[UDK] Living Quarters
polycounter lvl 11
*NEWEST UPDATE*
I'm looking to learn as much about UDK as possible, so I'm working on an environment concept by James Chung.
With this concept, I am looking to improve what I know about material definition, UDK's material editor, UDK's lighting (basically new at it), and use of decals to break up repeating elements. I'm sure there are a lot of other areas I can improve upon too
For now, I have the blockout finished and started some basic texturing.
http://i.imgur.com/336CRLi.jpg
I'm looking forward to any comments or critiques that people have. Thanks!
I'm looking to learn as much about UDK as possible, so I'm working on an environment concept by James Chung.
With this concept, I am looking to improve what I know about material definition, UDK's material editor, UDK's lighting (basically new at it), and use of decals to break up repeating elements. I'm sure there are a lot of other areas I can improve upon too
For now, I have the blockout finished and started some basic texturing.
http://i.imgur.com/336CRLi.jpg
I'm looking forward to any comments or critiques that people have. Thanks!
Replies
The illustration uses pretty bold framing as most of the nook is pretty dark forcing your eye into the bright parts of the room just beyond that. Try and see if you can pull back on the intensity of your bounces so that the front room gets darker. Either kill bounce numbers, darken your environment/ambient color, or lessen the bounce strength.
Take a look at how the blue from the bed is having a little bit of rim lighting influence on some key foreground elements. You might have to cheat that effect using light exclusivity, but I think you would really benefit from having some soft blue hitting the edge of the table and the door threshold.
Might want to consider making the back door more of a hallway as well. It's sort of unclear in the concept if it's a closed door or an open hallway but the way the light seems to be pouring out and into the room suggests it might be coming from down a hall, especially the way it's accenting some of the surfaces.
I'll hang around if you have any questions and just to see how this cool piece turns out overall.
Good luck to ya, this looks like fun,
-Jon
I do have a question though. I've seen environments made using lightmaps, and others made using dynamic lighting. How do you know when to use what method?
Your blockout is really awesome too, keep adding detail, and keep at it ^^ I love the concept you have chosen
Spent the evening going over lighting through various videos and digging through other environments. Great learning experience! On top of that, I figured out about the post-process chain :P Now I feel like I can make adjustments to the overall look similar to color correcting a photo. I feel comfortable enough to tackle some of the props since the scene is more or less set up.
http://i.imgur.com/FsoDrcn.jpg
Im an unsure why you say this. Dynamic lights are super expensive, so you really want lightmaps as much as possible in production. Obviously, if you are doing something personal, then you can do what you want, but I don't think it is pushing you more. Just depends on what you are learning
My point is, do what you want to get a sexy result, but learn how to use lightmaps as it IS required of you
Self promotion alert: if you're new to lighting, I have a blog post about some basic techniques I use - http://jcricreate.blogspot.com/2013/03/tutorial-lighting-workflow-tips.html
If all of your meshes are independent (not one giant scene mesh), you could try some mesh exclusivity to do some custom accent lighting. With GI, it's very hard to limit what your lights are influencing but by using the custom tags in the properties of the mesh and light, you can essentially marry a light to a mesh. Again, open the light properties, select "custom 1, 2, etc" and that light will then only effect meshes that have that same custom property selected. This is a good way to activate some of your surfaces with light that doesn't wash into the entire scene. You're already doing a decent job with this but as you start polishing, really consider some of the rim lighting and accenting that you want to do based on the concept.
Finally, Spoon is right. Learning to use both a static/light-mapped solution as well as dynamic is the way to go. For this scene dynamic might not be necessary as you might not have character shadows that need to render in real time. It all depends on the needs of the scene. For our latest DDD open world title (that's right, eat your heart out AAA), we don't use lightmaps at all, everything is dynamic and deferred but only a few lights are at casting shadows/projecting textures, etc. Again, figuring out the needs of your scene is the most important, but most certainly learn all the fundamentals.
Keep at it, can't wait to see it develop!
-Jon
Loving the light on the couch!
I didn't get as far as I'd like due to 4th of July, but I thought I'd update with the bit of lighting I did change and tweak. I could not resist reading more and trying to improve what I had. I feel pretty comfortable with it now. Will be proceeding to props and textures next!
http://i.imgur.com/PIvpCS8.jpg
I've been working with the materials and creating shaders (I really hate the glass shader so be aware that it is temporary). I've also started working on props and getting some assets done. Again there are some that I'm not too happy about, so I'll probably redo those in the near future. I've also tweaked the lighting endlessly to get closer to what I want. I'll end up adjusting it more towards the end.
On top of that, I cleaned up the thread a bit so there are image links for the older images. I'll try to maintain it without bloating it with files :P So here is my current progress!
http://i.imgur.com/FkMlUnZ.jpg
Next I'll be tackling the plants in the mid-ground before working on the bed and industrial equipment in the background.
http://i.imgur.com/io31abr.jpg
I'll be starting on the bed and industrial equipment next. Getting close to finishing :P Then I can start the endless tweaking to get things just right.
Any suggestions or comments to make the scene better will be appreciated! Thanks!
CharlieD: Thanks man! It's a bit tough right now with family visiting, but I'll be posting more soon!
I'm hoping I can get some critiques before moving forward to the final post work. I don't think I've been using the real-time reflections as best as I could, so I'm going to be replacing those to get more out of them. I also need to hop back into DX9 and rebake my cubemaps. I'm new to DX11 features, so any suggestions would be appreciated!
http://i.imgur.com/cRA5Nr5.jpg
Everything else really matches the concept super well. I personally want the tanks in the back to have a bit more detail.
Do you have subsurface scattering on your plants? I highly suggest it, it makes a really huge difference (though you don't have a foliage heavy scene so you can get away with not adding it).
Collecting critiques from everywhere and adding it to my task list. Hopefully I can update during the three day weekend!
Sofa does not block the door on the sketch. But in your realization it does.
My biggest concern is saturation. Like value, saturation can pull the eye. This focal saturation should pull the eye to the bed and be strongest there. In your current iteration, the hallway competes a bit with the bed, and some of you other emissives/colors meet similar levels.
Let's talk briefly about the bed, the light source above it seems to throw light in all directions. If you're using a point light there, make it a spot. Concerning directionality, it should be dissipating across the roof struts much quicker and instead throwing light downward toward the bed. In the concept, this soft blue light turns purply on the way down, not sure if you can supplement and additional light in, but I'd try it - it's a nice way to go from the blue light, to the red bed.
I did a quick paintover - pretty minor changes:
Next I'd tone down the emissive quality of the foreground elements. The brightness pulls the eye, and they're not important. I'm my paintover and in the concept, you can feel some light coming from the surface so you might could try to add some very soft lights that highlight the planters and possibly the bench. Something subtle to sell the feeling of sourced light.
The saturation of your sweet space beverages is a little high as well and they feel like they're glowing. Try to tone it down, and if you can, try to fake some scattered caustic light through the glass. This is apparent in the concept and I dabbed a hint of green below them in the paintover. Light might very well push the distance and bleed some of that green tint through the translucency of the liquid. Might be a cool touch.
I desaturated the red in your booth chairs, thought they competed against the red of the bed. Downplay them a bit and let the interesting spec/reflection elements be the star there. In the concept they're nearly brown, and very soft at that.
Finally I softened the intensity of the hallway light in relation to the bed light. You've really pushed that source and it looks nice, but if you wanted to stay a bit more true to the concept (and not detract from the bed), might be worth a shot. Very minor there.
I gently blurred the foreground too, might be something to think about as you approach post. Speaking of post, getting the bed lighting to be more hazy and volumetric would be rad. You could try a custom placed fog volume at the bed and then have your directional bed lights have some subtle blooming rays that would sift through the haze a bit. Something to try.
One day I'll stop writing novels and critique only using buzzwords.
Love,
-Jon
Thanks everyone for the help!