WIP UE4 : Underground Club : Final Major Project

Kat U

Hi guys,

Our names are Anna Kay and Kat Unsworth, we’re both third year students on the Game Art Design course at De Montfort University and this thread will document the progress of our Final Major Project.

Brief Introduction / Overview

Dropbear is your typical dank, drab club that you’ve heard of from one of your more questionable friends but never bothered to go to. One night you’ve ventured out only to find yourself stumbling down some stairs at 5am, lightly tracing the sweaty walls with your fingers as your body tumbles down deeper into the hot, pulsating basement of sound.

We want to concept and create an environment set in near-future inspired by underground club culture and populate it with characters. We’ll create a small 3D environment and focus on three focal points to showcase the characters.

The player will be taken through three highly detailed, key areas through the level’s narrative which serve as a setting for each of the three characters.

Kat – Concept Art, Character Art

Anna – Concept Art, 3D Environment Art

Our roles will most likely cross over throughout the project. We’ll be posting at the end of every week and it will include Work in Progress screenshots. The main software used will be 3DS Max, ZBrush, Photoshop and the final level will be showcased in Unreal Engine 4.

Please comment and critise our work; we want this project to shine so we ask you for your help!

Character Pinterest Board

Environment Pinterest Board

More info on our Blog

Week 1

Area_01 Moodboard


Inital whitebox paintovers


Initial area_01 mood exploration


Week 2

We decided that one of the characters would be a bouncer for the door. We decided to use the trainer and bodybuilder Pauline Nordin as our main reference.

Character_01 moodboard


Character_01 idea exploration






Week 3

Whitebox


Character_01 iteration


Character_01 colour exploration_01


Character_01 anatomy base iteration_01

Meloncov

I think you need the character wider hips. I realize she's supposed to look pretty butch, but apart from the breasts it looks full on male right now.

Kat U

Thanks, tried widening them a little when blocking out the outfit.
This is last weeks progress on the character;

Reference sheet;


Explored colours a little, need to wait for lighting pass on environment;


Character progress;


Kat

Anna Kay

I started building some of the assets and placing them within the engine. At the moment I'm spending a fair amount of time figuring out Unreal Engine as I've never looked into it before this project.
Here are some progress shots





I also did another concept for the interior of the club



I realised that from my concepts the 3D environment is starting to look very futuristic; this is something I want to avoid. My initial art direction was to keep it fairly grounded in the modern world and keep it in the near-future, sooo maybe year 2050 or so so this is something I'll be working on next.

pongstah

Looks like a lot of work. Good progress so far.

Carabiner

I'm really excited to follow your progress here! This looks great. (Also, are the point lights in the graybox above placeholders? Might get tricky if there are a lot of them)

Kat U

Just been working on more detail on the character, gettting a little behind, need to get this retopped and baked ASAP.



Close up on shoes;


Cheers guys

Kat

Reowwww

Hey Kat character looking cool, fabric needs some thickness though, very noticeable around the open shoulder areas, don't leave it 1 sided, you can do this quickly in zbrush by:

on the fabric subtool

-store morph target
-in deformation, inflate by 5 or 10 increments
-in morph target tab hit create diff mesh

This will make a new subtool of your clothing now with added thickness and edge polygroups, you can then go and sculpt in some seams like 1 inch from the edge and also use inflate brush to give the folded over fabric effect. This will really help with skin to fabric transition. keep it up! c:

Kat U

Hey Rich,
Ahh yeah good call, will get that sorted. Reckon just adding a shell modifer in max will work as well?? Got it all retopped and baked now is all

Thanks bud!

This is last weeks progress on the character;

Sculpt and baked version of face


Baked version


Wires


Need to remove some of the loops on the shoe to make it a bit more even.

Moving onto the bartender character this week, will come back to her when environment is a bit more finalised.

Reowwww

You wouldn't need to change geo really appart from the edge adding another chamfer to support a little thickness. If you're pushed for time dw about it just remember for next character, or as a quick fix just extend another edge loop by the thickness of the fabric. All fabric has thickness and usually ends in some hem/seam or frayed edge In fact most materials look better when they have some kinda of trim between two different materials, makes for a much nicer transition. All this applies to edges like ur collar, turtle neck, boots rim etc.

Kat U

Ahh yeah I will be sure to sort that out, thanks again

But yeah heres last weeks progress. Got cracking with the bartender character. So got a few more concepts and a quick first pass on the anatomy WIP.

Outfit_ideas_01;


Outfit_ideas_02;


First_pass_anatomy;

Kat U

Just been cracking on with the male character this week, progress shots Need to sort those pants out!

Kat U

Just posting the beginning of this weeks work as I am moving back to working on the bouncer for a while.

Anna Kay

Carabiner wrote: »

I'm really excited to follow your progress here! This looks great. (Also, are the point lights in the graybox above placeholders? Might get tricky if there are a lot of them)

Glad you're enjoying our project so far.
The lights were just placeholders, I have to admit I'm not very familiar with UE4 at all and this project is definitely a big challenge for me with a big learning curve. Any advice and tips are welcome.
I'm currently trying to flesh out the environment as well as aid Kat with some extra concept work.
Here is some of the progress so far

bartender dude:


paintover


more bouncer chick concepts







some enviro stuff




(I need to reupload those screenshots, I realised I fixed the modular ceiling and the walls since then, but I'll save it for the next post)

Kat U

Character update!

So finished off sculpting the bartender, I also have him retopologised and baked. Waiting to be textured.

Started texturing the bouncer, so this is my progress so far.

str8g8

Really like the setting and the environment, looking forward to see how this progresses :¬)

I recognize the photos of Kowloon from when I was working on a similar theme.

CybranM

Looks really nice, keep it up!

Reowwww

Need to focus on colour zones of the face kat, looking kinda uniform and pale at the mo. Also sclera looks too white, in reality its kinda creamy grey, usually darker that ppl think, will also help with the spec highlight to pop. Needs some kinda hole for the piercings too. Corners of the mouth lacking depth, imagine the lips are continuous inside the mouth, the corners should help the lips look like they are twisting inside the mouth, like a transition point, take a close look at photo ref of neutral lips you will see what I mean.

I noticed the concept has a cool stern face which represents the bouncer theme well, the 3d character seems to be missing that, you can fix that with the eyebrows and eyebags.. after all we all know how grumpy bouncers are from Mosh...

Keep going guys you can do eeeeeet! c:

p.s those tats are badass :O

AbKI

Oooooh. I love the look of this! Great start, looking forward to seeing more.

str8g8

Following on from Reowwww, I notice you're being a bit stingy with the edge loops on some of the details like the ear rings and the strap ... if this is current gen, then for the sake of a few more polys get rid of that. The days of hexagonal oil drums should be well and truly behind us now :¬)

Reowwww

good shout str8g8

Kat U

Hey guys, thanks so much for all the feedback!

I have changed what I can, but this is where the bouncer is for now. Going to move onto texturing the bartender this week.

str8g8

I think that looks a lot better, nice job! And she looks pretty badass...
(If you have to time to go back later the chin is also a bit polygonal :¬) .....)

Reowwww

A quick tweak you can do to the skin shader is to blur the shadows on the skin in the shadow blur slider. Think that will sell the skin a bit more c:

mats effect

I think some of your images on the moodboard for area 1 are already from it but you might find the book called City of Darkness Revisited a good reference.

Anna Kay

I'm really bad at this Polycount thing...anyways, here is a progress shot of the environment. I'm currently using Substance Designer to texture some of the assets; what I'm finding is that anything that is matte in Substance, looks super shiny in UE4...
I'm just busy populating the level for now, there is still so much to do!

Kat U

Not updated this is a while.

But heres we go.

I have almost finished with the bartender, need to fix his terrible hair, and other bits of polishing.



Started the dj character, got the sculpt down and currently retopoing at the moment. She is based on a concept Anna did when we were discussing the idea of the project, and it fits the character fairly well, obviously adjusted somewhat, but we are using most of the elements from there.

Annas older concept;


I've been having a bit of a sketch too which has been fun;

Mr. Darko

Anna Kay wrote: »

I'm currently using Substance Designer to texture some of the assets; what I'm finding is that anything that is matte in Substance, looks super shiny in UE4...

Have you tried inverting the roughness values before importing into UE4? I know you have to invert one of the normal map channels, might be the same for the roughness values.

Benkeeling

You have SRGB Ticket, untick that. Roughness needs to be set as Linear

Anna Kay

Benkeeling wrote: »

You have SRGB Ticket, untick that. Roughness needs to be set as Linear

Everything is fixed now, thanks Ben! Guru to the rescue!

Mr. Darko wrote: »

Have you tried inverting the roughness values before importing into UE4? I know you have to invert one of the normal map channels, might be the same for the roughness values.

ticking off SRGB fixed it, but thanks for your input

Anna Kay

Some more progress shots