[UE4] learning PBR for environment and portfolio rework

Backano

Hello!

It's the first time I post here so I'll make a little description.

3 years ago I finished a school of 3D artist and I got a base of what a video game artist need to know. Since then I got some job in little company where, most of the time, they had 1 or 2 artists who need to do a lot of things. It was very pleasant, but when the job ended, I get out with a lot of random stuff. I have done concepts, 2D painting/2D asset, GUI, low poly, texture with photo bashing or totally hand painted, lighting, rig/skin , animation ... in fact pretty much everything artists need to do to make a game form a to z. even the marketing assets...
It's been really pleasant, but also really stressful because, most of the time, I need to learn and to do at the same time. Witch as you can imagine result as a final product who's not really clean and "professional". In the end my portfolio is a total mess and my work is lower than what artists can do currently. I need an upgrade!

So i decided to just get rid of of everything and take some time to learn what I need to reach the post of an environment artist because it's what I enjoy the most! (or at least prob modeler at the beginning)
I chose to learn UE4 and make a scene with it. Before that I've never done normal map or use a PBR workflow neither, but it's something I wanted to learn since long time. It takes me some time to understand how to make a clean normal map (thank polycount for that!) And a friend advises me to use NDo to add detail to her. At the beginning i tried to make all my maps in photoshop, but i find the workflow unpleasant and it was hard to correct all the mistakes I made while I was learning, so I decided to give a try at substance designer and in the end I totally fall in love with it!
It took me 2 months to learn the basic of ue4 and substance and I end up with this scene:






I tried to make modular asset most of the time and my current workflow is:

-Maya > low and high poly to bake a normal map.

-Substance designer > making my material and blending them with a material ID map (bake from Maya and enhanced with Photoshop) then add wear, dust , weathering effect etc.

-UE4 > import mesh and maps and use the master shader I made who allow me to tweak my roughness value and my base color (may be I could get rid of this if I were more confident with my value)

For now I learned a lot of things, but I still don't have the level I want to reach. I want to rework this, but I can't figure out what is bad and what is good. Lighting, reflectivity effect and the auto exposure from ue4 give me a lot of trouble because they affect my material in a way that I can't say if the visual is right or completely false according to the set up I have.
So I would really like to have some advices and know what is your feeling about this scene?

noosence

All of your material definitions look good to me, except the large grey pipes on the walls next to the lockers, the material you have for that one doesnt sell it for me.The wear you have on it is chipping away at the surface. If it's going to be chipping away like that the metal needs to be rusted or something. Other wise I would make it look cleaner, or make it just a roughness change and not a height change on the surface. I did a google search for industrial pipes and found these images to show what I mean.










Other than that I think it looks good, just a bit boring. I don't feel any kind of story here. The rooms are a little bare and don't have much story flair going on. Just my two cents, but again this is looking good keep it up.

Beard3D Bandit

Hi man! Turn it into a horror scene, like a 'dead space ' kinda vibe with blood and stuff all over the place.

THAT should liven thing up a bit haha!

EpicBeardMan

Hello!

Now, if you ask me, the scene is pretty empty. And as @noosence said, it needs a kind of a story to it.
Everything else looks great, materials and the scene layout. Only thing you need is to figure out the story and populate the scene with story-driven elements, like blood, or what-not.

Good luck with your improvement

Cheers!

underfox

I completely agree with noosence about the material definition of your pipes, but to me the wall material and details doesn't read well either, I'm unsure of what kind of material it really is ( I suppose it should be made of metal but it somehow doesn't read as such) as for the details, they are too small and barely appear from the distance you took the shots. I can see that you tried to have the paint chipping away in some places.

the shot with the door is nice I think. both in term of color composition and image composition, the subject is well placed in the frame and well litten also, and the soft blue contrasting with the orange light works well, the fog + god rays help setting up a mood in that picture.


Keep up the good work

Backano

@noosence: ok, I see what you mean for the pipes. I think I have exaggerated the normal too much. I'll rework this and pay more attention to the roughness to have this grainy look on the highlight like in your picture.

I agree with you for the story. I think I'll change the layout to have a focus on a main asset who say something. I'll try a bloc out tonight and show it to you as soon as I can ^^

Thanks for your feedback it motivates me a lot!