Re-designed Soul Calibur Environment

Rikku300

Hiya everyone. These are the final renders for a re-designed Soul Calibur 2 environment I've been working on.
The fire effects and renders were done in UDK.

Any suggestions for improvements would be very much appreciated

Here's a link to a simple video render to show the animated fire and lighting.
http://youtu.be/32CwcjROwvs

Ghostscape

what is up with those trees?

What is the target spec for this scene? It looks to be significantly lower detail than the original scene you're trying to re-create/re-design.

Your scale seems pretty off, unless there is some camera trick at work here - the doors in the back seem way too short compared to the bench on the right side.

It's hard to find screenshots of the whole level online in 3 minutes, but even this shot of mitsurugi should help:



note things like:
the intricate detailing of the door, the rolled roof shingles, the modeled out stone tiles (whereas you have some sort of ground-intersectinb grey blob that doesn't read as any particular material?), the height of the door, scale of the stones, etc.

Also the cherry blossoms in the air in this shot:

are probably the most interesting part of the level and in general the trees give the scene a ton of character that is missing from this, as you've not given the trees a fair shake.

The_Korrupt_One

Looking good but I do have a couple of suggestions. I'd defiantly put some alphas on the leaves in the tree. I'd suggest looking at the 3D Motive videos on the subject http://www.3dmotive.com/training/3ds-max/creating-foliage-for-udk/?follow=true. The flickering light from the fires needs to be a bit more subtly and quicker. I think there is a 3D Buzz tutorial about fire in the UDK but I cant find a link to it. Also do you have lightmaps on the models? If your using 3DS Max then this is a good tutorial for it http://www.hourences.com/tutorials-ue3-lightmapping/

Rikku300

Sorry for such a late reply. Thank you both for the awesome feedback. It's given me a lot to improve. Currently I don't have time to go back and make the changes on this due to University work but I will keep in mind your suggestions for other projects. I hope to find the time to make the changes eventually to fix the scene.

Thanks again