[WIP] [UE4] - Skirmish - scifi corridor

gsokol

Its been a long time since I've done a WIP thread (or a portfolio environment for that matter )

I've kinda worked on little bits of this here and there for a while.


Concept:

Overall I want to improve my own drawing/painting/concepting ability, So I've been making myself draw things out a lot more. This took an embarrasingly long time for me to whip up, but I'm happy with the results:



I'm going for an Alien meets Halo 4 UNSC thing. I'm a big fan of a lot of the designs for Halo 4 UNSC stuff. Particularly the paneling and mixture of clean and busy spaces. On top of that, I wanted to try selling the atmosphere from Alien. Sorta going for an "abandoned, or is it?" vibe.


So far, I've whipped up a few blockout modular pieces to rough in the space.




I got these laid out in UE4, and I did a rough lighting pass to kinda start nailing down the mood. I'm not worried about introducing a focal point yet, just nailing down the hallways themselves for now.






Currently I'm working on fleshing out the modular pieces. I just doodled up something for the wall panel:



I'm working on the high poly for this now.


Interested in comments/critique. I'm not really wanting to rework the concept I did...but I'm not worried about deviating from it as I go along. I'm especially interested in hearing critiques about lighting/mood so far, as I'm less experienced with lighting.

garriola83

Dude. good stuff

ScottHoneycutt

Looking forward to seeing the cables falling down and the water dripping. That could make for some interesting effects with water and reflections on the ground. Good job on the concepts.

MasteroftheFork

This is coming along nicely, I like the shapes. I think the red lights are distracting, they should probably be used to create a focus in the corridor. Maybe when you have the cables hanging down you can light them with the red lights which would do two things, first they would act like a warning system for the passengers like "do not slip" sign of the future. Secondly they could make the fallen cables be the centre piece of this scene.

Carabiner

This is looking fantastic so far. Really impressed with your concept, too! Keep at it.

RILKE

Looks Great!! Nice concept there.

peanut™

Yes i concur, i can easily picture myself being a prisoner/hero trying to escape in this level.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

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gsokol

Finally time for a little update. My time for personal work has been pretty limited for a while, due to work and other things. Will continue to be so for a while. I still managed to find some time here and there to pick at this a bit.

Thanks for all of the feedback!

@ScottMichaelH - Thanks man! I'm looking forward to doing the wires/wet stuff too!

@MasteroftheFork - Yeah I agree the red stuff is a bit distracting right now. Good points. I'll definitely have to play around with those whenever I get the scene all composed.

@AlexCatMasterSupreme - Thanks man. Some quality info there.


Little update:




Did up the wall section. No real material work yet. Might either rough in material definition or start doing some doodling for the other pieces next.

ScottHoneycutt

You're back! Great! Keep at it, I was hoping you would.

gsokol

Have another update:



Finished low poly + normals for the floor. There hasn't been given any consideration to surfaces/materials yet. I just have this generic metal on everything at the moment.

Started working on the ceiling piece. Didn't really have all the details figured out in the initial concept, so I did another line drawing similar to the wall panel one:

Luxap

This is looking good, love the progress so far! Not really anything else to say, love to see the materials when they come along, keep it up! =D

AkiRa

Looks great so far!
Really keen to see how this turns out and how your double complementary color scheme will look in the engine. Why did you choose a 4 color scheme?
Looks awesome on the concept! Loving those designs man!

Cheers!

gsokol

Thanks guys!

@Luxap:

I'm itching to get to the materials too. I've been purposely saving all of them until I get the basic pieces in here because I want to try out some workflow things with Substance Designer and I want to lump that all together.

@AkiRa:

Thanks! I didn't intentionally try to do any sort of double complementary scheme or anything like that. Basically I went with the blue/yellow for the place itself, and the things that are red are intended to have been added later by some bad dudes. So while everything else should feel like it fits in this space, I want those things to feel tacked on, parasitic, etc. Not sure if I'll actually accomplish that visually or not, well see


Little progress update:

Finished the ceiling low poly + normal map. Got some feedback from a coworker that I have a lot of flat surfaces relying on normal detail, specifically on the wall panel, that could be more geo that would really help the form out a bit. I'll rework some of that soon.

Also whipped up a quick doodle for the doorway:

gsokol

Rough of the door piece:



Finishing up high poly and working on unwrapping low. Should have a good chunk of time over the weekend to keep noodling with this.

Mr Smo

this is looking very tasty.

gsokol

@Mr Smo:

Thanks!


Baked low-poly for the door:




Line Drawing for that doorway with the steps on the right of the original concept:



Gonna start working on that one next.

Exotronic

This is coming along nicely.

one critic I have is with the floor grid, the spacing is too wide, I would imagine someone getting their foot stuck in between the gap.

also, and this is just a personal taste, I would get rid of the metal bar in the middle of the pillars , I see no point in having it there as it doesn't really mesh with general look of the piece.

keep up the good work

gsokol

@Exotronic

Thanks man!

I made the spacing between the floor beams a little smaller. Possibly still a little scary to walk on? But struck a balance so it didn't get overly noisy/alias-y from a distance.

Haha, your not the first person to suggest removing them (the cylinders on the pillars). I like them, personally. I tried taking them off before and I immediately put them back. Maybe I'll leave them off for a few days to see if I change my mind :P


Here is what it looks like with smaller gaps in the floors + no bar in the pillars:

Featheredhat

very, cool!

Alphavader

looks promising - keep it up. Nothing to say yet -
except the floor and thats for you to decide, as you wrote it.
The spacing is a bit to big for my taste.

On the other hand, if you have someting interesting to show there
like a plasma wire shining - could look really cool.
(i know its not shown in the concept)

anyway - good work

gsokol

Thanks guys!

@Alphavader

I get what you are saying. Yeah I'm going to be doing some stuff underneath, like you mentioned. I want to get some piping/wiring and such going on down there, and maybe get some slight underlighting from there. Thanks!

Not much of an update, but figured I would share anyways because it made me giddy:

I tried running around in the level with my Oculus Rift DK2. It was surprisingly easy to get working...UE4 handles everything for you on that front.



It was realllly awesome! Running around with the rift actually helped me a little bit with scale and proportion...its a lot easier to get a 'feel' for the space with it. Also realized that faking a lot of bigger forms with normal maps is a lot more noticeable with the rift. I may go through and add more geo to some things so it looks nicer in vr.

Anyways, I'm working on that doorway I posted up top...will have an actual update soon.

gsokol

Finished the Doorway, and also reworked the Pillar. So that is all the main modular pieces. I still need to go back and rework some bits on a few pieces.

I also just started throwing in some rough props. Nothing Heavy yet...busted doors, computer console, etc.



Working on fixing up the geo and cleaning up the bakes on a few of the modular bits and then I'll block out materials on those.

gsokol

Reworked the wall piece. Added a bit more geometry to it.

Before:



After:



I also played around with spline meshes a bit. I'm planning on doing a significant portion of the wiring/piping with these.



In this image, the wiring going across the ceiling, as well as the hanging wire on the floor are spline meshes. Not visible in this picture, but I also started doing tubing under the floor grates with the same technique as well.


From here, I'm either going to start blocking out materials on the wall, or do similar geometry work to some of the other modular pieces...not sure yet.

DanielR17

Hey George, I really like what you did with this piece. I'd like to see what it's gonna be like with some cool materials. What is your workflow regarding texturing and shading?

ScottHoneycutt

I like how it's going. Nice wall piece and definitely better with that detail modeled IMO.

gsokol

Thanks guys

@DanielR17

I'm gonna block out rough materials in Substance Designer. I want to try doing some of the detail work in Painter, as well. Limited experience with Designer, and none with Painter, so I'm gonna try and see how it goes.

RogelioD

Whatever imagine host you are using, your images are blocked while I am at work :C

gsokol

Dangit.

Using dropbox

RogelioD

Yup, that'll do it. Dropbox is one of the only sites that gets blocked here for obvious NDA reasons :P

Looking forward to checking out all of the yummy environment goodness when I get home though!

gsokol

Well...its been a while, but after a whole bunch of work related and life related things, I have free time again, so I've decided to pick this thing back up.

I decided to rough in a bit more of the damaged stuff, and re-lit the space.

These images are in the detailed lighting view in UE4:

Nuclear Angel

Glad to see you getting back on this. I really dig the new lighting, especially on the top picture. 

garriola83

digging it, keep it up!

gsokol

Thanks guys!

@Nuclear Angel I'm glad you pointed out the top one specifically, since that is going to be the main comp.  As long as that is working I'm happy.

Did a line drawing for a crate that I'm going to have placed around.  Modeled a rough crate with the basic proportions that I wanted, then used an image of that as the base and drew over the top of it.

gsokol

High poly crate.  Doing low poly and uvs now.

X-One

Really nice work so far. Not much else to say yet. I dig your initial concept, and all of your drawings too. I like the approach, and it may be something I start doing for my own work.

macoll

Really cool scene, want to see moar ! Keep up I dig your lighting atm.

Gazu

Lovely Thread. Show more

gsokol

Finished the low poly and the UVs.  I'm going to try painting this in Substance Painter, which I've only poked at a tiny bit.
Gave the baker a go in Substance Painter.  I was quite impressed.  Name based baking is awesome, and it was quite speedy compared to xNormal.

I was pretty happy with the bake, figured I would share.  Everybody loves a good bake, right?  Low poly on top, low poly + normals on bottom:

gsokol

Decided that the way I was mapping and building the modular pieces was not great.  I was mapping each piece uniquely so I could get a nice bake and paint the materials in painter.  Wanted to build things more like I would in production, with tiling materials, trim sheets, etc.  So I stripped the baked maps off the pieces and started blocking out the materials.  I'm a bit frustrated, as the lit area in the shots above looks worse now that that I'm not looking at it in flat grey.  Of course, one of the adjacent hallways that I put very little lighting work into was looking quite nice: