WIP - Flooded Storefront Environment (feedback welcomed!)

Optimistic_Monkey

Hey guys this is my first post here on Polycount. This is a project that I started yesterday, and the goal of it is to create a small diorama environment that tells a story of a family that lives above their restaurant and their misfortune during a hurricane. I live in Houston, Texas, and I just went through one of the worst hurricanes in terms of flooding in a very long time. I wanted to tell a story about what the people here went through.

Right now I've just done rough models to place in my scene to get a feel for set dressing.



Rough pass on lighting and models to reiterate, would love any feedback you all have at this point. Of course a lot to be done at this point, but any suggestions are welcomed! I'll be posting more updates soon!

Blanchy

Hey man this is looking good!
It show penitential i would say

My crit would be, make the scene more interesting. If your only modelling the house and boat then why have the water surrounding?
for example:

If you make it into a platform like this, it might look more interesting. This way you can make models for underneath the water, showing brick and trash that has been washed down by the flood.

Goodluck man
All the best 

Optimistic_Monkey

@Blanchy Thanks for the advice, I do think I'm going to add a few more props and such for the set dressing around it so it doesn't feel so lonely!

Optimistic_Monkey

Took a break from some models I'm working on and finished up my brick material for the building! Let me know what you all think



I have parameters in to control the amount of mortar, wear and paint.

Olingova

The material is looking good maybe some moss/sea weed for the parts that stayed underwater a bit too long?

Optimistic_Monkey

@Olingova Thanks for the suggestion! I'm probably going to create a separate moss material in substance and then make the blend shader in Unreal 4 so I have more control over it.

Optimistic_Monkey

So minor update here, I decided to approach the building via modular pieces. I completely remodeled and set dressed a bit in unreal. Let me know what you all think!


The meshes with the default shader are the plywood/wood boards (assuming some of the owners of the stores boarded up before leaving, or staying for the hurricane).

lloydj14

Good Blockout. My crit would be it doesn't doesnt feel very grounded at the moment with it being just a shop surround by water especially the type of high street/ local shop feel it has about it. It feel like it should be in a row of buildings. Now you have gone for a modular approach you should have no issues creating a generic house/shop or 2, either side of the main 1 so for the final shots you haven't just got this open water in the background. Either that or go for the diorama approach something like this:


 Looking forward to seeing how this goes.