Hackers Hideout (Apartment Environment)

mrgilbert159

Hello Guys and gals. I need to do a full Environment for my portfolio as I've just been doing random assets and tests to basically teach myself different techniques. 
So I want to do a realistic environment with a story to it. What better than a hackers apartment right?
I'm sure you've all seen @Wiktor Wrecked apartment by now so I'm using his work as inspiration. Here it is
Cool right! So I was looking through pinterest and I came across this concept.
This one caught my eye because I love the lighting and its already practically messy. I then saw the little computer set up and thought I could add to it. Adding more dirt and mess and make the set up a bit more crazy. (Screens everywhere etc).
So I'm going to get started. Blocking out. I'm going to be following wicktors 'the making of' to help me with the steps.

Id love any help I can get along the way. Anything that doesn't look right or how I can improve or basically just tell me that something looks sh*t.
Thanks

mrgilbert159

So here's the initial blocking. Spent a good hole day of trying to get the proportions right. But after spending so long looking at it I think i've gotten oblivious with scale. I need the scale to be on point else i'm going to have weird results in the end. So if there's anything that needs changing please let me know!
Also ignor the lighting I know it looks crap but I needed lighting and a general feeling of where the lights would go.

I used the UE4 props to help with proportions. But what would be useful is a full scale character. Is there one in the content browser? All i can find is a empty character pawn.
Also you can see I already used a table that I quickly made in maya to help. My concern is that where i've placed it for the hackers desk the proportion is right. But when placed where the tables should be they look really small. Unlike in the concept where they take up a lot of space. Could it be the concept or me?

As you can see the green is good. Scales and proportions are correct but when placed near the camera. They look really small but in the concept there big??? 
I'm not going to scale them up as they are the correct size. The desks size should be the relatively same proportion to the small table right?
Let me know

mrgilbert159

So I wasn't happy with the scale. So I basically we did the whole thing again. I finally found some actors I could use for scaling. Still new to UE4 so Its a struggle to find everything. I read that early on you shouldn't be afraid to start over if your scale isn't looking right. 

But anyway, I created some textures and already its got some feeling. Still very early on so Its ok that it looks different to the concept. The lighting is very tricky to copy but very important. I'll keep playing around with it but at this stage I'm not too worried about it. 
Some textures I've created are a concrete wall, Ceiling, wood floor and a sort of wall paper texture. Some are very subtle but It really helps with the realism. #

This is just a quick screen shot and not from camera view.

mrgilbert159

Starting with the light assets first so I can get most of the lighting up. So that when I create the rest of the assets and bring them in, I know how they look in my scene and how they react with the light. This is so I can then make changes to the textures if they don't match up with the reference. Also It just helps me navigate through my scene instead of it being dark as there isn't much natural light. 

Most of the lights in the scene are generally made of the same material so i can create one in Quixel and save the preset and apply it to the rest of the assets. The tricky part is creating the effect within UE4.

So here's a hanging light I created. Its hard to see what material it would be made of in the concept but I went with glass. This is the asset in EU4 not baked and with two lights. I had already pre baked it before that's why its got that emmissive look in the centre.

This is what I'm getting after I bake the scene. It looks relatively good. But because of the secondary light I'm not getting shadows in my scene where I need them. I want  some light to travel through the glass shade which would create shadows where the beams are. But how do I do this when the light is inside the asset???

Also, I'm not sure how I'm getting light bleed through the shade?? I actually like it and it makes sense. But If I don't know how its happening how can I use it to my advantage. 

I then added some opacity to the light shade. I'm getting the bulb to show through but it's not emmisive. If I look through the shade the bulb is glowing rightly. 

Also even though the shade is .99 transparent, The shadows are completely gone. I'm now getting shadows where I need them but Its completely ignoring the shade asset. HMMMMMMMMMMMMM fix one problem only to get another.

Here's the material. The blend mode is set to translucent and I used a lerp because this is the best result I can get. If I set it to Masked then the entire shade goes totally transparent. This also happens when I use a multiply and a constant. 

So ye I'm kind of stumped and confused at the moment so any suggestions would be great PLEASE.

If there any tutorials on this anywhere maybe?? 

mrgilbert159

Got it!
So I did some research and some asking around and was told about subsurface shading. With a lot of testing and playing around I got my desired light.
Everything together (with the emmissive bulb and everything), It's looking pretty believable. Still more tweaking but for now, It's good and I can move on! 



It actually hurts my eyes to look at it  

...Oh and if your wondering where this is. It's my test area before I put things into my scene.

mrgilbert159

Been doing a lot of practising with lighting and subsurface materials lately. Subsurface is giving me the best result at the moment with my lamps.
So here's another. Trying to get the lights to look the same so they look like there part of a set.