[Environment] Blade Runner - Unreal Engine 4 - Deckard Apartment
polycounter lvl 4
Hello !
After a few hard months working on my props modeling, wanted to get a scene, more than 1 or 2 objects disconnected from each other.
I knew going on Blade Runner was a hard challenge, as it is a well known and superb artistic masterpiece. On top of a huge movie. On top of a great short novel first. Well I love this movie.
Last state of the scene :
First let me pull back some references, movie captures and some other pieces I grabbed from nice topics all around the web. (Will edit this to link the sources.)
Movie shots :
Awesome stuff :
After a few hard months working on my props modeling, wanted to get a scene, more than 1 or 2 objects disconnected from each other.
I knew going on Blade Runner was a hard challenge, as it is a well known and superb artistic masterpiece. On top of a huge movie. On top of a great short novel first. Well I love this movie.
Last state of the scene :
First let me pull back some references, movie captures and some other pieces I grabbed from nice topics all around the web. (Will edit this to link the sources.)
Movie shots :
Awesome stuff :
Replies
I'm having a lot of troubles mastering support edgeloops on turbosmooth, edge weights on opensubdiv, well just having some diffulties knowing where I'm going. I have the feeling it's a matter of practicing, a lot of different forms to get all the subtilities.
This mesh learn me something though, I have to stop trying to be on a LOW poly at all cost on my basemesh, it cost me a lot of time getting the high poly somethimes, not having round enough shapes.
Anyway, here is a render, tell me if you would like to see some working pics (wireframe, earlier version, etc).
Here is the second one : the armchair and couch.
Tried to do my best with some hand sculpt in Zbrush for the leather fold. The leather feel is different from what I've observed in the movie though.
Here's the piano :
And the piano assets :
And here some furnitures :
Bottles and glosses :
Keep it up
Would love to know how to make them disappear. Else I will just edit them with the reset. Sorry again for the troublemaking :S
I do want to work more on "disordering" stuff and crowding the place. I do need some more assets though, trying to be as optimal as possible, not doing on asset for each real asset in the movie (or I'm on this for the next 2 years.)
You can find a previous wip video here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjhHsU2QS78
I really want to put some more work on it...
Here is a link to my artstation page : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/V121Z
There would be two reasons you're not getting a lot of critiques. (from my point of view)
#1 Your scene looks great, but from a comparison point of view, Not many people can give critique on the level you are now because It's very hard to eyeball critiques from Deckard's apartment on this level of detail.
#2 Since it is a "recreation" of Deckard's apartment, no one can praise you for originality, composition or motive.
That would be why I'm unable to say anything else than it looks fantastic.
*Bonus*
To get more critique, I'd instead suggest showing pictures of your WHOLE scene rather than individual props. Then it is easier to see the scene and how it is coming along, and it's hence easier to give critique.
I did put some full scene render though. And I also did a video render, link is on the artstation page, here it is :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjhHsU2QS78
The lighting in some areas of your scene is extremely dark and it makes it difficult to read what's going on. This shot here appears to be a coffee table with some books on it, but the object beside the books is nearly hidden. In a view like this, it would be beneficial to be able to see the detail you may have worked into the coffee table and even the floor materials.
I would avoid rendering a viewing angle such as this, in the following image, as the large white pillar obstructs the focus of the scene (which I assume is the center of the room). The shadows, although similar in your reference, are very hard edged and create a noisy effect. Have you looked into UE4's ray traced soft shadow technology? https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/RayTracedDistanceFieldShadowing/
The shadowing effect you're going for could look really cool if you can pull it off right, but right now it's adding a lot of unnecessary noise to the scene.
The harsh effects of the shadows are visible here as well, producing a very noisy look. You have put a great effort into developing high quality assets for your scene as shown in your posts here, but that detail is consumed by the darkness of the scene. The detail on the table in this image is barely readable.
The light rays coming through the window are quite dense and appear low quality. It would be worth trying for a more subtle effect.
This scene by Vincent Joyau is a good comparison. Notice how the detail areas are given an adequate level of light, and there is a soft lighting contrast to the darker corner on the left. Even the strong, large shadow behind the sofa has a soft dropoff and shifts focus from a less important area of the scene to the area around the coffee table.
For presentation purposes, I would recommend turning off UE4's texture streaming to avoid texture downsizing and harsh transitions during a video render.
Overall, you have put great effort into the detailing of your assets but the lighting and composition of your scene needs work. It's always a shame to see great work hidden by poor lighting, but I think with some revision you will end up with a fantastic looking scene.
The lightshafts are a blue print from UE4 demo scenes, as I dont know how to get real time volumetric lights (expect with direct light spots), will try to work on them as suggested.
Will get this work done monday, as I used those renders for my first batch of cover letters and job applies and I think you are right, I can improve the global reading, before even getting more assets done in the near future. Thanks again for the time you took for your feedback, appreciated !