[UE4] Black Ash Desert [WIP]

Maximum-Dev · Nov 2016

Hello,

Sharing some screens here as I make progress on the new landscape I'm working on.
Black Ash Desert is called to an area on Iceland around Reykjavik peninsula. It's almost bare earth but also truly one of the most impressive locations on earth.

So as a landscape addict I couldn't resist replicating it in UE4. Still very WIP.

Maximum-Dev · Nov 2016

Had a little time today doing some more progress. Mostly tweaking materials and lighting.

Maximum-Dev · Nov 2016

Added some sulfur type of stuff.

Mr. Darko · Nov 2016

Amazing. Some of these screenshots look almost like photographs even under close scrutiny. The choice of location is both unique and challenging (from a game art perspective, it can be difficult to achieve pleasing color and value contrast in an area that can generally be best described as "black and grey"), and so far even in an early WIP stage I think you've pulled it off.

If I had any comments to give about how to "improve" it, I'd say that introducing some more overall value contrast could be interesting. That is, increasing the amount of snow in the highest peaks to have some bright white mountains in the distance and dark hills in the foreground. I imagine it'll be challenging to populate the region since there's really no vegetation to speak of in the area, but there are lots of interesting rock formations from the pictures I looked at, which could be used to add visual interest, with both more large scale formations and little rocks with geometry spread all over the place (I imagine you were planning on doing that anyway, but I figure I'd critique based on what I see in the WIP images). Perhaps you could even hint more at the volcanic nature of the region and include some steam vents interspersed as well.

Maximum-Dev · Nov 2016

Mr. Darko said:

Amazing. Some of these screenshots look almost like photographs even under close scrutiny. The choice of location is both unique and challenging (from a game art perspective, it can be difficult to achieve pleasing color and value contrast in an area that can generally be best described as "black and grey"), and so far even in an early WIP stage I think you've pulled it off.

If I had any comments to give about how to "improve" it, I'd say that introducing some more overall value contrast could be interesting. That is, increasing the amount of snow in the highest peaks to have some bright white mountains in the distance and dark hills in the foreground. I imagine it'll be challenging to populate the region since there's really no vegetation to speak of in the area, but there are lots of interesting rock formations from the pictures I looked at, which could be used to add visual interest, with both more large scale formations and little rocks with geometry spread all over the place (I imagine you were planning on doing that anyway, but I figure I'd critique based on what I see in the WIP images). Perhaps you could even hint more at the volcanic nature of the region and include some steam vents interspersed as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

The snow I'm not happy with it yet. I'm still unsure what's the best way to go about it. Previously I used to do some editing to WM generated masks in PS and use it for layering the snow on the top but with this location I can't do that as it ends up looking much different than how the snow is sitting on the mountains in the real location. I might generate a low poly mesh from the landscape and port it to substance painter for painting a mask for snow there. Would have to look for other option if that don't turn out well.

I went ahead and did something like what you mentioned (steam vents) not sure if this is what you had in mind though. Also updated the sulfur like coloring on the material. Here it is.

Mr. Darko · Nov 2016

I think that looks really good and it works. Makes sense for there to be sulfur build-up around it as well. But I recall seeing a picture where some steam just sort of comes up out of subtle fissures in the ground, almost looking it's coming from nowhere. You could do a bit of both, with cracks and the ant-hill style vents.

Maximum-Dev · Nov 2016

Mr. Darko said:

I think that looks really good and it works. Makes sense for there to be sulfur build-up around it as well. But I recall seeing a picture where some steam just sort of comes up out of subtle fissures in the ground, almost looking it's coming from nowhere. You could do a bit of both, with cracks and the ant-hill style vents.

Noted. Thanks for the feedback!

Okay I've been working on a mask for my splat map to use for the snow layer. The issue I'm having is that the landscape is 64 Square Kilometers and a 4k mask (I keep my splat maps at 4096x4096) isn't enough resolution when covers the whole landscape. The edges between the black and white pixels look like big pixels in engine. I tried overlaying a tiling mask on the snow mask to make the blend a little better. I'm quite unhappy and have to do the daily struggle.