Canyon Crash Site - WIP

Lite

I started working on this environment yesterday in UDK and would like to get some feedback. I am adding a smoke particle coming from the ship and a small waterfall behind it as well. Haven't touched the lighting or sky yet but I might build up the canyon walls higher and basically have the sky out of view.

Any critiques would be wonderful

luge

i'd leave the sky in view, otherwise you have just wall, and it will become bland. work with the sky, get some color in. fix up that water when you get the chance, right now its very distracting. I wouldn't worry about particles until you get more of the scene put together (unless you are leaving it as just the ship...) It also looks like there is no ground and there is purely only rock, so where is your foliage coming from?

Lite

Luge thanks a ton for the feedback, I haven't gotten to the sky yet but already just adding in a terrain and fixing up the water more helped a lot!

Here's a small update.

Still doing a lot of work building in the terrain right now and worrying about how to do the canyon walls properly. Still haven't touched the lighting and sky yet which i probably should have done first to set the over all mood.

luge

looks a lot better, your water could still use some work to get it just right. and yeah, the sky and lighting can really set the mood, but i wouldn't worry so much about the lighting currently. I'd get a sky in there that can give the mood you want, and then do a quick base lighting to see approximately how your scene looks with the mood you want.

Remember how water reacts to super-heated objects and then show it. like with the water touching the rocks, there are going to be different forms of rocks here, different forms because of it.

I'd add a little beach area or break in the rocks that forms a little cove or something and use it to highlight your focal point. essentially right now, you have a lot of movement, and nothing to kind of cool it down and give us a place to relax our eyes but still not take over the focus.

Lite

Thanks again Luge, i dropped down the right side and started adding in that little area to start framing the ship a bit more. It still feels very busy though right now.

Everything is far from finished but i'm feeling happier about the general layout now. The beachy are is going to be turned into a small hill now.

Anymore critiques right now would be super helpful!

luge

its getting there. your water could still use some more work. this is a great tutorial for water: http://ben-nadler.com/udk-simple-water-tutorial-part-1/ you'll have to do some tweaking since the tutorial is not finished, but it will get you in the right direction. For your waterfall, I wouldn't use particals for it. Use planes instead with a scrolling texture, and use particals for the spray on the bottom. it will look tons better. aside from that, you seem to have a good idea as to what to do. so just keep pushing forward.

Lite

Yea I just haven't gotten to the waterfall mesh yet but definitely switching out the fake particle one, just a place holder to get a better feel.

I'll get to the water tomorrow i swear!

Lite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhP5n-Hp_ns&feature=youtu.be

Just a quick little fly through to show the progress.

I feel like it's starting to get there finally.