Witcher 3 Tavern Environment Fanart

Kn5743

Hey everyone,

I've been working on an environment recently and am looking for some feedback and critiques on it.  I still have quite a few things to add but this is where I'm at currently.  The textures on the pillars are placeholder right now.  I haven't created a proper low poly for my sculpt yet so its just an auto UV on a decimated mesh.  Thanks!




Concept by Monika Zawistowska

Kn5743

Messed with the lighting a little and added some ropes to the rafters and updated the firepit.

melli06

Hey there! Its looking pretty nice! What I would really focus on is trying to nail the materials and lighting so everything pops just like the concept. The concept has more dark shadowed areas than in your scene. I would make the blue ceiling light much more dramatic and reduce the flat ambient lighting. Also making the candle lighting more dramatic once your scene has less ambient light, this would go a long way to adding visual interest. Adding more clutter would certainly help as well. Also I would work on making the floor material match the concept more. Look at the floor tiles in this Witcher 3 shot, see how they are shiny and flat but still seem very worn and rough. The stone's materials in the concept seems similar to the tiles in this image with a mild reflection and very smooth flat surfaces broken up by deep gaps between the stone/rock slabs. Obviously the concept uses rough stone/rock as opposed to tiles so they would be a little less shiny and perhaps a little rougher but not as flat and rough as your current floor material. Also thought it was fitting to use a witcher 3 shot
Another suggestion would be to add some dust particles to catch the blue light and give it some volume. 
Fair warning I am not really an environment artist and am pretty nooby so take what I say with a grain of salt. Also I realize game engines are not exactly ray tracers with beautiful soft shadows so what I say may be a little impractical. If you need any clarification or disagree no worries I'll be happy to elaborate. Seriously great work! Cheers

ackehallgren

Really cool work! I agree with Mellio about getting rid of a lot of the ambient light and making the shadows pop. Look forward to seeing it evolve!

PixelMasher

looks like a decent start, I would say the lighting is killing it right now, and the general lack of attitude/oomph/atmosphere. I did a quick lighting paintover for you to explain.


That fire in the center should be giving off more light and cast a nice warm glow on the surrounding forms, while the torches add additional hotspots. at the moment, the lack of contrast is making everything look flat, especially the materials. the wood table texture could use some more detail and contrast, and that fire pit should have lots of cool embers and chunky burnt log shapes in there, along with emissive textures to sell the heat.

right now the eye does not know where to focus. take the paintover image into photoshop and zoom way out, even at a small scale you can sort of tell whats going on and your eye automatically goes to the center. hope this helps, its late and this is super quick but you should get the idea

Kn5743

Thanks for the critiques and suggestions guys!  I'll start making some more adjustments to the lighting after I get some more stuff into the scene but here it is with a couple changes.  I've finished my pillars and gotten them into the scene as well.

@PixelMasher I've increased the brightness of the fire light and toned down the other lighting a bit.  How does this look?



@melli06  I'm going for a flagstone type texture like in this screenshot.  I think I need to add some more color variation to the stones and maybe some larger dirt patches.

PixelMasher

I think you need to make all your lights bigger in general, increase the radius. have large pools of light contrasted by areas of shadow in the corners. look at the witcher scene, that entire corner is lit up with a big pool of warm light. I would imagine a tavern like this would have a nice warm welcoming feeling for weary travelers. right now its feeling dingy and not like somewhere were people would be chowing down on roast beast and sloshing ale. 

the lighting is suffering from the classic mistake people make when doing lighting....placing a light only on each light source, instead of using light sources to justify their lighting decisions. for example, having those candles on the side each with their own small point light I would imagine and not adding any larger more subtle fill lights to show the forms in the scene. in terms of lighting intensity at the moment, the moonlight on the floor is brighter than the fire that should be lighting the room. 

Kn5743

@PixelMasher  Alright, thanks for the feedback.  I made some more adjustments to the lighting and added a couple fill lights.

PixelMasher

way better instantly

Flaw

Cool! Good stuff. I also wanted to do a Witcher inspired interior, I'll be keeping an eye on your progress with this one.

Kn5743

Thanks you guys!  Gonna start making some more props to fill out the scene now.

Ged

good work, the floor looks very flat, some difference in height or angle of the stones would be nice

Dextkiller

I agree with GED, the floor needs some variance. It seems to clean and flat for this scene. Adding some straw or other kinds of grime as well as a protruding stone here and there would go a long way. 

PixelMasher

yea I agree with the others about the floor. I would model 1-2 pieces of chunky stones you can crash through that use the same floor texture and align with it, it will add some nice chunky detail that catches the light. bloodborne did this extremely well, as well as the uncharted series. in a small scene like this you do not need to be afraid of adding polygons, its a small enclosed space that in an actual game, small interiors can have crazy detail thanks to occluders etc. I could see this being 100-200k tris easily on camera at any given time if not more. looking at some of the breakdowns in the uncharted 4 art portfolios, you can see they really are not afraid of having poly detail all over the place. go nuts.

Caiterade

Digging the colors and mood so far, but i agree about adding depth variation for the stone textures

Kn5743

Thanks guys!  Taking a short break from this but when I get back to it I'll add some height variation to the floor.

Tomiajayi

Kudos for making it to the front screen top banner!