Sci_fi Industrial Environment in Unreal

sneath

My first post on Polycount. :-) I welcome feedback or thoughts. Here's a video fly thru of the environment- http://vimeo.com/43417322




The source artwork was created in 3dsMax, Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop. There are a few props that are from the Unreal but 95% of work shown here was created by me including the particle effects. My inspiration for this peace is modern day construction equipment and powerplants. Some artist that inspired my work include Davy Levy, Stefan Morrell, Eliott Llilly and Giger. Games like Rage, Gears of War and Resistance Fall of Man certainly inspire my work as well movies like Alien, X-men, Star Wars and so on. Please visit my website at 3dmike.webs.com to see more of my portfolio.






And a couple of images of the high poly models which where used to generate normal maps from.

chrisradsby

nice work so far man I still believe you can do more with it though!

Let me do a quick paintover for you to push it a little bit with post-processing/lighting.



You want to make sure you up the brightness/contrast of the whole scene. Makes sure that the lava parts of the level give off some proper bloomish effect. Right now it looks like sludge (but even so it could be pushed with more contrast)

In essence you want the shadows to be more bluish and the sludge lava stuff to be more bright and yellow/orange and make sure to push it.

Right now it's too dark and the colors are too uniform to even spot the difference of color values in the textures. You want to make sure those pillars stand out from the rest of the sci-fi floors and walls.

Darkleopard

Nice work! I do like the lighter scene with chris's paint over, the lava defiantly looks better.

aobond

lovely work, and looks much better in motion too

Fomori

Yeah looks great, but that paint over really pushes it to the next level. I would try and emulate it!

sneath

Thanks Chrisradsby for the paintover suggestion; I couldn't agree more with your observation. I made the posteffect change, bumped the lava area lighting, and the emissive values on the lava shader. I like it better.

Alex Pointer

I think the scene is great-your modeling is sound, your texturing is sound, I like the dust effects that you have added, which shows attention to detail (you could use more steam). I really think you can sell this scene with the lava itself. As I watched the walkthrough, I found myself a bit distracted by it and less focused on the great work that you did with the modeling, texturing, and layout of the room. What is the story with the lava? Do you want the pool of lava to look as realistic as possible; super-heated, or cooling off? Looking at references of say Terminator 2 (final scene), or that horrible movie, Volcano, and it may help sell this thing. I am no Unreal Ed. Pro, but you may be able to pull off a layering trick, so you are not dealing with getting the glow effect right over the entire lava pool. I guess what I am trying to say is, if the lava is not supposed to be completely super-heated and there is some cooler matter floating around, it can be modeled out, separated, and act as floating geometry over the pool, which can be animated too—probably in the corners where matter would not be able to flow as well, which has a cooling affect (I think I am writing so much because I love where this is going!!!).

Lastly, the lava pool needs an overall glow that is more orange (if it is super-heated). I will take a print screen of a part in your video and try to visually represent what I am talking about-visuals are just better than words in my opinion.

This is really great but I think you can do even more!

Alex Pointer

Really like your Giger tribute by the way (portfolio)!

sneath

Thanks Alex for all the great comments. I just posted a new image with updated post effects and the lava glowing more. I like your idea for the floating geometry that is cooling, I'll have to investigate that some more. PS- glad you like my Giger tribute. :-)

Alex Pointer

I am at work and sometimes this webstie works funny. I see the paint over now and that is exactly what I was thinking-should be really cool to see the update and the walkthrough!

sneath

My particles some times all turn on and off at the same time. This happens when I change to Direct X 11 in UDK. In DirectX 9 mode I get this really ugly yellow haze that renders around the top and left perimeter of my screen. Anyhow, has anyone experience these sorts of issues? Known solutions?

nick2730

can u show wires for the door? Ive been trying to figure out how to model dfferent panel segments like you did around a corner

Fomori

Eh? Where can I have a look at your Giger tribute? I'm working on a Giger style scene at the moment. Would love to see what you've done.

(edit) Doh! Just saw the link to your portfolio. Yeah it's great!

sneath

I just floated the panels and vents above the surface. Does this image help?

nick2730

yea, it does, did you build it as one piece then divide and detach it or just start as seperate? The crease in between in just a gap then not a bevel or extrusion?

sneath

Models were separate objects then I divided when I was finished all modeling so if I am understanding what your looking correctly then yes it is a gap.

By the way I bought a one month membership to this site www.3dmotive.com and I learned alot about high poly modeling. I've been making games for 17 years and I still learned alot about. Quite a few tips I picked up that saved me a lot of time and it was well worth the $22 bucks.

nick2730

already seen them all :-) Thanks for the info

chrisradsby

Really nice work! I'm glad that I could help even though it was just a quick fix in photoshop ^^

sneath

Thanks to everyone for the comments/suggestions. Here's a new update with changes to the lighting, post effects and lava pool.

Video Link - http://vimeo.com/43417322

BlvdNights

Lighting is looking a lot better! Might help to make it a bit brighter though, just slightly. Have you played around with using cooler colored lights to counter the intense warm lights? Might make those darker areas pop more, and the whole scene in general.

Shogun3d

Lookin' really good. I think the smoke coming from the lava is a little too sporadic and noisy. I think this scene would have a nice feel if you just smoothed out the smoke into a more of a haze and add distortion underneath (just above the lava) to give it that heat distorted look.

wester

I agree with kaburan on this. Your smoke is definitely too overwhelming right now. I would also even change the color of the smoke to the color of the lava to fake the smoke being lit by the lava. Just a slightly deeper orange.

I would also not make the smoke "live" as long as it does. I would shorten the smoke so that it doesnt touch those top air vent type pieces. Right now the smoke is muddying those pieces, i want to see them because they look cool but they arent being called out very well as the smoke is obstructing them.

I love chrisradsby paintover.You can really do alot with the shadows on the post process and all around lighten the scene alittle. Since the scene is very warm it would be really nice to add some cool shadows as in the paintover.

garriola83

looking great! but some parts are looking too matte rather than having that spec metal usually have. maybe keep the steam above the area and on the lava areas for some contrast. great stuff

sneath

I totally forgot about adding some heat wave. Thanks, good idea.

Alex Pointer

It is absolutely looking better. I agree with Wester on the steam, I am glad that it is there but I feel it is rising a bit too high and the color could be slightly adjusted to cheat the lighting from the lava bouncing off. This is looking really great!

sneath

I agree too. The steam is really bothering me now. Fix'n....... :-)

sneath

It is hard to tell in this still image but I add heat distortion and shorten the life of the steam and it does look better. I pushed the post effect more to cool the darker side of the room and a bighten it a bit.

Minos

Looking pretty nice!

The scene looks a bit too busy though, it's hard to read what's going on. Your assets are very nice individually but the scene composition is kind of a mess. Leave some flat surfaces here and there so your props can pop up a little bit more.

The lighting is also working against you: There are no big gradients at all, just point lights all around. Gradients are important to make your scene more interesting and readable. A very subtle fog could also help.

Keep it up!

Alex Pointer

I definitely like the changes you made. good stuff.

locater16

Looks very cool, but I'd totally go for the easy "cool blue" techno/future lighting as the main light source/ambient color to contrast against the orange paint and glowing metal. This scene is practically begging for it.

konstruct

er- it got dark again. I think the last revision was better. reminds me so much of this Stefan Morell piece

sneath

Yup I mentioned the Stefan Morell was one of my creative inspiration for this piece.

sneath

well I think I'm done with this piece. some things could be better or different lighting but I'm feeling like I want to put this on the back burner for now. I really appreciate everyone's suggestions. Video Link http://vimeo.com/43417322 PS I'm looking for work.

sneath

Fraeger

Looks great, man!

DennisGlowacki

YUM

Brygelsmack

I really don't think the scene composition is "kind of a mess". The colors are nice and vibrant and they complement each other really nicely. The floor is empty enough as it is right now. The dark areas make sense and I think you lit the areas of interest pretty well. Nice work!

Seaseme

I think it looks really great right now -

As far as the floor being bare, so what? The floor looks nice while bare. I agree there could be a few more assets scattered around however and I would like to have seen a bit more of a story told. I'm really curious what the lava / lava tanks are for and what the rest of this facility is.

Anyhow, congratulations. I think it's a really strong piece and you did a really nice job taking the critiques here and improving your scene!