[UE4] Atmospheric Forest
polycounter lvl 2
Hey 
My name is Nicole Sochor. I've been in the game industry for a couple of years, worked at Ubisoft Blue Byte on Assassin's Creed Identity and after that I decided to cofound my own company. At PIXELBRAVE I am currently managing projects and working as a 3D artist. To see more visit: http://pixelbrave.com/
This article we will be about a forest I created in Unreal Engine 4, check out the final video here:
Why this project:
I am a forest lover and a vagabond at heart and I often have the feeling that games have troubles communicating the "forest feeling". With this project I wanted to challenge myself and create forest scenes that would feel real and evoke different emotions. I chose to make the forest in Unreal Engine 4 because of its great lighting system and because I already had experiences with working in UDK.
How I started:
I did research on how forests grow and how they are actually built up. How the different layers of vegetation are working together, what natural compositions you often find and what kind of experiences people have in forests.
The assets:
For the assets I decided to go all out and do them myself. There are tons of tutorials out there with people who already encounter the same problems as you and that saved me a lot of time. For example I had to experiment quite a bit getting the grass to move right and not give the feeling as it was underwater [the seaweed problem].
The trees were a combination of handsculpting and speedtree. I had 2 Hero trees that were handsculpted and textured and the other trees are done with speedtree.
Modeling & Texturing:
The terrain was created in World Machine and reworked in Mudbox. The models were sculpted in Zbrush and modeled in 3ds Max. I personally like the workflow of starting out in Zbrush from a sphere, sculpt the asset (being careful with the amount of subdivisions to keep controle), decimate and export as an obj. Then import and optimise the topology within 3ds Max before projecting the high poly detail on the low poly. The baking would be done in 3ds Max with a cage-setup, projecting in zbrush with low and high detail subtools or using Xnormal depending on the Asset.
Texturing was done using Zbrush and Photoshop. During the many years of traveling I've created my own personal library with reference photos and textures that I photographed in Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Poland, Denmark and Belgium, these came in handy when I started building up my textures in Photoshop. Within Zbrush I used my own alpha brushes and cleaned up texturing seams. I don't have a favorite program and I'm not much in to keyboard shortcuts as I use many different programs, I use whatever gets the job done.
Due to time constrains I couldn't try out photogrammetry but I am looking forward to give this a shot in the future.
Lighting system:
I researched different moods from games, movies, etc. and looked up the different color palettes that for example The Witcher or Disney uses. Every mood is different and I had to test out and feel what works for each scene.
I had quite some problems with getting the bakes right though: but luckily we have an awesome community and a lot of nice and great artists that love to help each other out! So I got my problems fixed in no time.
Results and thoughts:
I learned a lot from this project! Especially to think more about the big picture. For something as complex as a forest, one rock might not be worth obsessing about when it's only adding 0.1% to the end result...
I hope you guys found this article useful and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask
Byebye, Nicole
My name is Nicole Sochor. I've been in the game industry for a couple of years, worked at Ubisoft Blue Byte on Assassin's Creed Identity and after that I decided to cofound my own company. At PIXELBRAVE I am currently managing projects and working as a 3D artist. To see more visit: http://pixelbrave.com/
This article we will be about a forest I created in Unreal Engine 4, check out the final video here:
Why this project:
I am a forest lover and a vagabond at heart and I often have the feeling that games have troubles communicating the "forest feeling". With this project I wanted to challenge myself and create forest scenes that would feel real and evoke different emotions. I chose to make the forest in Unreal Engine 4 because of its great lighting system and because I already had experiences with working in UDK.
How I started:
I did research on how forests grow and how they are actually built up. How the different layers of vegetation are working together, what natural compositions you often find and what kind of experiences people have in forests.
The assets:
For the assets I decided to go all out and do them myself. There are tons of tutorials out there with people who already encounter the same problems as you and that saved me a lot of time. For example I had to experiment quite a bit getting the grass to move right and not give the feeling as it was underwater [the seaweed problem].
The trees were a combination of handsculpting and speedtree. I had 2 Hero trees that were handsculpted and textured and the other trees are done with speedtree.
Modeling & Texturing:
The terrain was created in World Machine and reworked in Mudbox. The models were sculpted in Zbrush and modeled in 3ds Max. I personally like the workflow of starting out in Zbrush from a sphere, sculpt the asset (being careful with the amount of subdivisions to keep controle), decimate and export as an obj. Then import and optimise the topology within 3ds Max before projecting the high poly detail on the low poly. The baking would be done in 3ds Max with a cage-setup, projecting in zbrush with low and high detail subtools or using Xnormal depending on the Asset.
Texturing was done using Zbrush and Photoshop. During the many years of traveling I've created my own personal library with reference photos and textures that I photographed in Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Poland, Denmark and Belgium, these came in handy when I started building up my textures in Photoshop. Within Zbrush I used my own alpha brushes and cleaned up texturing seams. I don't have a favorite program and I'm not much in to keyboard shortcuts as I use many different programs, I use whatever gets the job done.
Due to time constrains I couldn't try out photogrammetry but I am looking forward to give this a shot in the future.
Lighting system:
I researched different moods from games, movies, etc. and looked up the different color palettes that for example The Witcher or Disney uses. Every mood is different and I had to test out and feel what works for each scene.
I had quite some problems with getting the bakes right though: but luckily we have an awesome community and a lot of nice and great artists that love to help each other out! So I got my problems fixed in no time.
Results and thoughts:
I learned a lot from this project! Especially to think more about the big picture. For something as complex as a forest, one rock might not be worth obsessing about when it's only adding 0.1% to the end result...
I hope you guys found this article useful and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask
Byebye, Nicole
Replies
Quick question, is the foliage animated? I imagine this place would be so peaceful and yet so full of life and movement, but I couldn't tell for sure in the video - although as you mention the grass moving, I am assuming it is?
Also, out of curiosity, where is the forest itself in that world map? It appears that the forest scene is just a small part of it (unless my sense of scale is broken!)
Keep up the good work, forest looks amazing, and gratz on your entrepreneurship!
thank you for the amazing breakdown. I really love all the detail you created for this scene. Are you planning on creating a playable demo for this enviroment so we can have a closer look at it? And would you mind giving us some insights on how long it took to create the scene with all the different lighting setups?
Did you use Ivy generator or placed the evy by hand?
Best, Andreas
I'm considering diving into a landscape environment soon so any additional tips you could pass along to a person aspiring to build one would be great! anything I should reeeeeally take into consideration way before starting? e.g. taking time to learn world machine, etc... or specific features in UE4 that you consider a life saver? haha.
Thread added in favourite, i feel this will be very instructive
Keep it up!
*taking off to learn more about the software*
Hey Kris! Thank you for your nice reply! It took me quite some time to get the lighting mood right. And I can assure you creating all the variations in foliage took a lot of energy and time
Yes all the foliage elements are animated. I tried to keep it subtle because in lush forests you normally don't have that much wind. I wanted to make it look like a breeze that goes through the forest but maybe it was a little bit too subtle?
The forest scene you see is located next to the river on the left upper area. Due to time constrains I choose put most effort into this part.
Thank you! Yeah I absolutely love travelling and can't wait to visit New Zealand one day! There is still so much to see!
In the near future I will combine the travelling with the entrepreneurship, that will be one hell of an adventure!
Hey Andreas!
Thanks for the kind words! The project took me 3 months working after hours. I will not continue working on this project because I already started on the next one which will include a playable version.
I did use Ivy generator but it had way too many polygons to place in a game scene, so I reworked it in 3DS MAX and handplaced them on the trees.
Thank you for the comment! For me world machine and speedtree were essential for the scene.
This is the tutorial I used to create the landscape:
Also a good wind shader will help a lot bringing your scene to life and avoid the seaweed effect
What I definitely did wrong was: overplanning
Thank you! I'll try to make my future posts even better
Thanks! Yeah the website still needs some work. Thanks for pointing the bug out!
Thanks for your comment! here are some tutorials I used
http://www.damianlazarski.com/foliage_tutorial.html
The rest was basically trial and error
I also got a lot of inspiration from watching the making offs of The Hobbit, Avatar and The Vanishing of Eathen Carter.
http://www.theastronauts.com/
Thank you! I'm happy you like it
Thank you very much! This is my first post on polycount and I would have never thought that I get so much positive response
It's super motivating!
Thank you for your input! I will definitely consider it in the next project
Thank you for your amazing support!
Thanks very much
Thank you so much! It really makes me happy that my work touches others emotionally. Thank you for telling me about your experience!
Haha
and totally go for it! there are so many tutorials out for UE4 and it's not hard to make stuff look pretty in this engine!
Good luck!!
Thank you that is nice to hear
Thank you for beeing honest! What could I have changed/ added to make it more special to you?
But to enhance it, maybe something to suggest a story? Is it a magical forest? Fairies live here? You currently have some glowing mushrooms in the midground (a good focal point definitely), maybe have some more in the foreground (with less intensive glow), to suggest more depth. Scattering some sort of particles also helps (?)
Turn on DOF too because everything looks really sharp right now. Nice atmospheric perspective, btw.
That's my 2 cent
Thanks for posting those tutorials you used too!
... I like your taste in username too
you're right thanks for the advise! pretty good idea, I will definitely think about it more in the next project
HAHA XD thanks buddy! seems like we both were blessed with great taste