would be less obvious as well. Here's a good lantern ref for lighting:

Joopson

In UE4 you can actually use color-temperature instead of just picking a color you like. Useful for getting a jumping-off point for just how warm or cold certain types of lighting ought to be.

Here's a wikipedia link explaining color temperature, and giving a list of examples and their temperature. For an oil lantern, you'd want something between 1700k and 2400k

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

jwills

@Joopson @Frenetic Thank you guys! The lanterns need a bit of tweaking, especially in the colour temperature. Thank you for the Wiki link, that's got some really nice examples of lights and their temperatures

With all this feedback, im going to have to go back and do another pass fixing the textures and the lighting Thank you guys will be back with an update soon!