Alien Planet Museum Hall Exhibit

tsmith3d

I wanted to go for a larger personal project that really would get me exited.  what I wanted to do was go back to a childhood enthusiasm I got from going to the museum of natural history/nature and science as a little kid.  Looking at the dioramas was what made me want to do art for a living, looking at them and feeling "that's so cool! you can take a time and place and put in in a glass box and put it on display! ".

What I am modeling is a wing of the Denver Museum of nature and science but with a spin on having the dioramas feature strange alien worlds.  I want to have all the informational plaques and displays but covering alien life and alien ecosystems.  

Here is a few of the reference pics I snapped during this weekend



Here is the first test pass after a few hours in UE4

Will keep updating this as it goes!
 

tsmith3d

The more wide aspect of the hall I made to make walking around en game easier but visually might be a little too jarring so I  might make it more narrow like in the reference. 

tsmith3d

Nother update with allot of temp art still, just building up model harmony and lighting, gonna buckle down and move on to fleshing out the actual dioramas.
 

Joopson

Really cool idea. I look forward to seeing it develop!

tsmith3d

Some more fleshing out, trying to paint broad strokes across everything.  Need to go forward and pick one diorama and really detail it out and make sure the light baking is up to snuff.  Having trouble getting good bounce in the actual dioramas so need to fix that somehow.

Also that ue4 bloom is driving me crazy haha need to wrangle that.

RustySpannerz

Haha, I initially thought this was going to be dioramas of us for aliens to look at. Like Ken sitting at his desk, or Dolores mopping the kitchen floor. Nice work though, this idea is even cooler than I imagined! 

tsmith3d

Haha That would be an amazing idea! Didn't come to mind for me but someone should really get on that

vertex_

Very cool idea, the scene is looking great so far.

The fabric on the sofa, chair, and floor is lacking. It's a wide open space that could benefit from some high quality work on the materials. It would be worth considering doing a high poly bake on the entire sofa component.

The red seats in particular have some really jarring seams, and the ruffled style leather needs some help - it appears to be using an albedo map with a lot of shadowing and occlusion detail baked into it. This is a great article by Marmoset for texture and material work: https://www.marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/

Overall the scene has some serious potential. With this type of environment it's important to consider what the focal point will be and also a lot of color theory comes into play.

Looking forward to your updates.

LuisCherubini

Maybe you should make the aliens with a brief animated loop moving the head or something, alongside with those "warhh" sounds from the animal when you press the buttons in the diorama. That would make the experience really close to a actual museum. Therefore, its more work, and you'd need a animator and a sound designer. ahah

For the bounce light, you should probably play around with the Post Process Volume, (if you're using one). Try adding more lights, (watch out for draw calls), or baking it.  I'd definitely put the bloom value down.

The scene is already passing the "Museum" vibe to it, since you followed the ref pic 

strongly, thats good.

I'm following this thread.