[UE4] Need help with environment

Josef R

Hey guys, struggling with environments, and I'm pretty new to it. Could use a lot of tips.

Making a rocky desert area on an Earth-like alien planet. It's still very early, but not sure where to go from here. I need to make some more assets and textures and populate the scene more, but not sure if I'm currently even headed in the right direction. May need to scrap everything and start fresh on the drawing board, don't know.

Ryandec

I think what you have has given you a nice mood to start with. The next step you need to ask yourself is what u want the environment to be about, is it going to be just a desert on its own? do humans or any creatures inhabit it? if so did they already live there or for example are they astronauts? if they where a group of astronauts on an expedition then you could add a facility for example, maybe being partly built or fully built? I'm sure you can google like mars concept art or something like that to help out, not sure if that helps but good luck with it!

onera

The sky gives weird feeling, even if it's not planned yet, it just messes up the mood. All rocky desert environments have clear bright sky.

Because it looks almost like misty, not desert sand, but high humidity, which is very unlikely for that type of scene.

My recommend is to put a bright blue sky if you want to focus it later, but just to have that, bring in the skylight and capture a little blue colour. After that in the post process reduce the contrast a little and bring the vivids a little, that way you'll have more visibility and keep the colors, suitable for clear weather common for that type of scene.

If you want on the other side to make it before-rain feeling and windy, then you should put some wind-dust particles from Cascade, which could be really advanced if you want to make it legit, but not some shallow repeatable dust flying. Also make the sand wet at some spots.

Hope my English was sufficient to get my point of view.

All the best and good luck!

Josef R

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback.

For some context, this is going to be an alien Earth-like planet that was attempted to be colonized by humanity (but failed). It's for a little sci-fi game I'm working on in my free time, so I want to keep some details to myself.

I agree that it needs a sky, but I'll be going in a different direction. I'm planning on it being pretty hazy/dusty. I've actually warmed up the fog a bit so it looks less like, well fog, and more like dust. I'll look into particle stuff for more atmosphere.

I'll be working on more assets over the next few days and then get back with an update. I think I need to make a couple boulder models, and I have some scattered rock models and a rock pile model as well that I made. Then I need some alien foliage and I'll look into having small buildings/encampments and supply crates, but those will be pretty scattered and rare. I think I also need maybe two more ground textures to add more variation, because currently that feels really lacking.

I've started looking at some Star Wars and Destiny stuff for inspiration.

Here's a zoomed-out view to show what the level format is.

Add3r

Warming up the fog did a lot for the scene, but like said before by Onera, feel like a sky would go a long way. Even if its just a solid color of a egg shell blue or your color of choosing, it will definitely help sell the scene a lot more. Right now, the fog is forced to do all of the atmospheric work, when it should be a supplement to a proper skybox and post processing.

I really like the environment textures color palette and the rock models, the blending you have setup is really really nice. Definitely getting the Destiny vibe. A really minor thing, especially this early in the process, is that the orange sand you have looks like it has subtle but visible patterns in the tiling in the most recent shot. Something really nitpicky right now, but something I noticed

Nice work so far man! I definitely think you have the right heading here.

Josef R

Hey Add3r, thanks! I'll work on getting a proper sky in next. It's unfamiliar ground for me but I'll see what I can find on it.

Yeah I'm actually working on a solution to the tiling right now by lerping over the diffuse with a larger version of itself and adding in a large scale detail normal.

Dvids

I really like the rocks. Did you sculpt those in zbrush?

amirabd2130

also like the rocks :thumbup:

Josef R

Hey thanks guys. Yeah they're sculpted and then decimated and textured in Substance. Using Substance was great because I could just make my own smart material and then apply it to all the rocks. Here's a close-up shot of some assets. I'll probably go back and tweak the textures more.

DireWolf

I think you need to put in some human for scaling reference asap. The rock and the fog suggests those are huge. Like massively huge. Your sand however suggest the whole scene is really small.

Josef R

Here's a human for scale ref. Some of the rocks are pretty big.

I'm really new to environment art so expect a lot of mistakes haha.



Added a farther away image



The area is pretty small. A bunch of these "chunks" will be strung together to make the whole level.

Josef R

Hey guys, here's another update. Going to start working on foliage and stuff like dust/wind particles next. I'll also make some background landscape meshes to add more depth.