@okornyal Thank you! It is almost done! Hopefully up in the next couple of days.
@agisslayer Thank you! I really had to sacrifice a lot of things while working on this. I woke up early and did some before work, after work I went back to it again until about midnight everyday. Weekends were 12-14hr days of just working on this. It was pretty full on.
@MagicFlyingBus Sure, no problem, though it might be better here so other people can see it too? Whatever suits you.
Impressive final result, well done Benvox ! I didn't have the time to go through all the thread yet, but I will. Reading some previews comments seems to me that you documented the whole workflow in detail. Thanks for sharing this!
@Benvox2 I looked over a lot of your break downs and that helped a bit. I am just really curious about your process on how you build these assets from start to finish.
For example the vines. How do you go about placing the leaves? What about your process for the plants / foliage.
How many polygons are we looking at in the full scene? It looks fairly high given that a lot of the stone are their own objects. Is that normal or are you going heavier since it's a personal project?
How did you go about building the Vertex paint for the moss? It looks really good and moss has been a problem for me for a very long time.
The fire effect is also really nice. I have a scene where I wanted to add something similar but I can't get it to work properly, and the lighting comes out really terrible.
I would love to build something like this, but I always get stuck on issues that I can't seem to overcome. Or sometimes I just feel like I can't push it as much as I want to. I really want to be an environment artist but I've been flat out told my work is not good enough.
@Benvox2 I looked over a lot of your break downs and that helped a bit. I am just really curious about your process on how you build these assets from start to finish.
For example the vines. How do you go about placing the leaves? What about your process for the plants / foliage.
How many polygons are we looking at in the full scene? It looks fairly high given that a lot of the stone are their own objects. Is that normal or are you going heavier since it's a personal project?
How did you go about building the Vertex paint for the moss? It looks really good and moss has been a problem for me for a very long time.
The fire effect is also really nice. I have a scene where I wanted to add something similar but I can't get it to work properly, and the lighting comes out really terrible.
I would love to build something like this, but I always get stuck on issues that I can't seem to overcome. Or sometimes I just feel like I can't push it as much as I want to. I really want to be an environment artist but I've been flat out told my work is not good enough.
Hopefully the breakdown article that is being edited now well help make sense of the things I did.
Vines and leaves were done in a very old-school way unfortunately. I see there are blueprints for creating them right in Unreal but I actually created them in max. Unique ones where I needed and modular ones to fill the spaces. The leaves were added with the 'object paint' in 3ds Max. It is perfect for these situations.
Not sure how many for the whole scene, I will have to check the UE4 stats, but yes it would be pretty high. I modeled as closely as the original as I could so it is all very realistic numbers and even a bit last gen. The key is to use LODs so that all the tiles and pillars you dont currently see are downgraded to even lower-polygon models. Also sharing UV space and reusing materials/textures as much as possible is a huge help.
Vertex painting in UE4 is surprisingly simple once you set up the materials correctly. 'MetalGameStudios' makes incredibly clear tutorials on all things UE4 including vertex painting, I recommend looking at his channel.
Unfortunately I did not have the time I wanted to build the VFX from scratch (being an environment artist and all) so they are shamefully taken from the Unreal example files where I just tweaked some values and changed out some textures to suit my needs, next project I want to reserve more time for this.
Yea I know your feeling man, the key I have found is simply motivation. If something motivates you it gives you endless strength and drive. For me there were some negative situations in my life that gave me the strength to push this through til the end, and believe me I ran into a problem every single day. Don't try to rush things, you will just sacrifice quality, and don't stress when everything goes to shit and you hit a brick wall. Hit up some forums, post some questions and sort it out one step at a time. Good luck mate!
Badass scene, thanks for the breakdown and showing your workflow throughout. All these souls/borne environments are inspiring me to do something similar... Looking forward to the article.
Badass scene, thanks for the breakdown and showing your workflow throughout. All these souls/borne environments are inspiring me to do something similar... Looking forward to the article.
Thanks man! I highly recommend it if you are as blown away by the game environments like myself!
Finally got that breakdown sorted which may help clear up any additional questions:
This is an awesome example of nailing the execution of an environment to the quality bar set by the studio and being rewarded for it. Literally holding your work up next to theirs and hammering on it until it fits right in. Nice work
Heythis looks amazing, one question, is the floor a substance with tesselation? it looks like actual geometry this confused me a lot and I wanna try myself doing something like this.
Heythis looks amazing, one question, is the floor a substance with tesselation? it looks like actual geometry this confused me a lot and I wanna try myself doing something like this.
If i remember it correctly its a modular piece with extrudes to give it thikness and he uses some extra bricks on top
Heythis looks amazing, one question, is the floor a substance with tesselation? it looks like actual geometry this confused me a lot and I wanna try myself doing something like this.
Hey guys! Yea @wirrexx is absolutely right. I wanted to make it as close to the original game as possible, so no fancy shader work, just low poly geometry and LODs etc to keep it running smooth.
Replies
@Ben_Fr Thanks mate!
@Kihlstrand haha thanks! It's a great area for cracked red eye orbs as I gathered while getting reference.
@Chantel-sky Thank you !
@agisslayer Thank you! I really had to sacrifice a lot of things while working on this. I woke up early and did some before work, after work I went back to it again until about midnight everyday. Weekends were 12-14hr days of just working on this. It was pretty full on.
@MagicFlyingBus Sure, no problem, though it might be better here so other people can see it too? Whatever suits you.
I didn't have the time to go through all the thread yet, but I will.
Reading some previews comments seems to me that you documented the whole workflow in detail.
Thanks for sharing this!
For example the vines. How do you go about placing the leaves? What about your process for the plants / foliage.
How many polygons are we looking at in the full scene? It looks fairly high given that a lot of the stone are their own objects. Is that normal or are you going heavier since it's a personal project?
How did you go about building the Vertex paint for the moss? It looks really good and moss has been a problem for me for a very long time.
The fire effect is also really nice. I have a scene where I wanted to add something similar but I can't get it to work properly, and the lighting comes out really terrible.
I would love to build something like this, but I always get stuck on issues that I can't seem to overcome. Or sometimes I just feel like I can't push it as much as I want to. I really want to be an environment artist but I've been flat out told my work is not good enough.
Vines and leaves were done in a very old-school way unfortunately. I see there are blueprints for creating them right in Unreal but I actually created them in max. Unique ones where I needed and modular ones to fill the spaces. The leaves were added with the 'object paint' in 3ds Max. It is perfect for these situations.
Not sure how many for the whole scene, I will have to check the UE4 stats, but yes it would be pretty high. I modeled as closely as the original as I could so it is all very realistic numbers and even a bit last gen. The key is to use LODs so that all the tiles and pillars you dont currently see are downgraded to even lower-polygon models. Also sharing UV space and reusing materials/textures as much as possible is a huge help.
Vertex painting in UE4 is surprisingly simple once you set up the materials correctly. 'MetalGameStudios' makes incredibly clear tutorials on all things UE4 including vertex painting, I recommend looking at his channel.
Unfortunately I did not have the time I wanted to build the VFX from scratch (being an environment artist and all) so they are shamefully taken from the Unreal example files where I just tweaked some values and changed out some textures to suit my needs, next project I want to reserve more time for this.
Yea I know your feeling man, the key I have found is simply motivation. If something motivates you it gives you endless strength and drive. For me there were some negative situations in my life that gave me the strength to push this through til the end, and believe me I ran into a problem every single day. Don't try to rush things, you will just sacrifice quality, and don't stress when everything goes to shit and you hit a brick wall. Hit up some forums, post some questions and sort it out one step at a time. Good luck mate!
@TyRey99 Thanks man! Since posting this I have gotten a ton of emails about freelance work, but feel free to send me an email with the details!
@Rageleet Cheers man, I hope it helps in some way!
@Maxilator haha yea If I had more time I would like to take a leaf out of @Stavaas ' s book and model some dead characters for my level!
Also if it is helpful to some people I will dump a few modular piece images that probably are not pretty enough for a portfolio:
Looking forward to the article.
Finally got that breakdown sorted which may help clear up any additional questions:
https://80.lv/articles/dark-souls-3-in-ue4-production-interview/
Well done
@Saaamoth Thanks mate! Yea I really learned a lot by trying to copy the modularity of such a good studio!
I will just take the opportunity of this necromancy to thank everyone for the support throughout this project.
Fromsoftware noticed it too, and I have been working there for a few months now!
Cheers!
@Nathan3D Cheers man! Yea it is great, can't wait til they announce their new project!
@PixelMasher Thanks a lot mate! It was tough work, but I am glad I did it.