Modular Sci Fi Interior Study

Twotents

It's been a while since I have been actively working on a project so I decided to buckle down and learn how to make modular environments.

My goal with this project is to learn how to effectively create tiling sets then bake and texture these sets in Substance Painter, my goal during the texturing process is to gain a better understanding of PBR materials.

The direction of the project is a Industrial Sci Fi engineering area, with that in mind I have been collecting various references and posting them into a mood board on pinterest.

https://au.pinterest.com/kgrunig/modular-sci-fi-interior-references/

I also created an overall mood board I have as a desktop background to continually find inspiration to continue the study.


Using techniques I have learned from Thiago Klafke and Simon Fuchs I am hoping to create a solid game environment that is both visually interesting and tells a story. My secondary goals are to learn how to create an environment in Unreal Engine using the engine to create a narrative through atmosphere.

That being said I have done some preliminary modelling and tile testing in 3D Studio Max


 
and following my references and my imagination I have begin to create the tile sets. I would love some feedback as I am trying to ensure that my models are interesting enough but not overly busy with details.



Thank you for taking the time to read and look through my post, I look forward to hearing from you all.

Kind Regards
Twotents

AlexCatMasterSupreme

Hey man, I would try and push the complexity a little, right now it's just some basic walls with pipes on the outside. I would try and  break the box shapes and maybe integrate the pipes more into the walls. And for the door try and break the 45 degree angle boxes look. You could try playing with more wall profiles and some more of the paneling in the Kory Hubbel concept. One thing I like about his concepts is the value breakup in the linework, (dark values between cuts) and such, might be cool to try and push that in your 3d with materials. 
Another quick tip try and have larger walls for rest area, so you break up the "modular" look better. I try and have the middle one more simple,  then the smaller ones higher detail and brighter or darker in value for contrast. Then medium walls like you have there which can have a little more detail.

That way you are more 70-30 in how much detail you have across all the walls, you mention you want to avoid it looking busy. A good way to do this is as I said, so for example, when you are assigning materials, use a darker material 30% of the surface area, and a lighter/midtone 70% of the time. This could also be in the sizes of things, so we have 70% big, more simple wall, a smaller 30% of walls with more detail. This way you are giving room for rest but also having details and stuff will read well. Creating areas of visual intensity and visual simplicity is the key.

You can apply 70-30 (which really just means more of something than another, or hierarchy, or contrast.) to a lot of things not just those things so I would look for more ways.
 
Excited to see your progress! 


Hope that helps!

Twotents

Thanks for the input Alex, I appreciate your feedback, I will look into going 70 - 30, ill try make 5 large walls and 2 smaller walls and see how that integrates into my scene. Theres meant to be another image but it appears not to have loaded.

Twotents

So I decided to revisit my models a bit following the input given to me, here are some base models I redesigned 4 large panels and then I will make 2 small panels and 1 trim section.

I fooled around in Unreal Engine a bit and one thing that concerns me is corners. Would you generally model a corner piece or just use your existing meshes to create a corner?

@AlexCatMasterSupreme

Twotents

Also I will redesign the door a bit, one of the smaller 2x2 panels will be a single door where as the larger 4x4 walls will be a double door size door. Once I'm happy with the direction my models are going in I will then add details to the walls etc.

Twotents

I know as it stands my pieces are a bit uninteresting, just going through iterations to get a feel for modular modelling, I will be adding details in high poly passes as time goes buy but there are quite a few things that I am still unsure of when approaching environment modelling, so any advice and critiques would be most welcome.

A question I have at the moment would be the trim like pieces I have on the sides, if I were to make say a larger 1x1 square trim would that not clash or be covered over by the trim?

AlexCatMasterSupreme

Hey man, I would try and break it up into more parts and think about functional things you can add. For example when pipes intersect, model around them and explain how they connect,  maybe make a few kitbash functional parts to tack on top of the modular bits. I think something twice as wide as you have now could help too for the double wide I was saying before.