[UE4] Forest Valley

Will Faucher

So I've been posting this in the WAYWO thread a few times now, figured I should post a thread and get some good feedback/opinions. Here goes!

I am creating mid-sized environment in UE4, completely personal idea, not based off existing concept art. The idea I have in mind is a lush, forest environment with a large, rocky facade. What I have so far isn't anywhere near the level of lushness and greenery I want to have, but I'm working on it.

Plans/Objectives
- Create a killer moss shader (world-space, so that it only shows up on the top surface of rocks)

- More earthy/mossy ground surface (temporary ground texture for now)

- Possibly add some ruins scattered around

- Add tree leaves

- Have a more claustrophobic feel, too wide-open for now

- MOAR FOLIAGE. UE4 does not deal with foliage lighting very well. Contrary to UDK, UE4 doesn't support custom lighting due to its deffered lighting system, making it a royal pain in the ass to light foliage properly. I've done what I can with the bushes I have already, but it's a hassle to deal with. UE4 does not give a shit about your edited Normals it would seem.

- Need to give off a better sense of scale, environment feels too small right now.

- More to come


Reference collection:


Work so far. WIP.


All criticism and opinions appreciated!

neilberard

This looks like it's coming along nicely. I can't wait to see more.

Sebvhe

Is your character supposed to be at that scale ? If so, it looks like a leaf is the size of his head :poly124:
Other than that it's a really great start, eager to see more !

Will Faucher

Yeah, the character is the scale I want it at. I need to ensure that I get a good sense of scale going.
Here are some of my first grass shader results.

RobeOmega

Is this meant to be tall grass? If not then it is going above his knee's

Mr Whippy

Looking good so far. I think it's a great looking composition and has a good feel.

I think it's too early to say much more but I'm excited to see how you get these grass and moss shaders working with the dappled lighting and moonlit mood!

Will Faucher

You make a good point Robeomega, I've scaled the grass down while maintaining the same density. I should add that the trees are nothing more than placeholders for now. These are in no way the final meshes.
Thanks!

PixelGoat

I actually preferred it without the grass on the ground.. you had some really nice cracked ground going there..

Alphavader

same here - or less grass i would suggest

Sebvhe

I have to disagree, the grass helps him getting the lush environment he wants, moreover I feel that with the grass the sense of scale is much more accurate than earlier.
However I do agree that you have a pretty cracked ground on the side, you should remove some grass patches in these areas to ensure it will be visible.

secondnightmare

I really like the grass, but I think there's too much in the foreground. Maybe a few rocks near the bottom corners of the image would break it up? Still, the scene looks awesome!

maximumsproductions

Hey, this is shaping up nicely . One thing I may suggest is adding some sort of relatable sense of scale, like a wagon or barrel or some sort? I'm not sure what would be a good prop for this but yeah! (woops, turns out you already were planning this, anyway keep it up!)

Meloncov

How are you handling the grass shader? I've had problems getting alpha plane grass to look right in UE4.

Will Faucher

Thanks guys, I do plan on reducing the density of the grass, and putting in some kind of earthy path leading up the hill. Need to work on a nice ground textures/shader for the moss to blend in nicely with the earch, kind of like this.



I really want to keep it lush, as opposed to a deserted, dry, rocky landscape. The trees will have leaves coming in soon as well
Will explain how I got the grass shader set up when I get some free time.

Xaragoth

I agree. Far less grass. Is gud grass though. Overall you want to make the focus stronger. Eyes wandering all over the place right now, not getting stuck where you want to focus them.

Personally I'd also consider doing this as a daytime piece. You could get a really nice sunset going with this and some nice twilight in the valley below the trees.

ZacTheAwesome

Do you plan on putting more trees or bushes? The path seems like it's only going to be grass, even though it's early in the process.

MarcusF

Your grass is looking absolutely amazing, how did you get it to shade so well? My foliage doesn't light well in UE4 despite having edited normals

I like where you're going with this, like the others have said, perhaps a bit less grass, but I'm sure you have something in mind. I can't really crit anything, so far so good.

KrisLW

This is off to a wonderful start! Looking forward to seeing how it progresses That grass is absolutely incredible! (I'm quite fond of the rocks, as well)

I'm curious to know what is happening with the lighting, though. The angle vs. the color of the light seems to suggest moonlight (along with the stars), but then the brightness says 'daytime,' but then I get lost with the crisp whiteness and I end up thinking something along the lines of overcast sunset after a thunderstorm? I'm sure it will look good no matter which direction you go with it, I just currently can't seem to find what direction that is. *shrug*

Mr Whippy

Are the trees dead, or is it winter?

If it's winter you could probably make the grass a bit thinner and wintery looking... more patchy. Have the path way worn down to the stones more and patchy at the edges etc.

Looking good!

Dave

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Looking awesome.

This tutorial might help you achieve the kind of moss you're looking for...

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130038

Bruno Afonseca

Cool stuff mate! I was thinking about doing the same kind of environment. I'll be following your progress

SaboR1996

the only downfall is that all the trees are the same.

Will Faucher

Thanks for the feedback guys! Currently working on my composition, it's feeling a little dull rightnow, updates coming soon. To answer most of your questions, yes, there will be more trees and bushes. Like I mentioned above, the trees are nothing more than placeholders right now, leaves in the trees are coming, it is not winter nor are they dead, I just put them up there to give me a rough idea of how my composition will flow.

Also working on a wind shader right now, to get something along these lines:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zkonxpg08farbmd/Wind_Shader.mov

Will Faucher

Alright so UE4 has been giving me some massive headaches concerning foliage. I've tried just about everything and there just doesn't seem to be a way to get foliage to look right with deffered lighting. Weird artifacts show up at a distance, or things just look too flat and boring. I've already editing the Normals properly, that is not the cause of the issue here. UE4 just doesn't have a custom lighting mode that allows the user to control the darkness of shadows and highlights like UDK did.
Either I get weird stuff like this:


Or things just look super flat and dull like this:


So I think I'm going to go for something that won't have the engine handicapping me, and opt for a more haunted woods look, with dead trees lining the valley, like I had in my initial screenshots. Here is a quick paintover of where I intend to go:


I figured I would need a more dominant focal point, giving off a sense of massiveness.

Any and all feedback is tremendously appreciated!

billymcguffin

For what it's worth, I prefer the first two, even with the artifacting. Maybe it's different/more annoying in motion though?

Kitty|Owl

what is your lighting setup? properties etc?

When it comes to controlling the shadows and highlights etc, look into the tone-mapping controls

Also make sure the material is setup correctly/consistently regarding spec values, transparency/translucency maps etc.

also I prefer personally the second image to the first. It might be worth exploring lighting interest in the distance to create more depth to the scene

RexM

Looks like a good start.

The bush leaves are pretty weird though, the scales are all weird and it is throwing off the scale for the scene. When making larger bushes, you'll need to make a variation that has more geometry to keep the leaf sizes relatively consistent between each asset

ParoXum

Something bothers me a lot with your scene, the relative scale of the character in your environment. Your guy looks a bit like a toddler at the moment. If I were you I would try to get the scale right before going deeper into composition maybe.

Will Faucher

Thanks for the input guys.
As for the proper shading and tonemapping, that won't affect the way UE4 deals with lighting proper backfaces and foliage in general. It is a common problem. UE4 does not support lightmaps on instanced meshes, so anything placed with the foliage tool is out of the question. I'm finding a way around this problem.

As for the scale, I think I've had my face planted in this scene for far too long, I'm not seeing the issues, what do you suggest the problem here would be? Relative scale of bushes, grass, and rock formations in comparison to the character, I'd assume?

ParoXum

I believe for me it resides in the littles details as well as the bigger ones. It's less obvious on the pictures with your foliage on the trees.

The bushes have leaves that are scaled too big relative to the player, the grass is very uniform since you dont have bits that grow above the rest of the clumps here and there and it makes it feel like it's a constant short grass layer, but then my eyes set on the character and I realize how tall the grass is suppose to be.

The cliffs are fine, it's all a matter of what the texture on them will look like in the end, its features and scale of said features for example.

Tree branches are very thick, this I feel is very important to fix if you're going for the dead trees look.

Stairs actually look on target with the player size right now, and thus looks dwarved to me in the picture.
Be sure to look for other's opinion though on this

Will Faucher

Thanks a bunch! I will certainly keep all this into consideration.
Will keep you all posted soon!

killnpc

that vegetation looks amaze-balls

joshschmitt

If you figure out how to make foliage looking good please share the shader with the world, I tried forever to get backfaces and two-sided grass to work but always appears lighter or just plain black on the backface.

Suba

Mood of the last one is crazy though. I'd love to play in that environment.

Will Faucher

Thanks guys, I've taken a few days off from working on this, clear my head a little and taking a step back to see things with a fresh perspective. Will post updates soon. I've decided to stick with leafy trees and working around UE4's limitations. If it really doesn't work out, I'll go with dead trees, but for now it seems to be working in my favor. Stay tuned.

mats effect

Really loving watching this develop Will, you have some dam nice rocks there too Would love to see a break down of them when this is all done.

Zieg_Reborn

If you do plan on going with a "dead tree" look to the valley, I would strongly suggest using dead branch cards in place of leafy ones, to add to the oppressive look of the overhanging dead trees.

Also, you may have to rework the ground so the grass and other vegetation matches the feel of the dead trees above. It wouldn't make sense to have completely dead trees overhead, and lush undergrowth on the ground.

That being said, I would take some time and play with the vegetation shader UE4 has, I've seen some great results from it. I use Cry so I'm not familiar with how UE4 does it, but the distance artifacts may have to do with the MIP mapping of the opacity maps you are using for the leaves, if you are using any. you can try LODing the shader so that it renders differently at a distance, too.

Keep up the good work, I'm liking the way this is going so far.

Will Faucher

So here's a small update with a quick paintover of the sky which I plan to get working on later, as it adds a lot to the mood.
Worked on the sense of scale a bit, something still feels a little wrong, but I think adding the ferns helped stabilize things a little.
For now, I'm sticking with leafy trees unless UE4 starts playing hell with me. I prefer the feel it has, as opposed to a dead tree scene, but nothing is out of the question just yet. I'm just going with how I feel.
I've loaded Speedtrees new samples into UE4 with Version 4.3 to see how they look, and they still shade terribly. It's the backfaces that just look horrible. From certain angles it looks just fine, but from others, not so much. So I'm sticking with my own trees.

Zieg_Reborn wrote: »

If you do plan on going with a "dead tree" look to the valley, I would strongly suggest using dead branch cards in place of leafy ones, to add to the oppressive look of the overhanging dead trees.

Also, you may have to rework the ground so the grass and other vegetation matches the feel of the dead trees above. It wouldn't make sense to have completely dead trees overhead, and lush undergrowth on the ground.

I am in total agreement with you here, if I decide to go that route, this is certainly something I will be doing. Thanks for the input!

RexM

This is really coming together, I like the atmosphere. Your rocks really catch my eye, are they using tiling textures, or unique unwraps with detail textures?

For the vegetation, I would get some more color variation going. Some dead leaves here and there, dead strands of grass; something to differentiate the colors and make each asset pop more.

ParoXum

scale wise it's a huge step forward, if you can resolve the lights (why are they so big, what is emitting it) For the moment the yellow radius look quite large. But it may be fine once there's something there to make sense of this.

Some moss on the rocks maybe using up vector? It'd give an extra fine detail layer on top the big rocks and help discern their size better imo.

PixelGoat

Loving the sharpness of the cliffs!

MarcusF

Nice progression! I'm assuming you haven't figured out what your orange lightsources are going to be yet? Right now they're just glowy spots, but I'm sure you've got something in mind. How in the world did you get your foliage to shade properly?

Good work! Can't wait to see more!

RexM

To build on what ParoXum mentioned in terms of adding moss for scale on the cliff rocks, adding bushes that grow out of the cracks would really help make sense of the scale too, and then the moss can be used to 'ground' the bushes or whatever growing out of the cliffsides,

Makkon

This is looking really stellar

SirCalalot

This is coming along nicely!
I'm getting a really good Tomb Raider vibe from this (http://www.abload.de/img/tombraider2013-03-0417busi.png).

You seem to be on top of everything, but one thing that is bothering me is the dirt trail path.
The detail along it seems uniform until it turns to grass. I think it would work better with a flatter, less-detailed texture along the more trodden-in patches of path, with the more gravely details pushed further to the sides.

I'm also guessing you plan on putting some lamps about the place to produce those orange lights.
With that in mind, maybe it would be worth putting a few more small man-made artefacts in there to tie the rest of the scene together.
Some ribbons caught in foliage and blowing in the breeze? Or perhaps some Chinese lantern bunting that streams over the players head as they walk along the path.

Just some personal opinions that come to mind - feel free to ignore.
Keep up the awesome work!

Will Faucher

So I'm almost done working on the statue/stone carving that will be the lightsource in the foreground. I want to give it a look that makes it seem like it was carved into the face of the cliff, almost done with the sculpt. The bottom bowl is going to be a brazier where I'll be putting in a flame FX with Cascade.




Thank you all for your feedback guys, I really appreciate it!
@Paroxum: I'm working on a moss shader as I type, the Z-Falloff isn't giving me the result I want so I'm going to be going along the vertex paint route instead for better control.

Pixelgoat: Thanks!

MarcusF: Working on that right now

RexM: Getting to that really soon!

Makkon: Thank you!

SirCalalot: Thanks for the feedback, you're totally right about the dirt trail path, that is currently WIP, haven'T gotten around to making a proper texture for it just yet!

Keep the suggestions coming, I really appreciate anything you have to say, people!

mats effect

Interesting statue really like the sharp rocks. Might be interesting if the root type things where actually organic like they have grown up around the statue, just an idea though.

Justin Meisse

After dealing with the foliage lighting issues in UE4 would you recommend it for a nature heavy scene or should I stick with the May 2014 release of UDK?

Will Faucher

To be quite honest, Justin, it's hard to say. UE4 has so many perks. But if its a really nature-heavy scene, UDK might just be better since it supports custom lighting modes. UE4 is restricted to deffered lighting. However, I've seen some really nice foliage around the Unreal Forums, so I think someone will come up with a way to get foliage looking right.

I think the simplest workaround is moar geo. Deffered lighting works awesome if there are lots of polies to work with.

Sorry for the late reply, I've taken a small break from 3D, needed to clear my head a little. Practicing my digital painting these days.

TerryMosier

Love what your doing Will.I can't wait to see more of this after your break.

AndidDiana

It look really nice. I wanted to know, what is your lighting set up? Have you been using a post-process volume with  a custom Color Grading?

This is really inspiring !