[UE4] Tevinter Imperium Inspired Courtyard
polycounter lvl 10
Final Showcase
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Original Post:
Looking for critique (anything from construction to presentation) on a few props I've been working on as part of a greater scene. (I also think I'm having issues with adding images since the site update lol)
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Original Post:
Looking for critique (anything from construction to presentation) on a few props I've been working on as part of a greater scene. (I also think I'm having issues with adding images since the site update lol)
Replies
But that being said it is a bit too clean, and shows off that you're re-using the textures too much. Some variation in the assets, some hints of charcoal and ash in the brazier too make it look like it's been used, a few unique scuffs here and there would go a long way towards not making these look so uniform. If you're really into the optimization side of things (looks like it considering the texture sizes and polycounts I'm seeing) you could get some ideas from how Epic is doing Paragon
EG separate the tiling materials from the detail materials so you can have dirt/whatever in specific areas without having to have unique textures for that.
Giving your props a quick look-thru, the one that stands out to me as weak & lackluster is your column. I'm no column expert but those spiraly things look odd...like they were just jabbed in there (which is indeed what you've done geo-wise). I guess I'm accustomed to seeing them as part of a whole unified object. I'm sure you've done your research & such a column does indeed exist but thats besides the point...
Its not interesting...you should at least incorporate those flowery/ornamental designs from your bench into your pillar to enforce their cohesion. Or better yet, you should try to take yourself out of your comfort zone:
http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00RBUQkzpGVyuC/Stone-Marble-Roman-Column-Pillar-for-Decoration-QCM135-.jpg
This ideally would encourage you to improve as an artist & produce even more awesome results? Just a thought. Bear in mind, I in no way shape or form practice what I preach...but I am learning ZBrush so gimme a lil credit. Speaking of which, what source did you use to learn ZB & is it good? Hmmm you're gonna ignore me here too aren't you? grrr
The planters are just placeholder right now and I'll be doing a grunge pass with vertex painting later. I also want to add a color variation to the foliage.
I'm afraid the vines don't read well at a distance (and I've already smudged the scale larger than it should be, mannequin in there for scale). Are they too busy? The olive tree was made with SpeedTree but I'll be taking another pass at it =/ Too dense? I've unified the vertex normals on all the models, but I'm not sure the lighting is where it should be. Thanks for any feedback all!
(Also mywater reflection is upside down
Here's an updated on the correct albedo/metalic. Not sure how I feel about it, but I'm relieved it's fixed!
The separated models look amazing, but I'm not sure why, when you set up all the scene, all that work seems to fade off. Like all those nice metalwork and benches need to say: HEY GUYS, WE ARE HERE AND WE ARE AWESOME!
Are you using GI and Distance Field AO? both can make a huge difference in an environment like this, since now, the interior parts needs to be less bright.
The vines look pretty nice tbh, maybe the green is too saturated. I'm asuming you are using the foliage shader and subsurface scattering. Also the scale of the vines seems to be bigger than the scale of the little trees underneath
The water normals are far to wide imo, since it is a little pool, they should have smaller waves (unless there is a crazy wind blowing away all the water).
Additionally, I'm having problems understanding the balance between baked static lighting and dynamic. My baked static lighting always looks terrible, so I've defaulted to dynamic for quality and simplicity (plus @n4uj 's advice on DFAO is priceless). How do Reflection Captures and Lightmass Importance Volumes factor into a dynamically lit environment?
From what I understand of the UE4 documentation, there must exist baked lighting before you can use reflection captures? But also you have to have a static sky light to bake reflection captures? So what if my skylight is dynamic to utilize DFAO? Any help understanding the technical side of all this will win you my eternal gratitude and admiration
To be honest, if this is a personal project and you are going to use GI and DFAO, just forget about baking shadows. They are going to take ages to bake and there is no really a point, unless the sun is very high and you have sharp shadows. Well Idk, it is just to avoid you some headache. Also the foliage shader works much better with dynamic lights, sometimes baking shadows into foliage maps makes them quite dark.
About reflections... I just use the screen space default reflections, so I cannot help there... I will probably investigate them in my next project whenever I have time to start it.
By the way, if you are using the default skysphere, a skylight and a directional light, you might be annoyed by the autoexposure. You can get rid of it both in the viewport and in the project. Discovering that was a god sent to me...
. On the other hand, since you seem to want to go dynamic, you need a moveable skylight set up, to enable distance field GI (see: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/DistanceFieldAmbientOcclusion/index.html) and then you can still get a decent effect.
I'd love feedback on the water and lighting (and everything else!)
The water now looks really nice, maybe the stuff that is under it should have a colour tint, not just because of the water but also because of the dirt, the bottom of the fountains use to look quite dirty always.
I completely agree with the red light stuff, I think that it makes the whole building look more like... well... how should I put this... a house of ill repute?
Are you using GI? maybe that is the reason, because with GI you can allow to any object to inject colour to the illumination, and maybe stuff like the flags are doing so.
By the way, what architectural/props references are you using? right now it seems to have stuff from different eras, like the sculpture of the pond looks totally out of place in my eyes.
The bridge seems physically incorrect. I mean the way it is constructed. The material seems to be stone, but I have never seen stone bridges so slimer. You might want to look at google about how stone bridges look like. It is almost imposible to keep the same thickness from one end to the other using rocks, however a wooden bridge can be so thin for short distances
I prefer the previous lighting though, the new lighting looks a bit artificial with the strong reds everywhere. This could look pretty awesome if it was sun lit only, letting the bouce do the work for you (and maybe exaggerate it here and there by using fake lights). The ambient also looks too bright and washed out, did you add a skylight? It tends to wash things out so I'd watch out for that.
I'd also make the marble texture a bit brighter, it stands out too much now. With PBR it's always better to be a bit brighter than you otherwise would because the lighting works better that way!
@minos Thanks for the feedback! Your office scene is looking amazing! Can't wait for the tut...! in fact so much so let me ask you about lighting
Can anyone explain whats up / the uses and differences between Cascaded Shadow Maps and Distance Field Shadows when it comes to dynamic directional lights? They can't be used at the same time, correct?
And here's some (loose) ref (mostly for the look of the buildings I'll do in the bg. It looks mostly square and angular here, but I swear they use a ton of arches lol!)
If during your journey you discover good answers for all the lighting stuff we don't really understand, like the cascade shadows etc, can you please post here your findings?
When I made my Sampa scene I tried going fully dynamic too and imo unless you are making a game that requires dynamic day and night cycles you should stick with Static lights (static, not stationary as those are dynamic too). Using lightmaps not only is much much cheaper render wise, but you also get a lot more complexity from the lighting than pure dynamic lighting. I don't know how GI support for dynamic lights is in Unreal now but I remember it was very hacky and broken when I tried.
You can try switching all your lights to static and increasing the map size under lightmass settings (2 is good) to get faster baking times. Another way to decrease build times is to use small lightmap sizes for your pieces, for my office scene I'm using mostly 32 and 64 for lightmap sizes. You would be surprised how little resolution you actually need for most surfaces, specially on a map like yours that has a strong direct light
Another thing to pay attention to is to make sure the environment color under lightmass settings matches your sky and that the intensity is 1 or more. You can also experiment adding a static skylight for extra skylight lighting.
My office scene right now bakes in about 10 minutes on high, not bad at all considering how better it looks compared to going fully dynamic
As for the marble I meant just brightening the diffuse up a bit, since it's so dark it soaks up a lot of lighting and stands out too much from the other materials.
You environment looks really good now, but I think if you spend some more time getting the lighting right (and switching to lightmaps!) it will look fantastic
@Minos Ah thanks! You're the best! I'll definitely try baked lighting then and see how it compares. I think the trade off is that you have to give up light propagation and DFAO, but I'd love to have more control so it might be what I'm looking for!
Heres a quick and dirty update yall. @pixelpatron made a great point about the repetition so I've created a taller variation and some decor addons. I also want to break the interior and exterior up a bit so I'm trying out some curtains (very rough but I'd also like to get the small banners working with wind) and I'm working on getting the interior floor textured. I feel like I have my hand in a bunch of pots
Critique always appreciated!
- I think it mainly suffers from the repetition right now. All the arches are the same and take most of the screen. They are beautiful on their own, but since they populate everything they become generic and noise, you don't really pay attention to them too much. I think you could break it with a double arch at the back.
- Same with curtains. Lovely ideas, but they're all looking the same now. I've got smaller "floating in the wind" ones on the paintover. Try to break things up a bit.
- Most of the detail is evenly spaced everywhere. The ivy is a good example. Try to concentrate it a bit more per area. Instead of putting a bit of it everywhere, try to have areas with lots of it, and areas with none of it. This will make things more interesting.
- Attract the eye somewhere. This is mostly an obsession of mine though, it's still wip and the structure you have in the water could be it in the end. I've opened the space with the windows and a hint that the palace continues behind in the paintover, this clearly attracts the eye somewhere. Ideally, this would be the place were most of the work goes for the detailing.
Looking forward to your progress on this, I really like the style. ^^
I've been working with baked lighting, so I'll get pics of the scene up soon, but in the mean time here's a small prop!
Also I'm having an issue with my lighting and drapes. Right now, certain parts of the drapes are double sided planes and they just *will not* light properly with baked lighting. The problem areas only seem to occur on the dark side of my scene (angled directional light with lots of bounced light). I feel like I've tried ticking every box on and off to see if something was triggering the errors but I cannot fix it. Maybe I should abandon trying to light a double sided plane altogether and add a backfacing mesh? I've tried adding in a two sided sign node, no luck. I was also playing with using a subsurface shader, but I'm not sure that's appropriate either. Additionally they seem to respond terribly to AO. So if anyone has suggestion on how to fix this/ best practices for drapes and curtains, I would LOVE to hear them
Also is there any magic trick for increasing bounced lighting without over exposing/ losing shadows in the bright areas? I've already increased my bounces and intensity of the bounce light quite a bit, but the interior of the dark side of the scene is still lacking enough fill.
I think your scene turned out a tad too yellow/orangy btw. You might want to stick to cooler tones for areas that aren't affected by sunlight so much.
Your scene is turning out great btw!
As for the bounce light in the interior shots, as @Cay said, definitely going to have to go the artificial light route in the interiors and just try to find what feels natural to you
And thanks for the lighting feedback as well guys, I'll keep at it!
You can read more about implementation here:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/HowTo/Subsurface_Scattering/index.html
The dark areas, have you considering maybe putting some lower intensity lights back there? And have you messed with the number of light bounces in the lightmass settings? And lastly, might sound dumb, but theres a skylight in the scene right? Have you messed with the shadow color (forget what setting this is exactly, can check later)
It's looking really good btw, can't wait to see the final outcome. Love the outside layout and visual style.
As far as the large dragon sculpture, I love the globe-like sphere it's sitting on; the small pattern on the base and the greenish metal pieces, including the sun-like design really catches my eyes. The texture of that metallic material has so much depth with the grimy greens and shiny copper, it's almost distracting from the dragon on top. Assuming you want the dragon to be the focal point of the piece, I'd suggest adding more detail in the dragon itself, or maybe just defining the shapes of the dragon more. You have this beautiful stylization going on that really defines the planes of the face in the archon bust, supporting the anatomy of the face and the structure of the beard. I would like to feel that more in the dragon's face and body, especially in the hind leg which looks mostly like a solid plane right now (if that makes sense). Of course, maybe you wanted to keep the forms of the dragon more simplistic to make it feel gargolye-esque, but I would love to see more detail, or at least more definition of the anatomy in the body to bring attention up to the dragon and through the wings.
I love the feel of the sculpture you posted above the dragon, the pose feels simplistic yet meaningful and alive. I like your distribution of the metallic texture on this, it's brings some nice variation without being over-done. My only critique is the mouth feels lost, as in the eyes and nose are well defined by (what's maybe ambient occlusion?) but the mouth is hard to see.
Anyways, I love your work and your scene is coming along so gorgeously!