[UE4] Swamp Lodge - FINISHED

waikkil

FINAL

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I'm making an environment project for my thesis and to learn Unreal Engine, and I could really use some feedback! I have this nagging feeling that there's plenty of room for improvement here and I could use some fresh pair of eyes to help me pinpoint problem areas you guys are always amazingly helpful, I really should've started this thread ages ago.

I'm using this beautiful concept from Markus Luotero.

Here's also some progress shots:

FreneticPonies

Now that is a bleak eastern european/western russian swamp shack. Nice job!

waikkil

@FreneticPonies hehe thanks! That's exactly what I'm going for

EliasWick

This is great! Love the mood of the scene! How did you handle the lighting? Is it lightmaps or dynamic lighting?

gabrielgarga

awesome, congratz!

waikkil

@gabrielgarga Thank you!  

@EliasWick Thank you so much! I'm using lightmaps here, I have one quite dim directional light coming from above and then a skylight. In the previous picture I actually had some problems with baking the lightmap of the main lodge but managed to solve those.

Here's some more recent shots. I ended up updating the lodge models and tweaking the lightmap settings as well as adding the AO. I still want to work on the foliage and trees a bit, any feedback still welcome!

EliasWick

It looks even better with the recent changes, it's more crisp and clear! But keep in mind, it is losing that foggy quality that added a special mood to the scene.
Don't forget to add this piece to your portfolio!

Tobbo

This is looking great! Love the color pallet and atmosphere.

Chidambhar_Swaroop

This is amazing 

shabba

Nice work @waikkil!
I like the overall vibe alot!

I'd maybe consider breaking up some of the straight lines of the structure more, like the peak, and some of the boards. Maybe consider turning the main building slightly to show more of the dilapidated/caving in roof structure,  currently the sliver showing doesnt add a whole lot, so it'd be cool to expose more and alleviate that weird tension.

Your grass is so dense that you are getting black shadows, I'd consider going back to your grass texture and doing some variations that are less 'straight' blades, less dense at the base, and fill out/up, you can cut that up to create variations of shapes for your grass so it doesnt look repetitive or chunky.

I think one of the cool things about the concept is the smaller dead branches that you havent currently included. I'd make or add into the tree texture some dead branches /w alpha that you can map to cards and place along your dead geo branches.

Not sure if that dark, thick, short dead trunk in the foreground has the right feel to it, maybe if it was slightly off to the right in that nook. Or remove it as a foreground element. How would a short, partially submerged/collapsed dock extending partially into the foreground feel? Might be visually appealing and provide an element to draw the viewer back into the building/focal on the left side of the image?

And maybe consider pushing back the building structures just to test what the water reflection feels like without the peak reflection in the foreground? Might feel better, might be worse who knows.

Maybe a low dense fog over the foreground water to help break up  the mirror like reflection of the water surface and add some atmosphere to the foreground?

These are all just ideas, by no means a list of must do's, just explorations!

Great job Keep it up.

waikkil

@shabba thank you!! I really wanted to say I absolutely loved the amazing feedback you gave me! Thank you so much for taking the time!! Sorry, it took this long to respond. Your feedback gave me a lot to think about. It felt like little suggestions like that just opened whole new doors in my mind. It made the world of difference. I felt very encouraged to try new things on this, to explore and to put more of my own twist into it. I was struggling to stay excited on this (maybe it was the thesis-writing part) but in the end I really found the excitement back by trying some of those new things. And then it took the wheel completely.

It took (too much of) a long time, but In the end, I ended up making a major overhaul of this and I feel a lot more satisfied with it



But it is finished now. I have to stop working on this at some point. And I'm itching to start a new project, to learn more new things! But I still welcome all the comments and critique on this, there's probably a lot more that could be done here but I'm still too inexperienced to see that and the feedback really helps.