Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

[UE4] Tevinter Imperium Inspired Courtyard

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hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
Final Showcase




















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Original Post:
Looking for critique (anything from construction to presentation) on a few props I've been working on as part of a greater scene.  (I also think I'm having issues with adding images since the site update lol)



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  • Brian "Panda" Choi
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    Brian "Panda" Choi high dynamic range
    How much wear and tear are you willing to push into the materials?
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    I was trying to avoid making anything too conspicuous since I'm mirroring/reusing quite a bit of map space, its also a pretty clean palace-like scene, but I can certainly push it more. I need to add some embers to the brazier going forward, so that piece can definitely use some dirty-ing up. Any suggestions, or just more dirt/wear? :)
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    I like the idea of clean, especially as everything looks so expensive as it is. Can't imagine this stuff isn't cleaned regularly unless the entire place has been abandoned or the apocalypse has happened.

    But that being said it is a bit too clean, and shows off that you're re-using the textures too much. Some variation in the assets, some hints of charcoal and ash in the brazier too make it look like it's been used, a few unique scuffs here and there would go a long way towards not making these look so uniform. If you're really into the optimization side of things (looks like it considering the texture sizes and polycounts I'm seeing) you could get some ideas from how Epic is doing Paragon https://youtu.be/toLJh5nnJA8?t=4185

    EG separate the tiling materials from the detail materials so you can have dirt/whatever in specific areas without having to have unique textures for that.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    I'm working on re-uving and re-texturing the brazier to add some more interest/variety, but here's some high poly's I've also been working on. Creating low polys for these as well. CC appreicated :)








  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
     If you're really into the optimization side of things (looks like it considering the texture sizes and polycounts I'm seeing) you could get some ideas from how Epic is doing Paragon

    Can I ask what you (or any lurkers!) think appropriate texture sizes/ poly counts would be for these assets? I've always focused on optimization and lowpoly work-wise so it's natural for me to do with as little as possible, but it always kills me a little lol. I'd love to get away with more if I could, especially for portfolio pieces. The brazier for example, I'd love to use a 2048 map but that seems excessive and maybe unrealistic?


  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    A 2k map is fine for today, the PS4 and XBO both have access to about 4gb of ram, not quite as much need to squeeze everything as much as possible like before.
  • brandv3d
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    brandv3d polycounter lvl 12
    These are some very awesome props, nice work. Great job on the presentation as well.  :)
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the feed back guys. I finished texturing the stone assets, but now that I look at them, maybe not enough contrast? I'll look with fresh eyes tomorrow, but, as always, critique appreciated!


  • 8bitTurtle
    Holy cow...so this is what you've been up. These are looking fantastic! Good jerb.

    Giving your props a quick look-thru, the one that stands out to me as weak & lackluster is your column. I'm no column expert but those spiraly things look odd...like they were just jabbed in there (which is indeed what you've done geo-wise). I guess I'm accustomed to seeing them as part of a whole unified object. I'm sure you've done your research & such a column does indeed exist but thats besides the point...

    Its not interesting...you should at least incorporate those flowery/ornamental designs from your bench into your pillar to enforce their cohesion. Or better yet, you should try to take yourself out of your comfort zone:  
    http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00RBUQkzpGVyuC/Stone-Marble-Roman-Column-Pillar-for-Decoration-QCM135-.jpg

    This ideally would encourage you to improve as an artist & produce even more awesome results? Just a thought. Bear in mind, I in no way shape or form practice what I preach...but I am learning ZBrush so gimme a lil credit. Speaking of which, what source did you use to learn ZB & is it good? Hmmm you're gonna ignore me here too aren't you? grrr  >_<

  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
  • Kn5743
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    Kn5743 polycounter lvl 8
    Nice work man!  I really like the design.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Need to grunge it up a bit at some point, but working on some floor trims.

  • Brian "Panda" Choi
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    Brian "Panda" Choi high dynamic range
    Looking sexy and shiny, Megs!
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks guys :) Heres a WIP of a courtyard floor I'm working on. I want to add some grunge with vertex painting to blend everything better, as well as scattered geo of rocks/leaves, but does anyone have any better tricks for blending materials like this together? The triangular terracotta tile is the worst culprit as you can see. Adding a grout line in the geo seems a little overkill, but maybe not? (Critique also appreciated on the textures themselves, as always :) )


  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Please excuse my placeholders, but here is some foliage I've been working on. I would LOVE feedback on the lighting/ readability/ color tones of everything. I'm still learning UE4 so if you notice anything I'm doing horribly wrong, please let me know!

    The planters are just placeholder right now and I'll be doing a grunge pass with vertex painting later. I also want to add a color variation to the foliage.

    I'm afraid the vines don't read well at a distance (and I've already smudged the scale larger than it should be, mannequin in there for scale). Are they too busy? The olive tree was made with SpeedTree but I'll be taking another pass at it =/ Too dense? I've unified the vertex normals on all the models, but I'm not sure the lighting is where it should be. Thanks for any feedback all!

    (Also mywater reflection is upside down D: Anyone know the cure?)

  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    The thing with vines is you need accumulated dirt underneath them, yes even on walls. They also tend to be closer to the walls (they're sticking to the walls after all) and are generally thicker.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    The thing with vines is you need accumulated dirt underneath them, yes even on walls. They also tend to be closer to the walls (they're sticking to the walls after all) and are generally thicker.
    Ah thanks for the feedback, you're right. So I've flattened out the original meshes some, adding some more density to the texture, and added a filler texture behind the hanging vines to make them look a bit thicker. Still playing with everything, but is this looking better? I can take out some more of the stray leaves and vines to simplify even more.






  • Montreseur
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    Montreseur polycounter lvl 6
    Beautiful, beautiful work! I would run the albedo on the black marble through PBR validate, and then drop a PBR safe albedo node right before final output, with tolerance on 0 to bring the dark values into proper range.(granted you are using substance designer?), the value seems to be outside the PBR range?
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Beautiful, beautiful work! I would run the albedo on the black marble through PBR validate, and then drop a PBR safe albedo node right before final output, with tolerance on 0 to bring the dark values into proper range.(granted you are using substance designer?), the value seems to be outside the PBR range?
    Hey Montresuer, that's great advice! I tried it out this morning and was surprised to find no errors in the albedo D:  Since a friend had also mentioned it looked dark I knew *something* had to be off. I did some poking around in Unreal and found a shader error with the metalic! So thank you :D

    Here's an updated on the correct albedo/metalic. Not sure how I feel about it, but I'm relieved it's fixed!




  • AtticusMars
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    AtticusMars greentooth
    Please do not use png to post screenshots... this page has 14 images on it that come to 401mb total. Use jpeg.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Please do not use png to post screenshots... this page has 14 images on it that come to 401mb total. Use jpeg.
    oops apologies, fixed
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Denser vines with some color variation and depth. Critique appreciated :)


  • n4uj
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    n4uj polycounter lvl 5
    Holy crap! that is looking really good.
    The separated models look amazing, but I'm not sure why, when you set up all the scene, all that work seems to fade off. Like all those nice metalwork and benches need to say: HEY GUYS, WE ARE HERE AND WE ARE AWESOME!
    Are you using GI and Distance Field AO? both can make a huge difference in an environment like this, since now, the interior parts needs to be less bright.
    The vines look pretty nice tbh, maybe the green is too saturated. I'm asuming you are using the foliage shader and subsurface scattering. Also the scale of the vines seems to be bigger than the scale of the little trees underneath
    The water normals are far to wide imo, since it is a little pool, they should have smaller waves (unless there is a crazy wind blowing away all the water).
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    n4uj said:
    Holy crap! that is looking really good.
    The separated models look amazing, but I'm not sure why, when you set up all the scene, all that work seems to fade off. Like all those nice metalwork and benches need to say: HEY GUYS, WE ARE HERE AND WE ARE AWESOME!
    Are you using GI and Distance Field AO? both can make a huge difference in an environment like this, since now, the interior parts needs to be less bright.
    The vines look pretty nice tbh, maybe the green is too saturated. I'm asuming you are using the foliage shader and subsurface scattering. Also the scale of the vines seems to be bigger than the scale of the little trees underneath
    The water normals are far to wide imo, since it is a little pool, they should have smaller waves (unless there is a crazy wind blowing away all the water).
    Thank you! I wasn't using those, but now I'm playing around with them and it looks so much better! (I'm still a UE4 noob haha, but I'm trying!) And I think you're right about the saturation. I was going for a bright blue sky and bright foliage to even out the black and white, but it's a bit much. And thanks for the write up on your water mat. I followed a similar tutorial for a place holder but I havent gotten around to tweaking it, so I'll definitively be checking out the info you shared. :* :*

    Additionally, I'm having problems understanding the balance between baked static lighting and dynamic. My baked static lighting always looks terrible, so I've defaulted to dynamic for quality and simplicity (plus @n4uj 's advice on DFAO is priceless). How do Reflection Captures and Lightmass Importance Volumes factor into a dynamically lit environment?

    From what I understand of the UE4 documentation, there must exist baked lighting before you can use reflection captures? But also you have to have a static sky light to bake reflection captures? So what if my skylight is dynamic to utilize DFAO? Any help understanding the technical side of all this will win you my eternal gratitude and admiration :p Thanks guys!!
  • n4uj
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    n4uj polycounter lvl 5
    I'm glad my info did helped you :D Tell me if you have got any doubts in the water material/foliage shader, I'm not a pro at all, but maybe I can trow some light.
    To be honest, if this is a personal project and you are going to use GI and DFAO, just forget about baking shadows. They are going to take ages to bake and there is no really a point, unless the sun is very high and you have sharp shadows. Well Idk, it is just to avoid you some headache. Also the foliage shader works much better with dynamic lights, sometimes baking shadows into foliage maps makes them quite dark.
    About reflections... I just use the screen space default reflections, so I cannot help there... I will probably investigate them in my next project whenever I have time to start it.
    By the way, if you are using the default skysphere, a skylight and a directional light, you might be annoyed by the autoexposure. You can get rid of it both in the viewport and in the project. Discovering that was a god sent to me...
  • pixelpatron
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    pixelpatron polycounter
    I think the space would feel better overall if you double or 1.5'd your height of your second story columns. The repetition is getting a little intense. No need to make anything new, you should be able to creatively add some height to your columns and walls (hide with trim any seams) and bammo. More height. Lookin good though.
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    So what you're missing in lighting for UE4 is that you're going to go either dynamic OR static, definitely not both. Static looks great, but you need both static baked lighting and reflection capture spheres set up

    . On the other hand, since you seem to want to go dynamic, you need a moveable skylight set up, to enable distance field GI (see: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/DistanceFieldAmbientOcclusion/index.html) and then you can still get a decent effect.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    You guys rock! Thanks for all the feedback and info. Here's an update. I've been playing around with the lighting and settings as well as trying to get the water working ;A; I've given up on refraction because it keeps producing "right-side-up" shadows, which looks terrible when you should be seeing the underside of the bridge. Right now I'm using all dynamic lights, but I might look into baked lights since I'd like to get more sharpness out of my shadows. (I'm also having some AO bleeding problems). @pixelpatron great advice, I'll work on changing some things up soon!

    I'd love feedback on the water and lighting (and everything else!) :# The interior red lighting is supposed to be from a kind of "mage lantern" but let me know what you think!



  • griffiti
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    griffiti polycounter lvl 4
    For me the red light looks a bit naff as there isn't anything there to explain why it's red. The general lighting is cool though :) Really nice models and textures. Perhaps tart up the roof a bit because it looks a little bland compared to everything else.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    griffiti said:
    For me the red light looks a bit naff as there isn't anything there to explain why it's red. The general lighting is cool though :) Really nice models and textures. Perhaps tart up the roof a bit because it looks a little bland compared to everything else.
    Thanks @griffiti for the feedback! Hopefully the light will look better once I get the lanterns in, but yeah, its a bit out there. Do you mean the roof texture/mesh/ look overall? My plan is to get some taller buildings and spires in the background so maybe that will help with visual interests, but I can always bump up the roof somehow to help as well.
  • n4uj
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    n4uj polycounter lvl 5
    MAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN, you are suuuper fast getting cool resulttsss!!
     The water now looks really nice, maybe the stuff that is under it should have a colour tint, not just because of the water but also because of the dirt, the bottom of the fountains use to look quite dirty always.
    I completely agree with the red light stuff, I think that it makes the whole building look more like... well... how should I put this... a house of ill repute?
    Are you using GI? maybe that is the reason, because with GI you can allow to any object to inject colour to the illumination, and maybe stuff like the flags are doing so.
    By the way, what architectural/props references are you using? right now it seems to have stuff from different eras, like the sculpture of the pond looks totally out of place in my eyes.
    The bridge seems physically incorrect. I mean the way it is constructed. The material seems to be stone, but I have never seen stone bridges so slimer. You might want to look at google about how stone bridges look like. It is almost imposible to keep the same thickness from one end to the other using rocks, however a wooden bridge can be so thin for short distances

  • Minos
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    Minos polycounter lvl 16
    This is looking very cool, really like it so far!

    I prefer the previous lighting though, the new lighting looks a bit artificial with the strong reds everywhere. This could look pretty awesome if it was sun lit only, letting the bouce do the work for you (and maybe exaggerate it here and there by using fake lights). The ambient also looks too bright and washed out, did you add a skylight? It tends to wash things out so I'd watch out for that.

    I'd also make the marble texture a bit brighter, it stands out too much now. With PBR it's always better to be a bit brighter than you otherwise would because the lighting works better that way!
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    @n4uj Thanks! I can't say I don't like the idea of it being a house of ill repute >=) The interior seems intimidatingly large as I move towards proping it out, so maybe I'll just throw some pillows and lounges around and make it a brothel ;A; Also, the circle blob in the middle is just placeholder atm. I was thinking the same thing about the water, I think its going to have to get a bit murky-green. I am using reference from various sources, real world byzantine/roman/asian as well as some Tevinter concepts from Bioware. The bridge look is referenced from one of their comics, but its really just a silhouette in the background so I made the rest up :P You're probably right though, I might add some more support/grounding (though technically since its a culture of mages, I feel like I could answer "because...magic...!"). Honestly not sure about GI D: It doesn't seem to have any effect in the PostProcessVolume, but what I do have is a directional light w dynamic indirect lighting for light propagation, a sky sphere, a sky light using DFAO, and some point lights in the interior. My PostProcessVolume is also utilizing AO. Let me know if any of this sounds wonky =/

    @minos Thanks for the feedback! Your office scene is looking amazing! Can't wait for the tut...! in fact so much so let me ask you about lighting ;) So I'm currently using dynamic (movable) lights in this scene to avoid baking. I'm not getting the amount of bounce from the directional light that I would like (related to movable lights/ not having a lightmass maybe?) and to use distance field ambient occlusion, I do have a skylight to fill the scene. Would you go stationary light for this? I was doing some tests this morning with baking and it was taking very long, but if you think it would improve the quality I'd be willing to switch. And do you mean brighten the black marble around the scene?

    Can anyone explain whats up / the uses and differences between Cascaded Shadow Maps and Distance Field Shadows when it comes to dynamic directional lights? They can't be used at the same time, correct?

    And here's some (loose) ref (mostly for the look of the buildings I'll do in the bg. It looks mostly square and angular here, but I swear they use a ton of arches lol!)

  • n4uj
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    n4uj polycounter lvl 5
    I honestly think that the model counts as much as the material. I think is a good practice to make physically based materials for physically based models. Anyway it was something that catched my eye, I studied architecture and I'm always picky with the engineering behind of the models xD
    If during your journey you discover good answers for all the lighting stuff we don't really understand, like the cascade shadows etc, can you please post here your findings? :D
  • Minos
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    Minos polycounter lvl 16


    @minos Thanks for the feedback! Your office scene is looking amazing! Can't wait for the tut...! in fact so much so let me ask you about lighting ;) So I'm currently using dynamic (movable) lights in this scene to avoid baking. I'm not getting the amount of bounce from the directional light that I would like (related to movable lights/ not having a lightmass maybe?) and to use distance field ambient occlusion, I do have a skylight to fill the scene. Would you go stationary light for this? I was doing some tests this morning with baking and it was taking very long, but if you think it would improve the quality I'd be willing to switch. And do you mean brighten the black marble around the scene?

    Can anyone explain whats up / the uses and differences between Cascaded Shadow Maps and Distance Field Shadows when it comes to dynamic directional lights? They can't be used at the same time, correct?

    Hey Meggie!

    When I made my Sampa scene I tried going fully dynamic too and imo unless you are making a game that requires dynamic day and night cycles you should stick with Static lights (static, not stationary as those are dynamic too). Using lightmaps not only is much much cheaper render wise, but you also get a lot more complexity from the lighting than pure dynamic lighting. I don't know how GI support for dynamic lights is in Unreal now but I remember it was very hacky and broken when I tried.

    You can try switching all your lights to static and increasing the map size under lightmass settings (2 is good) to get faster baking times. Another way to decrease build times is to use small lightmap sizes for your pieces, for my office scene I'm using mostly 32 and 64 for lightmap sizes. You would be surprised how little resolution you actually need for most surfaces, specially on a map like yours that has a strong direct light :)

    Another thing to pay attention to is to make sure the environment color under lightmass settings matches your sky and that the intensity is 1 or more. You can also experiment adding a static skylight for extra skylight lighting.

    My office scene right now bakes in about 10 minutes on high, not bad at all considering how better it looks compared to going fully dynamic :)

    As for the marble I meant just brightening the diffuse up a bit, since it's so dark it soaks up a lot of lighting and stands out too much from the other materials.

    You environment looks really good now, but I think if you spend some more time getting the lighting right (and switching to lightmaps!) it will look fantastic :)
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    @n4uj absolutely! Hopefully someone knows whats what ;)

    @Minos Ah thanks! You're the best! I'll definitely try baked lighting then and see how it compares. I think the trade off is that you have to give up light propagation and DFAO, but I'd love to have more control so it might be what I'm looking for!

    Heres a quick and dirty update yall. @pixelpatron made a great point about the repetition so I've created a taller variation and some decor addons. I also want to break the interior and exterior up a bit so I'm trying out some curtains (very rough but I'd also like to get the small banners working with wind) and I'm working on getting the interior floor textured. I feel like I have my hand in a bunch of pots D: There are so many assets I'd like to revist or touch up, not to mention proping the space out. Trying to focus on the big things atm.

    Critique always appreciated!

  • Madwish
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    Madwish polycounter lvl 6
    Love the idea and I think you really got the style right. I got a couple of criticisms and a quick paintover to illustrate a bit better, hope you don't mind!

    - I think it mainly suffers from the repetition right now. All the arches are the same and take most of the screen. They are beautiful on their own, but since they populate everything they become generic and noise, you don't really pay attention to them too much. I think you could break it with a double arch at the back.
    - Same with curtains. Lovely ideas, but they're all looking the same now. I've got smaller "floating in the wind" ones on the paintover. Try to break things up a bit.
    - Most of the detail is evenly spaced everywhere. The ivy is a good example. Try to concentrate it a bit more per area. Instead of putting a bit of it everywhere, try to have areas with lots of it, and areas with none of it. This will make things more interesting.
    - Attract the eye somewhere. This is mostly an obsession of mine though, it's still wip and the structure you have in the water could be it in the end. I've opened the space with the windows and a hint that the palace continues behind in the paintover, this clearly attracts the eye somewhere. Ideally, this would be the place were most of the work goes for the detailing.


    Looking forward to your progress on this, I really like the style. ^^
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    @Madwish All good points, thank you! I had played with the idea of a double-wide arch but was afraid it didn't match the style I was going for, however for the sake of breaking up this repetition, I've implemented it again. I also ran with your window idea, but did an Aladin-esque balcony instead. I had been trying to enclose the scene so that I didn't have to worry about terrain or vistas, but its a good suggestions, so I'm going to try to make it work (pics soon!). And yeah statue will be the focal point, its just intimidating so I've been putting it off, but I have a good idea of what I want. Thanks for the feedback! :)

    I've been working with baked lighting, so I'll get pics of the scene up soon, but in the mean time here's a small prop!

  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Hey guys, wanted to post a quick update with the new baked lighting as per @Minos wonderful suggestion (might need to tone down the temp/color with postprocessing, but I'm liking it more!) Also took some great advice from @Madwish so hopefully its looking a little more diverse. Still playing w the placement of everything (thinking an alcove for the statue or not putting it there at all) and still have a lot to do, but feedback is more than welcome!



    Also I'm having an issue with my lighting and drapes. Right now, certain parts of the drapes are double sided planes and they just *will not* light properly with baked lighting. The problem areas only seem to occur on the dark side of my scene (angled directional light with lots of bounced light). I feel like I've tried ticking every box on and off to see if something was triggering the errors but I cannot fix it. Maybe I should abandon trying to light a double sided plane altogether and add a backfacing mesh? I've tried adding in a two sided sign node, no luck. I was also playing with using a subsurface shader, but I'm not sure that's appropriate either. Additionally they seem to respond terribly to AO. So if anyone has suggestion on how to fix this/ best practices for drapes and curtains, I would LOVE to hear them :)

    Also is there any magic trick for increasing bounced lighting without over exposing/ losing shadows in the bright areas? I've already increased my bounces and intensity of the bounce light quite a bit, but the interior of the dark side of the scene is still lacking enough fill.


  • Cay
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    Cay polycounter lvl 5
    There's no magic way to make everything perfectly lit. If you are using both skylight and directional light no matter what your settings are, you will have to use some additional fill lights (unless it's outdoor and there's no separation). I personally wouldn't mess with the bounce intensity too much, it might just end up being uncanny.
    I think your scene turned out a tad too yellow/orangy btw. You might want to stick to cooler tones for areas that aren't affected by sunlight so much.
    Your scene is turning out great btw!
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Oopf yeah my post processing still had some settings active that I had been playing with. Here are the true colors. Maybe still too yellow? Plus I finally started my center statue


  • Add3r
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    Add3r polycounter lvl 11
    Yeah I would watch the color of your sun, depending on the time of day, the sun color is actually more of a white or a pure white if its a summer day near noon.  If it isnt white, its a very very slight tinge of orange/yellow.  Let the bounce light of your warm materials create the warmness on your surfaces.  This will create a much more realistic feeling scene as that is the more physically correct way to approach sunlight.  It gets warmer the later or earlier in the day it is, as you get more of the atmosphere affecting the color of the rays.  I think you are pretty close, however, to nailing the sun color down.

    As for the bounce light in the interior shots, as @Cay said, definitely going to have to go the artificial light route in the interiors and just try to find what feels natural to you :)  A skybox/sphere will help tremendously if you do not currently have one, even if not exactly what you are going for, it will help generate cooler bounce light.    Your latest shot is great, definitely on the right track, time to push the ambient artificial lighting indoors! 
  • griffiti
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    griffiti polycounter lvl 4
    Yeah something like that to break it up. I don't think you need to add loads of detail just something to break up the completely straight lines. Weathering wouldn't go a miss either ie. the tiles being bleached by the sun.
  • griffiti
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    griffiti polycounter lvl 4
    Didn't see the second page! It's come on loads! Nice work! That floor would be so slippy if it ever got wet!
  • Bedrock
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    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    Looks absolutely brilliant so far! This might sound weird but do you erm, need the middle statue? I would like to see the same screenshot without it, I just feel like the scene might work better without it.
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Bedrock said:
    Looks absolutely brilliant so far! This might sound weird but do you erm, need the middle statue? I would like to see the same screenshot without it, I just feel like the scene might work better without it.
    Hmm you may be right, if nothing else I could probably get away without it. I just finished the HP sculpt and am going to retopo it, if nothing else its a fun hero asset, but I will certainly try with and without. Thanks! I'd love to know if anyone else feels the same.

    And thanks for the lighting feedback as well guys, I'll keep at it!
  • Higuy
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    Higuy polycounter lvl 9
    If your still having issues with the drapes and lighting, you could totally use subsurface for them - I think theres a special shader model in UE4 that will let you have light poor in from both sides. I used them for waving flags a while back and they turned out really good.

    You can read more about implementation here:
    https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/HowTo/Subsurface_Scattering/index.html

    The dark areas, have you considering maybe putting some lower intensity lights back there? And have you messed with the number of light bounces in the lightmass settings? And lastly, might sound dumb, but theres a skylight in the scene right? Have you messed with the shadow color (forget what setting this is exactly, can check later)

    It's looking really good btw, can't wait to see the final outcome. Love the outside layout and visual style.

  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    Here are some statues! I'd love feedback before I call them done. I'm trying not to make them *too* damaged since the scene is pretty pristine, but I'm afraid their still a little boring sculpt/texture-wise.


  • nikkiPito
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    nikkiPito polycounter lvl 8
    This scene is absolutely beautiful!! Wow! I love your stylization with the forms in the sculpted stone pieces, as well as the intricate little details (especially on the stone bench)

    As far as the large dragon sculpture, I love the globe-like sphere it's sitting on; the small pattern on the base and the greenish metal pieces, including the sun-like design really catches my eyes. The texture of that metallic material has so much depth with the grimy greens and shiny copper, it's almost distracting from the dragon on top. Assuming you want the dragon to be the focal point of the piece, I'd suggest adding more detail in the dragon itself, or maybe just defining the shapes of the dragon more. You have this beautiful stylization going on that really defines the planes of the face in the archon bust, supporting the anatomy of the face and the structure of the beard. I would like to feel that more in the dragon's face and body, especially in the hind leg which looks mostly like a solid plane right now (if that makes sense). Of course, maybe you wanted to keep the forms of the dragon more simplistic to make it feel gargolye-esque, but I would love to see more detail, or at least more definition of the anatomy in the body to bring attention up to the dragon and through the wings.  

    I love the feel of the sculpture you posted above the dragon, the pose feels simplistic yet meaningful and alive. I like your distribution of the metallic texture on this, it's brings some nice variation without being over-done. My only critique is the mouth feels lost, as in the eyes and nose are well defined by (what's maybe ambient occlusion?) but the mouth is hard to see.

    Anyways, I love your work and your scene is coming along so gorgeously! :D Can't wait for more updates!   
  • hmm_rock
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    hmm_rock polycounter lvl 10
    @nikkiPito Wonderful points, thank you! I'll try to make some adjustments. So far as the style, credit goes to Bioware for their fun, blocky statues, which are a blessing for me because character/creature artist I am not. Honestly I approached the head/bust as an anatomy study focusing on the planes of the face then used the move tool to make it a bit wonky. Thanks again for the kind words! :)


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