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[UE4] Asylum Environment - Feedback plz

Cay
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Cay polycounter lvl 5
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I've been working on this asylum scene for a while now.
The original shot is based on a matte background from the game Abandoned: Chestnut Lodge Asylum. (Karpin)

Well I don't really know the original game, so I just went in and assumed what the rest of the room could look like.

Now I'm slowly losing my sanity and I could really use some feedback and tips on what could be done to take it further in pretty much every aspect :)


I also tried a daytime version.





Replies

  • ANıL İŞBİLİR
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    ANıL İŞBİLİR polycounter lvl 8
    Great job. Are those lightshafts meshes?
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    thanks. Yes, those are meshes. I could add some particles and align them a little better for the daytime version though.
  • Mr. Darko
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    Mr. Darko polycounter lvl 4
    Looking pretty good. It's probably even good enough as is. The first daylight scene looks awesome.

    If I had to say what you could do to improve it, I'd say push matching the inspiration as much as possible. Really get that dirt, rust and general damage popping. One thing I noticed is that room in the original is so dirty and damaged that there's hardly a spot that's unaffected or clean enough to reflect anything (apart from the puddles), while your version has much more shiny surfaces. Things to focus on would be the dirt on the floor and the rust on the metal bars. Getting the cool rust trails on the wall on the right side of the original image would be nice too. Get that variation in roughness going.
  • SirCalalot
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    SirCalalot polycounter lvl 10
    I love how you've taken individual aspects of the original image and made them your own, while still retaining the main composition of the concept.

    Out of the two lighting types, I'd say I prefer the daytime version as the bloom from light hitting the various surfaces looks great!
    The problem here is that it pushes a lot of your lovely room into darkness and you lose a lot of that great detail.
    Maybe a lot more clutter and broken bits of tiles swept up against the walls would help bring some more of the interest back here.

    In terms of lighting, it'd be worth looking through different interior concept art images to see how other artists have been able to give the impression of a bright daylight outside while still maintaining detail inside, as it's very easy for a scene to become too dark.


    It's looking good so far, keep up the awesome work!
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks, guys! I'll look into it!

    Regarding the rust and all.. yeah in the concept he has that painted metal / rust texture that's on top but I felt it didn't work so well so I relied on localized rust mostly. (ambient occlusion/curvature mask) His version is also painted, while mine is bare.. but that was more of a choice. I'll play around with it some more.
    There's a lot of dirt on the ground.. cigarette stumps and what not.. I'll try to get some more of that in and improve the wall-decals.
    And I'll see what I can do with lighting and composition.
  • Adik
    looks really good!
    May i ask you something about your floor texture ? The small hanging parts of stucco, are these meshes, a simple normal effect or even a parralx mapping effect ?



  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    It's actually pretty cheap and doesn't really hold up so well if looked at closer.. x)
    Those are just a few tiny planes with the same texture placed there.. they don't even line up so well atm.
  • JoscelinFrost
    Really nice work! I agree that you have done a great job taking the source material and making it your own.
    As for ways to improve it, I think I would probably recommend a little more focused environmental storytelling. What I mean is that some of the details don't have a very clear cause and effect and you could capitalize on that. For example, where is the water coming from? If it is welling up from the floor there could be more buckling of the linoleum. Dripping from the ceiling? Maybe a moldy patch and a bit of a sag. Maybe leaking from the radiator or refrigerator?
    You have such a solid environment going, even little things like disconnecting one of the chains on the "Male Isolation Ward" sign to leave it dangling would help. Call it icing on an already delicious cake :smile: 
    Nice! - CJ
  • vbaguirov
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    vbaguirov polycounter lvl 2
    This is looking great. Try color grading the scene to define the mood better.

    The wet mark on the floor looks more like a fresh spraypaint rather than a puddle
  • Kyle KR
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    Kyle KR polycounter lvl 7
    Awesome work man! Turn the chain slightly so all the links are visible in the shots.
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks for all the advice, guys! Very useful to me.
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    I think I'm about to call this finished! I tried to listen to your advice and I'm pretty happy with where it's currently at.
    There's still a lot of stuff that could be done better, but I guess I'd rather start fresh and do things better with the next one.

    But please point out anything that's on your mind and I'll still go and fix it during the holidays. (really need to change those lazy ceiling pieces.. like.. now)




  • wirrexx
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    wirrexx ngon master
    Cay said:
    I think I'm about to call this finished! I tried to listen to your advice and I'm pretty happy with where it's currently at.
    There's still a lot of stuff that could be done better, but I guess I'd rather start fresh and do things better with the next one.

    But please point out anything that's on your mind and I'll still go and fix it during the holidays. (really need to change those lazy ceiling pieces.. like.. now)




    I'd love to see a breakdown on your roof plaster and the walls if possible. Gorgeous work! 
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    Thank you very much! I'll post it as soon as I get to it.
  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    This scene is realy great mate, good work!!
  • Ootrick
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    Ootrick polycounter lvl 6
    Very nice! Props look distributed nicely, clean looking texture work, lighting is great too, mind to share some shots of your lighting setup? 
  • Biomag
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    Biomag sublime tool
    Great work as always, Matt!
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    Ok so here's a "quick" look at the lighting setup.
    It's all pretty much standard I think.

    There's a static directional light with almost standard settings.. apart from the indirect intensity of 2.0.
    Then there's a skylight and a point light (without shadows) to set the black level.

    I included the current World Settings for Lightmass below.

    Here's a look at the setup for the windows.

    The sunlight is mainly cast by the directional light, but that's hardly enough to light the room.
    So there's a (sky-colored) spotlight, that casts against a white plane to get all the bounces starting with the 2nd. (Koola's Archviz & Clinton Crumpler used that)
    This one uses the inverse-squared falloff, so there's another, weaker spotlight to light up the entire room.
    And then there's another point light just to get some warm color to the immediate window area.

    The bloom is mostly due to post processing (exposure), so the other lights had to be "weaker" than the sunlight.



  • vonBerg
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    vonBerg polycounter lvl 5
    Amazing light and mood!
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    That's a hugely complex lighting setup to get what you're going for, including a lot of reflection spheres. Maybe just try an appropriately strong sunlight, skylight, and a ton of bounces? You can easily set the bounces to a hundred or so to get a lot of light. It would be a bit much to do all those hacks for each room in a game.
  • vonBerg
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    vonBerg polycounter lvl 5
    Btw what is the average build time? (Do you get a noticabIe better result with a level scale of 0.5? Just curious) I agree with @FreneticPonies make sure your probes/spheres are not overlapping.

  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    Well you have to take into account that I don't have a lot of experience in lighting.. so I tweaked around as I worked on it. I suppose there are quite a few things I should get rid of, since they don't affect the end result so much anymore.

    I didn't really do too much optimization on lighting since I was mostly going for the end result -> picture, but I understand what you guys are pointing out here. I can't really tell you the build time on max.. but I think it's somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes.
    @FreneticPonies thanks for the advice! I do have the bounces at 100 currently
  • vonBerg
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    vonBerg polycounter lvl 5
    @Cay Thanks for your info. :smile: 
  • jnascimento
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    jnascimento polycounter lvl 4
    Like it a lot. Love the details of lifted tiles on the floor and the ripped paper from the walls. Amassing mood.
    One question how did you do the floating dust particles near the windows?
  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    Well there's a mesh for the volumetric effect, the material fades out at grazing angles.
    Then there's a simple particle system for the smaller floating particles. I even used one of the standard assets as a texture (T_Dust_Particle). Oh and there's another cloudy dust particle system.
  • Ootrick
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    Ootrick polycounter lvl 6
    Thanks for the breakdown! I'm so curious to see everyones take on lighting, especially beginners because there's not that much info out there as to what marks to hit or... miss. I agree with FRENETICPONIES I don't think you need all of the captures. When you guys mention bounces are you talking about the indirect bounce in the light properties? I've been afraid to set it past 3....lol 
  • vonBerg
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    vonBerg polycounter lvl 5
    @Ootrick Just experiment with different lightmass settings in UE4 :smile: This thread was a real eye opener for me: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?28163-ArchViz-Lighting  An example of "koola's method" is increasing the bounces of the indirect Lighting.





  • osman
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    osman polycounter lvl 18
    This is looking great :). Keep an eye on the following thread in our forum for cool upcoming features for lightmass that will make lighting like this much easer. Here is one of the posts that might interest you:

    https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?88952-Lets-make-Lightmass-EPIC-(and-understandable)&p=410965&viewfull=1#post410965

    DanielW is working on something called light portals: 

  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    That's looking great.. thanks for posting, Osman! Those portals would be extremely useful for indoor scenes.
    Especially when looking at the render times he mentioned.
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    Ootrick said:
    Thanks for the breakdown! I'm so curious to see everyones take on lighting, especially beginners because there's not that much info out there as to what marks to hit or... miss. I agree with FRENETICPONIES I don't think you need all of the captures. When you guys mention bounces are you talking about the indirect bounce in the light properties? I've been afraid to set it past 3....lol 
    Yah, indirect light bounces, and it doesn't take up that much bake time. You can literally set it to a hundred without a whole lot of worry. Should give you more light with less work.
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