Bearded Man's Redwoods (UE4) (Looking For Feedback)

Matt_Billeci

Hey Polycount, for the past few weeks I have been working on a vegetation scene comprised of a handful of assets for a CGMA course and build them into a modular environment.  I am also attaching my style guide so you guys can see what I used for reference and inspiration. With this piece i tried to reflect a mysterious mood and I played with a bunch of the colors and I try to gradient the saturation to reflect that. Prior to this, I hadn't done any sort of vegetation before and I learned a great deal with this thanks to my classmates and Jeremy Huxley. Any C&C on how I can push this even further would be extremely helpful and appreciated!

aclund3

One thing that jumps out to me is the heavy moss at the bottom of the trees on the left side. If those trees have that much moss, the rocks probably should too. Adding in some variation in the surfaces (i.e. having the bark of the tree poke out between the moss every so often) like the bottom left pic in your 'stone and moss' section might help too. Additionally, depending on where you want this set, you might even pull the moss up one side of the trees as well.  For instance in the Pacific Northwest, moss grows on the north side of our trees pretty readily but not on the south... 

Tetranome

Nice lighting focus.
I think that your trunk-heads could benefit from a stronger silhouette. They're very monotonous - particularly the one on the left. Maybe you could rotate it a bit more to get some more interesting self-shadowing.

Matt_Billeci

aclund3 said:

One thing that jumps out to me is the heavy moss at the bottom of the trees on the left side. If those trees have that much moss, the rocks probably should too. Adding in some variation in the surfaces (i.e. having the bark of the tree poke out between the moss every so often) like the bottom left pic in your 'stone and moss' section might help too. Additionally, depending on where you want this set, you might even pull the moss up one side of the trees as well.  For instance in the Pacific Northwest, moss grows on the north side of our trees pretty readily but not on the south... 

Thanks for the pointers man! Some of the stuff you mentioned I hadn't even considered, like growth patterns for moss. I'll Look into making those adjustments along with adding better variation in my moss blends and rocks.

Tetranome said:

Nice lighting focus.
I think that your trunk-heads could benefit from a stronger silhouette. They're very monotonous - particularly the one on the left. Maybe you could rotate it a bit more to get some more interesting self-shadowing.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll rotate the head around a bit to see if i can get some cool self shadowing. As far as adjusting the silhouette, I tried to follow my reference for the actual John Muir wood carved sculpture but if you had any ideas on how to make his silhouette stronger, I'd be more than happy to hear them!

Matt_Billeci

Updating this with some of the feedback that I have received. I moved a bunch of stuff around, added some new textures, adjusted the branches to have a better flow and be less angular, added roots in the ground and tweaked a bunch of the shaders and lighting.

aclund3

Looking fun

On the first image the wide bright area on the left is taking away from what I imagine would be the focus of the image. If you want the viewer to be led up the path and towards the tree heads, I'd pull in some foliage or bring up the hill on the left to cover that large bright spot a bit. Too much contrast over there, IMO. 

Matt_Billeci

aclund3 said:

Looking fun

On the first image the wide bright area on the left is taking away from what I imagine would be the focus of the image. If you want the viewer to be led up the path and towards the tree heads, I'd pull in some foliage or bring up the hill on the left to cover that large bright spot a bit. Too much contrast over there, IMO. 

Yeah you're definitely right! I'll note that adjustment down. Thanks man!