[UE4] crash site environment

sprunghunt

So I thought I'd make a thread for this instead of just putting stuff in my twitter. It's a sci-fi landing/crash site on an alien planet I'm working on as a personal project.


there's also this helmet that'll be part of the story...

below you can see where I've adjusted the terrain textures to be a bit more interesting (this is the latest screenshot)

Kar-re

This already looks great, especially the main craft imo. 
I've been working on a similar personal project, where i've extracted heightmaps from mars, but I've gotta ask, how many textures do you have on your terrain and how did you make it transform so seamlessly? 

Jack M.

I think the only thing really setting back your scene right now is color composition. Everything in the scene is some form of orange and it's making everything blend together.

The first thing I would do is make the sky a vibrant crisp blue.

I think the texturing is pretty good on the pod, but I would change the color to maybe white. You could definitely keep the red labels though.

There's also clear intersecting geo with the mini dunes and other parts of the sand. If you're using unreal try messing around with DepthFade to get a better transition.

The final crit I have is that you should reconsider how you're guiding the viewers eye through the perspective in your image. Right now the lines are pretty horizontal and it's easy to fall right off the image and none of the lines took me to the pod. 

sprunghunt

KAR-RE - There are four textures on the terrain. They're using a combination of height blending and weight blending. Most of the textures are actually variations on a single master substance - which is probably why they seem to blend together well.

JACKM. - Thanks for the feedback. I understand your points about the colors and overall composition. I'll try adjusting these once I'm finished creating all the elements. There's still several other items that need to be included for the composition to be complete and what's there is only placed roughly in the final spot. 

sprunghunt

added some footprints in the sand

Maximum-Dev

Hi there

Looking good so far.
Is the footprints another material blended with the sand material?

griffiti

Looking good so far but I agree with JACKM about the colours and composition. Could you use the mid and background rocks to make the back drop more interesting and use the shapes they create to guide the viewers eye? You could also vary the foreground terrain to be not as flat. This would make the footprints stand out better too

sprunghunt

Added a parachute - no animation yet

sprunghunt

MAXIMUM-DEV - the footprints are a separate texture blended with the sand dunes material

glenatron

This is turning out great! Really liking the material on the 'chute. Maybe the sand ripples are a bit too parallel? Need more lower frequency modulation

EliasWick

Wow this looks amazing! Feels a bit like Borderlands without it's Cell-shading. The sand material looks very good as well! Is there a tessellation on there?

sprunghunt

I've started to add some animation to this scene


I added some more noise to the sand ripples but I'm not sure how effective it was 

sprunghunt

EliasWick said:

Wow this looks amazing! Feels a bit like Borderlands without it's Cell-shading. The sand material looks very good as well! Is there a tessellation on there?

Thanks Elias - you are correct there is tesselation on all the ground textures 

Stavaas

Nice work so far man, definitely following this one!

Joopson

Love it so far. Can already hear the wind blowing, in my mind!

sprunghunt

worked on a new model for this scene

here's it imported in unreal

sprunghunt

some new props - looks like they'll be waiting a while

leleuxart

Awesome mood so far. I love the animation in the parachute. Do you plan on making any adjustments to the lighting or atmosphere? 

sprunghunt

leleuxart said:

Awesome mood so far. I love the animation in the parachute. Do you plan on making any adjustments to the lighting or atmosphere? 

Thanks! I've got several more things I want to add that will give it a bit more atmosphere.   

Zarsky

I really like this scene a lot, but I think that the recent satellite dish doesn't blend in the scene in it's current  state.
I believe it will be fixed before it finished tho.

Keep up the excellent work!

ZacD

I agree that the dish stands out in a bad way, maybe you could make something smaller and more antenna like, that moves and maybe spins?

Magihat

Is the skeleton part of the final scene? I really like the story it brings but somehow it looks really off size-wise in comparison with the communication device. I expected the device to be like 2-3 times as big as it seems now. The animations and effects you showcase a little further up is stellar though so keep up the great work!

sprunghunt

Magihat said:

Is the skeleton part of the final scene? I really like the story it brings but somehow it looks really off size-wise in comparison with the communication device. I expected the device to be like 2-3 times as big as it seems now. The animations and effects you showcase a little further up is stellar though so keep up the great work!

Hi Magihat - thanks for the crits - I think the skeletal arms and hands are just a bit oversized - assuming that's a full sized keyboard on the device. I'll just scale them down a bit as I think the helmet is the right size. 

sprunghunt

ZacD said:

I agree that the dish stands out in a bad way, maybe you could make something smaller and more antenna like, that moves and maybe spins?

Thanks for the crits ZacD. I think I get what you and Zarsky mean. The dish is a bit plain looking. Maybe I'll turn it into something like this: 


or something more industrial/military like this: 

sprunghunt

something like this I think is more suited to the style of this world. 

sprunghunt

I realised I hadn't updated this in a while... So here's the latest of this scene:

hmm_rock

Really nice, love the light flickering, great atmosphere! The foreground is a little hard for me to read, it might just be the angle, but it took me a second to see the helmet/bones in profile.

gsokol

This is coming along nicely. 

Would this ship have landed here recently?  I don't get the impression that the ship had a hard landing at all....no perturbing on the ground where it impacted or anything.  Could probably be a few more bits of debris as well littered around the ship.

sprunghunt

gsokol said:

This is coming along nicely. 

Would this ship have landed here recently?  I don't get the impression that the ship had a hard landing at all....no perturbing on the ground where it impacted or anything.  Could probably be a few more bits of debris as well littered around the ship.

I realize the title of the thread is a bit misleading. The lander didn't 'crash' since there's a parachute. It's supposed to be an escape pod of sorts - since there's no obvious way for it to take off again and it's not big enough to have conventional engines. I guess I could rename the thread to something like "abandoned escape pod scene" or "stranded spaceman".