[UE4] The Frozen Pass

FullSynch

Hello everyone, I'm in my final year in school and working on some environments in my free time to fill out my portfolio. I've been putting off making a thread but I figure I'm at a good spot to open it up to public critique. It's still got a ways to go till completion, but I'de like to hear your thoughts on it. 

The original concept is by Daniel Conway
http://danielconway.artworkfolio.com/
[spoiler] [/spoiler]
Additional Images
[spoiler] [/spoiler]
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And a gif to see the water in action. 
[spoiler] [/spoiler]

Thanks!

chrisradsby

Aw yeah, this is so frickin awesome. I don't really have any critiques, I'm just enjoying the beautiful art!

 Mucho love from the Ubi Massive art-team!

Mathew O

This is sick O.o Great work!

Luxap

Following this for a while now, and this turned out super awesome man, Awesome job! 

Tits

This is very lovely, been following the work through twitter and I love how this turned out.
I'm not an environment artist but I'm sure lots of people would love to see a breakdown of the work.
Btw I don't think you need to put a spoiler tag in your own thread  

Nuclear Angel

Great job on the scene, you say you are not done, what is it you want to add to the scene? I also think that your scene looks extremely good in motion, love the gif! 

Makkon

Absolutely spectacular! Love the ice, the lighting, and the materials are superb! My only critique is that the stone steps feel a little rounded/soft and less structured compared to the hard, fractured, rhythmic steps from the concept. That's just a small part though. Looking forward to updates!

Sebeuroc

This is rad! Almost looks like a painting. Good work.

R3D

Beautiful

Norron

Really love how this is turning out. my only issue at the second is the foreground contrast. Nice work man!

NoRank

Wow, I thought this was a painting. Really nice job!

FullSynch

Wow thanks for the kind words folks It's still got a ways to go so I appreciate every bit of critique!

@chrisradsby @Mathew O Thanks! Much love back, I absolutely love Ubi's environment work. 

@Luxap Haha, yeah I'm following your work aswell, love that rainforest. 

@Tits THANK. I still feel that many aspects are subject to change, but I've received a lot of requests so I'll definitely be doing several breakdowns when it's in a more finalized state.  As for spoilers, I was just a little worried about the images being too big/many. 

@Nuclear Angel Thank you! Yeah the water comes through much better when it's moving. I've compiled a to-do list at the bottom.

@Makkon Thanks! Yeah that aspect has bothered me a lot, I am reworking the stairs as we speak. This fractured cut stone look is a little trickier than I imagined. 

@Sebeuroc Thanks, I want to push it even closer to that feel!

@R3D Bruh

@Norron Thanks, yes this bothers me a lot as well, I may need to look into some kind of negative light solution or some way to block bounce light from reaching there. 

@NoRank I like to hear that, I'm trying my best to capture even a fraction of Dan's style. 

For now my to do list is:
- Stair rework
- Foreground contrast
- Rock material tweaks 
- Particle variation
- Moss variation
- Hanging moss geo
- Icicles 
- Falling ice bits
- Ice material tweaks
- Fog tweaks
- General lighting tweaks

FullSynch

Here's some moss in the mean time. I've used Naughty Dogs "Ambient Occlusion Fresnel" from page 38 of their new tech art doc to create depth. 
 http://advances.realtimerendering.com/other/2016/naughty_dog/NaughtyDog_TechArt_Final.pdf

R3D

I'm really excited to see that new stair rework. also your water is looking a bit blobby

Kashaar

That's some top art, boi.

melli06

This is super amazing! Thank you for linking the Naughty Dog tech Art pdf as well! 

almighty_gir

FullSynch said:

Here's some moss in the mean time. I've used Naughty Dogs "Ambient Occlusion Fresnel" from page 38 of their new tech art doc to create depth. 
 http://advances.realtimerendering.com/other/2016/naughty_dog/NaughtyDog_TechArt_Final.pdf

Real fuckin' neato! How did you get around the fact that you can't get a light vector in UE4's material editor? or did you pass in the light direction using blueprints and a single light source?

Jakob Gavelli

almighty_gir said:

Real fuckin' neato! How did you get around the fact that you can't get a light vector in UE4's material editor? or did you pass in the light direction using blueprints and a single light source?

From reading the document it seems to be a case of masking out the AO-map by a simple fresnel. So there's no light direction involved, only a dot-product between vertex-normal and camera position.  
I never really thought about that, pretty nifty trick! 

Looking great! The GIF is just pure lovelyness! My only critique would be that I get confused by the scale of the environment. At first glance it looks really huge, but then looking at the size of the stairs it looks kind of small. But with most elements being rock or water etc, I don't have any object of reference, the stairs may be huge or small, I can't really tell!

Telerak

Upon first glance I thought the first image was the concept, looks breathtaking. The Gif you included is awesome. I can't wait to see more of these!

chrisevansart

damnnnn sonnnnn 

almighty_gir

Jakob Gavelli said:

almighty_gir said:

Real fuckin' neato! How did you get around the fact that you can't get a light vector in UE4's material editor? or did you pass in the light direction using blueprints and a single light source?

From reading the document it seems to be a case of masking out the AO-map by a simple fresnel. So there's no light direction involved, only a dot-product between vertex-normal and camera position.  
I never really thought about that, pretty nifty trick! 

Looking great! The GIF is just pure lovelyness! My only critique would be that I get confused by the scale of the environment. At first glance it looks really huge, but then looking at the size of the stairs it looks kind of small. But with most elements being rock or water etc, I don't have any object of reference, the stairs may be huge or small, I can't really tell!

Ah i was reading the next part of the doc where they handle fuzz/microfibres. my bad!

No wait... they provide actual code, and it requires a light vector to do:
float microshadow = saturate(abs(dot(N,L)) + aparture - 1.0); //where "L" = light vector.

Jakob Gavelli

almighty_gir said:

Ah i was reading the next part of the doc where they handle fuzz/microfibres. my bad!

No wait... they provide actual code, and it requires a light vector to do:
float microshadow = saturate(abs(dot(N,L)) + aparture - 1.0); //where "L" = light vector.

Nah, man. We're talking about Ambient Occlusion Fresnel I thought? xD 
Page 38 to 40? 
float aoFadeTerm = saturate(dot(vertexNormalWS, viewWS));
ao = lerp(1.0, ao, aoFadeTerm);

Microshadow looks pretty dope though, I bet you could do that in UE4 aswell.
Didn't mean to start answering questions about others stuff, sorry about that!
I'll let FullSynch explain his own work! xD

ZacD

Jakob Gavelli said:

Microshadow looks pretty dope though, I bet you could do that in UE4 aswell.

I think it was added in 4.14. (At 55:42)

https://youtu.be/6kfMVxNSowM?t=3342

Sharur

Amazing work! Thumbs up!

FullSynch

As cool as the micro-shadows would have been, it's a bit over my head at this point. I've only used the AO Fresnel and the UE4 fuzzy shading node for light wrapping, it's a very simple elegant solution. I also have a vertex painted flow maps system to show you guys soon. Just needs some clean up. 
[spoiler]

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LaurentiuN

OH MY GOD, this is freaking awesome, great job man.

KrisLW

This is incredible!

Fresnel AO is genious - very well implemented! You've got a ton of really awesome things going in this scene - I'm definitely interested to see that flow system!

Also, the water in general is gorgeous - I absolutely love how voluminous the main waterfalls are. It's nice to see them not just particles or planes.

The only "critique" I have, if you could even call it that, is the big ice in the back. When I see the top of the image, I think "oh, it's a painting," and then when I get down to the rest of the scene, "oh, no it's not."  It's still beautiful, and it works - it just doesn't quite match the foreground style IMO.

xChris

Wow I thought all the images were a painting, you nailed the concept! Awesome job!

Iuliae

Amazing work! I love that cartoonish but at the same time realistic look. Didn't believe was UE4 at first!
I agree with KirsLW about the ice: looks a bit off together with the rock part. But it's a really small detail. It's really an awesome work! 

ActionDawg

ZacD said:

Jakob Gavelli said:

Microshadow looks pretty dope though, I bet you could do that in UE4 aswell.

I think it was added in 4.14. (At 55:42)

https://youtu.be/6kfMVxNSowM?t=3342

Hey, the 4.14 contact shadows are actual hard shadows done via a screenspace raytrace while "microshadows" are an ad-hoc AO hack. There's a strong argument to be made though that contact shadows are a direct improvement on Uncharted's microshadows.

ant1fact

This is mouthwatering

FullSynch

@s1dK Thanks!

@KrisLW I appreciate the kind words. I totally agree about the foreground, hopefully this iteration is a little closer. 

@xChris Thanks man! I try my best.

@luliae Thank you, it's been interesting trying to balance the style.

@ant1fact Haha, thanks!

This week I've reworked the stairs and path from the ground up. First I made a tiling cobble material in Zbrush. I sub-d the stairs, applied the depth map as displacement and decimated it back down. After re-importing it to UE4 I had to nudge some things around and re-paint my foliage/moss, but I think the improvement was worth it. If I haven't mentioned it yet, I do all that in Blender. 





Water looks kinda bad in stills, wonder if I can emulate long-exposure photography in UE4. 

Chimp

water looks bad because it doesnt seem to reflect the environment, just the sky. It's just all blue reflection and nothing else i.e the green mossy stuff etc. Get some reflection probes going or do some SSR, or both

ZacD

The ice/snow near the water would probably look better if it was more wet looking. It looks a bit too rough and out of place right now. The higher up snow/ice looks good though. 

FullSynch

@Chimp Good call, looks like I was mis-managing my capture spheres and it was causing various issues. 

@ZacD Agreed, I'll tackle that soon. 

cptSwing

Jesus fuck.

FullSynch

Thanks

FullSynch

Thank you to everyone who's pitched in their critique, I've worked on this tirelessly and now feel comfortable bringing it to a close and placing it in my portfolio. I feel I've learned so much and I can't wait to start my next environment. In the mean time I'll continue to release breakdowns and maybe a couple tutorials/resources to spread the love. I've done an article over at 80 level that goes a bit into materials and painting flow maps if anyone is interested! 






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZueoEa4AVc