[UDK] Hive city alley

CougarJo

First UDK scene, so dirty wip inbound

Background : This alley belongs in a kind of hive city (terraformation, too much pollution, this kind of scenarios ) , where people stack up in this type of alley that you kind find everyhere in the city.

And because they lived here for a long time, they personalise the alley for their particular needs.


What remains to do in the near future :
-Texture (only place holder diffuse atm) , shader
-a lot of tubing, water hose running on the floor
-plants (hanging from metal grid on the walls, in homemade flower pots etc) , -doors and windows and few others modular parts.

And of course assets to populate the scene after this.

CougarJo

Little update!

SaboR1996

Looks solid already. sub'd

CougarJo

Oh thanks mate!

SergeiMirminski

Why not start working in UE4?

CougarJo

Good question! It was a big dilemma before starting the scene haha! To be honest, I want to be able to manage both UDK and UE4.

Jumping into UE4 without knowing UDK feels like skipping a step to me!

CougarJo

Shader done (I have some improvements in mind, but will do it later If needed).

I'm on the main assets now!

CougarJo

Almost nothing more in this update, but it give a better idea of where it's going I guess.

diamond3

Why not making a playable Unreal Tournament map out of it?
Assets-wise it goes pretty well, later it can be converted to deathmatch map. Of course this is a different story because aspects like gameplay and item placement should be considered. Basically, you need to be familiar with the game or collaborate with level designer. But actual playable map makes a better piece of portfolio than just an environment, IMHO.

CougarJo

Ah sorry for the late answer!

I don't want to take the time to do a playable level with this, I have a little project with another artist for the ''playable'' part But thanks for the suggestion!


More wips :

CougarJo

Little update :

Cay

You sure you wanna keep that obvious badly tiling concrete texture all over the place? I like the idea of the environment.. and some assets look interesting, but right now the environment is not making sense. Focal point or some interesting stuff would help a lot. The ivy also looks a bit out of place.. did you look up reference?

CougarJo

Thanks for the answer!
The concrete is not a tiling texture, it's several concrete panels! With the future props and vertex blending I guess that it will not be obvious like it is right now!

For the ivy , I'll quote my first post ''-plants (hanging from metal grid on the walls, in homemade flower pots etc)''

I'll do tubing and flowers/plants growing in pots, barrels, this kind of thing. The hole in the ground will be a growing zone for plants that are usefull for people living here.

For the moment it's just structural assets, there is some unique assets planed for the scene obviously.

Fwap

This is looking like it has a lot of promise, good work can't wait to see more.

CougarJo

Thanks

Small update again with another view from the other side :

robochrish

This is looking great!
I'm looking forward to seeing your progression ^_^

CougarJo

First pipes and cables :

CougarJo

Back after a PC hardware failure :poly127::poly127::poly127:

This two weeks I'll not be at home, and I'll work on my laptop, therefore I'll mainly do the assets, it can handle UDK very well

Higuy

I'm really digging the vines and moss in this scene! Can't wait to see how the lighting turns out.

ultramedia

Nice

Reminds me of AC:Black flag

CougarJo

Holiday and stuffs done, back on this scene, and faster :poly127:

(I've messed the compression for this screenshot, sorry!)

CougarJo

Small updates , mostly move and place assets.

ZacD

I'd like to see a lot of foliage in one area instead of it spread around evenly, it looks artificial when it's not clumped up.

CougarJo

Yep, I probably went too random on the placing, will change it after work Thanks!

CougarJo

I've changed a little the placing of the foliages, but I'm not quite there I think.

Can't wait for the week-end!

nuclearjelly

Dude, It's looking pretty good, but I saw your comment earlier on UDK to UE4, and UE4 is really really easy to learn and use. It'll also make your scene look a lot better if you take advantage of the PBR stuff it has, not to mention lighting, etc. And it's free now (for educational use), so there's no real reason not to switch over. Still, your scene has tonnes of promise.

jestersheepy

Awesome dude, but you got a lot of orange.
In world properties go to the lightmass settings and change the environment colour to a nice cool mid range blue and push your sun light colour a bit closer to white, plonk in a exponential height fog too

CougarJo

Thanks you guys!

nuclearjelly : I started the scene trying to be the cleaner possible (few textures, modular stuff, everything tidy etc) but with time it started to be a little mess.

I really think switching from UDK to UE4 with a not-so-clean scene is not the best way to learn it! I want to finish this scene and start another work (PBR ready of course) from fresh!


jestersheepy : For the following screenshots I haven't touch the lightning! I will try what you said , thanks for the help

But I don't want to loose the warm lightning , I fear that a bluee-ish light will not achieve the same mood.

CougarJo

Added a different floor for the lower part :

CougarJo

I'm going to close this one soon. Need few more assets, texture pass, lightning/post process and voila!

BARDLER

Your lighting is super even across your scene which is making everything really flat, and nearly all just mid tones. You have also placed your sunlight nearly at the same angle as your buildings which is making your shadows horizontal/perpendicular to your building. Try to add some contrast, and get some my dynamic shadow shapes with the lighting.

CougarJo

Yes, my lightning is pretty much random right now, I tried a bit more but it wasn't much better :poly117:

Thanks for the advice, I'll redo it and get back here to post after work

CougarJo

I'm calling this done!

I'll probably see things to change and stuff to add, but it's time to move on. During the summer I haven't work on it a lot, and now I'm feeling late. I want to jump into pbr/ue4.

I've learned a good amount working on it. Even if it's through fails sometimes

Minos

Nice style, congrats on finishing the scene!

I know you are done with this but something that could improve this scene a lot is a proper color pass. The geometry and textures are pretty nice, but the entire scene has only one color which makes it look very boring. You can easily compensate that by having a different lighting setup (either go for a more "white" sun or even a blue'ish night) and by desaturating the textures a bit, leaving only a few ones with the current saturation for interest.

peanut™

Looks splendid Cougarjo, this is to show how fluid thing rolls when you get yourself into something.

Well done

B_Korth

Wow, amazing. Glad I got to see the progress as you went along.

CougarJo

Minos Yes, I can see it too! I've tried before to add a more blueish main light, but I always lose the warm palette and sweaty mood I want to achieve for this piece

I'll not be at home for two weeks, so no big PC with dx11 for udk on it :poly118:. I'm doing a lightning pass right now.
I'll try to counter the warm sun with more cold and blue shadows where the sun is not hiting.

Thanks for the advice

I'll post the screenshots tomorrow or the day after.

peanut™ Thanks , I appreciate the words


B_Korth Thank you! Haha , I'm glad too, it's satisfying to see the 1st and last screenshot of my thread. Now I need to do better for the next one :poly124:

CougarJo

Update on the lightning :

pixelpatron

I like the lighting a lot more on your last few shots.

Couple of things are still standing out for me though. The floor area with the pit doesn't make sense as a believable space. Examples:
I would expect some sort of railing, or slight curb surrounding the central pit area. Alley texture/slab concrete not believable, meaning there appears to be a two story structure built on top of a concrete slab that is only a foot thick,might be more believable if there were support beams for that structure but currently they do not exist. (referring to the last image mainly). The overgrowth seems spotty, and haphazardly placed, I would suspect if it were a naturally growing moss that it'd spread from an area and not be so spotty. Bonus points for being only being placed in shaded areas where moss tends to grow. I'd like to see more separation between your framing texture and your filled in wall textures, It all blends together pretty uniformly at the moment. You'd also gain a lot more interest varying up your wall shapes; everything pretty much is flat, no inlets or balcony's that go into the structure, or roof line variation. Your main structure silhouettes are not that interesting.

I know the style is different, but here is a possible direction....there are interesting shapes, strong building silhouettes, and varying inlets, awnings, and balcony's. Might be worth the effort, to re-work what you have and come up with a better composition.


Looks great though. Keep going.

CougarJo

Thanks for this great feedback pixelpatron It's a nice concept.

I can see what you're talking about, good points! Too bad I didn't came across this concept haha, my fault

I don't have the scene with me for the holiday, I'm working on another asset.
I'll try to use the existings assets, adding and moving stuff following your advices. (railing, support for the cavity in the pit, placement of vegetation...)

But I don't think I'll take time to make new assets or really big changes for this scene, I really want to move on But maybe if I find the motivation I can add one things or two, really don't know right now.

I appreciate the advices