Uddebo's WIP

Uddebo

Hi boys and gals! Long time lurker no time caller.

Usually when I work on my environments, models or materials I just finish them with little time to reflect and gather feedback. Soooo I wanted to start this thread to document my progress and write about it which hopefully will get me to reflect on what I'm doing. It will also be fun to go back and look at the beginning of this thread in a few years and laugh at myself.

I would love if anyone of you lovely people would give me some pointers as well on my work! 

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I downloaded a trial version of Substance Designer 5 early this morning when I was supposed to work on my Bachelor's thesis and created this during 3-4 hours of procrastination.

I was looking out of the widow from where I was sitting at my university and looked at the old cobblestone ground. My view was the only reference I really used since this was just supposed to be a quick test.

What took the most time was creating the circular pattern, which wasn't a part of my references. 



For such a short time, I am fairly happy with the results. The problem I have now is that my laptop keeps crashing under the load of Substance Designer so changes to even small details will freeze everything. I like that I got the subtle red hue in the rocks.



Would love some feedback on this whether it is something regarding the actual textures or Substance workflow!  

Uddebo

Started a new material in substance, but this time it is some marble flooring! 

A lot of textures and materials you see often are waaaay dirtier than they should be, so I wanted to create a cleaner, more realisitc floor texture with subtle detail. The lighting on the image above reveals a lot of that detail, but it is fairly discrete in other cases. 



I might revisit these and and some more damage to the edges. but it is hard not to go too overboard. I might even tone down the dirt. 

Feedback is welcome! 

Uddebo

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast - Church Remake in UE4

Ok, instead of basically posting the finished product and ask for feedback, I'm actually going to start posting right from the get-go!

I am currently knees-deep in my thesis work right now, but that couldn't stop me from doing some portfolio work on the side! I recently started playing Half-Life 2: Lost Coast to relax and get my mind of Uni stuff. At the beginning of the game, after you climbed the cliff and shot some baddies, you enter a dilapidated church which really caught my eye. 



This seems like the perfect challenge for me. Being at the end of my Uni period, I am constantly stressing out things for the portfolio. But what I actually want to do is to create levels and environments. With meshes, materials, lighting and effects. This will let me do all of those things and it is not too much work (I will regret this sentence later). It will also let me follow certain rules and guidelines (by recreating the church) but also some artistic freedom since there is room for improvement in all aspects. 

The first post is not that exciting since I basically just mapped out the churches primary shapes with BSPs and custom meshes in UE4. 



There is still some work that needs to be done on the primary shapes, but I'll post this now as I'm skipping town for a few days and I have a major handin of my thesis work soon.

Once the primary shapes are done, I will start to do piece by piece probably starting with the tiles found first by the entrance, since they are used everywhere in the building. This will be a bit of a playing field for my where I will try things. Some might work, some might not. 

Uddebo

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast - Church Remake in UE4 - Post 2! (Which I now know is referred to as "Monastery") So: 

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast - Monastery Remake in UE4 - Post 2!

So in the last post I had basically just started to block out the monastery with some custom meshes and BSPs within UE4. I also started listing things that I NEED to do to stay true to the original but also things I could do to improve on the original scene and things I could conjure up to maximize this into a learning experience. (I want to start doing some more vegetation and to experiment with the rendering) 

Lets start with some screenshots of where I am now: 






Lost of artifacts, but that's OK! It's a WIP!

I'm still in the phase of trying to figure out how I should construct this. To do this I have tried out different layouts and measurements of the monastery and added some more refined (still iteration 1) objects to see how the light and the colors could be managed. I looked at the game and decided to recreate some objects that are often occurring. By doing this, I can more easily get the proportions correct and also see who the lighting will play. 

For instance, I noticed that different types of stone slabs and a red (marble?) flooring is often present. So I decided to tackle them early on!



One asset that is often used is the stone slabs that can be found right by the entrance. For this, I started with a simple mesh in Maya which I then transferred over to Zbrush to create some damages to the edges using mostly the Trim Dynamic tool. After that I simply created some noise to get some damages to the top and bottom of the mesh. I noticed that there are two different types of these stone slabs in the game; one with a red pattern in the middle and one without. So, instead of doing to separate objects, I instead decided to only have the pattern on one side. I can then just flip the mesh for when the pattern is not needed. Created an alpha of the pattern using a screenshot and Photoshop which I then just stamped in the mesh in Zbrush. 



One problem with such reoccurring object is that you can easily see the repetitive pattern of them, hence I created 3 version of the textures for it; one regular, one sandy/dirty and one with the paint chipped off. By doing this I could just vertex paint them to get variations. I decided to do this with every mesh that is reoccurring.  Below are some more meshes where I did the same procedure for.




I also noticed the two big arches(?) located to the right by the entrance. I decided to make these as well as they are a big part of the entrance and is breaking up the other colors. 


I have no idea what the red flooring by the alter is, but I cheated a bit and assumed that it was red marble. By doing so, I could just steal and alter the marble floor I created in the post above! 

This is the result of the altered marble floor. The problem here is that it is way to clean. So I decided to create some more variations for vertex painting purposes. I can then paint some extra dirt by concave edges. 

I still need to refined the vertex painting. Heck, I need to refine everything but it is a start! 

Other than that, I have mostly been spending my time on trying to figure out the actual shape of the monastery and how I should construct it. But I added a splash of color to the walls which makes a huge difference! I will now probably start with the actual textures for it! The problem I have here is the frescoes that are covering some of the walls. I have no problem recreating everything else on them but man... Those frescoes. I think that I might extract them from the actual game and use them. I still need to create all the other maps from their diffuse. I don't want to do it but recreating them will be way too hard probably.