[UE4] Medieval Scandinavian Village
ngon master
Project that I started long time ago. I live in Finland and saw this kind of historical village during my summer trip in Jyväskylä few years back. After starting to play Witcher 3 I decided to start working with this project again. Really loving how that game looks and feels and the nature really looks like in Finland. I also been wanting to test some photogrammetry stuff so this project will be awesome place to test that too.
I also want to learn more about Unreal Engine and after few VR projects I want to make something with dynamic lighting and heavy shaders 
It´s relaxing to make this kind of stuff.
So far my tools are 3DS Max for modeling, ZBrush for detail stuff, Substance Designer for baking and 99% texturing, SpeedTree for tree generating and photogrammetry for tree textures and stuff. Engine is UE4 4.15.1 with everything on
Latest:
Start of the project:
It´s relaxing to make this kind of stuff.So far my tools are 3DS Max for modeling, ZBrush for detail stuff, Substance Designer for baking and 99% texturing, SpeedTree for tree generating and photogrammetry for tree textures and stuff. Engine is UE4 4.15.1 with everything on
Latest:
Start of the project:
Replies
However I would probably make the road/sand a little less saturated.
Looking forward to your next update.
The whole scene could do with some de-saturation I think. Or maybe your directional light is too saturated.
Everything feels very round, nothing wrong with that, but it would be very cool to have some sharper grey rocks jutting out of the landscape in place. It would make an interesting contrast with all the green you have.
Something these coming out of the landscape in places would look great here in contrast with how smooth the rest of the scene is.
@Di$array Thanks! I will add grass there. My plan is to have a bunch of different types of grass and hay there. Those horse hoove prints would be a great detail to add there! Thanks!
@JLHGameArt Thanks! Yeah, I think my directional light is too yellow so it tint everything. Need to tweak that next. I will definitely make those rocks there. Maybe test some photogrammetry stuff for those.
@Filip5 Here are some wireframe shots. It´s around 17k tris and I use UE4 generated LODs.
@djackson362 Thanks!
@FreneticPonies I will need to tweak those heights on that landscape shader. I´m not really happy with all of those ground textures so I need to spend more time with Substance Designer. Thanks for that image and that is my next thing to fix!
There are some things you could improve on, though. The mountains in the back look quite uniform using just one material that has obvious tiling. You can use distance nodes in the material editor to tile less the further an object is away.
You can take a look at the landscape material from the UE4 Kite demo to see how it's done.
Another thing I would change is the way the grass, stone and mud blends together. Right now it's very smooth, which looks a bit artificial.
There should be a more textured transition that really shows off the heightmap. Hope that helps
You said you're not quite happy with the trees, make more gaps in your leaf cards for light to pass through, by either adjusting the texture or your leaf size/amount you propagate.
I made a quick paintover to show the result.
Really nice progress keep going
@FreneticPonies Thanks, will do
@Elithenia Thanks
@Xelar Thanks. I painted the whole landscape with grass layer for now. I´m planning to add rock layer there and generate good masks from World Machine to blend those layers. I need to check that tiling trick, thanks for pointing that out! There are a lot of stuff I need to add to that material and then fix blending and stuff.
@Xendance I don´t really try to aim for a specific time period, more or less medieval style. I really liked Witcher style and I guess I want to mix that with something like this.
That is very interesting video and shows how much time and effort it takes to build those
@Martoon Thanks, that´s a good point. I need to play more with those leafs and another nice things is that it will also decrease overdraw
@snake85027 Thank you!
I´ve been working with this scene day and night now. I redo all of the trees and shaders. Tweaked lighting, better grass scattering settings, whole new WorldMachine terrain, etc... I really would like to make a small game out of this. Need to optimize things a bit more for that tho
My thoughts about UE4 4.16 prev2. Volumetric fog really makes a HUGE difference. When making nature environments its really helps to create interesting moods. Helps to make a feel that the weather is hot or cold. Distance field stuff also works faster now. I got around 10fps more with this update when I checked the compressed distance fields setting. All in all I think it´s a nice update and can´t wait for the final release.
Did you settle on any specific settings for these shots? ie. different from night to day?
My only criticism is the night scene looks a little too saturated when compared to the day scene and as @fearian said the fire looks a little glowy as well in that scene.
@Zi0 Thanks!
@Jim_Watson Thanks! I would like to create dynamic night/day cycle but for now this sublevel system works pretty well.
@yabestpal Thanks! Yes I need to dial that down.
@kingfeargod Thanks!
@namiru22 Thanks! I love Witcher in so many ways
Awesome piece and it shows your unique style.
One more thing - you need to start making tutorials
Oh and stay awesome
@AXEL Thanks for the kind words! It would be fun to start making tutorials but it takes a lot of time. Maybe some sort of live streaming so people can see how I make mistakes
@DonSmith Thanks! Yeah, there are a lot of random stuff that I just throw there for testing. I need to start building things better and find the right feel. I´m going to make that grass shorter.
I started to optimize stuff a bit and now I get around 30-50fps with my old 7990. I´m trying to aim for the "cinematic" 24fps
Here are some of the areas that I came across during my trip and took some shots:
Little update. I redo the whole procedural foliage to make more sence. I also tweaked LOD distances, added tri planar to landscape material. My todo list just keeps growing
At the moment I'd say everything looks a bit too "clean" but I assume that's because most of the fine detail is on your to do list
The only thing I find a bit unfitting, although it's more of a personal choice is your tonemapping/LUT. It looks very reddish to me, which doesn't really match the idea I make of a Scandinavian scene. People would expect it to feel "colder", unless you go for one of the few very beautiful summer days that is. But when I look at it I feel like your village is going through a very unusual heatwave. Please don't bring climate change into your personal work
I like the way tou light the scene, and models for houses and threes, they look whery nice.
But there is something incomplete with vegetation. I think you lack of bushes, colorful flowers, stones or something like that.
@markus_benovsky Thanks! I´m working with stones and rocks. I created better workflow for making those and a master material. I also have a lot more foliage stuff I need to do. So much stuff
I also looked a lot how other games that uses baked lighting looks. I really liked Uncharted 4 lighting where darker areas feels colder and with baked GI the transition to brighter area is very smooth. Also I wanted to have better reflections when in darker areas so I tweaked reflection captures and global illumination in post process volume. I think I like this lighting setup more and obviously baked lighting can look more realistic but in this case the level is too huge for that. Trying to study different lighting setups really makes me appreciate lighting artists, those guys and girls are super talented and important!
I also modeled more foliage. I still need to make bigger flowers and bushes + few trees. Then I´m planning to start making different spline tools to help making areas faster. I already made few of them for fences and planks on the ground. I also made a test scene in UE4 to test out assets in a neutral lighting.
Could you say a bit more on which values you tweaked exactly?
Have you just increased the reflection captures' and global illumination intensities, changed the tint or something
more sophisticated?
Same for DFAO.
The scene looks so solid that it is hard to criticize.
Oh i found ! The tree on the left has no leaves, i don't understand why, all the others have
@Sunray Thanks! I´m planning to try to bring more of that effect there.
@macoll No problem
I also made a somehow modular rock wall and a Substance Designer graph that gives me mossy rock textures based on hi-poly sculpts. I´m going to have fun with this in the future