[UE4] Clean Power Reactor

Carter

I've been working on this small scene to improve my knowledge of PBR theory and creating modular tile sets, eventually it will lead to a large reactor in a separate room
Still a lot I want to polish any thoughts would be great as I've kinda worn my eyes out looking at it : 0

pmiller001

wow nice! I really like how this turned out.
Everything looks like its the same amount of shininess, is that intentional?

pmiller001

It also looks SUPER clean. NOt sure if that was intentional, but i feel like this is the power reactors first day on the job.

Carter

Hey thanks for looking! Its definitely meant to look pretty clean I didn't want to go overly grungy with anything hopefully hint at overall wear and tear. I think the lighting is washing out most of the detail in the roughness maps something I'm struggling with at the moment

Add3r

The art is great. The craftsmanship is solid, shape language is good, and material definition isn't bad (quite exceptional on most pieces actually). There is a lack of major material breakups though, seems like a lot of materials are either a shiny plastic or a shiny metal, with a sparse amount of matte rubber and the like. What I think is lacking is a sense of focal point. I think this can be created with either lighting or a smart use of colors. Right now you have a bunch of great individual pieces, but I am getting a sense that there isn't an attempt to lead the eye and it creates a sense of noise across the whole scene.

To make a point on the lighting, I think a solid pass will really tie all of your work together. Things feel just very ambient right now. Solid start overall though

Marshkin

Very impressive! I like how you have it clean but still look used! (scuff marks around the doorr etc)
One thing I noticed is that the trim on the ground is very clean. Even for a clean enviroment, I'd expect a few scuffs along that from people brushing against it or stepping onto the white trim.

The crate by the door somehow looks awkward. I think it would be a challenge for someone to deliberately put it up against an angle like that, tilting downwards.

I am seriously in love with the floor texture, it makes me want to scuff my sneakers on it1

Please post more!

AngryMindtricks

First of all, really nice level right now... looks good (Y)

Secondly, the crits haha...

- There's an obvious dot repeating across your bare white & orange texture... quick fix just scrub if off.. it's tiling across the top two panels connected to your ceiling.
- the way the paint text scraped from the floor isn't convincing imo... it's quite badly scraped off and the floor underneath it doesn't seem to compliment the amount of damage on the text... some bumps or harsher scratches must have come along with the scrapes on the text no?

- the silver panels on the cyan doors, parallel to the red arrows... they seem a little flat across it's outlining... it gives off quite a "sticker" feel... i'm not sure if it's a decal or actually in the albedo texture of that piece of geometry... but either way... a slight bevel on it's outlining would fix that sticker feel.. it's just too flat when you look at the bevel line in the door that leads up into the center of that piece of art.

Keep going! look good still

S2Engine

Coming along nicely! I agree with Add3r, you'll want to focus the lighting to give it a nice composition. Recently, I've been very impressed with Alien Isolation:




It may not necessarily match your mood and style, but there's some great execution to check out regardless.

Once you have a general idea of the direction, it couldn't hurt to create a small rectangular cube, apply an emissive material to it, and use it as a temporary light source.

ross185

I tested Alien: Isolation for 8 months... I knew it inside out, I was surprised it did so well though. Most people were quite skeptical, but in the end thinking back on it, it was a really good game to work on.

But enough of that, your environment looks really nice, clean cut and interesting shapes and colours.

The only one thing that catches my eye is the grate on the floor where one is facing a 90 degree angle to the one next to it? Was this intentional? The gaps inbetween the grates due to rotation makes the holes thinner.

But overall it is really nice and I am sure will look even better with more work put into it

Thanks Ross

marks

The floor looks really busy, maybe try simplifying the shapes/forms? People have to easily walk along that stuff remember

skyline5gtr

looks neat, can you break down what is what? Did you make just 1 texture then a bunch of mod pieces then use UV to pick the areas ?

Carter

Thanks for the comments everyone, I've made quite a few changes based off everyone's recommendations,

@ skyline5gtr The wall pieces and the cable trim at the bottom share the same sheet I just moved around the centre panel UV's

@ marks I've reduced the intensity of the lumps and made it more of a matte rubber for the centre floor panel

@ross185 The 90 degree rotation was intentional didn't want to have all the lines of the grate moving in one direction, I think the holes looking thinner when rotated is a fov issue. I'm capturing at the default 90 I think :poly122:

@S2Engine Alien Isolation was a good tip! I've introduced a fairly weak directional light, there will be a glass panel in the ceiling eventually and added a lot of small low intensity point lights hopefully this should be a bit more interesting to look at than pure white

@AngryMindtricks Not had an opportunity to update the decal - had a strange issue with parts of it disappearing under different lights so it was toggled off most of the time. I did some material changes to the silver panels so hopefully that has fixed the issue. The orange dot is gone!

@Marshkin I've added some subtle scuffs to the albedo ad roughness for the ground trim still playing around with the intensity. I've removed the crate from that location it looked pretty silly on reflection

@Add3r I've changed up the lighting considerably and tweaked some materials so its not all so uniformly shiny. The focal point will eventually be a reactor visible through the alcove but I've only just started blocking it out was thinking of adding a bright red light in front of the monitor in the alclove as a stopgap

beefaroni

I think it just needs a few like more noticeable scuffs. I wanna try to explain exactly, but I think I can show you with my scene. Maybe you don't want to take it as far as I did, but maybe a mid-ground? I'll just link the links cause I don't want my images cluttering your thread!

http://chrisstone3d.com/img/dandelion_observation_deck/chrisstone3d_main.jpg
http://chrisstone3d.com/img/dandelion_observation_deck/chrisstone3d_navtable.jpg

Dobbler

Beautiful renders, really psyched on your environment! Your textures are in that hard to find sweet spot where they're neither ultra-clean, nor ridiculously over worn. The only thing that immediately pops out for improvement is the scratches on the ceiling grates - that kind of wear makes sense for a surface on the ground, but it looks crazy to have that amount of damage on a ceiling tile

FULGORE

It's nice that the subtle differences in roughness are more noticeable now, but either my mind is playing tricks or it looks like your materials are reflecting light from a load of blue point lights that seem to have no source?

Zer0Naught

Nice one Carter. If I'm honest, I preferred the first set of images to your changes. I like the overall vibrancy of it, though it is a little void of lighting detail. I miss the orange and yellow! :P

Great work by the way, it's looking promising. Few questions:

Did you texture most things individually or use tile-able maps?
What sorta Prost Processing you got going on here? Everything looks so clean. I think I see some chromatic aberration though.
Your chrome pipes, do they use a cubemap or just sphere reflections?
Have you decal-ed a lot of stuff here?
Dynamic or lightmaps?

I suppose a simple screenshot of your workspace would answer most of them haha.

Edit: FULGORE mentioned that you may have some invisible lights (without source). I can't NOT see it now.

Carter

@Zer0Naught The blue lights are meant to be coming from some small emissive elements on the wall panels but the lighting is overpowering them, will dial up the brightness on the emissive and down on the point lights
The wall panels all share the same page with a baked normal map and a tileable base I've added to for subtle variations in each piece. The post processing I believe is just the default with some minor chromatic aberration at 0.2 some DOF effects for when you are super close to hide any ugly seams or textures and the eye compensation thing turned down to -0.5 I think.
I've used sphere reflections for everything and have a mix of stationery and realtime lights, The smaller point lights are dynamic. The text on the ground and the logo to the side of the door frame are decals although I'm still having problems with them

@FULGORE The phantom blue lights are from a too bright point lights overpowering the emissive elements they are supposed to be emitting from, will rebalance these

@Dobbler Completely missed that, good opportunity for a new ceiling material!

@beefaroni Your shots definitely helped, nice scene by the way. I've started adding more overall variations to the roughness and albedo maps for the wall panels and increasing the edge wear in logical places. Just need to balance it so it doesn't look like its been attacked with a fork

Makkon

I really liked the orange and cyan panel colors, but this new lighting is also really cool. You've got me wanting to make my own scifi corridor.

Also, I'd love to see your texture flats.

Zer0Naught

Thanks for the hasty response. About your decals, are you having trouble getting them to sit right? Before I turned on debuffer decals, all of my decals would bleed colour information from the object they sat on, it was rather annoying.

Add3r

I think you are trying to hard to have variety within your scene, trying to cram more details in to create that wow factor. Take a step back. More details does not necessarily mean its going to be better, far from it. Less is more, more times than not. I am not saying this in an attempt to have you redo work, remove anything from your work, nothing like that. Simply stating, I think having fewer lights is better IMO. Your lighting has absolutely improved. I would say right now it is obvious you have a bunch of omni lights floating around. I would focus now on creating light sources. Add a light to a panel or a light fixture. Create primary focal points in your scene and then put a light fixture with a spot light looking at it. Create some large, awesome looking shadows across it or from the object. Could even use cucoloris lights to create a grate texture or something to fake some dope shadows. Get some contrast in thuuuurrrrrr dudeski, don't be afraid of the dark!

I'd personally tay away from just floating lights in the middle of your scene. When building a PBR scene, you need to go all in to make the scene believable. You need to match your awesome material work with some realistic/hyper realistic lighting now. It absolutely is a huge step in the right direction now though. Keep at it man! Lighting is an art form in itself truthfully, it is something that is just as hard to nail as the actual art production IMO. Keep it up dude, improvements have already been made.

EDIT: Realized I came off as a total prick, did not mean to offend, think the geo and textures you have are a great start. A little more polish and you will have a solid port piece IMO

Harbinger

One thing I spot that I don't think anybody else has mentioned is a lack of silhouette on various surfaces. Some of your larger panels are overly reliant on normal maps for their details. The white panels that curve away from the camera really fall flat on glancing angles. Simply popping those panels out or in and cutting in some geo would really help. Keep pushing the lighting and the light design too like Add3r mentioned, it's really helping the scene pop.

Carter

Calling this done for now, still a few minor things to do but will revisit it in a few weeks with fresh eyes, want to start something new - thanks for the feedback everyone!

@Harbinger Popping some of the panels out is on the top of my list now

pmiller001

i can feel the powa.
I like it much more.

RILKE

Brilliant work here, colour pallet and lighting are excellent!!

pixelpatron

Ohh dats nice......well done.

Although I hate it when art isn't practical. that huge curb/bump heading up to what looks like a service elevator is completely impractical and takes away from the believability of the scene. Just add a little ramp or something with caution stripe on it....

Byren

Looks fantastic man! I love the subtle surface details amongst the simple colours, really works well together