First UE4 Scene - Would love feedback!

Polyghan

Hey! I've gone far too long without joining this community, so I wanted to post something for some crit and feedback! This is my first UE4 scene. Whole thing took 10 weeks (from the time I opened UE4 for the first time to final renders), though most of it was done during two crunch weeks. Everything was made by me using Modo, Quixel Suite 1, and UE4.

I'd love some feedback and crit. I will be going back to this when I have some free time, and I will be starting another scene soon, so anything I can learn from you guys will be really helpful!

Excuse the wonky bloom, these were rendered out with UE4's "High Resolution Screenshot" which seems to do some goofy things to the bloom (anyone know of a fix for this?).

Thanks!

FreneticPonies

Looking at the scene, it doesn't feel like the lights should be white in color. A warm orangish/red to contrast the blue/green tinted fog could be a lot nicer.

Beard3D Bandit

I agree with Frenetic, the 'clinical' tone to the lighting contradicts the slightly against the 'back-alley' feel of the Environment.


A nice little example. 

Perhaps experiment with the amount of lamps there are. By reducing the amount, it may provide a softer contrast.

Peace,
Beardy.

BARDLER

You have a solid scene here, but the biggest issue is that it is really hard to get a sense of scale in the scene. The garbage can thing is about 3/4 the height of the door, the windows are way better than the doors, the detail of the tiles looks way bigger than the brick walls, and those lanterns above are huge compared the other stuff. Create a simple box mesh guy that is roughly 6 feet tall and place him all over your scene to see what feels weird.

Polyghan

FreneticPonies said:

Looking at the scene, it doesn't feel like the lights should be white in color. A warm orangish/red to contrast the blue/green tinted fog could be a lot nicer.

Any advice on how I would match the orange/red light with the scene thematically? The lights are already extremely warm for lightbulbs, and I fear that if I move to something like fire (to justify the orange/red light color), it would clash with the sci-fi ish theme I'm going for.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are multiple light colors here. The moonlight IIRC is 5800k (real-life moon color temperature), the lamp lights are pretty yellow, and the doorway light is fairly white. Are you specifically referencing some lights, or all of them?

Beard3D Bandit said:

Perhaps experiment with the amount of lamps there are. By reducing the amount, it may provide a softer contrast.

Peace,
Beardy.

You're the second person to mention the number of lamps, so it's definitely going on my list, thanks!

BARDLER said:

You have a solid scene here, but the biggest issue is that it is really hard to get a sense of scale in the scene. The garbage can thing is about 3/4 the height of the door, the windows are way better than the doors, the detail of the tiles looks way bigger than the brick walls, and those lanterns above are huge compared the other stuff. Create a simple box mesh guy that is roughly 6 feet tall and place him all over your scene to see what feels weird.

  The garbage cans are designed to be those large garbage cans some cities use when people put out the trash. They're often at least 4.5x2x2 feet. That's what I was going for, at least. If it doesn't read that way I'll have to figure something out. The windows on the right are warehouse windows, are those the ones you're referencing? I'll add sizing to the list, thanks! Is there anything else that looks out of place size-wise?

FreneticPonies

Polyghan said:

FreneticPonies said:

Looking at the scene, it doesn't feel like the lights should be white in color. A warm orangish/red to contrast the blue/green tinted fog could be a lot nicer.

Any advice on how I would match the orange/red light with the scene thematically? The lights are already extremely warm for lightbulbs, and I fear that if I move to something like fire (to justify the orange/red light color), it would clash with the sci-fi ish theme I'm going for.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are multiple light colors here. The moonlight IIRC is 5800k (real-life moon color temperature), the lamp lights are pretty yellow, and the doorway light is fairly white. Are you specifically referencing some lights, or all of them?

Reply (won't let me go after the quote...)
Well, what the scene is like is up to you. Do the people in whatever future scene this is use lights that end up looking white after the tone mapping you applied? Or do they just something warmer? I mean, whiteish street lights are things of today, if it's science fiction surely all street lights could be multi color LEDs and thus be whatever color is desired?