As others are saying, I suggest taking some time learning Substance Designer if you haven't fully grasped it yet. I think you're doing yourself a disservice doing an environment and avoiding tiling textures. That isn't to put you down. But it is a very important skill for an environment artist to know. Because unwrapping is really more useful on smaller props or larger "hero" one-off props. Not something generally done on a hallway. This project definitely has the mileage to go the distance and look really good.
I suggest downloading other peoples substances and looking at people's graphs in Substance Designer. Study them and figure out what does what. Or figure out how to make the tiling textures in Photoshop or anything else. It will be a valuable skill to add to your repertoire.
Hey great stuff so far but as other have said I would also suggest using tiled material. Looks like your texel is a little low maybe. Since you said you were not so hot with designer why not try making them in Painter? it might be a little trickier but I think in the long run it will look great! Their workflow is midpoly using tiled materials, floating geo and custom normals. Good luck
Im leaving the normals(decals) at the end so I can focus more on the textures other than that i'll definitely try making tiled materials in Painter!
Im leaving the normals(decals) at the end so I can focus more on the textures other than that i'll definitely try making tiled materials in Painter!
Honestly, I was in the same situation as you and I fully regret not taking the time to go through and taking the time to learn Substance Designer, It will take a while to get a grasp of it but the flexibility of procedural textures you can make will save you time the long run
In any case there is a good range of graphs out there for you to download and learn from as well as some good content on allegorithmics channel such as
Being honest here... most of the materials in this scene are very very basic substance graph setups... I really advise you to drop the painter workflow and go with Designer... not because it's a massively beneficial program to learn but because this is the most basic of the basic materials you could be experimenting with... most people start with Metals, grass, concrete, etc... because you can get away with some lovely results with a bunch of blends between default noises... it makes your life so much easier when it comes to texture map generation/map conversions/map packing/etc once you start to get comfortable with it.
Pick it up, don't put it off. Striving to be a better artist means constantly diving into the deep end and immersing yourself with opportunities to learn and improve and this is definitely one of those situations.
I think you need to add more polygon model detail, start adding those panel seams in and dividing up the corridor to be more like the reference. right now yours feels like everything is large pieces which isn't really how things are constructed in real life. the level of detail in the reference image is much higher, in terms of geo and decals/details. start working in all that smaller information and this will improve a lot
Hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread for a bit, but the talk about Substance got me wondering. On SC they use tillable textures so they will always be crisp and sharp no matter how big the asset is and then you add details with Normal Decals, Trim Sheets, etc. My question is how do you add details like smears and leaking stains on the textures which are unique to some individual pieces? Do they make those as Decals as well? How about wear on edges and dirt on crevices, is it possible after exporting a Substance to UE4 and then change the wear parameters on different meshes and it will use the curvature from each mesh so the same Substance adapts to every individual mesh?
Hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread for a bit, but the talk about Substance got me wondering. On SC they use tillable textures so they will always be crisp and sharp no matter how big the asset is and then you add details with Normal Decals, Trim Sheets, etc. My question is how do you add details like smears and leaking stains on the textures which are unique to some individual pieces? Do they make those as Decals as well? How about wear on edges and dirt on crevices, is it possible after exporting a Substance to UE4 and then change the wear parameters on different meshes and it will use the curvature from each mesh so the same Substance adapts to every individual mesh?
This is a learning place so I dont mind lol. In UE4 there are ways of using the smears and leaks as a Deferred decal. I think you can do that when you make a Material in Designer and using the Substance Plugin to tweak settings and maybe change the curvature too.
Spent some time making those textures in Designer and now I am having texture streaming issues in UE4 not to mention my GPU overheating I have no idea how to fix the weird noise everywhere.
For your Substance issue, I would try googling around and looking at the Allegoirthmic support forums. If that does nothing for you then you can at least try uninstalling and reinstalling Substance and see if that gets you anywhere.
For your Substance issue, I would try googling around and looking at the Allegoirthmic support forums. If that does nothing for you then you can at least try uninstalling and reinstalling Substance and see if that gets you anywhere.
I managed to fix it by changing a few values but now the subsar file is too heavy for my pc to export that I have to split them all up. For now Ill finish the trimsheet and then export everything back to UE4 for testing \o/
Also this seems like a good place to ask, when applying for an environment artist job is it better if my portfolio is filled with the same kind of art (scifi or fantasy or lowpoly etc) or is it better to have a variety of images from different styles of environment?
Also this seems like a good place to ask, when applying for an environment artist job is it better if my portfolio is filled with the same kind of art (scifi or fantasy or lowpoly etc) or is it better to have a variety of images from different styles of environment?
Variety is good to have but more content is required. I cant tell whats missing in your portfolio, you seem to have alot of stuff in there, I suggest you start picking stuff you want in there and remove the old ones which dont shine as much as the others. I would also suggest setting up on Artstation for more views, you might get someone's attention :P
Also this seems like a good place to ask, when applying for an environment artist job is it better if my portfolio is filled with the same kind of art (scifi or fantasy or lowpoly etc) or is it better to have a variety of images from different styles of environment?
I think it's best for you two have a couple variety of environments e.g one Sci-Fi and one fantasy but then have a third which is your focus, so another Sci-Fi or fantasy if that makes sense.
I just wish things would go smooth for once... I cant seem to get the big panel on the left to bake in Max. Max is by far the only software that isnt totally ruining my bakes
Here's what my Normal Map looks like after the bake.
I managed to fixed my bakes thanks to Marmoset Toolbag 3 I will tweak the normals and then trim em up. Finally be able to give the scene some extra details. \o/
Also this seems like a good place to ask, when applying for an environment artist job is it better if my portfolio is filled with the same kind of art (scifi or fantasy or lowpoly etc) or is it better to have a variety of images from different styles of environment?
I think it's best for you two have a couple variety of environments e.g one Sci-Fi and one fantasy but then have a third which is your focus, so another Sci-Fi or fantasy if that makes sense.
Also as Deathstroke said, set up an Artstation
Thanks for the advice! I already had setup an Artstation profile with only my most recent work but had been using behance as my main portfolio website getting more exposition there for my previous work because it's more photography and architecture focused, Hopefully once I start adding some game related art to Artstation I'll get more exposition there.
I think first I'll try to recycle one of my industrial interior projects so that all the custom models I have made in the past don't go to waste (I just have to optimize them for the game engine) and after that I'll start working on a sci-fi scene.
Great work so far, but your decal sheet needs work. 1: You're wasting a ton of space with this spacing between them, try to work on a grid system too as it will help you with placing them if you need to shift the UVS. 2: You probably only really need the top 5 stack here, try to avoid arraying things on your decal sheet as much as possible because, again, wasted space. 3: again, you could probably easily get away with just doing one side of these and mirroring/arraying them, infact if you really want you could just have a single horizontal strip.
Keep up the work, look forward to seeing how it turns out!
Great work so far, but your decal sheet needs work. 1: You're wasting a ton of space with this spacing between them, try to work on a grid system too as it will help you with placing them if you need to shift the UVS. 2: You probably only really need the top 5 stack here, try to avoid arraying things on your decal sheet as much as possible because, again, wasted space. 3: again, you could probably easily get away with just doing one side of these and mirroring/arraying them, infact if you really want you could just have a single horizontal strip.
Keep up the work, look forward to seeing how it turns out!
Thanks! I reason I spaced them up was that I was getting weird artefacts when I was trying to bake them, Marmoset TB3 has a really nice baker that reduced the problems to a minimum. That was also the old decal sheet Yes I could work more on it but I am going to see how it turns out as I've aligned most of the stuff already and dont want to go into the hassle of placing it all together xD
Also redid the lighting. Have to figure out how to place the decals without manually placing them. I dont understand why some of the decals look flat even though they have been made properly.
Currently I am having constant crashes when I try to export my subsar files from Substance Designer. If any of them exports, they crash when I import inside UE4. 100% Disc Usage and Memory Usage.
Replies
I suggest downloading other peoples substances and looking at people's graphs in Substance Designer. Study them and figure out what does what. Or figure out how to make the tiling textures in Photoshop or anything else. It will be a valuable skill to add to your repertoire.
In any case there is a good range of graphs out there for you to download and learn from as well as some good content on allegorithmics channel such as
These guys are also great and provide their graphs to download and follow along
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvrzoT49CiRy1hvgbfkklQA/videos
Looking forward to seeing progress on it though
Pick it up, don't put it off. Striving to be a better artist means constantly diving into the deep end and immersing yourself with opportunities to learn and improve and this is definitely one of those situations.
Hope that helps man, keep up the good work.
How about wear on edges and dirt on crevices, is it possible after exporting a Substance to UE4 and then change the wear parameters on different meshes and it will use the curvature from each mesh so the same Substance adapts to every individual mesh?
In UE4 there are ways of using the smears and leaks as a Deferred decal.
I think you can do that when you make a Material in Designer and using the Substance Plugin to tweak settings and maybe change the curvature too.
So far I've made 2 materials.
launch application:
C:/Program Files/Allegorithmic/Substance Designer 6/sbscooker.exe --input C:/Users/Kingslayer/Documents/Substance Designer/EVACorridor.sbs --includes C:/Program Files/Allegorithmic/Substance Designer 6/resources/packages --output-path C:/Users/Kingslayer/AppData/Local/Temp/Allegorithmic/Substance Designer --output-name EVACorridor --expose-output-size 0 --expose-random-seed 1 --expose-pixel-size 1 --size-limit 12 --compression-mode 0
Execution failed ! (Exit Code: 4)
Output:
Substance Cooker 6.0.2 build 20117 (Mar 17 2017)
Loading...
Flattening...
Front End...
Back End...
ERR: (Error 4) Internal error
ERR: Cooking fail [Error 4]
I cant tell whats missing in your portfolio, you seem to have alot of stuff in there, I suggest you start picking stuff you want in there and remove the old ones which dont shine as much as the others.
I would also suggest setting up on Artstation for more views, you might get someone's attention :P
Also as Deathstroke said, set up an Artstation
Here's what my Normal Map looks like after the bake.
\o/
I think first I'll try to recycle one of my industrial interior projects so that all the custom models I have made in the past don't go to waste (I just have to optimize them for the game engine) and after that I'll start working on a sci-fi scene.
http://polycount.com/discussion/187774/ue4-wip-star-citizen-corridor-environment#latest
Great work so far, but your decal sheet needs work.
1: You're wasting a ton of space with this spacing between them, try to work on a grid system too as it will help you with placing them if you need to shift the UVS.
2: You probably only really need the top 5 stack here, try to avoid arraying things on your decal sheet as much as possible because, again, wasted space.
3: again, you could probably easily get away with just doing one side of these and mirroring/arraying them, infact if you really want you could just have a single horizontal strip.
Keep up the work, look forward to seeing how it turns out!
I reason I spaced them up was that I was getting weird artefacts when I was trying to bake them, Marmoset TB3 has a really nice baker that reduced the problems to a minimum. That was also the old decal sheet
Yes I could work more on it but I am going to see how it turns out as I've aligned most of the stuff already and dont want to go into the hassle of placing it all together xD
Have to figure out how to place the decals without manually placing them. I dont understand why some of the decals look flat even though they have been made properly.
I've managed to get POM decals working on UE4.
Check this thread: https://polycount.com/discussion/198544/blue-sun-tech-ancillary-maintenance-section-0-24-medium-poly-workflow-unreal#latest