Some evil dude's Environment Dump
vertex
Latest stuff:
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Old stuff from the beginning - "Project Kabuto".
Early stages and WIP notes:
Very early in the process of learning basic stuff in UE4. Blocking out the level of the unexisting game, starting with the big shapes. Real big shapes. Used to be a lot bigger just a day ago, with a lot of stuff like this:
The thing was about 1.5 km in-game, if my calculations of unreal units were correct (they probably weren't). But something was wrong with the feel of the level. I figured, islands don't sport mountains that big (UPD: as it turns out, they actually do sport them, but whatever). Large continental ranges do. So... I cut them down. Not to worry. Their time will come soon enough.
Plans are large. Everything unfortunately is for the first time in UE4, so progress is rather hard.
I heard rumors about world position shader trick which can be used to project staff onto vertical stretched-ass terrain cliffs, cover the tops of the rocks with grass textures, and any arcane thing imaginable. Cool. No idea how to do any of it.
Soooo anyway, I'll be posting some silly WIP staff as I learn my way through this. Here's one:
Destiny's Traveler came along during the early stages of blockout. Helped out with the terraforming of the empty void.
_______________________________________________________
Old stuff from the beginning - "Project Kabuto".
Early stages and WIP notes:
Very early in the process of learning basic stuff in UE4. Blocking out the level of the unexisting game, starting with the big shapes. Real big shapes. Used to be a lot bigger just a day ago, with a lot of stuff like this:
The thing was about 1.5 km in-game, if my calculations of unreal units were correct (they probably weren't). But something was wrong with the feel of the level. I figured, islands don't sport mountains that big (UPD: as it turns out, they actually do sport them, but whatever). Large continental ranges do. So... I cut them down. Not to worry. Their time will come soon enough.
Plans are large. Everything unfortunately is for the first time in UE4, so progress is rather hard.
I heard rumors about world position shader trick which can be used to project staff onto vertical stretched-ass terrain cliffs, cover the tops of the rocks with grass textures, and any arcane thing imaginable. Cool. No idea how to do any of it.
Soooo anyway, I'll be posting some silly WIP staff as I learn my way through this. Here's one:
Destiny's Traveler came along during the early stages of blockout. Helped out with the terraforming of the empty void.
Replies
What is Kabuto without Delphi? Well, actually, Kabuto is Delphi. That's weird.
Testing a character here with some raw brutal blockout. As an environment artist I never get to play with the characters, ever (T-shaped dolls aside). Animator's domain. First time for everything, indeed.
substance designer and photogrammetry.
However as it turns out substance designer is a just a glorified World Machine-style heightmap generation tool (which is out there for eons now) with a nice but limited set of black and white shapes and some awesome Photoshop distortion filters and multiply/subtract/overlay combiners. Cool. And - the most dramatic part - all you have after hours spent connecting nodes is... a texture. And all environment art jobs list Designer as a must-have state of the art soft? Come on! How about I take a photo and make a 10 times better looking texture out of it in no time? Substance Designer this, Substance Designer that. Pff.
Sure, tessellation looks kick-ass on all of these BALLS, but in-engine on real geo? Not as cool. Aaand there's also this performance stuff to think about.
Long story short, Designer is OK, but is it mandatory? Didn't feel so. Just another software that slows everything down (have you counted how many apps you're required to use these days? two digits number, anyone?). But it's far from useless. Going to use. Not going to post BALLS with all this pride like some people. Show me the real IN-ENGINE optimized geo, baby!
Photogrammetry sounded like magic. When I first saw development stuff from the Vanishing of Ethan Carter I didn't believe it was possible. But it was a reality. It wasn't great. It felt terrible. People like me are no longer needed, that's how it felt. Any dummy with a camera can be an "artist" now. Press "OK" on some dumb-ass IPHONE APP and here you go, my friend! Wait, what? Iphone? I was under the impression that grammetry tech is a little out of reach of an average Joe. It is not. Free to use for years now. Way before Ethan Carter, too. So I tried the tech. Well, as it turns out... yeah, artists are obsolete. One click and you have a model. Bye-bye, artists! Hey, remember these days when everything was handcrafted, based on a concept art piece of an actual artist? Good old days. Now we have a "technical artist". Like 1984.
I managed to generate some decent models, great looking after decimation, too. However there were some complications. UVs. Thank goodness, UVs. They are a mess. Clearing them up potentially takes more time than creating a quick and clean geo, slapping some alpha masks on it in Mud/ZB, some photo textures, and all the while having a direct control over everything. With photogrammetry, you're out of control. That's "being a slave to reference", in the most literal meaning possible. Going to use. Not going to be proud about it. That's cheating. That's like taking a photo, applying some fancy PS filter on it and calling it a painting. And being proud about it. To think that I was called a lazy-ass lowlife in art school for blurring pencil lines with my fingers. Professionals don't do that, they said. Dear teachers, you had no idea.
Photogrammetry is a thing, yes, but there's still time until the tech is perfected. When they're going to figure how to optimize it, lots of people are going to lose their jobs.
In the end, after trying these and some other minor techniques, I feel much more confident than just a week before.
If someone out there is afraid of change and new soft, like me, don't be. Use your old methods. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if you want to try this new stuff, don't be afraid either.
And practice your hand drawing. All of this 3D business is going to be done by robots soon enough. Google is working hard on that.
To me Photogrammetry is a tool, a means to an end, another type of brush in the artists tool box. Theres no way a machine is going to put a bunch of photogrammetry together and approach the beauty and quality that a good artist can. A good environment artist will think about the scene as a whole - what is the player doing in this scene, where should we focus thier experience, what sort of emotional experience is the player going to have here - fear, joy etc? I also see a lot of games coming out that cant use photogrametry because they simply arent realistic in thier art style, photogrametry rocks or grass in overwatch or zelda - I think not. So its no big worry but does look fun to try out I must admit!
good luck with your scene, I remember giants: citizen kabuto, wierd but impressive for its time!
Again, people who do marble palaces and power armors and metallic heavy sci-fi architecture should be happy. But I work with the landscapes, terrain, mountains and I'm not impressed at all.
PBR is a much bigger difference than you're selling it as. It's not so much your process that matters it's the rendering process that they work with and it allows you to really set apart two materials much better than just Pre-PBR rendering. Creating rocks I've been able to differentiate eroded and weathered surfaces and fresh cracks using Spec PBR better than i'd have been able to with Pre-PBR and they look better due to PBR.
Fact is - PBR rendering is here to stay, most companies creating 3D games are using it because it gives better in all situations.
Still trying to figure technology out. I created a simple black and white mask for the water and plugged it into roughness output, but reflection doesn't work properly. There are 2 reflections looks like, separated by a sharp ugly line which shifts when you looks up or down. No idea how to solve this one.
Oh no, UE4 is difficult! My textures are going crazy! They're are fine one second, then get blurred by the engine just moments later. Does this mean that my scene is too heavy?
Photogrammetry. The real quick way to create some useless models with UV's that are all messed up.
Halo artbook. The cliffhanger.
Sooo, I saw this picture in my Halo artbook and went like "Woooow. Awesome. But I'm gonna beat ya, Bungie. Watch me".
With some good dark side motivation I got to work.
Initial Kabuto-assets were used as a blockout pieces.
I focused on a single camera view.
Then I started replacing photogrammed bullshit with the real thing from World Machine. I got a clear winner.
Hot.
Hotter.
Disco!
Aaaand the end result.
Still no waterfall. Couldn't find any tech that would look nice from a huge distance. Textures blur themselves spontaneously, probably a lot of polygons on the screen or something. It couldn't get the "kite demo" log on the foreground to work, that useless piece of wood! Pictured here is a rare moment where it decided not to blur itself.
To get this view I had to push the sky sphere to it's limits (scale 4 or something). Even within these limits, I could not place things out there in the absolute back, because the fog starts fucking around and refuses to work. "Too far", the fog says. The light doesn't compute properly, mountain meshes doesn't light properly, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Will try to master the realm of architecture next.