[UE4][WIP] Chinese Courtyard
polycounter lvl 6
[LAST UPDATE]
Hello everyone,
It's been quite a while since I posted anything on Polycount. In fact I haven't posted anything since I entered the industry, which is totally not the right thing to do! I finally decided to start another project of my own and spend a little bit of time each day on it. It's not going at lightning speed, but it's steadily progressing. I pretty much finished the blockout/investigation phase, and I figured it's a good time to start posting it in here.
First, here are the main goals:
- Finish a new portfolio piece with current skills and workflows (duh).
- Integrate Blender and Substance suite in my workflow.
- Push some more technical things with the polish phase (such as rain, puddles, ...).
- Work the whole scene together instead of asset per asset, forcing me to be more flexible.
The last point is a bit of a weird one. Basically I am forcing myself to not finish one piece and move on to the next, but instead work the whole scene together. The idea is to allow me to be more flexible, as it is much easier to delete/rework something when I haven't worked the whole thing with textures and all. I've scrapped quite a few things along the way already. Not that it was bad in itself, but it wasn't serving the scene as much as I hoped. Of course posting now on Polycount is also asking you guys for feedbacks so I can improve things further.
The main reference of this project is the following concept by Wang Rui:
Contrary to previous projects, I'm not looking to follow the concept perfectly. I mostly use it for the layout and the main tree focus.
Here is what I have, which is pretty much just an advanced blockout. Some pieces are just low poly, some have a base normal bake applied. Nothing is fully textured and there is no roughness map at all for now.
My idea was to start with the concept layout and incorporate various real life references to it (going for a more colourful traditional Chinese style). It's hard to see without any texture work, but hopefully this should be more clear in the coming weeks. Lighting/PostProcess is also totally WIP, I haven't decided yet if I go for a more dramatic atmosphere following the concept or something more vivid.
My next focus will be on materials, working on the first full materials of the scene. I'll probably keep the workflow of working on the entire scene by step instead of focusing entirely on one thing. Ideally I'll just make a first pass on most materials and make sure everything works fine before doing more. Along the way I also plan to add some props, do a vegetation pass and include the VFX like the rain.
As said above I'm not expecting fast update, but ideally I'll keep regular progress on this thread.
All feedback is of course welcomed!
Hello everyone,
It's been quite a while since I posted anything on Polycount. In fact I haven't posted anything since I entered the industry, which is totally not the right thing to do! I finally decided to start another project of my own and spend a little bit of time each day on it. It's not going at lightning speed, but it's steadily progressing. I pretty much finished the blockout/investigation phase, and I figured it's a good time to start posting it in here.
First, here are the main goals:
- Finish a new portfolio piece with current skills and workflows (duh).
- Integrate Blender and Substance suite in my workflow.
- Push some more technical things with the polish phase (such as rain, puddles, ...).
- Work the whole scene together instead of asset per asset, forcing me to be more flexible.
The last point is a bit of a weird one. Basically I am forcing myself to not finish one piece and move on to the next, but instead work the whole scene together. The idea is to allow me to be more flexible, as it is much easier to delete/rework something when I haven't worked the whole thing with textures and all. I've scrapped quite a few things along the way already. Not that it was bad in itself, but it wasn't serving the scene as much as I hoped. Of course posting now on Polycount is also asking you guys for feedbacks so I can improve things further.
The main reference of this project is the following concept by Wang Rui:
Contrary to previous projects, I'm not looking to follow the concept perfectly. I mostly use it for the layout and the main tree focus.
Here is what I have, which is pretty much just an advanced blockout. Some pieces are just low poly, some have a base normal bake applied. Nothing is fully textured and there is no roughness map at all for now.
My idea was to start with the concept layout and incorporate various real life references to it (going for a more colourful traditional Chinese style). It's hard to see without any texture work, but hopefully this should be more clear in the coming weeks. Lighting/PostProcess is also totally WIP, I haven't decided yet if I go for a more dramatic atmosphere following the concept or something more vivid.
My next focus will be on materials, working on the first full materials of the scene. I'll probably keep the workflow of working on the entire scene by step instead of focusing entirely on one thing. Ideally I'll just make a first pass on most materials and make sure everything works fine before doing more. Along the way I also plan to add some props, do a vegetation pass and include the VFX like the rain.
As said above I'm not expecting fast update, but ideally I'll keep regular progress on this thread.
All feedback is of course welcomed!
Replies
Quite busy these days but I did a first draft of the plaster materials. I've got to work on it more and integrate more decals, but I want to have a couple of materials in the scene before going too far. I'll also need to fix the lighting once I have more surfaces rendering correctly, the current setup will probably cause some issues very soon. Not too familiar with UE4 lighting though, so I'll have to play with it a bit.
@PLYONS Thanks. I moved back to Belgium for some holidays so I should have more time to advance a bit on it.
And today's update includes some first draft on the support of the roof, placing the colorful pattern. I'll go back on them later on, but I'd like to do a pass on the full scene and flesh out a bit more the lighting first.
There's a bit of a lack of metal in this scene right now, so I'll add some minor elements such as trims and circle attachments later on here and there.
[EDIT]
I did a quick pass on the lighting as it really needed it. It's still very much wip and a tad too reddish, but I think it's going in the right direction overall.
I'll also add the last screenshot to the top post for ease of use.
Foliage always causes me headaches too. In prod because they are expensive as hell with the overdraw, on personal work because I am no vegetation artist and it's not something that follows the usual workflow. I usually end up cheating like crazy all the time, which is the case here too.
In this case I just wanted a quick and dirty first pass so I worked off a photograph of a branch, added color variation into it and a colored linear gradient to darken the base. Then the shader is based on the same approach from Koola's work: masked subsurface two sided shader with the albedo plugged into the subsurface (no albedo input at all), constant roughness, normal multiplied by the two sided sign to unify the lighting (normals face up). After that I just added a purple/pink slight emissive and a power on the albedo to control things more. I highly recommend checking out the free Lightroominteriordaylight scene from Koola on the marketplace, there's awesome things on lighting.
I'm actually quite pleased with how it looks since it was supposed to be a quick and dirty first pass. I'll tune it more later on (maybe more contrast and more dense/smaller branches, but I kinda like the stylized direction, will wait for the rest of the scene to be more fleshed out) but for now it does the job well enough I think.
Next update might take more time, I'll probably try a few things on the wood facade and treat it as a whole instead of separate updates. Critiques are welcome as usual.
The roof foliage is indeed moveable for now to avoid problematic shadows. I'm sure there's plenty of ways to make it work in static but at this point in a portfolio piece it's not a priority, I might look into it later on. As for the tiles, I used Substance Designer for them. Texturing is one of my weak points, so I'm trying various workflows for different pieces. Some are photoshop, some use Substance Designer, some Painter, some polypainting, some Quixel nDO and I combine them together regularly too. I love using plenty of programs so portfolio pieces are really fun on that. ;p
Latest version has a wood beam first draft, foliage tweaking and I decided to setup the scene correctly to have nicer renders (supersampling 200 percents for now and some few tweaks on post process). DOF has always been an issue for me, so it's probably going to change a lot in the future. ;D
And thanks for so detailed breakdown, learned some new things for me
Working a bit less per day right now, so progress is slower. The wood is also trickier than I thought and I'll probably go through different iterations later on with decals and weathering. Got the first pass for the top though, and I blocked out some gold. At first I went more for a black metal but I'd like to try a gold direction first. It's a bit of a stereotype I guess, but it might work well in the end, we'll see!
Also darkened the tree a bit since there was not enough tone separation with the wood on the facade.
That being said, here's a peek at the current version with the bigger changes:
- Lighting reworked from scratch. Lighting isn't something I do in production, and I guess it shows a lot. I've re-started from scratch to get something a bit more interesting. This time I also played with post process and exposure. It still needs work, but it looks better. Unfortunately I do not have an IPS screen at home currently, so it might be a bit crushed in the dark right now.
- More play on dark and gold. This is something I found in a ref and I'd like to iterate on it. I might change some materials along this line. It should play well with some weathering details later on (grass, moss, ...). Or it won't and I will change it, we'll see!
- Glossy painted wood instead of the previous more raw one. It was too noisy and not really interesting at a distance.
- Materials balancing here and there.
Crits are welcome once again. Nothing is set in stone right now and I still need to finish the first pass on all materials. Once done I'll look for a second pass and some weathering touches. Expect slow updates, but it will be finished at some point. ^^
I'll also probably rework the tree from scratch as a unique asset, it was more of a placeholder and it doesn't hold well at all. Considering it's a bit of a focus, it would make sense to spend time on it.
Modelling is nailed!
One thing worries me though, your concept has a vertical format that works really well but your screenshots are 16:9 which kind of breaks the composition. Furthermore when I look at the concept, it feels like a really tiny place, this feeling is a bit lost on your screenshot, probably because of the format. I know screens are 16:9 but if it's just a portfolio piece I'd keep the vertical format for the beauty shot, it'll do wonders!
Finally, something I really like in the concept and I think you should keep, is the blown out sky with some bloom. For now your lighting is still a bit dull.
Anyway, you already have a really good piece, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with he comment on the 16:9. For now this isn't really working well since the extra space isn't used at all. Even in vertical format it wouldn't work fully as I still miss a lot of things which make the concept more interesting (puddles, rain, moss, papers on ground, ...). For now I will not really focus on the final composition as I miss too many things, but I definitely think that going with at least one vertical shot mimicking the concept would probably be best in the end. Ideally I will still have a 16:9 version but it will be more interesting, that's the plan anyway. ;p
Lighting is indeed still dull, and also not really going with the rainy mood. I'll dedicate some time in the future once the scene is more advanced. Good point on the blue bloom and the overblown sky, I'll definitely try to play with that!
It's really going to be a pretty long one. I've written a TODO list of the main things I will do in the future. It should also force me to focus on the right things instead of playing with the lights without reason. ;p
- Simple wood door for the main entrance? (not blocked out, but in concept, is it needed?)
- Facade top door (too much samey wood, add coloured part like in the concept?)
- Windows dirt pass
- Separate the back area after the door more like in the concept (simple additive fog plane?)