I really love the transparent glass/plastic material you've created for the cylinder object. A few things to work on:
- The foliage/vines are bringing down the environment overall — I'd work on making that texture more realistic and making sure they're lighted well (specifically this image; they seem very dark here: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/0r/q9ppu0bhh5uu.jpg)
- Overall the shadows seem very dark (could just be my monitor though). Have you thought about putting in an overarching sky light or something to lighten up the shadows? It looks like you've done some great work with the modeling and I'd hate to lose that in the darkness of the shadows.
I think something that would really take this to the next level would be thinking more about the player and how they will be navigating this environment — really incorporating more level design into your piece. Really creating a narrative and guiding the player through the environment will help bring it to that next level of polish.
What you should be doing really is just work on a small important area of your scene. I think at this point it's too big for you and you won't get anything to the finish line.
Thanks for the critiques and advice everyone. Very helpful and much appreciated.
I set out to do a "sci fi corridor scene". A project showing a corridor leading to a room. Displaying high to low poly modeling, modular work flow, a handful of hero props, shared textures etc. My take on it was building it with in an old abandoned re purposed brick sewer way leading to an abandoned underground facility. The plastic tube walkway is a tattered hazmat sealed passageway. That once connected two separate areas. I'll add smaller props, signage and discarded hazmat suits and such to give context. Maybe a dry decontamination pod entrance showing the end of the walkway connecting to the brick siding.
Currently I'm using 1 directional light for the sun, a sky light, atmospheric fog along with occlusion method light shafts. A tweaked exponential height fog and eye adaption. As well as a hand full of spot lights and point lights and reflection spheres and boxes. I'll try and adjust the settings for these to give me a good middle ground between too dark and seeing what needs to be seen for the player.
Thanks for pointing out the plants. I have since turned on sub surface for them. And I will try to better the lighting and prop placement to promote good transitional flow for the player to better see where to go.
The piping, electrical cables and foliage are a little expensive once I start throwing them around everywhere
to fill the scene. So I'm wanting to do these at the end once I know all the large pieces are in place.
Any thoughts, suggestions, tips or pointers are very much appreciated.
I'm still trying to nail the lighting and getting the plant life to look natural in invading the entrances. ?Should the flow of the large room be anything more than a large room with obvious places to walk? There will be an overhead scaffolding walkway layer in the room above the main floor layer that leads to the roof. I also had in mind to propagate the pathways with props and setting assets to make pathways more interesting.
?Does anyone think I need to or want to see an addition of sci fi type metal paneling for the corridor section or through out the scene in general? I already planned on putting piping and electrical cables everywhere. I don't want to obstruct the line of sight much more or end up covering a lot of the brick to the point where you cant tell its a sewer.
I'll try and tweak the colors and variation in the brick and vegetation. Maybe some geometry brick assets that pop out from the texture. Right now I'm only using 3 different vine props for the vegetation. I'm trying to get as much mileage out of these as I can to save on memory. The 2800 asset, I'm thinking will be replaced for a more useful and less expensive version. It was from early on in the project. I also have a slight sun burnt brown/orange scene color tint in the "post process volume" settings that gives the scene the mood I was wanting to go for. This is messing with the green in the leaves a bit. I haven't looked into it yet, but maybe there is a way to cull this effect from the plants or alpha Materials so they are not effected.
Looking nice! Just a thought about the foliage; if you are worried about memory do you think its a good idea to bake those leaves/vines down to some planes with a few carefully placed leaf cards for volume? Also I have noticed a lot of people using a subsurface scattering material for foliage with some nice results.
Thank you. That's a good point. I'll add some LOD's for the vegetation. Given the close vicinity of the room I wasn't really thinking about LOD's for anything. But doing LOD's for the smaller props totally make sense. I'm working on crates and piles of stuff to liter and define the pathways. I've been tweaking the SSS for the leaves material recently, trying to find the right balance of color I want to bleed through. It's possible I'm not using it to it's full effect yet. I'll get back to you on that one. I also turned off shadow casting for all the ground cover leaf alpha cards for the moment. They still have lightmaps.
Bulk Head Door, maya base mesh, 40,000 tri. next: Decimate in zBrush, add high poly detail, create color ID map, UV Layout low poly, high and low poly x normal bake. Then finally PBR texture set.
Decimated down to 6,200 tri If I were to animate and rig the door. I would have have kept the moving pieces separated. I might come back and do this later if I decide to animate the door for the environment. But for now the door isn't going to be used.
Awesome work! And I wouldn't worry about the memory cost mesh wise, textures take up most of the memory, meshes not so much. And even phones nowadays can have a lot of ram.
Replies
- The foliage/vines are bringing down the environment overall — I'd work on making that texture more realistic and making sure they're lighted well (specifically this image; they seem very dark here: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/0r/q9ppu0bhh5uu.jpg)
- Overall the shadows seem very dark (could just be my monitor though). Have you thought about putting in an overarching sky light or something to lighten up the shadows? It looks like you've done some great work with the modeling and I'd hate to lose that in the darkness of the shadows.
I think something that would really take this to the next level would be thinking more about the player and how they will be navigating this environment — really incorporating more level design into your piece. Really creating a narrative and guiding the player through the environment will help bring it to that next level of polish.
My take on it was building it with in an old abandoned re purposed brick sewer way leading to an abandoned underground facility.
The plastic tube walkway is a tattered hazmat sealed passageway. That once connected two separate areas. I'll add smaller props, signage and discarded hazmat suits and such to give context. Maybe a dry decontamination pod entrance showing the end of the walkway connecting to the brick siding.
More soon, and Thanks again.
I'm still trying to nail the lighting and getting the plant life to look natural in invading the entrances.
?Should the flow of the large room be anything more than a large room with obvious places to walk?
There will be an overhead scaffolding walkway layer in the room above the main floor layer that leads to the roof. I also had in mind to propagate the pathways with props and setting assets to make pathways more interesting.
?Does anyone think I need to or want to see an addition of sci fi type metal paneling for the corridor section or through out the scene in general?
I already planned on putting piping and electrical cables everywhere. I don't want to obstruct the line of sight much more or end up covering a lot of the brick to the point where you cant tell its a sewer.
For the vines, I'd say you're making them too bright/yellowish, which makes it stand out too much in the scene. Here's a good reference:
I'll try and tweak the colors and variation in the brick and vegetation. Maybe some geometry brick assets that pop out from the texture. Right now I'm only using 3 different vine props for the vegetation. I'm trying to get as much mileage out of these as I can to save on memory. The 2800 asset, I'm thinking will be replaced for a more useful and less expensive version. It was from early on in the project.
I also have a slight sun burnt brown/orange scene color tint in the "post process volume" settings that gives the scene the mood I was wanting to go for. This is messing with the green in the leaves a bit. I haven't looked into it yet, but maybe there is a way to cull this effect from the plants or alpha Materials so they are not effected.
More vine, leaf and twig variation?
Is it too bright?
Should there be a wet grungy version of the brick texture vertex painted in certain spots to break up the brick?
Starting to fill in the room more.
Thoughts and suggestions are very much welcome.
That's a good point. I'll add some LOD's for the vegetation. Given the close vicinity of the room I wasn't really thinking about LOD's for anything. But doing LOD's for the smaller props totally make sense. I'm working on crates and piles of stuff to liter and define the pathways.
I've been tweaking the SSS for the leaves material recently, trying to find the right balance of color I want to bleed through. It's possible I'm not using it to it's full effect yet. I'll get back to you on that one.
I also turned off shadow casting for all the ground cover leaf alpha cards for the moment. They still have lightmaps.
next: Decimate in zBrush, add high poly detail, create color ID map, UV Layout low poly, high and low poly x normal bake. Then finally PBR texture set.
Decimated down to 6,200 tri
If I were to animate and rig the door. I would have have kept the moving pieces separated.
I might come back and do this later if I decide to animate the door for the environment. But for now the door isn't going to be used.
More soon.
Thoughts?
Yeah, they are just alpha cards.
Since I have those vines everywhere, needed to have leaves on the ground below the vines.
some projection type decals would work a little better now that you mentioned it. Especially with grunge for certain areas.