[WIP] 15 Million dollar mansion in UE4
polycounter lvl 6
I want to make this house in UE4 at a photorealistic level:
UE4 archviz has been around for a while and creating small scandinavian apartments just doesn't cut it anymore. Creating this magnificent home would really put me on the map and I'm sure it would lead to a job. I am willing to spend 6 months on it as well. (in between work).
In fact I'm taking a week of holidays to work on it full time. I've already started blocking it out and it has many great references (5 floor plans, 30+ photos and a 3 minute video).
Obviously such an insane home offers a fair share of challenges which I was hoping to talk through. So firs the pros of this home:
PRO:
- Simple Geometry. Even compared to a smaller apartment this house is very simple. Just nice clean block of concrete and hard edges. It looks complicated but through doing blockouts I've discovered it's actually very cleanly made.
- Great lighting. The huge open spaces likely means one can just rely on directional and sky lights, no bounce cards required.
- Simple Furniture. Again a tiny apartment filled with complicated geometry can quickly become just as complex. The bed is one of the more complicated items in this scene.
- Simple Materials. Besides being obsessed with concrete I feel as if the materials are very achievable for someone with only a couple months of substance designer experience. The concrete also looks really fun to make.
- Passion. This house keeps me awake at night. I NEED TO MAKE IT. I look at little apartments and just feel flat.
- There's another amazing house right next to it by the same architects that I also want to make.
CONS:
- Environment. Very complicated envon, the entire house sits on a cliff besides the beach. I'm not too concerned with the terrain actually as a lot of it will be outside the viewing area, creating the islands in the distance and the ocean in a believable way I imagine will be difficult. I'm not sure how UE4 handles infinite ocean planes.
- Vegetation. I plan to use photoscanned materials for the majority of the vegetation which will help, a lot of the vegetation is Australian native which is both a con and a pro (I'm australian). It's hard to find resources that fit the flora, but it also is more valuable as an artist working in Aus to have these assets.
- Water. The water is a huge component to making this scene work and I imagine will take time to get right. There are 3 water materials required. the pool (aqua, clean, caustics). The pond (dirty, still) and the ocean.
- Hard to break up into sections. Due to the home being so open it's not really possible to show each room individually. The scene isn't going to work until the vegetation, ocean and sky are completed.
UE4 archviz has been around for a while and creating small scandinavian apartments just doesn't cut it anymore. Creating this magnificent home would really put me on the map and I'm sure it would lead to a job. I am willing to spend 6 months on it as well. (in between work).
In fact I'm taking a week of holidays to work on it full time. I've already started blocking it out and it has many great references (5 floor plans, 30+ photos and a 3 minute video).
Obviously such an insane home offers a fair share of challenges which I was hoping to talk through. So firs the pros of this home:
PRO:
- Simple Geometry. Even compared to a smaller apartment this house is very simple. Just nice clean block of concrete and hard edges. It looks complicated but through doing blockouts I've discovered it's actually very cleanly made.
- Great lighting. The huge open spaces likely means one can just rely on directional and sky lights, no bounce cards required.
- Simple Furniture. Again a tiny apartment filled with complicated geometry can quickly become just as complex. The bed is one of the more complicated items in this scene.
- Simple Materials. Besides being obsessed with concrete I feel as if the materials are very achievable for someone with only a couple months of substance designer experience. The concrete also looks really fun to make.
- Passion. This house keeps me awake at night. I NEED TO MAKE IT. I look at little apartments and just feel flat.
- There's another amazing house right next to it by the same architects that I also want to make.
CONS:
- Environment. Very complicated envon, the entire house sits on a cliff besides the beach. I'm not too concerned with the terrain actually as a lot of it will be outside the viewing area, creating the islands in the distance and the ocean in a believable way I imagine will be difficult. I'm not sure how UE4 handles infinite ocean planes.
- Vegetation. I plan to use photoscanned materials for the majority of the vegetation which will help, a lot of the vegetation is Australian native which is both a con and a pro (I'm australian). It's hard to find resources that fit the flora, but it also is more valuable as an artist working in Aus to have these assets.
- Water. The water is a huge component to making this scene work and I imagine will take time to get right. There are 3 water materials required. the pool (aqua, clean, caustics). The pond (dirty, still) and the ocean.
- Hard to break up into sections. Due to the home being so open it's not really possible to show each room individually. The scene isn't going to work until the vegetation, ocean and sky are completed.
Replies
I'm not sure whether to rescale each room individually or just scale the entire project by a factor of 1.1 - 1.2. Testing when I get home.
I think the scale is pretty close but definitely needs improvement. A big problem is the default Arch Vis Character from UE4 kind of sucks. I hate the FOV. I think initially I will just rely on cameras and sequencer, so setting up a few camera to test for scale. Overall I think all dimensions could be increased slightly. It just looks too small!
I increased the scale of the entire scene here by 10%
It still felt a little small so I compared 110% to 120%
110 on the left, 120 on the right.
I felt the Z value is too much at 120% but felt really good for the XY. It annoys me to much so much effort into real world scale and then learn it's better without it, that's why it's 3D ART I guess. Bigger = better though so I'm going to lean more towards the 120% version and just adjust parts individually.
okay so I think the best process is to separate the house into XY * Z independent sections. If I separate the walls from floors I can more easily adjust heights of the ceiling without affecting the surrounding mesh. I think I'm going to have to do 2 more refined blockouts before I can start adding detail.
I noticed that the stair are smaller in your scene compared to the images.
I would revisit this stage to verify that won't mess up the cushions that seems to be placed on the stairs.