First Unreal 4 Project: Creepy Hotel

GhostBlades

Learned a lot on this one, rigging, importing characters, blueprints, interacting with doors -

































Also Made a regular - survival horror dude to go along with it

The render of the man is in marmoset though - I can't figure out a good way to get the skin shader goin inside unreal 4 - non the less - he's rigged up and got a walk cycle goin in unreal 4

GhostBlades

And a few Zbrush WIPS

Deathstick

The character's lookin' pretty sweet to me, pretty crazy how you're doing both the environment and character. Here's some crits on the environment:

I'd recommend getting some kind of ambient lighting in there even though it's supposed to be creepy. As of right now it's hard for me to see any of the details in the room.

The lighting also has a few visual "errors" such as how some of the objects look pitch black when they're right next to an object clearly lit.

If you're just using dynamic shadows make sure to use a skylight as well, which will allow you to set the brightness of your actual shadows and give some ambient to it so everything not being hit directly by light isn't pitch black. Make sure you have a few cubemap actors in there as well to make things like the metal materials/reflective surfaces pop more.

I'd probably recommend using a mixture of static/stationary and dynamic lights so you can have global illumination in the environment which usually makes things look a lot better lighting-wise.

It looks like you're doing a great job with the materials so far and overall placement of the scene. Just nail that lighting so I can see while still maintaining a creepy vibe

The only other couple of nitpicks is I'm not too sure about that giant chamfer on the toilet model, is that actually based on a real-life toilet? That and I think I'd do something more with the towel hangar by the sink. Maybe add in a dirty washtowel on it to make it more interesting and break up the circle, right now the circular nature of it is too distracting and brings me right to it when it's not currently the most interesting detail in the room. You also might want to raise it a bit as right now I think whatever kind of hand towel was used there would be hitting the sink's counter unless it was a washcloth, making the whole thing useless.

That said, great job so far!
Keep it up!

skyline5gtr

It is very hard to see what is going on in the room, Try brightening it up and adding some interest. From what i can tell materials look good dont hide them

GhostBlades

Deathstick - thank you for the advice - - I will try the skylight and update it - right now the scene is static and dynamic lights - by cubemap actors do you mean the realtime reflection probes?
I will try the skylight to get a bit of brighter shadows

- hard to find that balance between showing off art and making it look creepier with harsher shadows..but yeah - ill give it a try thank you

as for the toilet - its actually the toilet that is in my apartment at the moment (haha) the one I have is similar to this one

GhostBlades

@Skyline5gtr - thank you I will give that a try

GhostBlades

Actually here's a question

originally I wanted this character to have tried committing suicide - after killing his mistress - after finding out she was pregnant, and this is a sort of purgatory

I have triggers set up for the bathroom when you go past it after a while the door shakes like someone is pounding on it then you hear the mirror inside breaking like someone took them -

I didn't want to do a cliche with blood

but here's the question: when it comes to a scene that its supposed to be a bit more creepy - how important is it to see every individual asset (especially if the character had a flashlight)
Wouldn't the overall feel be more important?

Could always just individually render each in a breakdown if I wanted to show off individual assets no?

What is your opinion

Cay

Did you check your wood albedo's value? A dark albedo darkens materials quite a bit.. could be part of the problem. You'd have to bump up the lighting quite a bit to counter it.

GhostBlades

I was sort of looking at home Resident evil did their stuff for the remake in a lot of cases they have areas that are not clearly seen also - which i do like - but I agree that what I have is a bit too dark just gonna lighten up the wood albedo a bit see if that makes a difference -

gonna change a few of the cameras around to get a bit more of an angular camera view

B.O.W.

The atmosphere is very good, texture is very beautiful!

Deathstick

Yeah I definitely see the Resident Evil influence in the lighting. My only two cents though is since this is more of a portfolio type of thing it kind of sucks to "hide" your work, whereas a player would actually be playing through multiple levels with a flashlight frustrated/nervous (on purpose by the game's design) by how little they can see, if that makes any sense.

It's the same sort of thing with Alien: Isolation, a lot of it you're walking around in almost pitch black vents, but they do make sure to break it up with a few set pieces decently lit with spotlights.

Then again this could all be personal preferences and ultimately it's up to you, but might I recommend looking at games like the Left4Dead series and Bioshock (particularly one or two, but there are definitely creepy lighting setups on interiors in infinite as well)

I find those games having a lot of their scenes clearly visible while feeling dark and creepy, usually due to lots of elongated shadows, cool tints mixed with some spotlights of warm, and the rather noticeable vignette. (at least in l4d for that) To me it's mostly what they do with the elongated shadows and high contrast lighting that gives the strange vibe. IE even though it looks dark, it's not really black.



And I figured I'd just through hitman absolution into the mix as well, since many of the hitman environments had that seedy/creepy vibe without having blood everywhere.

Swarm22

IMO your fringe is way too high. It makes certain areas look like they're meant to be seen with old school 3D glasses.

GhostBlades

Thanks for all the advice to everyone

So I did some subtle tweeks to the lighting and increased the albedo on all my wood by multiplying it by 2 -

seemed to brighten it up a bit and added a skylight -

- I got 3 monitors 1 shows it way brighter than the 2 other ones...so i don't know what to trust anymore I just don't want it to look blown out...lemme know what you guys think

I mainly tweeked in the room - I rather enjoy the bathroom being darker - but I bumped up the main light in the bathroom a bit and got a bit more of that global illumination

GhostBlades

There is more on

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/creepy-hotel-room-unreal-4

GhostBlades

Deathstick wrote: »

Yeah I definitely see the Resident Evil influence in the lighting. My only two cents though is since this is more of a portfolio type of thing it kind of sucks to "hide" your work, whereas a player would actually be playing through multiple levels with a flashlight frustrated/nervous (on purpose by the game's design) by how little they can see, if that makes any sense.

It's the same sort of thing with Alien: Isolation, a lot of it you're walking around in almost pitch black vents, but they do make sure to break it up with a few set pieces decently lit with spotlights.

Then again this could all be personal preferences and ultimately it's up to you, but might I recommend looking at games like the Left4Dead series and Bioshock (particularly one or two, but there are definitely creepy lighting setups on interiors in infinite as well)

I find those games having a lot of their scenes clearly visible while feeling dark and creepy, usually due to lots of elongated shadows, cool tints mixed with some spotlights of warm, and the rather noticeable vignette. (at least in l4d for that) To me it's mostly what they do with the elongated shadows and high contrast lighting that gives the strange vibe. IE even though it looks dark, it's not really black.



And I figured I'd just through hitman absolution into the mix as well, since many of the hitman environments had that seedy/creepy vibe without having blood everywhere.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense cool references - I really like the lighting in hit man - but then again - In a lot of those action games - there's a need for visual clarity - you need to be able to see the enemies -

I remember Doom 3 had quite a bit of harsh lighting that made it way hard to see enemies...but It worked out for them all in all...it could have used a slight bit brightening up