[UE4] Sentinel Factory - Fighting game level

Harbinger

Hey Polycount,

I've got a couple of weeks of work on this so far and I'd love to get some critique. As the title says, I wanted to build a fighting game environment taking place in a Sentinel factory. I'm currently working through all of my proxy assets and doing the high-res models and bakes. I'm currently debating on using the new Quixel Suite or Substance Designer to do the texturing pass, so everything will remain generic metal for now

Concept - Final stages of Sentinel assembly and testing. Each bot gets rolled through those big bay doors in the back on a construction platform, wired up and in various states of assembly. Picture big robotic welders working on them, some with missing arms, etc. The Sentinel on the right is nearly finished and testing it's thrusters, so the blast deflectors are up and he'll periodically power up. The big machines on the left are heat treating/forging armor plating and will periodically cycle as well.

There are things I'm happy with, things I'm not, and things I'm on the fence about. I was hoping Polycount could rip this apart and help me make it better

Shogun3d

Fantastic. Very nice flightline angle with camera position for first impression. The composition and depth reads very nicely.

I know you haven't finished the sentinels yet in the back, but it would be great to see some details that compliment them to indicate more scale. Things like the ladders and stairs in the back help to understand the scale, but having some more assets to reinforce this would be fantastic. Things like hanging cables, or a work lift, would really assist in capturing the size of the factory.

Looking forward to seeing the progress here.

Harbinger

Great feedback! Thanks Will. Keeping that sense of scale is something I've been struggling with a bit, it's hard when everything is proxy and/or untextured. I'm planning on lots of cables attached to the Sentinel itself and hanging from the overhead cranes above, and it's hard to see right now because of the temp lighting and materials, but the big crane over the main Sentinel has a cab for the operator, so the windows and door on it should help. Also, lots of emissive lights scattered all over should help. If these sound like good ideas or you have some other suggestions I'm all ears.

Harbinger

I was able to dive back into this last week. Did a few more iterations on the level itself that helped increase the sense of scale. Need to work on lighting fixtures, a proper lighting pass, and I'm still kicking around ideas for a re-design on the foreground plates.

Fairly happy with the state of the Sentinel high poly tonight:



Fire away the comments/crits!

klamp

This is looking really cool so far. I like that you went with the old school Sentinel designs instead of the new X-Men movie ones.

I think the only thing I'd keep an eye on when moving forward is the amount of detail in the background. There are a lot of small, intricate details that could potentially be very distracting. It's still early on, though, so I feel like this is something you can balance by clever lighting, coloring, or a bit of atmospheric perspective to knock it back.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

Jandokenpon

Looks great, can't say much except that's already been said until the lighting is finalized for a fighting game level.

Synen

Looks amazing so far man, lovin the detail in the environment.

I wanted to ask if you could post or give any tips about going about creating this, I'm working on a fighting level myself for a friend and I'm just having a hard time trying to get the perspective and layout down. Thanks man and keep it up def following this

gsokol

Oh man this is looking rad!

One thing that stands out to me so far is that I feel like the background is so left-heavy because of all the equipment, vs the open space with the sentinels on the right.

Balancing this out will help quite a bit...you might be able to do it all in lighting...if you really play up the lighting on that closest sentinel, and maybe giving less light to the equipment on the left. Maybe having some crazy strong underglow under the sentinel would be cool..

Overall though I love where this is going. I really like the perspective that you have here...really looking forward to seeing where you take this!

Harbinger

Thanks for the feedback! Really appreciated!

Latest updates: Sentinel baked down and implemented into the level. Spent a few hours getting Swarm set up on my laptop, so I now have a little 2 machine render farm. Lighting builds go significantly faster! Initial lighting pass done. A little closer to what I envisioned, at least with the focal points isolated a bit more, but lighting is something I usually iterate a ton on as I go. Would love some feedback on the initial pass. All of the materials were changed to a non-metallic neutral color go help judge lighting, so surfaces are looking a bit flat now. I have a couple more assets to model and then I can finally get moving on a material pass.



klamp - Thanks! I loved the new X-men film but I wasn't digging those Sentinel designs. I can see how the comic versions would look kind of cheesy for live action though! How does the detail balance feel now? Hopefully some of the background detail is neutralized a bit while still looking interesting.

Jandokenpon - Thank you!

Synen - Thanks! First thing I'd recommend is getting your cameras implemented. I set up a matinee and got a gameplay style camera moving left and right so I could scrub through the timeline and visualize things a lot easier. There were a ton of iterations on how wide the fighting stage was, camera angles, distance and FOV. I also spent a significant amount of time in the proxy/blockout phase and kept iterating while looking through the "game" camera to compose the scene. One thing that helped early on was deciding to slide the gameplay camera at a 45 degree angle compared to the rest of the level so I could get some interesting perspective. On a real production, getting 2-axis cameras and fighting gameplay would probably cause a ton of problems, but for a personal art piece, I'd rather angle the camera and build the rest of the environment on the grid properly.

gsokol - Thanks! Is the composition more balanced now that I have the Sentinels in? The last major piece to be modeled is a big robotic arm/welding system that is working on the Sentinels, so there will be a little more visual weight to the right side of the frame.

Harbinger

Some new updates today. Did quite a few iterations on lighting, learning to balance the use of static and stationary lights took a little bit of work. Can't wait to start on materials this weekend!

shotgun

This is a proper process, imo. Lighting and colors are well-balanced. Maybe add a touch of cyan to balance the reds.
Other than that maybe try fogging-away the farthest space, the atmosphere feels thick

peanut™

look sweet mate, i can tell the work you put it to this.

noscope

this is really nice. I can just imagine 2 people fighting infront of this and some animation going on with the sentinels being made in the background with sparks flying off. cant wait to see the textures!! cant really find anything to crit atm. did you work from a concept or just made it up as you went along?

AbKI

Wow, this looks great.

SoulWind

This is looking fantastic. The lighting, the composition, the overall mood, all great. I cant wait to see it with some more colour. The only thing I'd say is that the sentinel looks more stylised than the environment its in. But I think its only a minor thing that may completely change when the materials get involved.

TaxExemption

This looks really amazing so far! Not sure if it was intentional, but from a gameplay perspective, the foreground is actually really functional. Those railings provide a sort of grid players use to measure the distance between them and their opponent, really helps to quickly let you know whether your attack will hit or whiff. It's the reason training stages always have a grid in them.
With the current lighting, your foreground doesn't feel as though it stands out from the backdrop which can be problematic. That can also be helped when texturing begins so perhaps its a little early to critique that. Keep in mind that competitively, stages are frequently banned if it's too hard to distinguish the action from the background. Perhaps some caution stripe paint on the floor to help create a divide?

Can't wait to see more updates soon!

gsokol

Oh snap thats looking good!

I think sticking to the initial camera spot and using lighting to balance the space was the right call.

You have a really nice foundation to work from here, looking forward to seeing where you take this!

Minos

Looking good, love the sentinels

Subscribing!

Harbinger

Just got back from vacation, but I took my laptop along and was able to get some updates. After some initial experimentation I'm feeling comfortable with Substance Designer now, so the material pass should be a lot of fun.



shotgun, peanut, AbKI, SoulWind, gsokol, Minos - Thanks so much! Your feedback means a lot to me.

noscope - Thanks! No concept, just made it up as I went a long. I spent a bunch of time gathering references of factories, foundries, and concept art of "mech construction" type stuff.

TaxExemption - Thanks for the feedback! The equal spacing, grid layout was intentional, cool that somebody noticed . I also tried to make the background composition in a way that you could be able to easily tell how far you were from the edge of the playfield so you don't get trapped in the corners. Foreground/gameplay separation from the background is something I'm juggling a bit. For gameplay purposes I'd want some clear separation, but as an art piece I just want it to look cool. Trying to find the balance

felipealves

Really nice scene man.

Maybe add some fog or a blur on the background to increase the focus on characters.

garcellano

This is looking pretty awesome, Harbinger!
Just my two cents, the yellow glow on the Sentinels' chest might be a bit too intense.
Liking the scene, man. Definitely subscribing

marks

This looks awesome

Urbanoutdoorsman

Loving this!
Please keep at it.

Jeremy Mitchell

This is looking so rad! Sentinel glow is a bit much - obscures the features.

The lighting is cool. I'd even maybe push the atmosphere heavier. The planes get lost there in the center of the frame.

shotgun

I'm gonna say this ver lost it's tight lighting. There r now colors bouncing everywhere without a clear design. In the previous version, which simply had less, the ambiance was cool and some local lights were warm. Less was more. Now it's completely mixed in my eyes...

Maybe look at it fresh with as many lights as there was in the early lighting-only step

mischiefmayhem

Love the use of lights and soft glows. Good work.

chriszuko

This scene is really cool! Great work so far! The lighting is a bit just.. blah at the moment. Sure you have some colors poking through, but nothing is really driving the focal sections of your piece. What I think may work really nicely is if you popped the foreground sentinel with an.. orange/red tone and then the background stuff with either a bluish or greenish tone. Give emphasis on the main one staring you in the face, but still have sense of "holy crap, there isn't just this one". It doesn't have to be too saturated either if you don't want to go for that look, but really some separation would be nice.

Whatever you do, it seems like you are soaring along the right path. Keep it up! Subbed.

MrsNomingtons

Your scene is really coming together. I would definitely agree with the rest on the lighting. It's a bit scattered at the moment and I think it's distracting from the composition a bit too much and I can't tell where the focal point is anymore.

I think you could tackle this in a few ways. Try killing a few of the tiny bright spot lights in the back completely and use lowkey fill lights in a complimentary colour, bump up the radius massively and have them on low brightness so that they're subtle. Alternatively, you could add some fog + slight blur in the back (or wherever you want the least attention) to tone down the noise from both the textures and the lights. It would also add to the atmosphere. Could maybe make the lights in the back a bit smaller compared to the lights in the front.

What I personally do is use film lighting as reference. Pick a shot from a movie with a lighting scenario and atmosphere you like and try to match it up to that according to your own composition. I'd recommend trying to play with some colour schemes/grading.

I think Prometheus could be good to look at. Notice how in this shot they use the small spot lights but where they make sense in the composition.


They also placed the smoke + clouds on the corners as to help keep the focus on the middle.

I'd recommend checking out some of the lighting on Blade Runner as well.

Harbinger

Thanks everybody for the feedback! Here's the latest:



Lighting iteration, hopefully I get some more foreground separation and push the background a bit more.
Height fog is tweaked, scene should have some more depth.
Did a pass on the emissive and bloom PP. Sentinel and fight stage emissive should be more interesting, BG light greebles have been toned down but still there for scale/depth.
Got rolling with Substance Designer and got a pretty good material pass in.

Keep the crits rolling, it's so helpful!