Hip Hop is Dead [UE4]

jStins

+++Finished!+++





+++Finished!+++

I'm starting a project to dig into UE4 and get a little deeper with PBR shading. It's a still image focusing on the clunky old hardware that was around during the rise of hip hop. The setting is a dusty old basement with late-day sunlight lighting the scene. Visual target is realism.

The composition will be tight as I mainly want to focus on asset creation rather than the larger elements of the space. Here is a mood board showing the overall ambiance I'm after:



Here is a Maya blockout with the larger assets, composition and overall lighting:



Any comments or suggestions on the overall composition, layout, etc?

I started with a small asset in the scene, a cassette tape. Here is a marmoset render with the low poly, normal, AO, albedo, roughness, etc...



I'm moving onto the boom box first, the legendary Lasonic TRC-931. Here's some ref:



And here's the first pass at the high poly:



Please let me know if you see any potential baking issues on the high poly or smoothing errors. I'm going to do a final pass on the high poly and start the low poly soon.

Hopefully the full scene will get finished, but I hope to get some nice props out of it at a minimum.

Any comments or critique are welcome!

polaroid29

No critiques yet, just subscribing to the thread to see progress! Big hip hop head, so I'm excited to see the outcome.

Can't forget an MPC in there somewhere :poly124:

jStins

Thanks polaroid. An MPC is a great idea!

I got the boom box baked down. Here are some Marmoset shots...





I'm going to start texturing and get the scene blocked in UE4 soon.

C&C welcome, thanks.

AbKI

Love the idea for this theme, props are looking great already.

cptSwing

great idea for a portfolio piece and looking good

theblueturtle_

fantastic idea! looks really good so far

ae.

this is gonna be solid!

jStins

Thanks guys.

@JoshuaG: I saw that movie. In a theater. It had almost been wiped from my memory until now. Thanks a lot!

MeshMagnet

What's your process for getting the mesh over the speakers?

Joltya

MeshMagnet wrote: »

What's your process for getting the mesh over the speakers?

I'm curious of this as well.

Sequisha

MeshMagnet wrote: »

What's your process for getting the mesh over the speakers?

More than likely using a bake to obtain an alpha for that portion of the mesh.

jStins

I used zBrush Micromesh to create the high poly as seen HERE. I'm sure there are other methods in Max/Maya that could achieve a similar results using tiled geometry that's deformed to the shape you want.

And Sequisha is correct, normal and alpha were baked down from the high poly.

I'm a little concerned that the pattern is too small and may not hold up at lower texture resolutions. I might need to exaggerate the scale and re-bake it... We'll see.

I'll see if I can make some screenshots to illustrate the process when I get home.

Deathstick

I'm loving everything so far! Those cassette tapes are stylin.' The only problem I can possibly see with them is some of that great detail might get lost for that small an object when rendered in UE4, but then again you said you're aiming for a tight composition. Would look lovely in a game with a 3D menu/rotation like the items in Skyrim or Farcry 4.

Gotta admire that detail!

GrungyStudios

because iggy azalea killed it =D

seriously though this is a good start, keeping my eye on this one

jStins

@MeshMagnet & Joltya: Here's a brief breakdown on the MicroMesh process...



@Deathstick: Thanks man. I hear you on the Cassette. There were multiple times when I felt crazy investing the time/detail, but I really wanted to use that to iron out some kinks in my baking workflow (especially on hard surface stuff). The good news is that the Boom Box went relatively smoothly, so all systems go! (until the next mystery baking error pops up.) :P Hopefully the detail will pay off in the end.

@GrungyStudios: Haha thanks!

@JoshuaG: Here's the normal map with extra fancy knob indicators.



Thanks again everyone for the kind words and encouragement. It will be about a week before I can make any significant progress, but any additional C&C are welcome.

Joltya

Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing! :thumbup:

jStins

Finally found some time to run the boom box through quixel and have the textures about 90% complete. All those little labels and text sure were fun. And by 'fun', I mean a pain in the butt.







UE4 Question: I also have the scene blocked out in UE4 and am building my master material for the scene. (Not worth showing yet as the lighting is shit.) Does anyone have any good resources on building a shader for transparent plastic? I admittedly have only done a cursory search, but any recommendations or advice are appreciated.

C&C Please!

jStins

Here's the blockout in UE4



I still need a better IPS monitor at home so please let me know if the light color's seem off / too saturated. Thanks!

jStins

I took some time off from this to get married and do the honeymoon thing. Now I'm getting back to the asset creation thing.

Here is the other primary prop for the scene. The Technics 1200-mk2.





The high poly is mostly complete with a few final odds and ends to add, mainly at the head of the tonearm. I will probably refine the boom box textures and flesh out the scene in UE4 a bit more before I get the low poly / baking done on the turntable.

C&C Please!

nastobi123

oh man, this is the first time I saw this kind of theme. Honestly, the boombox could be a bit more gritty and grungy with scatches and worn edges, fading texts and add story to it, probably like a cloth in the handle or stickers. Basing on the environment where it is. The hiphoppers probably bring it outside on the ground freestyling or b-boying. It's just clean unless its fresh out of the factory. Love the detail though, looking forward to it. Very OG idea, never seen this before.

_Kratos_

Nice mood here man!
Also smooth models as well
I do agree with Nastobi...you could bet some more weathered materials... its gonna make the whole think believable but you maybe doing a first pass on textures...
Looking forward to see more

Stinkfoot

Now that's a ghettoblaster!

jStins

Thanks all. The weathering on the Boombox is next on my to-do list. I was mainly aiming for good material definition on my first pass and hopefully achieved that. Now I want to find a good balance and make it look used, but not abused. I hope to have an update on the Boombox this weekend, but we'll see how it goes.

erroldynamic

Awesome! Takes me back

rls

awesome theme and what you did is really nice

amirabd2130

niceeee! love the stereo, aka boom box

P.S. congrats on your maraige :thumbup:

James.

its the tedious work that makes something great

jStins

Made some progress in getting the scene built out in UE4 with lighting and some of the smaller props. Hoping to get this wrapped up before the end of the year. 





I'm feeling pretty happy with how the scene lighting is coming together, but on the other hand I've been looking at this so long I might be missing some issues. I have a few final props to finish (turntable, milk crate, records, other odds and ends). 

Any critique or comments greatly appreciated. Thanks!

TheTraza

This works is awesome. Love the theme and the props!
Which software did you use to bake the maps? And even the retopology on the ghettoblaster looks a little bit odd to me. Is an algorithm like decimate?
Grats on your work

jStins

Thanks man. The high and low poly were both modeled in Maya. The low poly was created by hand. I just removed edgeloops from the high poly and optimized from there. The low poly could probably be optimized further and the mesh more elegant, but it's working for my needs. I bake my maps in xNormal. 

jStins

I put together a quick Marmoset presentation of the Boombox and Cassette assets.



Marmoset Viewer HERE

Any comments or critique appreciated as always. Thanks for looking.

jacob thomas

Is that a Biggie tape on top of NAS? Shots fired!
Super cool piece, but I'd check the materials on the cassette cases, they look super metallic and not like clear plastic. Probably a side effect of using the albedo in the spec channel.

Poinball

Yeah its better to use Black and white spec for those cases

jStins

@jacob thomas : Haha, good eye. Some days I think Ready to Die is the best rap album of all time, but usually Illmatic holds that place for me. Maybe those cases need to be rearranged. Are you referring to the cases in the Marmoset render or the UE4 shots on the previous page? I admittedly just threw the Glass template on there in Marmoset so it probably needs some roughness work. I'll take another look at them in UE4 as well. Thanks for the input.

@Poinball :  I'm using the metalness workflow in UE4 and that's set to black. Unless I'm mistaken that means that the albedo doesn't affect specular color and only the roughness controls reflection / highlights? Either way I'll revisit the spec work on the cases. Thanks for looking.

jacob thomas

Illmatic, all day. I was referring to the Toolbag Viewer for what it's worth. Might need to make sure your shaders in Toolbag are set to metalness?

Pedro Amorim

Needs more Big L!
Awesome dude Love the theme

Earthyn

Apart from both speakers sharing a texture so the scratch is duplicated I love this!

RogelioD

Nice piece! Love the thought behind it. Great execution as well!

Although, as an aside... hip-hop is far from dead

Atmosphere, Murs, Illmaculate, Aesop Rock, Yonas, Grieves, Prof, Blueprint, Romaro Franceswa, POS, Kitty, Luke Christopher, MF Doom, Sage Francis, Buck 65, B. Dolan, Watsky.... 

FAR from dead!

(My Hip-Hop Gems Spotify Playlist https://open.spotify.com/user/1290183242/playlist/1ta5fAzetfBi1lrXkRpcck )

Kel-Shaded

Nice list Rogliod, awesome set Jstins

jStins

@Pedro Amorim : Thanks! I will see if I can find a Big L cassette or record cover and give him his due. All my old tapes got trashed years ago so I'm stuck with what I can find online. 

@Earthyn: Thank you. The repetitive detail on the speaker area is bothering me also! I will have to look for a way to hide that better. Stacked UVs backfired there. Anybody have any ideas for getting unique wear in UE4 on an asset like this? Maybe a separate UV set? Hm. I will look into it.

@RogelioD: Thanks a lot man. I hear you, there is still a lot of good contemporary rap and hip hop out there. I guess the title was meant to speak to the retro theme and 'golden age' era hip hop. There are some artists in that list that I haven't heard before. I'll check em out next time I need some motivation to plow through some tedious stuff on the piece. 

@Kel-Shaded: Thanks! 

jStins

Finally got back to this and added a few more props:







I'd be grateful for any critique or feedback, especially on the lighting and post work. I really like working with the post effects, but may have overdone it? Here's a comparison with the 'raw' render out of UE4. 



Thanks for looking!

ngw

Does the SL-1200 seem a little small compared to the cassettes?

Ged

the vinyl deck looks a little small perhaps? I prefer the raw output, nice colours! 

Cube Republic

Great stuff. The sl1210 is a bit small though. 

jStins

Thanks guys. I was pretty careful to get measurements and model everything to scale, but I will double check. The scale of the turntable may need to be exaggerated so it feels right, even if the dimensions are correct.

jStins

I double checked the scale / dimensions and scaled the turntable up a bit. Calling the scene done for now.




More breakdowns and Marmoset viewer shots on my website and Art Station