Business Lobby Environment
polycounter lvl 6
Hey, I've been making an environment in UDK like almost everyone on here, and I'd like some opinions if you don't mind. It's getting there, but it's still a bit empty.
I wanted to do something inspired by contemporary architecture, so I'm creating a lobby environment for some anonymous business firm.
This is the conference room window that overlooks the place on the other side of the lobby.
Right now it's just a placeholder mesh, but I'm going for an angular, geometric style like so:
Lighting has been a pain, so I left everything a stark white for now (which I may keep). I'm going to post any new props here, since some of them are still first-pass stuff.
I wanted to do something inspired by contemporary architecture, so I'm creating a lobby environment for some anonymous business firm.
This is the conference room window that overlooks the place on the other side of the lobby.
Right now it's just a placeholder mesh, but I'm going for an angular, geometric style like so:
Lighting has been a pain, so I left everything a stark white for now (which I may keep). I'm going to post any new props here, since some of them are still first-pass stuff.
Replies
I'd also like to see some prop/texture sheets too. Are these a bunch of separate modular pieces?
Structurally you could add in support beams, frames, stuff like that.
Also I'm sure you've noticed that in the first and second shot the greenery fits in well, so put in more pot plants, vines, trees etc to give it the whole 'green energy' feel.
Keep it up!
danpaz3d - You're right, I was thinking how I could incorporate more greenery somehow.
leleuxart - Yeah I think I'll keep the light mostly white, and try to add color elsewhere like you said. Most of the walls are just generic panels with different textures at the moment. Here's a closer shot:
Most of the props are old models from an unfinished scene (except the spotlights) so I'm going to redo as many as I can, starting with the fire extinguisher. Here's a quick render for now.
956 tris, 512 textures
902 tris, 512 textures
I could probably take a few more polys off by deleting more backfaces, but I'll leave it for now. Maybe I should have used a 12-sided cylinder for the bottle... might change that if it continues to irk me.
I'm making a security camera next, hi-poly soon.
Hi-poly for the security cam. After I bake and texture this I'm gonna work on some smaller stuff that isn't as time consuming and move things along.
804 tris, 512 textures
I left a few polygons in there so I could rotate it around a bit. Next I'm gonna see if I can make some interesting decals/patterns to add more color.
I'll try to re-light the scene a few more times before I finish with it - I just hate waiting ~10 minutes every time I tweak a value.
I've been unhappy with the graphic decals I made in the last couple days, so I ended up switching back over to modeling to stay productive. I made the angular wall element with an office. I'm going to populate the offices as well, but I'm going to leave that for last since it won't be noticed as much.
Update: Added some elevators! I created a logo/identity for my fake company, which is partially visible here. The ivy here is still WIP.
Still need to finish texturing the buttons. The double-doors and the automatic door are older assets that I may re-do, but they are decent placeholders.
The elevator entrance is on the underside of the angular edifice thing. I put some spotlights on it to make it a bit more 'dramatic', hopefully. It would be more interesting with night-time lighting, though.
AlexCatMasterSupreme - I know what you mean about the flat feeling. I have a white-on-white look so far so it's tough to get the specular to pop without turning matte surfaces like concrete into some kind of plastic. I think I will have to use lights more sparingly and make them stronger in order to get some contrast going.
Here's some new stuff:
Decals for the little conference rooms.
I sculpted a leaf and spent a lot of time tweaking the material and looking at the UDK content, only to end up using a pretty basic setup. It's setup for vertex color painting, but I haven't touched it since I wasted a lot of time baking and re-baking to lights. It's tough to light foliage properly.
Here's a small-ish open office area I added. The chairs + desks will be re-done (don't think the chair would be structurally sound anyway).
I'm gonna be making mostly furniture and decorative stuff from here on out. Maybe I'll even finish!
Bek - Cool, I loved the original DX. I have DX:HR, but I only played a little bit of it so far. A lot of the environments are great, but it's just so... orange. Heh.
I finished the hi-poly for the office chairs. Later today I'll try to finish a conference table if I have time.
The finished office chair is ~3200 triangles - maybe a little high. You can see areas where I could have optimized some more, but I left the extra geo in.
I'm finding that vertex lit models often times end up looking better for "clean" textures than lightmaps since it's not so blotchy, so it can be worth having the extra polygons. Kind of frustrating that I wasted a lot of time making lightmap UVs for everything, though.
I'm trying to populate the small office area now. The desks don't have a proper texture yet.
http://www.mech.hku.hk/bse/mech3023/gallery/taikooplace02.jpg
The open area office is pretty empty. I think you can add something like file cabinets or picture frames.
nedwork - I took your advice and added a stronger cubemap. I haven't touched it up yet though, so it's jaggy. I also added some more office stuff. I agree the textures could use a little more work, since they are mostly just AO. I'm going to devote my last bit of polishing to the textures for sure.
Here's what the office looks like now. There's some obvious lightmap seams on the ceiling/floor because I'm just using modular pieces at the moment.
I'm going to make some trash bins, some kinda painting/wall art, then finish the markerboard. Outside on the lower level, I think I'll make a bench and then I'll be done with all the models.
I made the lighting in the lobby area darker overall. I tried to create some more contrast by using a blue skylight and using a warmer color for the spotlights.
It's not the sterile white I initially imagined, but maybe it's more interesting in a way.
~1700 tris
Textures still not terribly exciting, but it's also just a markerboard. I promise to make a second pass at some of the textures!
Gonna make a "living" art frame like this and a trash bin next.
JasonLavoie, Tom Pritchard - Thanks much, guys.
I just finished some work on the fishbowl conference rooms. Pictures:
Here's the interior.
Second floor conference room that's basically the same layout.
Here's some of the new props I made. Those angular squares are supposed to be sound absorption panels.
Instead of making every new prop from scratch I've been trying to reuse some of the models, i.e. the chair, the conference desks, the circular lights, and so on.
The moss frame was kind of a pain because I wasn't sure what method to use to get the right look that kind of plant. I ended up resculpting it a couple times and I tried using a bunch of grass-like alpha planes, but it didn't look too good.
What I ended up doing was duplicating a plane a couple times and using an alpha on a separate UV channel, which gives it a fuzzy look. I remember seeing this technique in Shadow of the Colossus for the fur effects on the bosses.
The end result is subtle and probably wouldn't be noticed, but I was glad I found something that worked, anyway.
I also tried making a frame with plants, styled after the picture of the green wall I posted. I ended up deciding that I didn't like the idea, though. I wasted a good day or two on that, but I got some reusable foliage out of it.
This is the last area I'm gonna try to populate with stuff. I might try to break up the floor with some kind of design. I was also thinking of adding a reception desk, and a modular couch, like so:
I'll be back sooner next time!
roosterMAP - I'll take any DX comparisons as a compliment, thanks!
Amberd - Cool, thank you!
Added some wayfinding decals to try and break up the tiles a bit.
I was messing around with lens flares and some post-processing now that I'm closer to finishing. I tried to keep the PP simple and let the lighting do the work instead.
Also redid the stairs and decided to remove the bridge on the top floor. I had been debating that, but I decided I wanted more views of the angular offices since its more or less the centerpiece of the scene.
Conference desk at the lower level entrance.
I haven't finished the couches yet but I'm nearly done now. I still wanted to make a bunch of mini office supplie type props, but I need to stop adding to the workload. The sub-1 FPS framerates are killing me, so I need to put this away!
pf
I realized I didn't have any clocks so I made one that looks like a tablet. Here's a gratuitous closeup.
Also got around to making those couches.
The tables in the middle will have some magazines/books, but I just have a placeholder mesh for now.
Now I'm just tweaking stuff and making mini-props and decals. I want to finish by this weekend.
futurepoly - Cool, I definitely think of this as a game environment imitating arch viz. BTW Celeryland is one of the best things going.
tristamus -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aZVkW9p-cCU#t=74s
ivars - Yeah, you hear people talk about the UDK look, so that's always on my mind. Glad to hear it.
r4ptur3 - I'm sorry to say there's nothing special about the carpet, really. It doesn't even have a normal map. In fact I felt kind bad about it so I added a bump offset, but you would have to look closely at it.
As for the materials and whatnot, the only trick I can think of is masking off parts for color and then multiplying it by a color node in UDK. That way I can just constantly tweak them and get a quick update, but the color picker is laggy.
I think I read somewhere that they did that in Mirror's Edge. I used that for the carpet, couches, chairs, etc. I'd be glad to post more of the setup later if there's interest.
It took some extra time, but I think this is wrapped up! I'd love to hear any crits you might have - I know I didn't address as many as I would've liked, but I appreciate all the help. If you see anything I overlooked or otherwise fucked up, I may still go back and change it.
Sorry for the image spam!
I added blurry sprite people in the style of arch-viz again. I also changed the logo to be more minimalist, because I felt it was too angular. It kinda had an outdated "futuristic" vibe that I didn't like (hope that makes sense).
The lounge area again. Now with TVs and magazines.
The 1st Floor Offices.
The Overlook conference room. Decided to leave the windows tinted instead of adding another visible office. It's a bit more imposing that way, I think.
2nd Floor Offices. I spent a lot of time redoing parts of the PC screen and TVs graphics.
Here's an abbreviated making-of in GIF form. You can see I experimented a lot early on before settling on a style. Hope it's of some interest.
And for the hell of it, I made a panorama.
I'm getting sick of looking at it, but I still want to make a quick fly-through video. I'll have to bump the thread once I wrap my head around video editing again.
Thanks for looking.
a few of the shots have an uncanny-valley effect happening and i think thats a biproduct of the lighting. it falls flat in many areas and this environment can read a lot like previs. the blurred people dont help in that regard either. some of the materials used for your props dont read like their real life counter part. the computers and the chairs come to mind. maybe thats just because these are images and it reads a lot better in motion. it would be interesting if you pulled away from the experimental design/previs look of this environment and went with more dramatic lighting. higher contrast. lens flares. dust on the lens. things like that to separate it from that type of 3d artwork and bring it back to the exaggerated world of videogames through slight exaggerations in the lighting. personally, i thought the refracted glass was a nicer touch on the office space than the flat translucent glass you have in the final version.
the blurred people cards were a cool touch. It helps to set scale / make it feel more alive. I'm sure they will be controversial, but I love them.
This is one of the few environments I have seen that feels like it was made in a different engine. It does not feel UDK-ey at all. Huge props on that.
Congrats! I'd still love to see some breakdown stuff
Great execution on the environments! Through lighting and materials you achieve the clean/minimalist style without it feeling clinical. My only small crit is the shadows where some pillars meet the floor and ceiling (specifically the Overlook conference room) are a tad splotchy.
Overall, really well done
BANGARANG! - You make some fair points. The blurred people definitely bring an uncanny-valley effect. If I make their features less distinguishable, I think it'll help in that regard.
The lighting has always been a concern of mine from the outset. I think it's a weak area, but that being said I take offense to "previs".
r4ptur3 - Yeah the sprite people were a last second idea, but I'm sticking to my guns - mostly because it's different.
schneller - You're right about the shadows. It's tough to tweak small stuff like that since you might break everything else. I'll probably change the people to make them more subtle.
Minos - Thanks! Good to hear.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. Here's some breakdown stuff, as requested. I'll make a few more later.
Technically, this is exquisite. Materials are great on 90% of the things. Some objects like the computers and the fire extinguisher, but the architectural materials like wood, leather, and dear god the carpet are very well done. Along with that, the overall design looks great and shows some really fancy over the top architecture. The kind of office that cost five times as much as it should have.
But. It feels somewhat incohesive. There should be some 'room' variation such as the main hall of a building feeling different than the offices, but I feel you've gone too far. You have a lot of different room designs close by, and it makes the building feel somewhat like a showroom similar to what they have at IKEA. I'm not talking about the colored glass, I'm talking about images like this[/img] where you have carpet, tiles, concrete and wood all in the space of a few meters. There are just too many different floors and design styles for one building, IMO.
Also, one thing that really bugs me is the plaster(?) around the pipe in the last series of images. They could afford to paint over the wall afterwards, they could afford to add graffiti on there, even, but they couldn't find a... plasterer who could manage to not cover half the wall? It just feels very weird.
Snader - You make a valid point. I had this problem early on because I experimented with a few different looks, and I tried to narrow it down a bit. It probably stems in part from the fact that I tried to mash as many cool ideas I came across into the scene.
I know you didn't mention this specifically, but that crit about cohesion might stem partly from the fact that I used different accent colors throughout. It's very trendy to use all neutral colors + ONE super saturated accent color, and I tried to avoid that because I think it can be tacky sometimes. If I narrowed the color palette a touch, I think it will help. Also, I took your advice on the bricks.
Short test video so far:
[vv]56346462[/vv]
In keeping with the environment, I'm taking a lot of style cues from arch viz, so I don't think I'll put any breakdown stuff in it.
If you look closely (or turn on HD) you can see the blur people in motion. I need to tweak the intervals to be more random + frequent, but I think the base of it is there. I thought about animating the doors, too, but... I think it's OK.
It's a bit tedious tweaking the matinee since the camera movement track can bug out easily if you keep redoing the keyframes.
More prop sheets, too. Hope everyone is having a nice break
I don't think having multiple colors is an issue at all, but I think it would be wise to unify them a wee bit. For example, you have red carpet and green glass on the ground floor - I'd make the glass and carpet the same color. You might even be able to do something hue-wise with the plants, because there is a form of ivy that's red, and there is a blue-ish variant too.
I didn't miss what you said. I should have said "I know you weren't critical of the color scheme, but nonetheless...". I'll probably be messing around with the color picker until the last video frame is rendered, I'm sure.
About the ivy - I was meaning to use vertex colors to add some color variation, so maybe I'll try that.
Thanks for your input.