Abandoned Space-Station [UE4]

Sheers

I made a sci-fi space station for my senior project in Unity 5 (original thread here), but there were lots of bad assets and things that needed polish.  Wanting to continue it, I moved this over to UE4, and started reworking as much as I could.  I'm pretty happy for what I've done in here vs. Unity.  

Current things I'm noticing:
-Bloom/Len's Flare needs to be dialed back
-Lighten up the shadows
-Garbage bag materials aren't on par perhaps
-Ceiling material too shiny

My goal is to wrap up this environment by the end of this month.  I'd like to hear feedback on lighting and things that should be iterated on more.  If you'd like wire-frames of assets, I can post those!

There's a flickering light in this level, so I apologize about the brightness in this shot and the following.  I'll get around to making a fly-through of the level so you can see it impact the space.

Cglewis

The one thing that stands out is there doesnt seem to be a focal point and your materials are too shiny

Cay

I think first and foremost you need to sort the lighting out.. but you noticed that already.
Right now it's hard to tell what's going on.

skyline5gtr

Its very hard to see anything that's going on. The lighting is killing anything positive that may be in the scene

Sheers

Thanks for confirming the lighting issue.  I've been tinkering for about an hour with the lights, but I'm not feeling the right progress.  Should I be modifying a skylight to control the darkness? Or should I add a Directional Light and do something with that?  I think the scene could work without one since it's indoor lighting.

gerridoo

Have you tried using the exponential height fog with a very small value? I know for my scene it helped bring some light back into the dark areas when tweaked with the right settings. Could help with the lighting a bit. 

Cay

Usually I use a point light and switch it to linear falloff and turn cast shadows off. That's a way to get to get a pretty constant low value in while retaining control. If you use a fog or environment colour it affects all of your map. Skylight won't help you at all in indoor settings.
Btw.. to me it looks like you didn't bake lighting, it looks very much like the dynamic preview. Excuse me if I'm wrong. My lights are usually all static, only the main source is stationary(e.g. sun).

Sheers

I've iterated on the lighting using the feedback everyone provided.  Here's what I've done:  

• Most of my lights were set to dynamic (some were set to static, need to pay more attention to that). 
• Materials that were wayyyyy to shiny were modfied.  There's a few more materials that will need to be dialed down.
• The exp height fog with some value helped fill some black space! 
• I've also done the point light method Cay mentioned, and it's helping me move along.  
• I added light fixtures in the containment area to help fill in some black voids.  
• I modified some smaller lights and mounted them on the walls, acting as emergency light of sort.  

I think for the remainder of this I'll stay focused on the space for the containment and the under construction area.  I'll just hide the other places until I master this space. Next up, I'm going to edit the materials on the decor supports (in the 2nd image on the corner of the walls).  I'll look into adding other ceiling lights,  a new floor pattern to mix it up, and adding some decals.  Anything else I might be overlooking?

Sheers

Made a texture atlas for some scraps of paper and trash on the ground as well as some shelves with props.  Props so far are medical bins and storage boxes that hold papers inside of them.  I could be more creative with the shelf design, so I'll revisit that asset. Furthermore, I changed the tile size on the floor to a larger size (i was using a TexCoord before), and this felt nicer.  A blueprint was made for some pipes to be made on a spline.  

I'm noticing in the 3rd shot the blue cables normals look incorrect, but I'm assuming reading this thread  will help me fix it.   I'm leaning towards making some higher quality garbage bags, because they feel a bit off in the scene.  I'll aim to keep pushing lighting to get better and better with this.    

Sheers

I'm nearing completion with this.  It's been a lot of lightmap and minor tweaks for this.  I'm trying to see if I can get the metal on one of the wall panels to better interact with the light.