[WIP] Coffin Apartment
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Been a while since I've done a full environment, and I really want to see if I can do something "proper" now that my knowledge of lighting and texturing has improved a lot since the last time I did one (some 8 or 9 months ago).
I decided to go with the Chinese "coffin apartments", these really cramped, one-person rooms (basically just a bed and some shelves to dump your stuff), because I really like finding interesting things in the mundane, and this type of environment is perfect for telling a story through seemingly ordinary props.
Been a while since I've done a full environment, and I really want to see if I can do something "proper" now that my knowledge of lighting and texturing has improved a lot since the last time I did one (some 8 or 9 months ago).
I decided to go with the Chinese "coffin apartments", these really cramped, one-person rooms (basically just a bed and some shelves to dump your stuff), because I really like finding interesting things in the mundane, and this type of environment is perfect for telling a story through seemingly ordinary props.
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I started with a really rough blockout/lighting pass in UE4. The door to the room is on the back wall (you can't see it from this angle). The room has a bed, shelf, sink, toilet, and not much else. Tons of opportunities to hang things from the walls, though. Lighting is very basic - two light sources for now. There's actually a similar cubicle with a high window on the right of the scene, so I can use that one for light too if needed.
Also started with prop creation, cause why the hell not. Modeled and baked this TV today, which is supposed to be some kind of Sony Trinitron with somewhat wacky proportions so it'll fit on the shelf. Textures are still pretty basic - I'll see about adding some unique and recognizable wear and details tomorrow.
I'll probably do a couple props to get in the mood, then figure out my bigger pieces like the furniture, and what I'm gonna do for the textures of the room itself.
No, it didn't take me a month to model a fan. Well, I hope not.
Honestly, I've been sidetracked by other (smaller projets), and preoccupied with the prospect of employment. But since I haven't found a job yet, and my portfolio is (fairly) up to date, I decided I had nothing better to do than come back to this. Hopefully there should be fairly frequent updates to this scene now, and if we're lucky I might even force myself to blog about them.
So, what's changed since last time? Not much. A big structural change I've made to the scene is the replacement of the left and right "walls" by metal panels. Looking more at my ref, it seems the room is actually a bigger (probably normal-sized) room separated into three by these cheap panels, which are... bolted on? I'm not sure. Either way, it explains the little "windows" between the rooms (these are gonna have grilles over them later) so I'm rolling with it.
Other things I've done in the past couple days:
-Made a wall and floor texture (metal panels are still in the blockout stage and will need their own texture)
-Made the fan
-Made the fluorescent lamp at the back
-Reworked the lighting a bit. Brightened up the walls' albedo color, yellowed all the neutral whites (you can be sure people smoke a lot in these buildings), increased my lights' GI contribution (gotta love that ambient light) and cooled the fluorescent light's temperature to get some blues again (the yellow walls turned it into a neutral white). These might not be noticeable changes (because my scene was previously calibrated for... whatever I had) but they should help me a *lot* because it ensures that I can texture with more accurate values, rather than having to custom-adjust all my textures for an incorrect exposure and lighting setup.
What's next? Trying to get the big props out of the way. Bed, table, sink, toilet, electrical boxes & pipes, as well as the wall dividers. Once the scene looks a little bit more like a scene, we'll see about going into fine detailing, and the fun part, smaller props & decals.
The wall material. It's nothing special, and just has a couple simple details. Some little "clumps" of paint (I'm assuming that's what they are), brushstrokes, and that sort of layered variation from the plaster being spread on (imagine the top of a surface being flattened or scraped away by a min/darken layer in PS). I've also added a lot of leaks in the roughness to give a subtle "dirty" effect to the walls, like there's a lot of moisture in the air, and they're covered by a ton of grime that's never been washed away. Since it's entirely in the roughness, I can put the effect over the whole texture without fear of the tiling being really visible since it'll only show around specular highlights.
The tiles are pretty simple as well. Basic substance designer setup, with an anti-stain pattern (the kind you often find in cheap commerces and schools), and some grunges, scuff marks, added in the roughness. I've added a bit of wobble to the entire floor by overlaying a subtle, large-scale perlin noise to the texture's normal map, and given each individual tile a bit of "bump" in the middle to further break up the reflections.
The interstice between the tiles isn't significantly darker or rougher (in fact it's almost the same value as the tiles themselves), but because I'm lighting the scene with static lights, the texture AO gets applied fully, producing very dark crevices even in lit areas. I'm not sure if there's a workaround for that, but for now I've simply put an AO multiplier in my master material and might tone down the AO on individual textures where it ends up being too strong.
One thing I've noticed in environment art for games is that geo is king. PBR brought us a ton of advances in the domains of lighting and material definition, but these still aren't as good as they are in film. And where you can't quite sell the look of your lighting or textures, geo helps just as much as it did before, if not more so.
Maybe I'm saying this because I'm coming from a couple extremely minimalistic environment projects (a clean bathroom, and an empty subway hallway). But playing with very subtle details in texture and light, while fun, is also a challenge. And being able to use striking, cinematic lighting and complex geo to hide most of these defects - of an imperfect technology, or more likely, of an inexperienced and sometimes lazy artist (check and check) - is definitely a great help.
To embrace this, I've begun to attempt to pick more complex shapes in my designs. The neon is an example: sure, there's simpler models - but the less visual interest in the shapes, the more the textures and lighting have to compensate. By aiming to integrate more mid-level shapes which read well from an overall perspective of the environment, I can spread out the load more fairly between all aspects of environment creation, rather than having textures and lighting carry the show.
Here's my main ref, on which there's a similar light (though not nearly as noticeable since the rest of the room is well-lit).
One challenge I'm going to face sometime in the future is actually figuring out what to do with that orange "room". It's fairly visible in my shot, which means it's going to need some detail (and a justification for the light, or less conspicuous placement).
Alright. I did a fair bit of reshuffling. This is mainly based on a friend's observation/suggestion, that the panels on the right wall are hiding a bed compartment. Opening up that space lets me free up the left side of the room, which I can turn into a cooking/storage space. Which, alas, is going to mean more props to model. But the tradeoff will hopefully be worth it - if we can fit a bed, bathroom, and cooking area all in one shot it'll really reinforce the "living space" identity of the scene.
Mini update, I started working on some of the furniture for the kitchen corner (I'll probably stay away from clutter until all the big furniture pieces and the walls are done).
Another small update, but an important milestone for me - The metallic wall partitions finally have their own textures and beveled models, which means the shell of the room is pretty much complete (at least until I decide to do further modifications like punching out a hole for the doorframe, and make the back wall removable so I can get shots of the full interior without having to use such a high FOV).
I've also messed with the lights a bit: by increasing the source radius, we can get a nice falloff in the shadows (they get softer the farther away from their contact points. I've actually forgot to enable this for the main fluorescent tube! But I'll be sure to try it out the next time I start a high quality bake (the shadow on the ceiling will probably look a little more natural then).
Just a silly update for today, gross toilet I had a lot of fun texturing!
@sybrix I'll see about cleaning up my graphs and sharing them the next time I'm doing stuff in Designer.
Here are some of the props I worked on recently. Mostly bathroom stuff, along with a set of power boxes and plugs. Here's how it all looks together right now:
The only critique I can give currently is for the prongs on the plugs. Compared to the plastic, they seem very flat and lack roughness or color variation. Overall though, really really nice. Can't wait for the next update!
Apologies for the lack of updates - illness has made it hard to work on this project recently, and even harder to give updates! But I'll do what I can.
Major changes include:
-Moving the toilet/sink corner further back to give that area realistic clearance (it was way too small before)
-Adding a door (storage closet?) to break up the big white wall
-Changing the color of the main light (that cool blue just wasn't doing it, and made the walls look neutral white rather than that dirty yellow we really want to go for)
-A bunch of sink/toilet props (still gotta do more!)
-Some other minor additions, like work on the bunk beds, and a mini entry hall with door you can't see from this angle
For now I'm dedicating what energy I have towards continuing this scene, but I'll try to do breakdowns and answer people's questions when I get the chance.