Unreal 4 - Savannah backstreet

mazman34340

After tinkering with it for a month, I believe it's almost finished. I just want to add the last few touches to make this an excellent portfolio piece.

Thank you all for some of the past critiques as they have extremely helpful.

theonewhoknocks

Looking good man, one thing off the bat that caught my eye is your cobblestone ground texture. It doesn't look like it is tiling too well and there is pretty harsh seam. I like how you are breaking it up with the moss in between, but definitely get that seam fixed.

The lighting is pretty flat, but I know that it takes some time to tweak. Keep it up.

fab-camp

talking about lighting, that fine-lined ambientocclusion looks to strong to me.
also the girders on the ceiling seem to big, and are missing their upper part.
the brick walls seem quit flat. maybe add more normal-bumps. and you could try chamfering/smoothing corners. they are looking to sahrp and perfekt for a brickwall like this.

does that make some sense?

mazman34340

Tweaked the lighting, fixed the seam, and played a bit with the materials.
Professor says its close to AAA quality.

Narlyteeth

is it just me or does that puddle look like a figure? I thought it was someone's shadow at first.(creepy)

Lighting of the last shot looks better but I think the close up bricks are taking too much screen space. the focal point is too small compared to the close up of the brick wall. I was wondering are you working from a reference image or a style sheet?

you could try using a skylight so you don't have those annoying lightmap seams.

modsoft

mazman,
Nice work! A few of my personal comments, take what you will:

Blue: First thing I noticed was a few too many areas with 90degree angles adding an overall sharp/polygonal feeling. Consider breaking up these edges. See one method valve does this here. A couple of separate brick meshes could go a long way.
Red: A bit too much repetition of this asset, consider making another variant and altering the color a bit.
Yellow: I would try another version with a later/evening time of day, and utilize more light sources. Windows, lamps (which I believe those are) could be more interesting lighting.
Purple: Window and brick material could use some parallax effects.

Also, adding a few 'lived in' assets would help make the space more believable. A package at the door, graffiti, trash, a bicycle or two, bottles, etc etc. Have me finding new details after 10 seconds of looking.

JedTheKrampus

I agree with Narlyteeth on the close-up bricks. You never want to show individual texels like that in a portfolio piece.

You could try using a skylight, just to see if you prefer the distance field AO look, but I'd honestly prefer lightmaps for this kind of scene, since it's so small they don't take too long to bake and it's still the best global illumination gets in real time right now.

mazman34340

I tried some simple measures like using a plane to help smooth out the 90 degree angles.

Played with lighting and materials. Placed more reflection cubes.

By the way, I used BSP's for many sections of the wall. They are great for blocking out a level but then... are bit cumbersome.

mazman34340

Reference Images

mazman34340

Bump, major updates earlier. Didn't realize it wouldn't top it when I just edited the posts.