Dark Corners [UE4]
polycounter
Hello Polycounters,
I decided to make me a small dark themed sci-fi environment.
I want it to remain rather dark and make lighting the hero,
also I'll try to use tiling textures (trims, panels etc.) where I can get away with it,
rather that bake all of the assets.
Any critique or suggestion is welcome.
Here's the latest version.
I decided to make me a small dark themed sci-fi environment.
I want it to remain rather dark and make lighting the hero,
also I'll try to use tiling textures (trims, panels etc.) where I can get away with it,
rather that bake all of the assets.
Any critique or suggestion is welcome.
Here's the latest version.
Replies
I made a Gif that hopefully explains a bit better:
Detail Lighting
I will try to figure out something that works better in terms of lighting, and I understand if you think the scene is a bit too busy, but I have other shots planned so I need the detail for some closer shots.
All in all still a long way till I can call it finished.
@Vir_Norin Thanks! That's a rather honoring comparison.
@S1DK Yes, I think I will add some control panels or crates.
@COLORMATE I just made a random black material which is used most of the scene for now, plus some default metals and panel materials I baked.
@KAZPERSTAN Thanks for taking the time to make the gif. I'll take that into account, when I focus on the lighting some more.The highlight isn't there mostly in the update and I made a sort of a surveillance gizmo at the top to serve as a focal point possibly.
@NICOREPE Quite right, for now there are mostly tileable materials used.
@PIXELPATRON I hear you. I'm not sure about dropping the global light down, but I will try to define a focal point with lighting.
The lighting in by no means final and I might play with different setups.
@JACK M. Thanks, yes that connector/clamp thing was shaded flat.
@MARCOLUNA Thanks!
@OBLASTRADIUSO Thanks!
I didn't have too much time to work on this, but what I did have I spent mostly experimenting lighting.
I tried to make it more consistent, but I can't seem to get enough control
the way reflection probes work and I'm a bit tired with it.
I modeled low poly models and made some basic materials with ddo.
in terms of critique, I have a few suggestions that might help. starting with lighting,
1. you have no visible light fixtures, which makes it difficult to know the source of the light ( it generally seems like omni's everywhere), leading to no directionality in the scene making it hard to read.
in terms of this I would remove (or just turn off the layer) the lighting in the scene and start working on pulling out your focal points (so where do you want someone to look if they glance at the image),
then work on the functional aspect to the lighting (so if this were a real place where would the focus be with the lighting from a design perspective?),
then add in detail lighting (so this would be areas where lighting isn't important from a focal or design/functionality perspective, usually non detracting (smaller/dimmer))
2. from a framing point of view, personally it might be worth considering the main view being taken from an eye-level/ walkway to help push the sense of scale. I personally find this grounds the scene better with the viewer than floating camera views.
3. avoid omni lights. unless a light fixture calls for one generally you will have directional lighting, as a rule aside from those cases, it is better to avoid adding in omni/fills until the very end and only at the very end if you need them.
4. exposure:
a) check your histogram and make sure you arent crushing or clipping.
b) get to grips with the Ansel Adams Zone System: http://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-using-ansel-adams-zone-system--photo-5607
despite the fact you do not have a light meter (generally) in a game engine, you can still use this system assuming you have a photo-program (photoshop,gimp,etc).
c)Typically ignore your exposure until the end, rely on the intensity settings of the lighting (basically trust the numbers until you have the basic lighting setup). use consistent values so when you do your tone-mapping/exposure you know that there wont be any light elements that are over-exposed or under-exposed seperate from the rest.
NOTE: you may want to just neutralize all the exposure settings at the beginning, definitely turn off eye adaptation/auto-exposure adjustment.
lighting values set-up is easier if you use reference to real values (move the decimal place to the left until you have a range that is manageable, easiest way to set this up is to add in a sun, set a value for it that 'works', then use that as the base for the rest of the light intensities in the scene (so the sun is typically between 32,000 and 100,000 lux (lumens(lm) per square meter, see explanation why we use this below post*). which means you take the value you use for the sunlight and divide by the easiest which is 100,000 to find 1 lumen equivalent in your scene. then for a 240lm light you mult that value by 240 and so on. hopefully that makes sense.)
d) expose/tone-map with no saturation (so turn saturation to 0 whilst exposing), this will make it easier to adjust.
*explination:
lumens = perceived emitted light (so how 'bright' is the source)
Lux = typically received/incident light at a point in distanced from source (usually in m^2).
basically for the sun intensity we use the lux value as a base (lm/m^2) since we aren't creating a light source the size and distance the sun is IRL, this is also why sun intensity settings are usually arbitrary/different from light entities in engines. however some engines treat it as a lux value per meter or a division of that.
in UE4 the unit for brightness on point and spotlights is = lm's (so 1000 = 1000lm's). you can use this to figure out the correct brightness value for the sunlight units.
a spotlight set to 35,000- 100,000 lm's (depending how bright you want the day to be) in the engine (in shadow that has no other light! 1m above the ground. sometimes it can be easier to create a square plane in shadow 1m^2 and place the light above that).
balance the sunlight to match the brightness (adjust the exposure down if over exposed until you can tell the difference between going too bright or too dark in the sunlight vs the point light)
I think I have rambled a lot, so I'll stop hahaha
EDIT; some errors, fixed
Materials:
Everything is the same colour, the same shade of grey metal. Get more variation in there. Some metals are darker than others, some are more/less glossy than others. Not everything is a metal, these kinds of environments typically have a lot of paint too -> paint comes in different colours and shades, get some subtle variation in there from that.
Lighting:
I did a quick paintover of one of your images focusing mostly on lighting, hope you don't mind. Ignoring the area on the top left which has super bland materials, this can look really cool just by making lighting changes !! You need more directionality in your lighting, and also to not light everything equally. Make sure you use lighting to pick out areas of interest, and let the rest blend into the background as much as possible.
since they're not very saturated.
In terms of lighting I certainly don't want to put more focus on one side of the corridor, unless I misunderstood your paintover.
It works quite well for this shot, but I don't think it works for the whole of the environment.
I've changed the lighting quite a bit this time around though.
Here are some new images. Nevermind the valve, that will be fixed.
I'll work on a smaller, but more polished environment for my portfolio.
In terms of there being mostly grays, the original idea was pretty much to make a mostly black environment with a dramatic light, rather than an ambient light such as it is now.
Also It's really view dependent.
Here are some other shots though.
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They're a simple metal material with some wetness texture overlaid,
also vertex painted water drops.
(all mostly in the roughness channel)