Abandoned Swamp House Environment - [UE4]

oxygencube

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Hey guys and girls,

This is my first real post. I am a 3d generalist and want to make the transition to an environment artist. I have been doing some tutorials and reading through tons of post here and elsewhere. I have come to the point where I think I gotta start an environment. I have decided to work mainly from this concept from Andree Wallin. I will add and remove stuff as I see fit.

My main goal for this project are:

• Create, at minimum, a realistic swamp house ext. diorama.
• Develop/learn prop/asset workflow.
• Learn to create tileable textures in Zbrush.
• Learn/implement modular workflow.
• Build the environment in either CryEngine or UDK.

My plan is to start with a few basic props which will allow me to grow and learn with smaller items that could be replaced at the end easily.

My starting prop list includes:

• Oil Barrel
• Wooden crate/box
• A rock
• A tree

In browsing these forums I can tell I have tons to learn but I think with a little help from you guys I can figure this stuff out.

Thanks for all your feedback, crits, and patience in advance. I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions.

..oxy..

Jaston3D

Yeah the tall grass looks like its duplicated a ton. Just make it scale randomly on the z axis and that should hide it a little more. Great work so far though

Chase

Shaping up nicely! Did you use a single plane for each small plant stem and a plane for each leaf?

oxygencube

Chase wrote: »

Shaping up nicely! Did you use a single plane for each small plant stem and a plane for each leaf?

Actually, just two tris each.

Chase

Oh well that's even better

oxygencube

I am having a heck of a time getting the lighting right on this scene. I have tried baked/dynamic and everything in between. In this setup I am doing everything baked except for the foliage but am having some issues with the 'indirect lighting cache'. As you can see in the lighting pass it is too bright. I have learned that it looks like it is treating the entire set of foliage as one object and referencing only one sample point. Look at the .gif of me adding foliage by the red cube.. the entire set picks up that lighting.



I would really appreciate some help on this..

thx.

oxygencube

I spent the last week or so getting the assets I have done in the scene and trying to rough out the lighting..

oxygencube

Knocked out some hero plants this week... For the bush I ended up making a tiling strip to be able to make longer branches.. Next week lilly pads and cattails.

Noxiousd

Did you follow a tutorial for foliage? If so which one pls?

oxygencube

I got the base of the trunks down, I sculpted the tree trunks and then textured them, I will used the straight trunk part to texture the limbs.



@Noxiousd

Here are some resources on foliage: 

http://joopson3d.tumblr.com/post/30984980518/foliage-workflow-for-udk
http://www.cryengine.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=315&t=100319

oxygencube

Sculpted the leaves and branches for the trees.. So much detail that really won't get seen when it's baked and put on to planes but it's still worth it.

Wayfray

Looking forward to seeing where this ends up.

furys-death

Definitely looking forward to seeing how this progresses. Love the attention to detail on the foliage. 

oxygencube

Ok, I need some help here. Currently I think this tree is 'ok', I still want to shift things around on it but the gist is there.   I am using three textures. One for the trunk base that is 1:1, one tiling bark texture for the top bark / branches and one for the leaves. I am currently concerned about the poly count. Right now the tree sits at 12,000 tris. I have done some reading and this seems a bit high. Practically this is just for my portfolio so I don't need a high frame rate and this project is targeted to be a current gen piece. I still want to show my understanding of optimization and polycount. Is 12k too high for this tree? Granted in a real world app there would be a few LODs ect.

Would appreciate some feedback on this.

Thanks!  

Wayfray

You could showcase an LOD alongside the current higher polycount version. Have you checked out this kind of method? https://blendernpr.org/lets-talk-about-normals/

Seems they can get away with fairly chunky cards, since the normals are edited to be lit properly.

oxygencube

 I got the tree down to about 8k with the root system and 7k without. 

Here is an update of all the current assets in place. Got one or two more trees to go then on to props like boat, barrels, sticks ect.