(WIP) Procedural Arctic Forest Environment [UE4]
polycounter lvl 3
Check out the 80 Level article here: https://80.lv/articles/procedural-artcit-forest-environment-production/
This is a summer project I started a few weeks ago, the goal was to find out if tessellating foliage would kill performance on a modern midrange PC.
Most of the R&D is done at this point and with just rudimentary optimisations a GTX 970 paired with an ancient Sandy Bridge processor framerates are in the 20s. With the tech sorted out I'm just having fun with this scene populating it with assets, I'll be posting updates as I go along.
Current progress:
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This is a summer project I started a few weeks ago, the goal was to find out if tessellating foliage would kill performance on a modern midrange PC.
Most of the R&D is done at this point and with just rudimentary optimisations a GTX 970 paired with an ancient Sandy Bridge processor framerates are in the 20s. With the tech sorted out I'm just having fun with this scene populating it with assets, I'll be posting updates as I go along.
Current progress:
***
Replies
Would love to see what it would look like with some snowfall
looking nice!
sadly if you mix Tessellation + Foliage + LODs a long standing and largely ignored bug bug will ruin your performance, up to the point of even crashing your GPU (which Windows/nvidia is nice enough to recover from).
if you pursue this and encounter this issue don't hesitate to add your voice to the bug report
The spruces are now a lot more varied (8 growth stages from young to old) but performance took a nosedive! The trees are currently sitting at 5k polys for the small ones up to 10k for the large ones, the internal structure that's not very visible from the outside is getting culled in the next pass (I liked the idea of framing shots with some really close up branches without losing the illusion of volume). No billboards yet though, I guess the fact it even runs is a positive sign.
I haven't run in to this issue yet, but thanks for the heads up! Running version 4.15.
Current progress:
Experimenting with wavy snow projected along sloped surfaces.
As for the snow patches created by using displacement, I really like the way they look, but they are somehow not realistic. I don't know if you should change it though, it does look very good.
Not the best feedback, but I really felt like commenting that scene
wonderful work mate.
I want to share some details about the material I've put together that's driving the look of the trees. (with pictures!)
It's been an iterative process as I've discovered I need a new type of branch in some place or variation in snow density on a macro and micro scale.
New optimized trees in Maya (now in the 1k-6k poly range). AO has been baked to vertices to give a starting point for vertex painting in UE4. The solid blues are areas where I want dead branches to appear:
Vertex painting snow in UE4 is a breeze, this is the sort of "micro" scale detail I want:
The trees in the distance quickly became an even noisy blur so I added a random number that modifies the general level of snow coverage on any given instance of a tree. This is "macro" scale detail, it's compatible with the foliage tool, LOD friendly and interacts nicely with the vertex paint. You can see the effect in earlier pictures.
Thank you
I can see what you mean about realism, in the heart of winter snow wouldn't naturally accumulate into big chunks like that while leaving the rock surface in the cracks exposed. As a thought experiment *maybe* if it was warm and the snow had been thawing for a while the melted water running over the surface could have carved deep valleys in natural crevices of the snow surface, dirt and pebbles carried by the water would also settle there. During springtime snow can go through many cycles of thawing and freezing, this kind of snow is usually compacted and has a hardened glaze of ice on the outer layer. If water gets to flow in between the snow and ground chunks of snow can suddenly "cave in" resulting in large cracks forming on the snow surface. But as you said if it looks good don't overthink it.
Do you have any portfolio? How can I contact you?
Playing with lighting and the FOV:
Here's the tree modeling process explained, I'm doing a more comprehensive writeup for 80.lv which will be out soon!
In Maya I built branches of different types, in total there are more but I can't reasonably fit them all here. The big branch you see on the right is 146 tris and they get leaner from there. Most branches were blocked out with the 2 major branch cards I mentioned earlier with smaller ones added for flavor. The small thin frond cards were used to build the tree tops which have a very particular shape. There are also some more crooked branches that are bare of needles.
The 80 Level article is out! https://80.lv/articles/procedural-artcit-forest-environment-production/