[UE4] Cyberpunk City Environment
polycounter lvl 8
Hi guys. Yesterday I started a fun project - cyberpunk city environment in UE4. Today I completed rough blockout in 3d package.
This scene will be sat at night. Also there will be rain and lots of emissive things too
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I made a little plot for environment:
The scene takes places in imaginary Hydar City. A few days ago there was a series of terrorist attacks on public buildings.
Our character is private eye looking for person who allegedly disappeared during the terrorist attack. He just leaves an apartment of that person in Residential Level 02B and head to Pyramid in search of clues.
References:
The Pyramid is main focal point of the scene.
City in background:
Small courtyard (tree will be neon)
Start point, apartments
I also added lights, just to illustrate better my idea and mood of the scene.
If you have some ideas or cretiques feel free to give me some.
This scene will be sat at night. Also there will be rain and lots of emissive things too
.I made a little plot for environment:
The scene takes places in imaginary Hydar City. A few days ago there was a series of terrorist attacks on public buildings.
Our character is private eye looking for person who allegedly disappeared during the terrorist attack. He just leaves an apartment of that person in Residential Level 02B and head to Pyramid in search of clues.
References:
The Pyramid is main focal point of the scene.
City in background:
Small courtyard (tree will be neon)
Start point, apartments
I also added lights, just to illustrate better my idea and mood of the scene.
If you have some ideas or cretiques feel free to give me some.
Replies
First time used 3D Coat as texturing tool. After some time I really enjoyed working with it.
Also puddles is little bit too much I think. But it's ok for now.
Screenshots
Cheers!
Weather and effects still wasn't presented here. Lighting is under heavy WIP. Having hard time creating rain particle system look right. Will be working on background buildings soon.
Really liked Modo + 3DCoat combination. In Modo I use boolean + smooth shader workflow.
I think I need to crank down bloom intensity in postprocess, what do you guys think?
Below some screenshots:
Now I need to add background buildings, add some props, throw in some movable props for dynamic shadows (cars, vent fans, etc) and I think I'll call it done.
What do you guys think?
As for the ground, yep I plan to add some litter and dirt. Maybe some trashcans, some plants, fire hydrant and all that stuff.
I really like how junk worked out.
Still gonna work on background buildings and bar props. For tat I will look at example UE4 scenes, if you can give me useful info or some tips, please do.
Also give me some thoughts about mood change.
Remove/turn off all your billboards. (temporarily) I want you to tackle this scene using just directional light and ambient light, and fog. Don't worry about little street lights or any little point lights at this point. Report back with what you deem interesting lighting when you've done the following:
An easy process for lighting is to do the following:
Turn off directional light (temporarily), tweak ambient to desired level of darkness. Basically you want this value to be your darkest dark. Meaning in the absence of light what is this value? It'll basically be what the viewer would see in a darkly lit area, obviously you wouldn't want pure black, so it's the value and color represented at it's darkest point. (think of a basic cube, like q-bert cube.....there is a fully lit side, a medium halfway side, and the dark side of the cube.) Your ambient light should be your dark side value, your darkest dark but still has some value or light to it so it's not black.
Once you have the ambient, the next step is your directional light and fog. Then big large point lights in a few key spots to blow out certain elements...used sparingly.
Like I said, start with that, and report back with your progress. (an easy way to nuke your neon signs is to just temporarily save a version of the shader or texture with a black image)
Once you nail that part of the lighting, THEN you can add all the frosting. (the neon, the little point lights, emmiseive textures.) There are far too many environment modelers/artists who skip the cake/foundation part, they throw down the frosting on a lopsided uneatable mess and call it a day. You skipped to the frosting part without having a solid foundation.
Good luck.
Added props and effects. Made background building (will make more).
Added parked and flying cars placeholders.
Actually, I think in editor it looks little bit brighter. Anyway, we will boost ambient light little more, so it won't be that dark.
I guess I can call this done now. There was some things I do not have time left to do, some things I can do better, but I hope you like the result. I have still a lot things to learn.
I want to make some highres/wire/breakdown shots later and maybe Sketchfab models.
Also I will share this scene in a couple of days.
Looking back I understand that there are things that I wish to rework, but I glad that I pull it off eventually, next time I hope I'll do better.
Also I uploaded some props in Marmoser Viewer, so enjoy.
https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344250
https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344180
https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344077
https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344033
https://www.artstation.com/embed/1344212
I shared this environment, so if you want to download, hit this link:
https://goo.gl/sNj49u
Unfonturetanely, archive is 2GB (mostly uncompressed textures).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ECKCAAFvrTTnl1SEJJU3VWUU0/view?usp=sharing
Cheers and thanks for reading!
I still feel as if your environment right now has too many dark spots which is really uncomfortable to the eyes. If I could kind of explain a theory which I generally think about almost every second I'm creating anything in my environments is that the general idea of how a lot of 2D concept art works is that they use things that resemble things to enable the free-will/self interpretation of their viewer's minds/eyes to their advantage. Having areas that can be seen and not hidden by shadow will always allow your viewers to self interpret, but the moment you deprive your audience of a piece of the composition with really dark areas there you can't make anything out can often actually emotionally feel like a missing piece of the puzzle. That's why I feel like it's so uncomfortable to look at pure black or pure white when you're looking at it side by side with a surrounding that's full of detail most of the time.
Evidently your areas probably aren't pure black or pure white but it's more on the issue about not being able to see anything in those shadows what so ever.
Still on the topic of your lighting, One example I can point out on where the lighting isn't working is your third from the bottom screenshot. I can't really make out any of your building details from 12'o clock to 6'o clock within that screenshot, and generally everything on the bottom half of that section is pretty ambiguous still. It's just what I can see so far.
But that is a opinion, but it's what I work with
Either way this is coming along nicely and shows much potential, so keep at it!
Hope that helps!
I'll make cyberpunk environment in future and will raise the quality for sure, so thanks again for input!