[UE4] Station C3 - Sci-fi Environment

gerbilho

Hi,

I'm working on this modular environment right now. It's a commercial area / mall in a space station, somewhere in a near future (not very original I know...). I started concepting and sketching myself, but then saw some great stuff from Star Citizen and decided to use that as reference. I don't want to make a copy of the reference, instead I want to use it as a starting point and create something of my own.
Most of the pieces are just placeholders at the moment.

I would like your opinions and suggestions.

At the moment its looking like this:

gerbilho

gerbilho

3ds Max screen grabs

gerbilho

Other views inside UE4:

gerbilho

Small update:

gerbilho

Another small update. The wall textures are still placeholders as I wanted to see if the colors worked out. Maybe these colors are a bit cliche, no?

gerbilho

Another small update. Testing materials. 
I've been trying to learn Substance Painter and using it for materials. Still not sure if I'll use it or just go back to photoshop...

Sheers

When you combine Designer and Painter you'll feel a lot more confident.  This isn't too bad for this stage of building (i'm assuming you used the supplied Smart Materials).  I feel the straight white might be powerful for this since the orange is almost the same intensity.  Add some orangy hue to the white paint stripes and keep on iterating.

gerbilho

Sheers said:

When you combine Designer and Painter you'll feel a lot more confident.  This isn't too bad for this stage of building (i'm assuming you used the supplied Smart Materials).  I feel the straight white might be powerful for this since the orange is almost the same intensity.  Add some orangy hue to the white paint stripes and keep on iterating.

Hi Sheers, thanks for the input. Yes the white srtipe seems a lot more intense in UE4 than in substance painter viewport. I may have to tweak the colors. For the orange parts I'm going to make a mask to be able to change the color inside UE4.

gerbilho

Today's update

gerbilho

Another update. Some modeling and texturing.

gerbilho

Update:
I'm getting some strange artifacts when I take screenshots with the "High Resolution Screenshot" functionality in the editor, so I decided to use printscreen...

jaker3278

keep it up, looking good, 

gerbilho

jaker3278 said:

keep it up, looking good, 

Thanks! I'll be posting updates later today.

gerbilho

Working on the elevators.
I'm not too sure about the design... let's see how it looks with the materials.

gerbilho

Update.
Still working on the elevators. I want the space to look dirty and poorly maintained.
Next I'm going to import them in unreal and see how they look.

gerbilho

Last update for today (in UE4)

gerbilho

And the video:

gerbilho

I thought the elevator area would look cool with a carpet. I tried it and I didn't like the result. At least with this texture... I'm going to change it.

gerbilho

Update: 

- New Carpet: I think this one looks much better. Added some wear and dirt.
- New wall piece: SyncFlow300
- Changed the lighting to nightime

C

gerbilho

VIdeo showing the last update

gerbilho

Some updates:
Added a moving fan and started shaping new modules.

gerbilho

Working on the restaurants...

gerbilho

I had the crazy idea of using wood on a portion of the wall. Is there wood in space? Of course not! This is just a synthetic coating imitating wood!
What do you think? Keep it or lose it?
Changed the scene back to daytime.

Kid.in.the.Dark

A wood synthetic coating is a nice way of explaining the use of wood haha... I'd say use it where relevant... Just in my own opinion, if I were to theoretically design the interior of a space ship the only time I'd use a wood replica coating were to make the crew feel comfortable in an environment/atmosphere that resembled home e.g. a coffee shop/chill out living room/lounge type area but those are the only times. I'd stick to metal

gerbilho

Kid.in.the.Dark said:

A wood synthetic coating is a nice way of explaining the use of wood haha... I'd say use it where relevant... Just in my own opinion, if I were to theoretically design the interior of a space ship the only time I'd use a wood replica coating were to make the crew feel comfortable in an environment/atmosphere that resembled home e.g. a coffee shop/chill out living room/lounge type area but those are the only times. I'd stick to metal

Looking at this again with fresh eyes I have to say you're right. No fake wood.

gerbilho

Yesterday I updated unreal from version 4.11 to 4.12
After I converted the project I noticed that things looked different. Everything is darker, more contrasty and some materials way more reflective.
If you look at the floor this is very obvious. The rough areas on the floor turned almost white in version 4.12
I already tweaked a lot of parameters but I still can't replicate the look I had in version 4.11...
Any suggestions?

gerbilho

I'm having a hard time making this glass material look right inside UE4. It's very different from what I get in Substance Painter as you can see. The glass is not a separate object, it's part of the same mesh, so when I set the material to translucent inside UE4, other parts of the mesh get transparent too... so I decided to try changing the material blending mode to masked. Now the object is opaque but the glass transparency doesn't accept intermediate values: its either is completly transparent or completly opaque...

Any clues on how to solve this?

Thanks.

Montreseur

gerbilho said:

Update:
I'm getting some strange artifacts when I take screenshots with the "High Resolution Screenshot" functionality in the editor, so I decided to use printscreen...

use highResScreenshot with a number after (2-4) and then scale it down. 

gerbilho

Environment Update

gerbilho

Concept for a sci-fi column that I'll be modeling next

Fweddy

I like seeing this come along, I don't think the yellow colour for the restaurants dont seem to mesh well with the rest of the environment, maybe change it or make the yellow a bit less saturated?

Everything else is looking great!

sziada

this is coming along real nicely, should be good when it comes to the final product!

gerbilho

Fweddy said:

 I like seeing this come along, I don't think the yellow colour for the restaurants dont seem to mesh well with the rest of the environment, maybe change it or make the yellow a bit less saturated?

Everything else is looking great!

Thanks. I see what you mean. I'm also not completly sure about the yellow/green combination. Seems a bit too "lemon" for my taste. Maybe I'll try a few color variations ahead.

sziada said:

this is coming along real nicely, should be good when it comes to the final product!

Thanks! The column is almost ready. I think I'll be able to post new images in a day or two.

Poinball

I really like your Concept for the sci-fi column ! I cant wait to see it in your scene.

gerbilho

Poinball said:

I really like your Concept for the sci-fi column ! I cant wait to see it in your scene.

Thanks! I have an update:

gerbilho

Sci-Fi Environment WIP (UE4)

Here's a small update after a long pause. Sorry about that, I'm going to post more often from now on.

The fern is from megascans

Detilium said:

This looks very interesting. I popped this as a favorite so I can tag along! Great progress so far, and I'm very excited to see where this prop is going, with the plant in the middle and everything! Keep up the great work! 

Thanks! Sorry to keep you waiting for so long...

Kaine123

This would look really at home in a system shock 2 remake

gerbilho

Kaine123 said:

This would look really at home in a system shock 2 remake

Ahah! Well, maybe...  

Testing my brand new fern, made with megascans textures.
Also testing sound occlusion. You can hear the sound change as the player goes to the back of the column (turn up your sound!)

gerbilho

Sci-Fi environment WIP
Small update. Changing the look of the large windows.

chrisradsby

Nice work so far man! I really like where this is going but I somehow feel like it's lacking something. 

I'd probably start thinking about
- initial focal point
- Interesting ceiling shapes/detail
- floors need designated areas for walk ways, specific flooring for lounge areas
- Find the "Look" you want for one area, then use the same for the rest with modifications.
- Working Big to Small , will help overall composition issues early. Otherwise it's easy to end up using your small props to make up for the fact that something isn't "interesting" enough etc.

I went back up the thread and had a look at your initial sketches, they look really promising and I'm looking forward to seeing how this one will end up  Good work so far !

gerbilho

chrisradsby said:

Nice work so far man! I really like where this is going but I somehow feel like it's lacking something. 

I'd probably start thinking about
- initial focal point
- Interesting ceiling shapes/detail
- floors need designated areas for walk ways, specific flooring for lounge areas
- Find the "Look" you want for one area, then use the same for the rest with modifications.
- Working Big to Small , will help overall composition issues early. Otherwise it's easy to end up using your small props to make up for the fact that something isn't "interesting" enough etc.

I went back up the thread and had a look at your initial sketches, they look really promising and I'm looking forward to seeing how this one will end up  Good work so far !

Thanks Christoffer! I love getting this kind of feedback.
I absolutely agree with all the points you mentioned. Sometimes I feel I'm losing my focus on this environment. I've been working on it for some time now, late at night after work when I'm already tired. Not ideal! But I'm having fun with it.
New ideas keep poping up and I can no longer stick 100% with my initial concepts. But I think this is for the best, unless I make a mess of things that don't match each other of course... but no I think the final result will be much more interesting than my initial concept.

Here's a quick sketch I made for the new windows with a super dirty paintover in photoshop. Instead of being a station in space this will be a station settled on the bottom of a sea of methane, in the moon Titan. I thought it would look cool with an underwater (methane in this case) view. Some of the ground mud and rocks would be in contact with the external glass for a cool effect. I imagine submarines passing by with strong spotlights to illuminate their way.

gerbilho

It's been hard to get some time to work on this, but here's another update.

New windows.

Playing with LUTs.