Hey! Cool environment! You've got some really strong models in there, but my main crit is that your lighting needs a lot of work. You see the areas which are completely black? Those are bad, as well as the blown out lights. Dinusty explains it pretty well in some of his crit vids, https://youtu.be/2By7sbFG3ak around 3 minutes in he uses a technique in photoshop which shows you all the total black and total white areas and explains why its not a good idea. There's a lot in this environment which is getting really let down by your lighting. Spending a good chunk of time to use this project to learn the basics of lighting, atmosphere and mood may be a good idea. Hope that helps!
Modeling and materials seem to be nice. Honestly I hardly can see what's going on there due to the contrast and clipping. (Which again might be just coming from your Filmic Tonemapper settings) so lighting in general is what you gotta work on before you can take any feedback or other aspects of the work.
Thanks for the critique! I added and changed some lights, as well as removed my LUT. I figure once I improve the lighting, I'll redo the color grading. How does this look?
Glaring issue I see here is your emissive is cranked up way too high on the green and white neon's. They're white hot for the most part, and it's distracting. You can afford to be much more subtle wish electric emissive lights like that. Check out how they did the lighting in Doom (2016) https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6XPXV Also check this out.
Notice how the lighting draws attention to the focal point of the room, it's the brightest spit, and it's not blowing it out, it's just bright enough to show off the metal and draw the eye of the player, while the rest of the area is lit so you know it's there and you can go there after you have checked out the console in the middle. Nice variation in colour as well. So my advice would be to vary the intensity of your emissive materials instead of having them all cranked to 20, and use your lighting to draw attention to the interesting parts of the environment. You don't need that crazy glow around everything.
Adjusted the emissive and added a few more crates. I used a multiply and constant node to multiply the emissives by 0.2 - 0.3. I also experimented with the emissive intensity in Substance Painter, but it seems no matter what that is set to it will appear as intense as ever.
As of posting this reply, I realize I forgot to adjust the stair light intensity, though it seems minor. How are the results so far?
Hey it looks really good. UE4 is hard to get used to there are a lot of things to learn, especially with lighting (I'm in the process of trying to learn it as well) I would say that The quality of lighting might be helped by the actually placement of the models of the lights. They all seem to be placed very high and the light seems to be focused on whats high up, while in a lot of industrial environments, lights are focused on the floor where people walk and on things people interact with. Other than that I think it looks really cool i love the layout and the core area below ground with the glowing greens.
Nice work. I think the lighting still needs more work, there are alot of pitch black areas in those shots. The wall panels have a noticeable tiling pattern with the dirt. I also think you should add some more detail to those flat wall panels. Nice size space looks like a interesting area for some gameplay.
Replies
There's a lot in this environment which is getting really let down by your lighting. Spending a good chunk of time to use this project to learn the basics of lighting, atmosphere and mood may be a good idea.
Hope that helps!
Also check this out.
Notice how the lighting draws attention to the focal point of the room, it's the brightest spit, and it's not blowing it out, it's just bright enough to show off the metal and draw the eye of the player, while the rest of the area is lit so you know it's there and you can go there after you have checked out the console in the middle. Nice variation in colour as well. So my advice would be to vary the intensity of your emissive materials instead of having them all cranked to 20, and use your lighting to draw attention to the interesting parts of the environment. You don't need that crazy glow around everything.
As of posting this reply, I realize I forgot to adjust the stair light intensity, though it seems minor. How are the results so far?
I would say that The quality of lighting might be helped by the actually placement of the models of the lights. They all seem to be placed very high and the light seems to be focused on whats high up, while in a lot of industrial environments, lights are focused on the floor where people walk and on things people interact with. Other than that I think it looks really cool i love the layout and the core area below ground with the glowing greens.