[UE4] High Tech Environment

Dustinmaertz

Latest Update "Scroll down for more."


Introduction
Hi Polycount! Welcome to the start of my environment thread. Over the next 10 weeks I will be posting my progress on my environment project. For this project I will be using the Unreal Engine 4 to layout and render my work.

Throughout the course of this project I hope to gain a better understanding of environment creation workflows and techniques. I look forward to any feedback or advice from the community.

Concept
I will be basing this project off a piece of concept art done by Unidcolor. I will try to stick to the concept as close as possible, not sure I i will be able to recreate the same perspective.



Goals

• Practice modular asset creation.
• Learn PBR workflow.
• Explore UE4 new features.
• Learn how to save time on normals by using nDo2

Basic Planning

1. Block out space. [Due Week 2]
2. Refine block out with modular placeholders.[Due Week 2]
3. Model High poly and low poly assets. [Due Week 4]
4. Block out basic lighting. [Due Week 5]
5. Texture / Shader creation. [Due Week 6]
6. Refine lighting setup [Due Week 8]
7. Final texture and shader tweaks. [Due Week 10]
8. Renders. [Due Week 10]

First Block Out

Here is my current progress in the block out. Mostly just BSP brushes and some placeholder geometry. And a quick and simple light setup.

Mik2121

Looking good, but it seems like your right wall might be too close to the stairs and machinery nearby? On the concept art it looks like there's a lot of space in-between.
I would make that area twice as wide as it's now.

Good luck!!

dralex789

Looks like a good start man. I think that concept is a great one to use as a start, but you may find with the tools of UE4 at your disposal you'll be able to get something really cool. Huge opportunity for micro detail, more materials, and maybe even some story to the environment beyond a wet floor, etc.

Keep it up!

Alex

Dustinmaertz

@Mik - Thanks for the feedback. Good call on the spacing, I adjusted it and things feel a lot better.

@Dralex - Thanks for the input. I can't wait to start playing around with the new physically based materials.

I will be posting another update later today.

Thaiauxn

I'm excited to see how you handle those grates and transparent tiles above them! It reminds me of the Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage DLC bunker. very cool design.

Dustinmaertz

Here is my progress on some of the high poly models.


Here are some pattern tests for the more complex wall pieces. I will end up baking it into a selection mask and creating the normal map pattern with ndo2.


Thanks again for the feedback so far.

Dustinmaertz

Here is my weeks progress. Got a couple walls done and started on the floor panels. Lighting is just a placeholder. Starting to get the hang of the baking workflow for UE4 and how to integrate Ndo2 to save some time.

_Kratos_

Great work so far! Wanna see some more!

kay-vonlanthen

great stuff. what does PBR workflow mean? thanks

iangoold3d

Dude this is looking really solid. keep up the good work.
:thumbup:

*subscribed*

Dustinmaertz

@kay-vonlanthen - PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering. Next gen game engines like Unreal Engine 4 use this kind of rendering system. Here is a good explanation of the idea. https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory

@_Kratos_ - Glad you like it so far, more to come.

@iangoold3d - Thanks man.

Small Update :


Still lots of little things to model.

Dustinmaertz

Making some more progress on the modeling. Slowly chipping away at the list of static meshes to make.

Here is a couple progress shots. More to come later tonight.


Side by side comparison.


Any and all feedback is welcome.

sushi

Looking really awesome man. Proportions look good.

If I'm judging it correctly: the concept shows a grate that runs underneath the stairs and it looks like it has glass inserts. In your scene that area is empty, are you going to incorporate that?

Dustinmaertz

@Sushi - I have not finished creating the grate yet. I will am going to try and finish the floor pieces today and/or tomorrow. Thanks for the feedback.

Dustinmaertz

Little update, added glass block looking thingy. I am starting to get the hang of incorporating ndo2 into my workflow, but I feel like some of my details are coming out a little flat. Let me know what you think.

lucashaley

Any recent progress?

Keep going!

Dustinmaertz

Here is a small update, Got the stairs in and started cutting out the vent area beneath the stairs. Still fighting lightmaps on a few assets. More updates will be coming tomorrow.
Known Issue : overlapping light maps on hallway walls.

Dustinmaertz

Another update for today. I switched most of the light from point light to spot lights. Added two more walls(Hard to see from this angle.)

Feedback is always welcome.

Zokk

Looks good, but one thing I can say about the concept you're working from is: The floor is way too busy and distracting. There's too much geometry, and the contrast between colors is too high. It makes the environment seem too bottom-heavy and almost claustrophobic, in a way. Personally, I'd suggest steering away from putting that much detail into the floor, especially considering the comparably sparse geometry in walls and ceiling.

That's just my opinion, though.

oxblood

This is all great. I say go for it. This has loads of potential

Dustinmaertz

@Zokk - Thanks for the feedback. I agree the floor is pretty busy at the moment. I plan on adding hanging wires and tubing to the ceiling to pull some attention away from the busy floor.

@oxblood - Thanks man!

Worked on this for most of the day. I concentrated on creating some master materials and rebaking some normal map issues. Spent some time playing around with masks to separate materials in the shader so I can make changes to the materials quickly. I have been dissecting the new SciFi Hallway scene on the Unreal Marketplace. Lots of cool materials and techniques.

Most the materials are just flat base colors and parameter values for roughness and metallic. Trying to get the feel for the Physically based material workflow. Some of the elements in the scene are really bright from this angle. I might have to play with the Fresnel on some of the materials.

All feedback and comments are welcome!

Dustinmaertz

Been mainly playing with the lighting, I feel that I am getting closer to the concept. Lots of little emissive bits still to do. Spent a lot of time reading the documentation and learning how lights in UE4 work. Had a few issues with the blue lights bouncing to far and making everything way to blue. Fixed by lowering the indirect lighting intensity.

I am still getting a few lighting seams seams when I build my lights. Most notably on the floor panels near the stairs on the left. Any Suggestions would be great.

Any feedback is appreciated. Don't hold back.

Dustinmaertz

Another update, almost replaced all of the placeholder materials. Today I created a new master materials that blends some noise into the roughness channel. Hopefully this will help break up some of the flat colors. Ceiling is a little to shinny, still trying to find the correct roughness value.

Feedback would be awesome, PLEASE DON'T HOLD BACK!!!

Ignacio_G

Hey Dustinmaertz,

I'd say you're off to a good start. Here's some crit:
I have no idea where I'm supposed to look. There is no focal point. My eye goes straight to the brightest point, which is the door with the strong blue emissive. If you want that as your focal point, you'd need to shift your camera so that it's in one of the hotspots of your composition, and emphasise that area with all of your artistic tools at your disposal (lighting, contrast, contrast of hue, shape etc).

My second piece of advice is that some of your hard surface doesn't indicate function. The walls for example: it just looks like a "it's a cool shape, let me model that" instead, I'd think about why that shape is there and what function does it serve? Is there a small vent underneath? Does it also double up and store weapons? And the room as a whole? I don't really know what it's function is either. Hallway with some kind of control area? If you have lights on the sides of your walk area, i'd imagine that their function would be to light up your path, so perhaps you could use that to guide the viewer's eye to that door at the end and have that be your focal point?

Also, I'd strongly consider, once you get more into your scene, is to add a bit of visual story telling element into it. What happened in the scene? Who does this place belong to?

On a more technical point: Maybe you haven't gotten there but I don't believe a lot of your materials. I'd work on your material detention. White plastic? Painted metal?

Your lighting is also flattening out the scene. Leave room for darker areas and save your brightest areas for your focal point or to lead the eye.

Hope that helps!

edit and note: This is completely disregarding that you are following a concept piece. Personally? I'd throw your own artistic brush stroke to it.

Dustinmaertz

@Ignacio_G - Thank you for the awesome critique. I agree that most of the hard surface work falls into the oh that looks cool category, and lacks purpose and function. I think I have been following the concept a little to close, limiting what I can do with the scene. I am definitely going to take your advice and throw my own artistic flare into it.

I am definitely struggling with the material definition, this my first attempt at using PBR. I think I am going to try my hand at making some different materials like plastic, rubber and painted metal. So I can get the hang of the workflow. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated.

lucashaley

Dustin -- any chance we can see your PBR material definitions? I'd love to see what you're doing under the hood.

-Lucas

Dustinmaertz

@Lucas - Here are some breakdowns of a few material I have made.

First up is the Master Roughness Blend material. At the moment I use this on most of the assets in the scene. It's full of static switch parameters to add flexibility. The fun thing about this material is it overlays a noise/grunge texture in the material channel with its own scale controls.



Next is the master masked material. Nothing to crazy on this one, Just some parameters and uv scaling and rotation controls.



Last up is the master plastic material. I recently made this material and it has not made its way into the scene. I am going for more of a rough plastic In the roughness I blending between a min and max value using a noise mask. Lerping between values with a mask offers more control and fine tuning in the material instance.



If you have any question's let me know, or if you have any advice or critique its more then welcome.

Dustinmaertz

Another small update, playing with lights and materials.

Dustinmaertz

update

Kimon

Hey man, shaping up nicely! Just don't get lost in all the fun details and reflections that UE4 has to offer before you get all the main stuff in there! I know it's easy to lose yourself in that kind of stuff

lamar McHaney

I am liking where this is going. My only Crit is that the floor looks to reflective compared to the concept.

Dustinmaertz

Micro update, added another unique floor panel, add ceiling vent and toned down the reflectivity of the floor.

_A_n_PsOLAR_BfEAR_

looks sweet man nice going cant wait to see more =D