First Environment piece for portfolio - Japanese Room [UE4]

Andreicus

Hi, i finished my first environment piece for my portfolio and i wanted to share it on the forum.
It took me 3 months working in the evening after my full time job and at this point i can certainly say that i learned a lot in every department from modeling to texturing and rendering, a great experience.

Anyway enough talking and let's get started:

The environment is based on a concept of Arseniy Chebynkin: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9kxLL

I went for a more realistic look instead of an anime one but i tried to keep that nostalgic and dreaming feel that this room gives to you. 
I adopted a modular workflow for all the walls, floor, roof, pillars and the building in general.

I used Maya for modeling all the meshes except for the sweatshirt where i used Marvelous Designer. 
All the materials, textures and bakes where done in Substance Painter and i rendered everything in the Unreal Engine.

**Final Rendering updated 18/02/2018

ArtStation link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/64xAW

Ok, tell me what you think, critiques, feedback, comments, what's your cat doing right now...i'm ready

ChristenLA

Very nice modeling! I'm especially a big fan of the guitar and amp. Fantastic materials on both of those as well.

Because you have such nice models, I don't think the camera position is doing them and the room justice. For architectural renders, there can be a big temptation to make a wide angle shot to get everything in the scene in, but that's not necessarily what looks best. For example, on the first image a 1/3 of the shot is taken up with dead space on the floor and it's making the room feel really empty.  It's especially fighting with the 'cluttered' natural look you have going everywhere else in the room. A more focused camera angle would add a lot more intimacy and would probably match the feeling you're going for better.

The light angle you chose for this room is really nice. I especially like how the window is hitting the area behind the bed and the great interesting shadows you get on the low table. There does seem to be several areas of light bleeding, both on the left wall's top and the middle area of the far wall. This can be fixed by either putting the models closer together or adding light blocking cube behind the walls (if you're using it as an exterior shot as well, try cubes set to invisible but still cast shadows). If you're trying to match the lighting of the concept art better (or just want a slightly more natural feel) you might want to consider upping the indirect lighting intensity to get more of a light bounce around the room and a slightly warmer light tone.

The posters you have look nice and match the mood of the room well. I do think the posters behind the bookshelf seem very unnaturally placed, because they seem to be smack in the middle of the wood sides where you can't see them and they would be difficult to place. 

I hope I didn't write too much >.< I really like the scene and the door area especially seems so light and wonderful!

Andreicus

ChristenLA said:

Very nice modeling! I'm especially a big fan of the guitar and amp. Fantastic materials on both of those as well.

Thank you

ChristenLA said:

Because you have such nice models, I don't think the camera position is doing them and the room justice. For architectural renders, there can be a big temptation to make a wide angle shot to get everything in the scene in, but that's not necessarily what looks best. For example, on the first image a 1/3 of the shot is taken up with dead space on the floor and it's making the room feel really empty.  It's especially fighting with the 'cluttered' natural look you have going everywhere else in the room. A more focused camera angle would add a lot more intimacy and would probably match the feeling you're going for better.

Yes you are right, the empty space is something that bothered me aswell when i took that shot because i wanted to capture both of the doors at the same time but there was all that empty space.
Next time if i'll have a similar scene i will take smaller portion of the room instead of a wide angle shot

ChristenLA said:

The light angle you chose for this room is really nice. I especially like how the window is hitting the area behind the bed and the great interesting shadows you get on the low table. There does seem to be several areas of light bleeding, both on the left wall's top and the middle area of the far wall. This can be fixed by either putting the models closer together or adding light blocking cube behind the walls (if you're using it as an exterior shot as well, try cubes set to invisible but still cast shadows). If you're trying to match the lighting of the concept art better (or just want a slightly more natural feel) you might want to consider upping the indirect lighting intensity to get more of a light bounce around the room and a slightly warmer light tone.

Thanks for the tips ! 

ChristenLA said:

The posters you have look nice and match the mood of the room well. I do think the posters behind the bookshelf seem very unnaturally placed, because they seem to be smack in the middle of the wood sides where you can't see them and they would be difficult to place. 

Yes, i mean, they might have been sticked on the wall before the placement of the bookshelf but to look more natural they should probably be smaller like in the concept so they fit between the wooden shelves or maybe remove them completely.

ChristenLA said:

I hope I didn't write too much >.< I really like the scene and the door area especially seems so light and wonderful!

No, you gave me a lot of positive feedback and you expressed your opinion on the scene, it's never too much

Andreicus

I managed to fix some stuff ( free time...where the hell are you ) like light bleeding through walls, some color bleeding caused by the volumetric fog, posters placement and i refined the shadows a little more.
I also changed the camera angle.

Benvox2

Looking great! Would love to see it with a little more contrast, in terms of lighting and shadows. Also it might look slightly too pristine. Some light dirt or stains that are barely noticeable would add a lot.

Andreicus

Benvox2 said:

Looking great! Would love to see it with a little more contrast, in terms of lighting and shadows. Also it might look slightly too pristine. Some light dirt or stains that are barely noticeable would add a lot.

Thanks for the feedback !

Andreicus

Added some more contrast and some very light dirt/wearing effects on the floor

Joopson

Are those diagonal lines of light in the thinner shadows cause by low shadow map resolution? It's pretty distracting to me right now, honestly. Looks really good otherwise. Though the bed looks weirdly thin, and some proportions feel a little weird (notably the cabinets on the right feel huge to me, compared to the bed and bureau.)

Also the tatami mats feel a little weird. They're usually made of a woven straw material, or a synthetic substitute; and are edged with a cotton or polyester, which isn't very shiny. The dark lines between the mats look quite glossy in this scene. Here's a square example of a tatami closeup:
 

Personally, I'd maybe make the sunlight or bounced light a bit warmer, too, to help capture the dreamy pleasantness of the concept.

Andreicus

Joopson said:

Are those diagonal lines of light in the thinner shadows cause by low shadow map resolution? It's pretty distracting to me right now, honestly. Looks really good otherwise. Though the bed looks weirdly thin, and some proportions feel a little weird (notably the cabinets on the right feel huge to me, compared to the bed and bureau.)

Also the tatami mats feel a little weird. They're usually made of a woven straw material, or a synthetic substitute; and are edged with a cotton or polyester, which isn't very shiny. The dark lines between the mats look quite glossy in this scene. Here's a square example of a tatami closeup:
 

Personally, I'd maybe make the sunlight or bounced light a bit warmer, too, to help capture the dreamy pleasantness of the concept.

Thanks for your feedback.

So regarding the tatami i used a woven bamboo fabric for the "face" and a simple black fabric for the borders but now i changed the material of the borders to a black cotton material instead of a simple fabric, it's still a bit shiny but thats because it is directly hit by the light of the other room.

About the diagonal lines of lights i tried a bunch of things like bumping up the shadow resolution scale, increase the lightmap density ( it didn't change anything because the meshes were "all green" already ), changed the anti aliasing and other stuff but they disappeared ( except for some dots ) only after i set the "lighting build quality" to "preview" instead of an higher resolution like "production" or "high" i don't know why.
I also made the color of the directional light a bit warmer.