Survival Horror Realistic Environment Detail
polycounter lvl 2
Hi everyone, I'm beginning to work on a survival horror game in Unreal Engine 4. I've been modeling and texturing 3d models for years but am fairly new at creating assets for games. The game will be in the style of Allison Road and P.T. I have a few questions that I hope somebody can help me with. Mostly dealing with workflows for adding subtle dirt and grunge onto my environment pieces.
First is how do you think is the best way to add localized damage and dirt on meshes that are meant for tiling materials?
In this shot here. notice the black dirt and edge wear on the baseboard to the left and the wall on the very right next to the pizza box. I figured vertex painting is one way to go about it, but doesn't that require extra unneeded geometry? Especially when i thought for a game the models should be as efficient and low poly as possible.
A grunge mask seems like it would be a little too random when you want the details placed in a more realistic manner on edges and corners.
So that leaves me with thinking one of two options. Either decals were used, or each wall and trim piece has it's own texture. I've been tinkering with decals and have been having a hard time getting this effect. Would texturing each wall piece separately be a bad way to go about this, I was able to achieve the effect by painting each wall in substance painter but that means each piece gets it's own texture, which also seems pretty inefficient.
I'd also like to achieve an effect similar to where the baseboard meets the wall. This grunge seems to be very localized and hard to achieve using a random mask. If I make a mask for each piece, wouldn't it be just as good to texture the whole piece on it's own?
Here is what I have so far:
Another problem is I can't seem to get the trim to look good on the walls. It's almost like there's too much contrast between the two objects and they need to be "blended" together slightly and I'm not sure how to get them to look nice together as the Allison Road screenshots above are.
It actually almost looks like my trim pieces aren't even attached to the wall. Is this a lighting issue? Or something to do with the materials?
Thank you for any feedback guys and I'm hoping somebody can point me in the right direction. I've been searching the forums for a while now but I'm off work this week and would love to make some real progress on this game. Once I get my workflow down I'd love to keep posting progress pics. I'm sure how have many more questions as well.
First is how do you think is the best way to add localized damage and dirt on meshes that are meant for tiling materials?
In this shot here. notice the black dirt and edge wear on the baseboard to the left and the wall on the very right next to the pizza box. I figured vertex painting is one way to go about it, but doesn't that require extra unneeded geometry? Especially when i thought for a game the models should be as efficient and low poly as possible.
A grunge mask seems like it would be a little too random when you want the details placed in a more realistic manner on edges and corners.
So that leaves me with thinking one of two options. Either decals were used, or each wall and trim piece has it's own texture. I've been tinkering with decals and have been having a hard time getting this effect. Would texturing each wall piece separately be a bad way to go about this, I was able to achieve the effect by painting each wall in substance painter but that means each piece gets it's own texture, which also seems pretty inefficient.
I'd also like to achieve an effect similar to where the baseboard meets the wall. This grunge seems to be very localized and hard to achieve using a random mask. If I make a mask for each piece, wouldn't it be just as good to texture the whole piece on it's own?
Here is what I have so far:
Another problem is I can't seem to get the trim to look good on the walls. It's almost like there's too much contrast between the two objects and they need to be "blended" together slightly and I'm not sure how to get them to look nice together as the Allison Road screenshots above are.
It actually almost looks like my trim pieces aren't even attached to the wall. Is this a lighting issue? Or something to do with the materials?
Thank you for any feedback guys and I'm hoping somebody can point me in the right direction. I've been searching the forums for a while now but I'm off work this week and would love to make some real progress on this game. Once I get my workflow down I'd love to keep posting progress pics. I'm sure how have many more questions as well.