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[UE4] maple forest (looking for feedback)

Sherif3142
polycounter lvl 5
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Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
hello everybody,

  here is an environment i've been working on for the past few weeks, i'd like to know what you guys think of it .
  i'm still not sure about the lighting so any critiques would be much appreciated.


unlit :



mud texture made in substance designer :

tree bark base texture made in SD :


Replies

  • Chidambhar_Swaroop
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    Chidambhar_Swaroop polycounter lvl 2
    Well I am a newbie so I can't answer much but it looks very nice... btw how long did it take ??

    On the 3rd image. Is it water ?? If yes, I think u should decrease the roughness... Something like this...

     
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
    Feels very, muddy. None of the materials feel distinct enough, the mud and water could be smoother and shinier, making them look wetter and more distinct than the wood bark and etc. All the colors need to be more distinct too. There's a lot of very similar greenish brown all around, some areas of more distinct color would be really nice. Eg the trail here (maple trees around this forest actually, though only a few) has a really distinctive color from the rest of the scene


  • Jarran
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    Jarran polycounter lvl 11
    this is nice but I'm just gonna echo what @FreneticPonies said. I would also suggest that you're missing a lot of shadows within/around the foliage which is losing a lot of separation between elements.
  • Maximum-Dev
    1. Colors are somehow bland, there's not enough contrast from one surface to another.
    2. There's a distinct lack of color variation, this is especially showing in your Unlit mode.
    3. Tree leaves, ferns, clovers, etc. each should have their own unique hue and saturation.
    4. Enable "Generate distance fields as if 2 sided" on every piece of foliage you have in there. That helps avoid over occlusion like on the ferns.
    5. Up your SSAO intensity to around 0.8 or 0.9. As you see there's almost not AO on your clovers.
    6. Punch the normal maps intensity on your foliage way higher i.e 1,1,0.25. That should help the surfaces look not just flat.
    7. Tree bark mesh has some unrealistic irregularities which are also causing it to receive too much AO.
    8. I'm not sure if those are muddy water puddles on the ground, if they are then try using a Reflection Capture Sphere right above it.
    9. Overall try to keep your BaseColors more green-ish (not much yellow), and give your SSS Colors a more yellow-ish tint. This helps to actually feel the light passing through.
    10. Your skylight/ambient light is too strong and makes it really hard to feel there's any Sunlight over there.

    I hope that helps. :)
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    sorry for the late reply guys ,

    Chidambhar_Swaroop glad you liked it, it took me about a month it
    yeah you're right there was a problem with water reflection i used planer reflection to fix it.

    FreneticPonies i think you have a point the fog made every thing a brown hue, made colors more variant

    Jarran thanks for the advice , decreased skylight intensity .

    @Maximum-Dev
    thanks for taking the time to write a detailed critique i really appreciate it.

    here is the updated scene after i edited the lighting and post-process

    without directional lighting :

    buffers:

  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
  • Swaggletooth
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    Swaggletooth polycounter lvl 5
    I like the improvements to the lighting and materials, as often gets said lighting is 90% of the work :wink:

    Only one thing stands out now, and thats the tree trunk on the right side of the shot. I don't know if that's based on photogrammetry or if it's a sculpt, but it's an odd shape. I'd normally expect tree trunks to be much more cylindrical and straight, so keep the base shape of that (because that's fine), then extrude upwards from there (feather out the "veins" as you go up too).
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    I like the improvements to the lighting and materials, as often gets said lighting is 90% of the work :wink:

    Only one thing stands out now, and thats the tree trunk on the right side of the shot. I don't know if that's based on photogrammetry or if it's a sculpt, but it's an odd shape. I'd normally expect tree trunks to be much more cylindrical and straight, so keep the base shape of that (because that's fine), then extrude upwards from there (feather out the "veins" as you go up too).
    thanks, glad you liked the lighting changes.
    the tree trunks was sculpted in zbrush from zspheres and textured in substance painter
    i was trying to get something similar to these

    but maybe it turned out a bit too irregular

  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    sorry for the late reply guys ,

    Chidambhar_Swaroop glad you liked it, it took me about a month it
    yeah you're right there was a problem with water reflection i used planer reflection to fix it.

    FreneticPonies i think you have a point the fog made every thing a brown hue, made colors more variant

    Jarran thanks for the advice , decreased skylight intensity .

    @Maximum-Dev
    thanks for taking the time to write a detailed critique i really appreciate it.

    here is the updated scene after i edited the lighting and post-process

    without directional lighting :

    buffers:

  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    sorry for the late reply guys ,

    Chidambhar_Swaroop glad you liked it, it took me about a month it
    yeah you're right there was a problem with water reflection i used planer reflection to fix it.

    FreneticPonies i think you have a point the fog made every thing a brown hue, made colors more variant

    Jarran thanks for the advice , decreased skylight intensity .

    @Maximum-Dev
    thanks for taking the time to write a detailed critique i really appreciate it.

    here is the updated scene after i edited the lighting and post-process

    without directional lighting:

    buffers:

  • Maximum-Dev
    Why you have different specular values on different ferns, tree leaves and ground? Clamp your specular between 0 and 0.5. For ferns and leaves you should definitely keep it at a solid 0.5.
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    Why you have different specular values on different ferns, tree leaves and ground? Clamp your specular between 0 and 0.5. For ferns and leaves you should definitely keep it at a solid 0.5.

    you're right maybe i shouldn't have missed with specular values for ferns and leaves .
    updated images:


  • Maximum-Dev
    That's better.
    Those logs and sticks need to be at 0.5 as well. Generally values lower than 0.5 are when you're recreating micro occlusion or distance based specular modifications. Other than that you should have a uniform 0.5.
    I think you've reached a point where it just takes a good amount of tweaking until the whole thing improves. Apart from the tree trunk and those fallen ones it's hard to say what needs improvement.
    If you post the assets individually on clean backgrounds plus adding information like tri count, overdraw view etc. you'd be able to collect some feedback there as well. :)
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    That's better.
    Those logs and sticks need to be at 0.5 as well. Generally values lower than 0.5 are when you're recreating micro occlusion distance based specular modifications. Other than that you should have a uniform 0.5.
    I think you've reached a point where it just takes a good amount of tweaking until the whole thing improves. Apart from the tree trunk and those fallen ones it's hard to say what needs improvement.
    If you post the assets individually on clean backgrounds plus adding information like tri count, overdraw view etc. you'd be able to collect some feedback there as well. :)
    thanks for the feedback, i've changed specular values to 0.5 for all materials and tweaked the lighting a bit .
    assets used :

    which one do you think is better ?

  • perrrrr
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    perrrrr polycounter lvl 4
    Good job, really like the ground details/vegetation!
    which one do you think is better ?

    I think this one, but I would add more pictures of the scene or with a new arrangement.
  • Maximum-Dev
    I think the first one looks more interesting than the second.

    Dead ferns, usually -some- of the leaves are dead, some are still alive. And sometimes some part of a single fern leaf dies and the rest of it are still alive. I see you have a fern that's completely brown/dead. but it adds a lot of realism if you mix the two together as well. Also don't forget that the dead leaves shouldn't have the same form as the alive leave. Dead fern leaves tend to bend down a lot more.

    Shrubs and bushes have really thin branches that makes it hard to see them from a distance due to mipmap and clipping.
    The cap part of the fallen tree trunk seems to have the same texture/material as it's bark part. Normally you'd want a it to look different. Seems like as if you have tiled a texture all over it. It also looks too glossy. Increase the roughness on that since wood/moss is quite rough.

    At top of the large trees I see branches going to left and right in an unrealistic way. Same with the large bush. I'm not sure what software you used to make them but normally branches don't bend sideways near the top like that.

    Trees and bushes seem to have very high tri counts. That's mostly due to leaves cards being very small which forces you to use lots of cards in order to make the tree look filled. It's a lot more efficient to create larger cards instead of using more cards.

    Clovers are packed in tight circles. Makes it less convincing. Try to expand the circle radius and remember it doesn't have to be a circle at all. You can try packing clovers in more irregular shapes.

    I hope that information is useful towards your progress.
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
    perrrrr thanks for the feedback, glad you liked the vegetation.

    @Maximum-Dev thanks man that was very helpful, after reading your comment I decided  to remake the branches.
    the big trees were too high poly 70k-50k now they are less than 20k for lod0 and less than 1500 tris for lod2

    in engine renders:

    i also tweaked the ferns and clovers, and retouched the materials of the fallen tree trunk as you said

  • Sherif3142
  • Sherif3142
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    Sherif3142 polycounter lvl 5
  • FreneticPonies
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    FreneticPonies polycounter lvl 3
  • lotet
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    lotet hero character
    beautiful. I think you might have gone a bit overboard with the colors in that last one, the previous images had this really nice haze-y feel to it which I personally loved.
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