Fable 3 Bowerstone Industrial Environment

Thomas Clewley

Hello all

Here is a my progress so far on a environment i've been working on. I though i'd hold off till i have some stuff to show.

Here is the concept i'm working from. 


I will probably flick between the concept and the in-game version throughout depend on what just looks good.

I've done a few high polys mainly focusing on the silhouette and edges for my of the meshes which can be given a fine detail pass later in a sculpt or in texture.

Boxes and barrels (still need grain, will add in the texture later)



Crain


Lights and signs


Stone Trims


Rope Rail and Window pieces


 Brick wall texture sculpt



Square cobble stone floor texture sculpt



Quick wood sculpt (this is the bain of my life, first time doing wood and just cant seem to get it looking right).
I wont some level of stylized to it since its fable but i'm still not happy with this yet.

Thomas Clewley

Made some progress, got all the assets textured and put everything together in ue4.  

Here is a few textured assets.










Still not happy with the final result, i'm feeling the lighting needs a lot of work as well as the composition. Any though on how i can push it to the 'next level'?



 

Thomas Clewley

Quick Fly-threw can be found here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW54DQhZjS4

Deathstick

Which engine are you putting your scene together in? If it's UE4 I'd recommend doing a lightmass bake with some bounce lighting so the lighting doesn't jump to pitch black, or a subtle skylight if you're doing the lighting dynamically.

Right now its kind of strange looking how some of the props appear to be pitch black in the scene when they're right next to a pretty well lit one like the boat being black on a relatively mid-brightness water.

Nice work on the props! They might benefit from an AO map if you haven't already done so.

Thomas Clewley

Deathstick - thanks for the feedback. yes it ue4, i'm using a skylight with a cubemap, although i think i may have it turned down too low in my attempt to create a night scene. Now that you point it out it doesn't make no scene with dark area next to the lights.  

I suppose my quick attempt at post process look up table doesn't help matter. Lighting defiantly seems like something i'm going to re do, i'm thinking of just scraping my bs attempt at lights and start it over. Luckily i'm using blueprint for most of my lights so it shouldn't be a issue.

Here is the scene without post process volume 


The boat clears up a lot. However the door in the bottom left is still too dark so the needs fixing.

The is waters a funny one since its running of reflections so its odd that its bright next to objects that are too dark.

The assets have AO so that something that need looking into if the AO isn't coming across. 

I just still feel like it lacking something but i cant put my finger on it.

3dReaper

As other have stated and you have as well, the lighting still needs work.

Some areas you can improve on:

Darker, redder, dreary overall tone, through lighting mostly.
Add fog to the channel near the water.

I believe showing shots of the sky and upper buildings as well would help bring the piece together.

Saw another artist that worked on this concept as well, if you want some more ideas:
http://www.andybaigent3d.com/fable-3-bowerstone-industrial-environment.html

Thomas Clewley

3dreaper - thanks for the feedback. I had  seen andy's work mid way building so i tried to avoid directly copy his work which is difficult since we were both working towards the same goal.  It just feel the ways of improving my work from feedback i've gotten from other sources is to follow what andy has done, which doesn't feel right.

I much agree with  dreary overtone, it was my goal but it was trying to achieves that i feel i feel short of . I was thinking of de-saturating the scene a bit in post to see if that helps with the mood.

Yes adding roof tops and skies would place the scene better, by putting into a bigger world.
Fog on over the water sounds like a good idea instead of relying sole on my distance fog i already have in there. It was playing havoc with my waters refraction. 

I'm planning on add more motion to the scene as well, animate a few props, add some more particles effects and some light effect. So the scene looks more alive, currently its only the water the fire that moves. 

Raane

Everything is a little too straight, parallel lines everywhere. Break out of that - knock edges off the parallel, taper some of the posts, make stuff just that little bit crooked. Push your bricks and cobbles so they aren't all pure straight lines of identical silhouetted shapes.
I see you've got a little bit going on on the cobbles but i think you need to push it even more. Take the trim dynamic brush and just crush down some cobbles so they come to different heights with different angles and big chips cutting out that identical pillowing.
You might also want to bring the value of the stonework around the canal down, it really jumps out.

Cay

You should try to get the lighting to look good without any heavy post processing. Alleyways can be pretty dark and it would be nice to get some of that gradient going from black to white. You can always boost it with exposure to your liking, but you still need a solid base.
I'd turn everything else off and play with the skylight first, it has a huge impact on the whole scene.
Make sure you use your lanterns and light sources sparingly or lower the intensity, it detracts from your focal point (should probably be somewhere down the canal).