Redwood Forest UE4
polycounter lvl 9
Hi there!
Here is a little side project I've been working on lately, a redwood forest
Video did unfortunately suffer a little from compression but I'm going to investigate if I can improve it on my end.
Made in Unreal Engine 4. I will be posting some breakdown of the scene and assets shortly
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzg4QTsi6Ds[/ame]
Here is a little side project I've been working on lately, a redwood forest
Video did unfortunately suffer a little from compression but I'm going to investigate if I can improve it on my end.
Made in Unreal Engine 4. I will be posting some breakdown of the scene and assets shortly
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzg4QTsi6Ds[/ame]
Replies
Video looks good, unfortunately YouTube compresses videos pretty heavily after upload. But still, mind sharing your encoding settings?
Sure I can see if I can dig the settings up.
Yeah maybe some more color could have gotten in there, I'll see if I get around to do another pass at it, I will focus on making some breakdowns first for now
I agree it turned out a bit dark maybe, here is a brighter video, but still the crappy compression though... cant seem to find a way around it
[ame]
Will start working on the breakdowns tonight
The first thing I noticed is that your trees and logs have no moss on them. Although redwoods do tend to have less than I've seen on other trees they still have some moss on them. The colors of the trunks are a little too brown in my opinion as well. I also think they are a little to dark.
As Digitalair mentioned I think things are too dry as well. I don't think I've ever seen a forest look that dry even in the dead of summer.
I think the foliage in general is a little too rough/not glossy enough.
Most importantly I think your lighting feels really flat. Making the contrast a little stronger in the lighting, adding slight bloom, and maybe pushing the blue a little in the ambient fog would help I think. Also if you haven't already, try messing around with lighting temperature. It's a nice little feature that helps you get some really nice colors.
Make sure mesh distance field ambient occlusion is on. You can find this in project settings>rendering. Distance field ambient occlusion gives you a really good base lighting setup. Then you can move forward from there improving things.
Beyond those aforementioned things you have a really solid environment here and I'm super excited to see where you head with it.
There is moss in there I might just have been to gentle with it
Aye I have Distance field enabled but I though having it too strong made the image feel very contrast-y and close to black-ish in some spots but I'll play with the settings some more
I am working on an abandoned swamp environment and and not sure how best to tackle trees for current gen. Mind sharing how you went about making them? I am tinkering with the idea of making them in a generic pose then rigging them them to get variety. I've been trying to avoid photosourcing because I am convinced that being able to make leaves/plants from scratch with Zbrush/Maya/Photoshop/NDO instead of SpeedTree is a valuable skill to have.
Would appreciate any advice!
How many assets are in there? I think I saw around 15? Can we have shots of all of them?
I think I see some random color variation settings here and there for the ferns, or are all of them preset?. Did you make them by hand/speedtree? Or do you use a modular blueprint trickery?
Just a suggestion, but have you considered selling some of these on the marketplace or uploading them to the community contributions section? I'd love to take a deeper look at your work.
Thanks man!:) I'll be posting a full breakdown once Im done tweaking the last things, will post some assets and such! Yeah and its more fun building things yourself
pixelpatron
THanks! Yeah I'm trying to just push it a little bit balancing/lighting
Xaragoth
Thanks, yeah Im currently trying to improve the lighting and getting the wetness to come through, its a bit difficult though but I'll manage
I think there are around 12-15 assets in total.
No everything is tweakable in my vegetation shader so making variations is very quick. Its all made by hand
Jack M.
Will do! Yes, it has come up as an idea but it would mean some issues with me being with EA and Epic being a competitor, I rather stay away from any corporate crossfire
metalliandy
Thanks! I will make them as soon as I'm done with the tweaks
FreneticPonies
Ah, yeah I can probably bring back some of the yellow but might keep it a bit less contrast-y than that, just personal preference
Personally I think @MrNinjutsu adjustments are great. I think it's a tad washed out but the colors are great.
I would agree that some textures look a bit monochromatic, but all in all I think it's a very convincing experience.
Should be easy to adjust test settings with a post process volume though.
It's pretty cool that it's all made by hand
I'd love to see some moss and leaves on the fallen logs in main view. I also think some variation on the shape of the angled log wold be cool. adding some broken branches and a more triangular end I think would make for a more interesting silhouette that is less cylindrical.
The lighting and vegetation is fantastic. Nice work!
@MrNinjutsu yeah thats really cool! Maybe not the look I'm going for but might make a variation like that just for fun
@killnpc Yeah I'll work it over a bit
Thanks everybody! Still tweaking a lot but I should have something to show fairly soon
I made some more tweaks to the materials, lighting and post. Still some content fixes to do but I'm kinda liking it so far. thinking of maybe doing a more high detail sculpt for the trunk and try got get a bit more out of it.
Cant seeem to get the shadows to draw for the little mushrooms, might need to go for a blend shader so they don't stick out as much.
Spec is a lot better now in game but get slighty matted in the screenshots, I think its because I must take them at x3 since the x2 settings just generates a checkerboard like image..
Hopefully going to have time to do the last push this weekend
Is there any chance you will be posting close ups or wireframes. Specifically of the taller plants/tree saplings.
How many polys for the saplings?
The vegetation doesn't look like it has that much color variation, so the up close shots like the clovers look a little plain.
The fog in the background also feels pretty bright. I'd personally tone it down a little and work with the falloff so it's a little more gradual, because it feels like it's almost a wall where the fog starts, if you look in the center of the image at the log.
Keep it up! Subbing so I can see how this turns out
I tried to apply some of it today
Yeah I will post full breakdowns of assets and such when I'm done with the tweaks
One thing I'd say is that the atmosphere is a lot less apparent, but I understand that that might be a stylistic choice to increase the visual contrast. However, to be realistic, you might want to tone it down a bit more. Another thing is that redwoods drop a LOT of leaves and branches, so small rocks like you have on the trail would be completely buried.
You completely nailed the vegetation though, especially the "carpets" of clovers.
Have you considered using DFGI on the scene? I'm curious about what that would look like.