[UE4] - Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow

cazetta

My third remixed stage! It's from a very very cult snes game called Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow. Maui Mallard is actually Donald Duck, and the stage itself is called The Ninja Training Grounds. I hope you like it!

That's actually the first time I used Zbrush (so freaking hard to learn) in my composition, I'm also striving to achieve a not-mediocre level in my hand-painted skills, so pardon me if you see some odd things, will ya?

More at:  https://www.artstation.com/artist/cazetta

https://youtu.be/ypUjEznQ1WM

cazetta

up

hmm_rock

Hey nice work! Thats a pretty big level, I wasnt expecting the underground, but its an awesome contrast. Love the placement of the smaller props/tokens, lots of character. The foliage is looking good and you have some variation in there. Some grass poking through the cobble stone might be nice, and I think some of your leaves are looking a little glossy. 

gsokol

In general, I think you are suffering from too much everything here.  The scene overall is quite busy.  All of your colors are quite saturated, to the point where its difficult to discern the floor from the wall, background from foreground.  Especially since you are trying to make this look like a playable level, think about what it takes for a player to easily recognize where they can and cannot go, what is background and what isn't.  For instance, for your ground I would consider desaturating, making it a bit brighter, and pull out the contrast from the cracks in between the stones, weather its because your normals or height is too strong, or if you have that information painted into the albedo.  makes for a much cleaner read, and the contrast between busy detail and clean detail will stand out to a player.

I think overall the sculpting you did in Zbrush is pretty good.  I think your choice to have every single block as a separate asset makes for more noise though.  This is an ancient space, those dinged up rocks weren't just piled up yesterday, they should be covered with dirt, whittled from erosion, and those deep cracks would get filled with those things.

Even on a color calibrated monitor, I can barely see anything in the underground areas, you need to brighten that space up.  Very rarely would it be acceptable for a space to be so dark that a player cannot see where to go.  You can have the illusion of it being dark through color, while still giving a bit more illumination so we can see whats going on.

cazetta

hmm_rock said:

Hey nice work! Thats a pretty big level, I wasnt expecting the underground, but its an awesome contrast. Love the placement of the smaller props/tokens, lots of character. The foliage is looking good and you have some variation in there. Some grass poking through the cobble stone might be nice, and I think some of your leaves are looking a little glossy. 

Ok dude, thank you very much for the feedback!

cazetta

gsokol said:

In general, I think you are suffering from too much everything here.  The scene overall is quite busy.  All of your colors are quite saturated, to the point where its difficult to discern the floor from the wall, background from foreground.  Especially since you are trying to make this look like a playable level, think about what it takes for a player to easily recognize where they can and cannot go, what is background and what isn't.  For instance, for your ground I would consider desaturating, making it a bit brighter, and pull out the contrast from the cracks in between the stones, weather its because your normals or height is too strong, or if you have that information painted into the albedo.  makes for a much cleaner read, and the contrast between busy detail and clean detail will stand out to a player.

I think overall the sculpting you did in Zbrush is pretty good.  I think your choice to have every single block as a separate asset makes for more noise though.  This is an ancient space, those dinged up rocks weren't just piled up yesterday, they should be covered with dirt, whittled from erosion, and those deep cracks would get filled with those things.

Even on a color calibrated monitor, I can barely see anything in the underground areas, you need to brighten that space up.  Very rarely would it be acceptable for a space to be so dark that a player cannot see where to go.  You can have the illusion of it being dark through color, while still giving a bit more illumination so we can see whats going on.

That's a very valuable piece of feedback, thank you.

cazetta

I did a comparison video with the original snes version, too bad I didn't saw your opinions first ='(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQIoydT704c