WIP - Cathedral Fighting game Environment

Orpheus

Concept By Eric Yi Lin
URL: http://kuroe702.deviantart.com/art/Haven-Interior-363235388
I am using this concept for inspiration to create a fighting game environment in unreal engine 4. This is part of a 6 week demo reel project at the Dave school. This is a piece i am very excited to work on since the fighting game genre is something i am passionate about. . I really want to capture the depth, history, and emotion this piece has to offer. As of now, i am 3 weeks into the project and have taken care of most of the modeling and layout done. I will be posting WIPS as much as i can. Below is what i have so far today. Any critiques are much appreciated! 

Orpheus

Orpheus said:

Here is a quick update on my project. I currently have a base texture on everything in the environment. This week will be spent polishing up the textures, and modeling fixes, and lighting. Again, critiques are appreciated!

RobeOmega

I am not sure about how much of this you can realistically do with the time you have left but here goes.

I feel you have lost a lot of the depth and sense to scale to the scene e.g. the cathedral in your environment is about maybe 3-4 times shorter than the concept and the overall sense of large scale feeling that the concept has does not seem to translate into your environment.

The lighting and the mood in the concept is also different from yours with strong moonlight beaming through the windows creating light rays in combination with the orange lighting and bloom from the various candles around the cathedral. Currently on your piece you have some light coming from the outside but it almost create no effect because the windows look like they are opaque rather than transparent and I feed the light rays could really make a difference in your scene. Additionally the candles look like they are put out and you have a red light coming from seemingly no where but I will let you off for that because I assume that is just a placeholder currently.

Orpheus

@Robeomega Thanks for the feedback! The reason my environment is much shorter than what is shown in the reference is because my instructor and I made the decision to make it short in fear of having all the back wall detail too far away from my hero camera with the two unreal characters.Also the lighting and most of the textures are placeholders. I will have a flipbook/animated card of a flame and some emissive glow on it to replicate a candle light. Also the light rays will be added soon once i finish with my pass with texturing. The reason why i am working in this order is because since this is a class project i have a schedule and milestone to hit each week for the remaining 2 weeks. Ill be more consistent in posting my WIPs to show more of the progress i am making.

Kid.in.the.Dark

What Robeomega said was pretty much everything I was going to state as well, mainly the sense of scale.. it's the first thing that hit me once I compared the environment and concept together.

I'd have to say I'm a little confused about what you mean with the backwall geo being too far away? as in detail that would not be seen if you had it at that distance?

having said that if that is what you mean, if this is a games level and not specifically set for a static camera shot then I suggest you should just build your level in correct scale, there's no point in stubbing out the height if it breaks the entire illusion/attraction of your original concept. It's actually causing a lot more damage to the piece. Something as simple as doubling the height of your walls, moving the roof up and duplicating your hallway 3-4x longer with the same assets you're currently using would make this scene a lot more attractive. Also, since you can barely make out the details that far away in the concept i'd say it's already alright to embrace that factor however it won't go to waste since if this eventually makes it into your portfolio, no-one can tell you otherwise that you can't have close ups on that detail you built on the back wall when it comes to presentation of this project.

Hopefully what I understood from your last post was correct, otherwise I'm sorry for the rant haha.

Keep going though (Y)

Orpheus

Thank you for the critique! I will be doing 2 variations of this level. One with a taller and longer hallway and one to the scale shown before. The smaller hallway was there just for the scale of the class project. I will however when this project is over going to extend the hallway. I will be doing a camera fly-through showing the back wall up close. I will be posting a WIP soon today just to show my progress since i am running in my last week. This is going to be a project i will be tinkering a lot with.

Orpheus

@Kid.in.the.Dark 
Thanks for the critique !
I will be making 2 variations of this level. 1 With the scale as is and 1 with a longer and taller hall. I will also be doing a fly through with a camera to show the back wall more as well. This is a project i want to tinker a lot more with after hand in. Ill post a wip up soon to show were i am at right now.

Orpheus

Orpheus said:

Here is an update with more refined lighting and textures. This is my last couple of days to work on this project for class.

RobeOmega

Looking so much better! If I had to make any critiques before the two day deadline I would say to make the moonlight much brighter and tint it more towards blue like in the concept. Additionally make the candles cast more of a flame and let them affect the lighting of the scene much more. Looking good though and I look forward to seeing the finished product!

Orpheus

Orpheus said: 
Here is an update from my project. We were given an extra week to have this final project polished out. Although it is ready for hand in, I am working more towards matching import elements in the reference to my scene. All aspects will be updated and polished this week. Thanks to those that gave me critiques along the way. It gave me a great motivational push to make this project the best it can be (and more some!)Tell me what you all think!

KrisLW

I think the lighting is still a bit unbalanced - the light on the wall of candles and across the back middle windows almost reads to me as sunset/sunrise. I think there could be a little less light from the candles, and little more light on the candles, if that makes sense. The amount of light they cast is much more confined in the concept, but the candles themselves light up, since they are translucent wax. Perhaps try poking at a subsurface shader for their material?

If time is in a crunch, then I would say the most prominent thing for me would be to do something with that back wall. The upper area is very flat, physically, and allows the repetition of the texture to be quite noticeable. There's not much to pick up from the concept for that wall, but I'd say maybe some more ornate trim for the windows (especially the round one up top), or some kind of columns going up, like what you have between the side wall segments.

Orpheus

Thank you @KrisLW !!!
I will definitely mess around with the materials after my crunch time. I will also have a talk with my instructor to see what else we can do to spruce up that back wall.

defragger

I really dont know why you dont want to double the cathedral in length. This also solves the sprucing up the back wall because it would be further away. Two problems solved in one. Boom!
Your scene is nice but has nothing to do with the concept.

Orpheus

Thank you for your critique @defragger !
In proxy, I tested various depths in front of my instructor. Together we agreed that removing two window lengths helped bring the details forward so they can be viewed. The goal of the project was to make a fighting level inspired by this concept and not the actual concept. Normally i follow a concept as close as possible.

Orpheus

Orpheus said:

Here is the final screenshot from hand in. Again, let me know what you all think!

Greg DAlessandro

I like the shadow values, but you need to brighten up the lights from outside