[UE4] Cliff Tower Ruins

Sharur

Decided to share the environment asset pack, that I was working on the last month.

McGreed

The overall shape is good, I think, however the strong repeating tiling lets it down. You can especially see it with picture #4, it's very apparent.

Sharur

What do you suggest? How would you blend those?

McGreed

I don't know how your meshs or textures sets look like, however it needs some more variant tile sets, or make current ones bigger, so its not just a 3 brick high, but 6 or more, and tiling less noticable. Have different variants of the same tile set, to break up the uniformity, because currently the siluette of for example the corner of the building is very noticable, because of the protuding brick.

Sharur

I'm going to go with shader update and make sure, that it can be painted on top to get rid of these tiling issue.

Eric Chadwick

Be careful with the blending... you may see strange transitions in the blended areas. You have a regular pattern of stones with distinct gaps between them. Each texture set should probably use the same number of rows as the first set.

If you had flat concrete-like textures instead, the blending would be easier because you wouldn't have to deal with the grout lines. I'm not saying you should do this, just that this is why it's harder.

You might also want to make the blends hard-edged rather than soft. So you don't see soft rock edges.

I would suggest making modular pieces that you can snap together, which tile at the edges but have different patterns in the middles. It also helps to add individual stone models on the corners/edges, that pop out for depth, and easy variation. 

Some resources if you haven't seen them yet
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture

Sharur

@Eric Chadwick
Thanks Eric! It is a modular set, around 10 different pieces, which snap together. I guess my mistake was to use the same base for everything. But each has a different texture assigned to it. I will look into blending.

Sharur

I think vertex painting and decals did the job.

Eric Chadwick

It still looks heavily tiled. What does your tile texture look like?

Currently it looks like it's tiling 6 or 7 times within this area. A single tile this size would work better. 

Sharur

Eric Chadwick said:

It still looks heavily tiled. What does your tile texture look like?

Currently it looks like it's tiling 6 or 7 times within this area. A single tile this size would work better. 

It's not a texture tile, it's a mesh tile. I didn't like how POM shader looks like, so I went with this approach. All of the pieces are geometry with texture on top.

Eric Chadwick

OK, but how big is a single tile? It looks like you're using a mesh that's about 3 bricks tall. For less obvious repetition, it could be more like 20-30 bricks tall.

Sharur

Yes, I should have done more from the start, I suppose. 20 on 20 like you suggested. What I can do now, though, is mix up the meshes, put some decals, some vertex painting and some vines. 

Eric Chadwick

It sounds like it might be frustrating to have to re-do the tile piece. I can understand the temptation to stop working on this piece and move on. I'm just trying to save you some headache... if the repetition problem is important to you, you won't be able to solve it with decals and blending. 

X-One

It might be a bit of a band-aid, but maybe try making a couple larger mesh-tiles that share the same outer edges as the small ones. In that way, you might be able to get away with keeping the majority of what you have, while quickly being able to snap a couple new assets in key locations (where the repetition is overly obvious). Alternatively, you could create some smaller, more flexible brick assets that stick out (by laying them on top) of the most offending areas. They might help to break up the surface. If you can get away with transforming them, you might get a decent amount of variation with only a couple pieces.

 Eric is right though, I don't think decals and blending alone will be enough.

Grusti

I think you defently need to rework stones, patterns are to obvious and not a decals or vertex blending could help much. If you think about that in long term perspective a time that you spend on remake this one issue is more valuable than spent time try to cover it.

Sharur

@Eric Chadwick
I understand. But at this point I only have weekend to work on this, which means it will take considerable amount of time to rework every single piece.
I added a lot of separate bricks to put on top to break up the tiling.

@X-One
Yes, it's a good idea, I added around 7 bricks for manual placing already. It's not ideal solution but it works.

@ilyaivanovart
I agree, but at this point I can't afford to spend any more time on it, unfortunately. I will have to find a way to break up tiling with manual bricks, wood panels, etc. That's what I'm doing now.

So yes, I need to submit it very soon.

Sharur

@Eric Chadwick
@X-One
@ilyaivanovart

I took some time redoing the whole wall piece. What do you think? I'll take some time to rework all other pieces but this is the new base.

Eric Chadwick

Much better! 

But is that four cubes stacked? The seam down the middle is pretty obvious. Better to make corner pieces, and middle pieces. So you can seamlessly place them next to one another.

Sharur

@Eric Chadwick

Yes, I agree. Too visible. I updated it again.

Eric Chadwick

Looking great!

Grusti

MUCH better)

Sharur

Thanks guys! Appreciate the feedback!