Student Environment Art Project

cliker

For an undergraduate class on environment art I have chosen a concept art from the upcoming game Dragon Age: Inquisition. I am extremely excited to work on this for two reasons: 1- i love the Dragon Age series, 2- this is my first big dive into all the workings of making an environment for a game. There are a lot of firsts, using Unreal 4 and using different texture maps to name a couple, and I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can during this semester.

My goals for this project:

1- Wrap my head around Unreal 4.
2- Lean advanced UV and texture techniques.
3- Produce a quality render worthy of a portfolio.

To go about doing this I will start by building the basic geo in Unreal to get my scale right with a 3rd person blueprint. Once that is done, I'll throw the geo into Maya make the geo more detailed. I'll work on this for now and I'll keep you all posted on my progress as much as I can.

All this being said, I am extremely open to critiques and I hope much is given. I want to get better and make cool art with you all along the way. Thank you.

DWalker

The concept is a bit simple, which can be good if you're learning or have a limited amount of time (or both...), but I wonder if it will have enough appeal as a portfolio piece.

cliker

You are correct, I choose something a bit simple to facilitate the learning process. After I finish this project, I plan to up the difficulty that challenges what I have learned from this one. You are probably right about if not having enough appeal for a portfolio. I can't wait to find out.

Leto

I think it's a great piece to work from. Let's see how it goes!

cliker

O.K., had to go back and forth between Unreal and Maya a few times but the basic block out is done. Currently having problems with getting the lighting to work how I want it in Unreal and doing lots of Google and Youtube detective work to figure it out.

Here is a couple of screenshots of what I have so far.





Goal tonight is to figure out the lighting so I can get a good screen grab of the geo in Unreal.

CBolyer

Anxious to see more!

Z-Axis

Good start. How'd you get your character to go into 3rd person like that?

gsokol

Well...you are certainly going about it the right way...blocking it out first and everything. Props for that.

The way the meshes look in UE4 makes it look like you are having lightmap issues. Did you bake lighting? Need to have lightmap uvs otherwise it will look pretty wacky.

cliker

O.K., it has been a while but I am back. I basically spent the last month how to import/export between all the software packages, learning about texturing and just general things I need to know about game art. That said, I have learned a lot about the Unreal Engine but still have a long way to go. Here is the updated images to what I have so far.











Things I still need to do and or learn and implement of the next two weeks:
-Redo some textures and refine Normal maps.
-Lighting
-Add some more detailed meshes or projections to walls to show the fancy ornamentation.

Once i get those things under control and if I have time (I'll end up doing it if I run out of time anyways) is to add the statue and dramatic lighting.

O.K., what do you guys think? Any advice or anything that I am doing completely wrong? You won't hurt my feeling, I want it to look good when I am done so throw it at me.

Thank you everyone!

Chimi Jimi

hey dude,

my main crit would be that you havent really followed the concept you should take more care and look more closely at something that you are supposed to be creating in 3d for example your floor tiles are wrong material wise and how many there are also yours arent spaced correctly compared to the concept

just a heads up

fab-camp

now that you learned how to better model, texture and import to engine, you might start to model and texture one of these modular pillars you got colored yellow in your concept-breakdown.
try to get this piece close to the concept.
right now your scene still looks like a textured blockout. (leaving the floor aside which has more definition already. if maybe not that accurate as Chimi Jimi said )

cliker

Good advice. I will work to correct those issues this week. Thanks a lot guys.