Grassland Environment - Unreal 4 - 1 Week Project

Shyralon

Hi all, it's me again
For university I got the task to create any project I want, only limitation is that it has to be finished within a week. Started on wednesday, so I have a few more days to go.
I decided to finally start learning Unreal 4 and create a grassland environment, inspired by some kind of autumn alaska tundra grassland whatever. So warm colors, lots of grass and mountains in the background. Here's the current progress:





Right now I am having the problem that I don't really now what else to do. Maybe some more vegetation and rocks..
So I am very thankful for every advice (ideas what else to build and technical critiques).

Tobbo

Your lighting needs to be rebuilt. :P

Are you using a post processing effect? The contrast levels seem really crunched. Your shadows are almost pure black and there seems to be a strange color correction or color saturation applied? I would just take out the post processing effect for now. It's distracting from the areas that could be given critique on.

Post processing aside, this looks like a decent start. At this point there's not too much to give feedback on.

Perhaps you could post your reference images?

Shyralon

Here's my moodboard:


What I was trying to recreate with the post processing effect are the blueish mountains in the backgrounds and the really saturated grass in the foreground (see reference), but maybe it needs a bit more tweaking.

I already tried to get rid of the harsh black shadows, but had no real succes so far. I think it has something to do with the directional light I use. I tried to use a skylight to counter this problem, but it totally messes up my colors.

Shyralon

Worked a bit more, finished the abandoned bunker
(even thoguh I'm not sure if I'll leave it in the final environment.



Also tweaked my landscape material a bit more, it now blends the world color and world normal texture with black and white detail textures and normals (which can have individual scaling factors) based on a splat map.




The hard black shadows are because I haven't build my level yet, but it takes way too long to do so (I have to be finished within a wekk, remember?). So I have to get creative and create a second detailed level with a medieval camp environment (yaaay) and since I am presenting a video I can then edit the footage of the two levels together. Atleast that's the plan.
Some asset tests for the camp:

Doxturtle

looks good. Maybe some tears in the fabric, and some dirt at the bottom of the poles would make it look more realistic. If the camp is going to be on the plains, its going to get torn and muddy

Shyralon

Good idea
Thought about using vertex painting for that later, when I finished the modelling. Since I only have time till wednesday morning, I want to finish modelling/texturing tomorrow and do all the level building/tweaking tomorrow evening. Tuesday then is for creating flythroughs, rendering the videos, working on the presentation and all this stuff.

Shyralon

Finished modelling most of the assets I need and testing them in ue4.




Tomorrow I will be building the final environment, create particle effects for fire and smoke ( which I have never done before, we will se how it turns out..) and vertex paint dirt and wear and stuff onto the meshes. If I have some time left I will do more tweaking and maybe even do a few more assets.

CharacterCarl

Good stuff. You're really quick at this.
You could turn down the brightness on the wood textures a bit. I have a feeling that they might coincide with the bright values of the ground and get lost when placed inside the level. Also makes it look more used.

Shyralon

Thanks, your project is pretty cool too
Did the final composition today as well as some vertexpainting (mainly dirt).
Depending on my motivation I will maybe do some more assets, but plan for tomorrow are creating the final flythroughs. Also compiled the game for presentation purposes, so you can fly around the level^^

Ramseus

If you're still looking for other things to add to the scene, the water in some of your reference images caught my eye. A stream or pond or some such could add some more interest to the scene and break up the endless grass.

Shyralon

I really like the idea too, but I have no idea if I can realize that since I've never created anything like a river etc in unreal. And tomorrow is the last day I have to work on this (at least for the uni deadline, maybe I will go back afterwards).
But if I have still time left after setting up the cameras for the flythrough, I will look into that

Shyralon

Alright, the weeks over, tomorrow is the presentation, so here is the final flythrough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a25bk0x7S2U

Made a few more little assets like the palisades, bread, plates and bags.

Something appears to be wrong with the youtube sound (my file is okay..) but I'll look into that tomorrow, too tired now.

Let me hear what you think about the result of this 1 week project