[UE4 WIP] Subway Train Station

THEONLYraider

Hey Guys!

[Update 10/02/18] 


Currently working on my first environment in UE3. I picked this concept because I liked the challenges it presented, and I thought that it would be small enough for me to tackle. It's my first time blocking everything out with BSP brushes, and I wasn't able to get all the correct shapes I wanted from the block out. I threw a light in the scene for now to block things out.


Here is the concept I am working off of: 
By: Artyom Vlaskin
Found it on conceptroot.com

I blocked things out a bit until I felt there was enough information to work off of.


I broke things down with color. Then circled the pieces I thought were essential to making it feel like the concept. I then measured out the environment to match the players height.

Here is where I am at right now:

Taken from the concept perspective.

Taken from the chairs view.

Security camera angle.

This is showing the extra room I will be making. It will be gated off, and have a soda machine inside the area, along with some reused props. Was thinking about how I could limit the player to just the corner. So I came up with the idea to gate off the area behind the concept, and make it provide more atmosphere.

That is everything I have so far on it. I had made a couple mistakes on the height of the ceiling early on. I adjusted it to make it taller, since the skeletal mesh I am using in the scene is a bit smaller than when I play the level. Decided to add the extra room, and a black foggy area behind the turnstiles. I am still missing the block out of the newspaper stand, gate, flyers on the walls, the vent, and the wires on top.

Thanks for taking a look!
Going back to working on it now.

THEONLYraider

Back working on this again.First time making the material for mesh painting, so it's taking me a while to get that down looking good. Lots of trial and error on the ceiling. First it was the mesh, then it was the material not working. Let it sit for the holidays, then came back to figure out the problems.
As a side note, I have included the links I have used at the bottom of the post if anyone would like to take a look.

Here is the layout for the material I used for the ceiling. I will still be tweaking it more to get it to look better down the road. For now I am happy with how it turned out, and how it paints.




I haven't added any spec maps to it yet. I wanted to get the diffuse and normal down to get a feel for how it would work with everything.

The ceiling and floor are complete as far as geo. I did a quick pass on both of them to test the painting, so far it is working pretty well. Happy with how it looks so far.






If anyone have any resources for lighting, or advice, I would greatly appreciate it. I know the basic stuff, and getting everything set up. But could use some better resources or tutorials.

Going to be working on the geo for the walls, and material for mesh painting over the weekend. Maybe an update on Monday.

Thanks all!


Vertex Painting Resources used:
[http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124735 http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Advanced_Vertex_Painting.html
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI4ZHVDuiKo[/ame]
http://www.laurenscorijn.com/vertex-blending-snow.html]

THEONLYraider

3rd update!

Got into making the walls yesterday night. I will be doing some vertex painting for them, not exactly sure how I would like to do it. Nevertheless, I wanted to get them with a good base texture so I could finally see the composition of all the main pieces.

Here is what I have so far:









I had a fence texture by the gates, but for some reason the geo was reverting back to the bsp brush. Will have to investigate that tonight. I like the wall base texture I have for it, even though the concept called for square tiles. The stripe on the wall was a test to see if I had done everything correctly when setting them up. Going to be working on wall texture more, and adding a spec map. Nothing in the scene has a spec map on it so far, but that will change soon.

That is my update for today. Thanks!

CharacterCarl

Good progress! Looking interesting so far.
I'd thin out the grunginess on the floor tiles some more. Right now they look like huge dirt splashes on otherwise clean tiles. Make it go into the gaps between the tiles or along the tile borders.

I remember a nice comprehensive tutorial on texturing (tiles) by Scott Homer inside the VERTEX 2 BOOK.

THEONLYraider

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree. The way the grunginess is being painted on is pretty sloppy. I will have to fine tune it.

Appreciate the resource, I will have to take a look into that when I get a chance tonight.

THEONLYraider

Posting a quick update here.

Imported my level into UE4, since it it's free now, and man it looks 10x better.

PBR materials are fun to work with. Even with a basic setup they look fantastic. Anyways on to the progress and pictures.









I was able to get everything set up pretty fast, and assemble the materials to work with the vertex painting. For now I am working on getting the lighting to look right, and experimenting with lights. In these shots I have a spot light (Near the turnstiles), A point light with an IES light profile (Near the map on the wall), and a point light with a stretched source length for the tube look ( Near the end of the hall).

The lights in the scene are not yet final, and could use some beefing up along with some emissive work. Right now they are too bright, and look too futuristic and not realistic. Will be looking for some info on how to pull off the fluorescent lights look. If anyone has any info on how to achieve that kind of look it would be greatly appreciated.

Nothing big on the geo side this time, or texture side, but I will have a big push for those big pieces soon.

Thanks for the support!

heyguy

I think you can try and imitate florescent lighting by painting an emissive map with dimmer color/darker shades around the sides like how you might see in real life. I know your bulbs aren't exposed but the basic principle is still the same. The sides of your light fixtures could be dimmer. Just lower the brightness of your emissive map down a tad too so it doesn't look so bright.

stefmen

I think you should take a look on the size of your tiles on the wall and floor, I think they are way to big. for example count the amount of tiles from top to bottom in your concept picture and use that amount in your 3d environment.

THEONLYraider

@heyguy Thanks for the idea! I will have to try that out when messing with the emissive map and diffuse. I also want to add some kind of burn in on the plastic for that effect too.

@stefmen I agree, it is running a bit away form the concept in that regard. I will tile it in the material and take some pics of that.

@DerRazputin I haven't forgotten about your suggestion either! Looking for a texture for the broken tiles. Thinking about doing some work in Zbrush on it...maybe

Thanks again for the feedback everyone

THEONLYraider

Updates!

Got a chance to work on the light cover textures last night. Thanks to the critique from heyguy. I was able to figure out the emissive map to mask out the darker spots, and add some more detail to the cover it's self. Pretty happy with how it turned out. Just need to finish the metal holder texture Pics below:







As for the walls, I had to stretch the texture out a little bit to make sure it would tile in the V direction correctly. Thanks for pointing that out to me stefmen. It was the last thing I was working on so I rushed it a bit and wasn't able to get the stripe in, or tile the floor. Sleep is more important. lol










Adjusted the intensity of the lights after looking at some reference pictures. Going to leave it for now and focus on the walls and floors some more. Finishing the metal texture is on my todo list for tonight. Depending on how far I get with the walls/floors I might add some more pieces. Would like to get more geo into the scene for sizing things.

Thanks again for the feedback guys, I really do appreciate the help and critiques.

THEONLYraider

Coming back to this!

Created the ticket window finally. I will be going back into the texture to get a little more out of it, but I don't want to become too stuck on a single object for too long. The next object to texture will be the Turnstiles.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rwn5L






Also worked on a tile substance for the wall. Since I never really messed with substance designer I watched the tutorial from James sky, see below, and I was able to create the right look for the tiles I'll use for the walls. The tiles are now closer to the concept.





Would like to figure out how to add a mask of a yellow line to help it get closer to the concept. If someone knows a video or something it would be helpful  


Subway Tile Tutorial (By James Sky)

THEONLYraider

Back again!

Completely redid my layout along with my base materials for the scene. Lighting and layout were the biggest challenges for me in this particular scene. My previous layout was not as modular as I wanted it to be, so I decided to start over. >.<





After getting the modular pieces into the scene I encountered a lot of lightmap seams and leaks. The only way I was able to finally solve these issues was to export walls corner to corner to re-UV the light map. I exported the floor as a single mesh to avoid lightmap seam there too. Adjusting my world settings did not fix or hide the original seams

Substance Designer Materials






Continued learning some more substance designer to be able to use my own mats for everything. Lots of tuts, time, and fun. The ceiling material was a combination of techniques I learned in JOR Substance Vol.2  and the masterclass from Josh Lynch. I tried messing with tessellation for the ceiling pieces, but that didn't work out, so I just used the regular height map. It still looks pretty flat in engine though...

Looking to get some of the smaller pieces in the level blocked out and textured in the coming weeks. Hopefully all of them.lol

THEONLYraider

Got some more time to get block-ins made for the pieces with stand-in textures. Making sure to take into account he size and what the lighting looks like for each piece with the material. Trying to get the pieces setup with scale, UV's, and lighting info before going into too much detail.







Looking to get The subway signs, bars by the turnstile, and the new-stand block-ins into UE4 with textures next. Looking forward to getting everything finally in with a fully lit scene. 

THEONLYraider

Testing out some different lighting in these next shots. Turned the indirect lighting to see if it would make the newsstand become more lit, Didn't really work
All of the materials are placeholders until I get the last of the props in.








Got the newsstand and smaller sign in with a rough texture. Also found that my materials were not using their height maps or AO maps, because I forgot to check the box for it within the graph in UE4 >.< So now they all have those maps turned on.  

THEONLYraider

Getting some more of the bigger things blocked in with textures. Scaling and making sure it's got the right forms has been my major focus when putting these assets in. The trash cans will be taken down a bit, as they look pretty big when compared to the news stand. The drink and ticket vending machines are roughly the same size and a little bit bigger than the player model reference I'm using; first time making those so it should be fun.lol


The turnstile gate is the first of the two gates I want to put into the scene.

This first pass of the gate is modeled off a reference I grabbed for what I would like the area to look like in the end. Looking to make this modular as two separate pieces and just realized the door if backwards. >.<  The final product I would like from this area is two modular pieces; the fence and the door.


Near the vending machines I want to put a bigger gate that can be used to block off what would be the stairs down. Going to be blocking that in next.


Here is where I'm at for the moment. Happy to see the amount of items in the scene finally adding up to create something.lol Can't wait to get into the details of each one after this broad stroke of the scene. Really getting tired of that placeholder floor, so I might have to tackle that first.

THEONLYraider

Made some progress recently on the turnstile section. Will be focusing on the bars and door next to it, since it should be the same material.





The texture turned out alright. Not to happy with the amount of shine or dirt buildup I achieved. If anyone has critiques I'm all ears.