[UE4] Mass Effect Corridor WIP

maxivz

Hello guys, i have been playing around with UE 4 latelly and i decided to put up a quick mini envio to learn it better and work on my skills. I decided to go with this concept i found from mass effect:
SO far i have been blocking it out and i would like some critics on it before jumping into the detailing as i am still feeling im missing something

Once im satisfied with the blockout i will start detailing it

maxivz

An unpdate, heres some hp meshes in, next to do is the door
Anybody knows how why the high res photo function from unreal viewport may not be working? it created empty files

Joost

Looking good so far!

Count Vader

haha I just started doing this same concept, guess it's time for mass effect corridor noob challenge 1

maxivz

@komaokc
Thanks! any critic you can think of is welcome
@Count Vader
Lets get it started!

Joost

Can't think of any crits right now, as it's still a bit early on. Everything's looking clean and matches the concept quite well. I'd maybe make the floor a bit more interesting.

This thread might help for some inspiration:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87942

Count Vader

There's some points where it deviates from the concept but I'm not sure how closely you're trying to follow the concept and thus whether or not you'd be interested in hearing about it

Otherwise yeah looks good, too early on to offer much meaningful critique

serriffe

Always loved that concept, can't wait to see the end product

A-N-P

If you can nail the lighting and that clean look, this is going to look sweeeet.

Abdullah

looking great so far.

maxivz

Thanks for the replies guys! really appreciating the feedback, i want to achive the clean look for sure, i just hope i can get the light well.
Im following the concept pretty closelly but giving it my own twist in some places.
I have come to the part where i must make the door model, i have been thinking in changing the door and instead of making it like in the concept id like to make it like this, changing a bit some colours :

ID like to know what you guys think about that

oxblood

in this instance i think your better off just sticking to the door in the concept. why fix what isn't broken?

maxivz

Thanks for the reply oxblood! Its not about fixing it but about giving it a bit of a spin from the original concept, including that door from another mass effect concept which i really like, id like to hear some more critiques on this decission, if you guys think its better to do the original door from the concept then ill do that one

Strider007

I think the door in terms of what you've done looks good as a single piece but in the context of the corridor would feel out of place i feel..The door in the concept follows the curvature of the room which makes contextual sense in how the corridor was designed and put together..I think its fine to deviate to an extent with paneling structure and general possible mechanism of the door but not to the point where it begins to feel incoherent.

Count Vader

agreed with above, unless you are totally confident in your skills as a concept guy, it's best not to fiddle with stuff like that.

think of it as building a structure based on an architect's plans, unless you're also an architect you probably wouldn't wanna switch out/change around the original plans.

that being said im not a concept artist myself, so if you really think it'll work go for it, you can always change it up later provided you give the door its own texture sheet.

maxivz

Thanks for the feedback guys! i made the door and so far its looking like this;
Heres a closeup:

I am still not sure if the wall where the door goes into looks good that way, i used for reference the black panels underneath the white panels on the sides

Count Vader

I would add another final pair of columns/supports right in front of the door, since they are bent and hug the contours of the door better, it should look less awkward. at least thats what i intend to do in my version :P

edit: just ensure that the angle of the door's outer curve matches the angle of the curve of supports, otherwise it will not really work visually

maxivz

Count Vader wrote: »

I would add another final pair of columns/supports right in front of the door, since they are bent and hug the contours of the door better, it should look less awkward. at least thats what i intend to do in my version :P

edit: just ensure that the angle of the door's outer curve matches the angle of the curve of supports, otherwise it will not really work visually

I was just playing around with that and i figures its actually a very good idea, i even think that is what its actually happening in the concept as well. Thanks for the advice!
Edit: seeing the concept i think the door has another angle compared to the support

Count Vader

yea much better, now just bring in the frame ofthe door to match the curvature/ positioning of the supports better and it should look pretty good!

maxivz

Count vader seeing the concept i think the curvatures of the supports and the door dont match perfectlly

Count Vader

Yeah I get what you mean. But there's also some weird perspective shit going in the concept, like if you look on the leftmost side it looks like the supports almost fan out in relation to each other that doesn't really make sense structurally or in perspective.

I mean again do whatever you feel works, theres no real "right" way, but also by letting the supports perfectly fill the space around the door, you'd be creating less work for yourself since then you won't have to worry about filling up the extra wall space around the door as it will be fully occluded by the supports.

maxivz

Now that you mention it we should be once again over some 2d cheats, i think ill leave it like this becouse then i can have some contrast over the black top of the support with the greish door support.
Thanks for the tips once again vader!
I will start low polying and hopefully tomorrow start with the textures (my weakest part)

Count Vader

Cool, good luck, I'm still on the blockout stage for mine haha.

maxivz

So heres some progress, this time i got the normal maps baked and i am in the process of baking ambient oclussion maps, the next thing to do is making master materials, block out the materials in unreal and then start the detailing on the textures

locater16

With UE4 I'm not sure I'd bake in ambient oclussion, half the point is that the (semi) realtime lighting is quite sufficient to light things properly.

maxivz

locater16 wrote: »

With UE4 I'm not sure I'd bake in ambient oclussion, half the point is that the (semi) realtime lighting is quite sufficient to light things properly.

You can bake an ambient oclussion and plug it in the ambient oclussion in the material, its not used for the diffuse

locater16

maxivz wrote: »

You can bake an ambient oclussion and plug it in the ambient oclussion in the material, its not used for the diffuse

The other half the point is too not worry about stuff like that and so be able to work faster, no worries about baking when you've got excellent high res SSAO on your side.

But that's just my two cents.

ariofighter

SSAO will work for areas on the scene where large parts come together. Its fantastic on a scene like this because it will blend all of the modular pieces of the hallway. However you will want to bake out independent AO maps for each individual asset to help smaller details pop. Also for the things SSAO will not pick up, details only present in the normal map for example. It really is a two step approach.

Also to reiterate what Maxivz said, you want to plug the baked AO maps into the AO slot on the shader, not multiply them on the diffuse via Photoshop or the shader itself.

The scene's progress looks great, keep up the good work. I can't wait to see more.

Count Vader

^Ya I'm assuming the SSAO/lightmap AO present in UE only picks up geometry and not stuff that's in normal maps. Unless I'm mistaking and they made it like marmoset where the SSAO actually does react to normal details. Either way I'd still bake an AO map, if only to remember where to place dirt and stuff.

Legend286

The SSAO (actually I think it's more like HBAO) in UE4 does in fact use tangent normals, as there are no separate geometry normals available. It's sort of intentional, but sort of unavoidable without making a separate gbuffer for geometry normals only.

Count Vader

Oh, interesting! So you're saying there's no point in baking out an AO map (unless like I said above to remind yourself where to paint in dirt) ?

I'll have to play around with that

ZacD

SSAO doesn't do very clean or detailed AO. If you want to capture all the details of your highpoly, you'll still need a separate AO texture.

Count Vader

Yeah I mean I'm used to the ao only affecting the geometry and not the normal map detail, which is what baked AO is for

but Legend286 was saying the AO in UE4 uses the normal map data? (and I know marmoset does this too) I'm confused now..

locater16

Count Vader wrote: »

Yeah I mean I'm used to the ao only affecting the geometry and not the normal map detail, which is what baked AO is for

but Legend286 was saying the AO in UE4 uses the normal map data? (and I know marmoset does this too) I'm confused now..

Pretty sure it does, though I haven't looked at that bit of code. On the high end it should also default to the buzzword worthy "HDAO" which is just SSAO but can grab more samples faster, and since UE4 will default to a lot more samples it will be higher res and more detailed than what you're used to with last gen SSAO.

Like I said, there isn't a real necessity too baking AO anymore.

Daedalus51

Actually AO in Unreal 4 also affects normal details (switch to AO view only and you will se )

However...still bake an AO...put it into the slot in the shader and what happens is tha the AO texture only gets applied where indirect lighting is happening and gets masked off in direct lighting, which is a pretty nice effect

maxivz

Thanks for the feedback guys! Heres some small little progress, as always, stuggling with the materials,id like to know what you think so far so i can push them even further, they are only base values from left to right chrome or steel, black glossy plastic, white rought plastic, rubber.

Count Vader

^Well right now they just look like they have static value for each paramater (albedo/spec/etc) so there isn't much to critique. Maybe add a bit of roughness and color variation, and stick them on your actual models, it might be easier to critique then. Are these all gonna be tiling materials?

maxivz

So yesterday i was wondering trough my hardrives cleaning up some stuff when i came up with the max file for this project which i tought i had lost with my hardrive crash, so i am at it again, heres some progress on the texturing and lighting, i am very new to unreal 4 so advices on the lighting etc would be great, also i am using 4x2k maps for the floor but the textures look blurry inside unreal while in marmoset they look good, any idea why?
I will be progressing slow trough this one cause my pc is stuggling a lot to work with unreal 4 and even 4k textures in photoshop, time to upgrade this uh

Mr Significant

There is something in mipamps setting in Texture Panel Settings. Just 2x click on the texture that you want to change it mipmaps, and test few.

Or try to find something with post processing sharpness filter, I remeber in UDK was something like that.