[UE4] Recreating a scene from TES IV: Oblivion (WIP)

failhappy

*EDIT* THIS IS MY LATEST UPDATE:
My hand in for this project is in two days, so I am calling this done and getting everything ready for handing in. Most things still need a second texture pass, which I'll do when I come back to this project in about a month, once I finish my other uni assignments.








ORIGINAL POST:

Hi guys, first WIP thread on here

This is my final year project at uni, I'm a bit behind but I'm looking to get feedback as I go to improve my work. The scene I am recreating is the Waterfront house from Oblivion, but I'm making some changes to it to make the scene a little more grounded in reality.

I basically have a month to get this to completion, so I'm rather scared atm!

Oblivion in-game screenshot:




Chest asset:


Blockout and progress inside Max:


I am not happy with the glossiness of everything in UE4 so far, it all looks way too shiny. This is my first venture into PBR so I thought it wouldn't be an issue, also this is just a quick lighting pass, but any and all useful information regarding how to improve my lighting would be greatly appreciated.

My workflow for this project is 3ds Max > xNormal > Quixel & Photoshop > UE4.
I'm baking a colourID map from max. Normal (both tangent and OS) and AO from xNormal and then using them to create the material in DDO.

Here is the hutch asset I'm currently working on, just blocking out all of the planks for the highpoly:


main ref image:


HERE is my blog for this project, which from now on will be getting updated alongside this thread.

Thanks in advance for any critiques/feedback.

Sanislov

Great start!:) I cant wait to see more:)

DanielPeres

Looking nice,I love that game so I will follow this thread for sure

tierzilla

looking really nice one thing to mention: put a floor under the chimney

failhappy

I overlooked that! Thanks tierzilla

Joopson

Love that game; I really look forward to seeing what you do with this!

failhappy

Quick little update:

Added a floor to the fireplace, and got the daub walls textured. Although I'm not happy with them yet.

KingKellogg

I love the atmosphere!

failhappy

Added some blockout models to fill the scene up, screenshots soon

failhappy

failhappy

Added some straw to the floor, used the Scatter compound object inside max to do it. Needs unwrapping/texturing still but I was just messing with how it would look. Bear in mind I'm hoping to have the floor made of mud

failhappy

Got the earthen floor material done, and pretty happy with the walls now too.

Any crits are welcome, be harsh!

DanielPeres

I am actually curious about your walls texture, it does look great. I am working in a similar scene where I am going to use similar to that medieval concrete and I am now thinking about doing the texture in ZBrush, could you please tell us your secret eheh

failhappy

nukakola7 wrote: »

I am actually curious about your walls texture, it does look great. I am working in a similar scene where I am going to use similar to that medieval concrete and I am now thinking about doing the texture in ZBrush, could you please tell us your secret eheh

I actually made it rather easily. Using the Render Cloud filter in Photoshop and then creating a normal from that with NDO.

I did two layers both with render clouds, then with one layer I made the normals quite large for the big bumps, then with the second layer I made the detail really fine for all the small bumps and overlayed the layers. Then in UE4 I just have constant vectors for the albedo, metalness and roughness.

DanielPeres

Ohh I tought there was some harder work to it, clever way to do it and great job, I really love the end result! Keep it coming, the whole scene is coming along really nice and you have some great wood textures there. TES Oblivion/Skyrim are games that I really love so I am looking forward to see this unfold

failhappy

Glad you like the wood textures, I was apprehensive starting the project about the amount of wood I was going to have to texture.

I modelled and textured the table and stools today:


The light above the table is where there's going to be a rush light/candle

failhappy

Worked on my wooden textures by adding some rough smoothing to them.

The tool they used in medieval times is called an adze and it left marks like these:


I made a tileable pattern in photoshop and then used NDO to overlay the pattern onto my existing normal maps, using a layer mask to mask out the pattern in places where it would be smoothed out due to wear from constant use.

The result is really good on the table in particular:

failhappy

Got a tapestry in there and I've now modelled the rushlights:

failhappy

Been playing around with the lighting a little bit as well as adding a few little assets into the scene.

I've made the rushlights (candles) have a more red light as they would have when they were used, however I'm not sure how to change the colour of the candle flame particle (which is an edited version of the starter content fire). I've also added in some ambient moonlight, which will be coming from a window I am going to put in which will have shutters on.
The ambient light needs bumping up a bit I think but any feedback would be appreciated guys. Especially on the lighting.



One problem I am having is that now the rushlights have been dimmed the normal maps on the wood are barely visible, anyone got any ideas how to make it more prominent?

TSeabrook

Maybe an ambient light set to not cast shadows at a low intensity?

failhappy

I have a couple of point lights in there at low intensity set to not cast shadows. I'm just not sure if it's the right intensity/colour, same with the candle light.

failhappy

Tweaked the lighting some more and added a few more assets:



I added a hole and frame for the window but I still need to model shutters for it. I also made the door and a rabbit:



Any crits welcome, I need to get this to the best that I can.

tierzilla

Looking good so far ,i really like the material definition. i would add a handle to the door , and maybe put the meat near the table , i know is a little place but maybe putting together each asset in the correct place. You wont put the microwave on your bathroom right? dont know if i explained myself right..

edit:adding some beam's and maybe a hunt trophy like a deer head or horns, some flowers or paintings so the overall is not everything so reddish.

Joopson

Hey, not sure if you know, but I nearly flipped my lid when I found out that hitting Esc deselects everything in unreal. Can be very useful for shots like these.

Personally, I liked the lighting more before; it showed off your work a bit better. Now it's quite dark, and it's hard to see the detail and hard-work put into it all.

failhappy

@Tierzilla - Thanks for the ideas, I'm not sure what you mean by some beams, but I like the idea of a deer head. Flowers are also something I might add, but they will have to be nearer the end.

@Joopson - I appreciate the feedback. and I did NOT know that! I've been selecting things off the screen and then turning the camera to get the screenshot I want.

I agree with the lighting, the brighter candles showed the assets off better (especially the normal maps on the wood). However I need to make the lighting as realistic as possbile so the candles do need to be rather dull (in the medieval period they were made from cheap fats which burned really dull compared to beeswax).
I'm going to be playing with the lighting some more, my next task is to add brighter ambient lighting and make the fire brighter.

I also got some feedback off a lecturer today saying to check my textures aren't too dark, which some of them are. So after I brighten up some albedos I think the detail will be more noticeable as well.

failhappy

Update:
- added a door handle (re-used the handle from my chest asset, thoughts?)
- Moved rabbits and tapestry
- Added a shutter to the window
- Brightened up some albedo maps
- Tweaked lighting more



edit: Also textured the bedframe. Going to have a sheet with some straw sticking out of it and then a blanket ontop of that

failhappy

Quick update; moved the rabbits again to a move realistic location (they were way too high before), and added a mounted deer head.



As always, any and all crits are welcome.

failhappy

Not quite happy with the tapestry, it just doesn't look right to me.
I've also completed the hutch asset.

failhappy

Another update:- I've just used Topogun for the first time, creating two tshirts. I used the cloth modifier in Max to get them resting on top of the hutch then I retopo'd them in Topogun. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out, I haven't finished the texture yet though, I plan to go in and add stitching.

I've also created a bucket and a sweeping brush, as well as finally getting around to texturing the cup/jar/pitcher/etc.







Any crits would be appreciated

failhappy

Finished the texture for the Deer head, not very pleased with it but time is pressing on and it looks good enough from a distance

oobersli

so is that fireplace the final? is each stone an actual stone and not a texture?

primnull

why is so dark? not at all like your refernece

failhappy

Oobersli - Yeah the fireplace is final, although I do want to go in and make it a bit more efficient, it's built out of 8 unique stones instanced inside 3ds Max, then exported as a single mesh to Unreal. The tri count is really high at the moment but it's not causing any performance issues. Would you recommend going about it a different way?

Primnull - The reference image was from the original game, where the lighting is unrealistically bright. I'm trying to make the scene overall more believable, which means bringing the brightness of the candles down (the candles in my scene are actually rushlights, which burn even duller than candles). I'm still not 100% happy with the lighting, I'm trying to find the sweet spot between realistic and actually being able to see my work.

failhappy

I think the 'crushed shadows' option in the post process volume was turned off when I took the last few screenshots, I've upped the brightness of the candles 30% and increased the amount the shadows are being crushed. Hopefully this is better than before:

failhappy

Added straw to the floor again, used a mix of modelled detail and alpha planes.



I'll be playing around with the placement of the alpha planes a bit to get the spread a bit more natural.

Any crits would be appreciated

failhappy

My hand in for this project is Friday, so I am calling this done and getting everything ready for handing in. Most things still need a second texture pass, which I'll do when I come back to this project in about a month, once I finish my other uni assignments.

mhofever

Looking good! What I think your scene needs is a little dirtiness. At the moment it feels a little clean for a Waterfront house in the Imperial City. As the style is angled to medieval, they didn't have clean looking walls or stone.

The word I'm looking for is wear and tear, I think some of your textures need this, adding dirt and grime to corners of the wall and variation on the floor.
Have a look at the ref. below, thats what I mean by wear and tear on the walls.



Also, your fireplace could look more worn. See how the fire affects the stone around the fire, you get these dark, burnt areas like the reference below.

Since you said the fireplace is built out of individual stones, for future reference, you could create a base mesh and bake the higher quality of the fireplace onto the base mesh using Xnormal, you'll have the high detail information stored in the normal maps.




Make your fireplace lighting slightly more red than the other lights, it will give a better contrast against the other lights.

Other than that, it's looking good, mate.

failhappy

Thank you for the crits, I've stopped working on this for my deadline, but I'll definitely work on the areas you've mentioned after my other assignments.

As for the fireplace, I couldn't think of a decent way to make a low poly mesh at the time. I've since got Topogun which (although it'd take a while) would be able to make much more efficient mesh to bake down the highpoly. At the moment it's all individual stones with the turbosmooth modifiers removed and the back polys deleted.

tierzilla

turned out really awesome man! congrats!

mhofever

failhappy wrote: »

Thank you for the crits, I've stopped working on this for my deadline, but I'll definitely work on the areas you've mentioned after my other assignments.

As for the fireplace, I couldn't think of a decent way to make a low poly mesh at the time. I've since got Topogun which (although it'd take a while) would be able to make much more efficient mesh to bake down the highpoly. At the moment it's all individual stones with the turbosmooth modifiers removed and the back polys deleted.

You wouldn't need TopoGun for environment props, TopoGun is better used for organic modelling retopos. The fire place can be easily created as a simple modified chamfered box mesh and you'd just need to have a cage around your base mesh and the high quality mesh.


The great thing about that is that you can render out your height map too, which you can use as tessellation so that the stones will pop out without you having to model them individually. The textures have all the information stored so it reads from there and gives your texture 3D depth. Next-gen games are using tessellation, which gives them that high quality render while maintaining a decent poly count.



Good little tutorial about the pipeline process of baking onto lower poly mesh :
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiBCh7gMg9Q[/ame]

failhappy

I know how to bake a normal map, most of the assets in my scene have some form of high poly (even if it's just a turbosmoothed mesh for smoother shading), but it was important to me to keep the defined edges of the stones at the corners. Tessellation could be the solution, I've not used it before but it'd be good to learn.

I'll have a look into it and see about having a much simpler mesh, thanks for the idea

failhappy

@tierzilla - Cheers, appreciate it.